Even before NATO forces begin leaving Afghanistan, predator nations are pouring lavish praise, diplomatic agreements and buckets full of cash on Afghan leaders, trying to win access to the nation’s vast natural resources after Western troops leave.

Chief among them are China, Iran and India ― nations that contributed nothing toward the military effort over the last decade but hope to reap benefits from it anyway.

For example, in Beijing late last week, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Chinese President Hu Jintao signed a deal allowing China to pursue mineral resources, energy development and agricultural opportunities. Government media quoted Hu as saying China planned to “provide sincere and selfless help to the country.”

China’s record so far has been far from selfless. Over the past decade, China has given the Afghan government $246 million in aid ― while spending $3.5 billion to develop a cooper mine there. That doesn’t count the $30 million bribe China paid to Afghanistan’s minister of mines in 2009 to gain access to that cooper mine. The minister has since lost that job.

On the ground in Afghanistan, China is quiet and largely invisible away from its commercial pursuits, where Afghan military and police, trained and paid by NATO, protect them.

India, meanwhile, has won rights to mine iron ore. And Iran, after failing in its urgent efforts to scuttle the U.S.-Afghanistan strategic partnership, is promising copious aid and assistance after NATO leaves.

My suggestion to Afghans: Don’t hold your breath. Iran has already bought its way into the Afghan media and now funds at least a third of the nation’s radio, TV and newspapers. All of them are used to broadcast hateful messages about America and the West. But payments to their employees are plummeting as international sanctions decimate the Iranian treasury.

All of this is causing angst and worse among the nations that have spent or obligated more than $1 trillion over the last decade and lost more than 3,000 lives. Earlier this year, William Patey, the outgoing British ambassador to Afghanistan, remarked that the West welcomes foreign investment in the state, “but it would be even more heartening if these countries could set aside a budget to help with the security effort, particularly after coalition forces leave. There seems to be an assumption that Afghanistan, Britain and America will cover security.”

Underlying all of this is the discovery that Afghanistan holds at least $1 trillion in untapped natural resources, including oil, cobalt, iron ore, gold and precious metals, among them lithium, used to power batteries. An internal Pentagon memo, now widely quoted, calls Afghanistan “the Saudi Arabia of lithium.”

By all rights the nations that fought for Afghanistan, spent all that money, lost all those lives, ought to have first call on these lucrative commercial opportunities. But that’s not to be ―partly because Karzai defines the phrase “bite the hand that feeds you.”

But the larger reason: Western states generally are not willing to pay the massive bribes Karzai and his minions have come to expect. For years now, Karzai has acknowledged, Iran has been delivering bags full of cash to him ― and about 44 members of the Afghan Parliament, Reuters reported.

China, home to pandemic corruption, will always pay what’s needed to get what it wants. Well, the United States has the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and most Western nations have similar laws.

Unhindered by any of that, China’s National Petroleum Corp. has worked out a deal to pump 5,000 barrels of oil a day beginning later this year from newly discovered Afghan reserves. And India, another richly corrupt state, has acquired an agreement to help build a natural-gas pipeline through Afghanistan.

But these mercenary countries don’t seem to understand what they’re getting into. Once NATO forces leave, and a small U.S. presence remains at Bagram Air Base outside Kabul, the Taliban are likely to seize control of the rest of the state, or most of it. Are these miscreants going to stand by and watch as these other countries make off with Afghanistan’s riches?

Many analysts have been saying the Chinese refuse to get involved in the fighting because they don’t want the Taliban and its militant allies to view China as an enemy. But that won’t matter. The Taliban, realizing that China and Pakistan are allies, will undoubtedly attack them. And Pakistan will probably delegate the Haqqani terrorist network to go after Indian companies.

None of these states chose to get involved before. Enter the arena now at your own considerable risk.

By Joel Brinkley

Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former foreign correspondent for the New York Times. ― Ed.

(Tribune Media Services)