but very little has been reported/disclosed for some reason. (Huh, wonder why.)

Here is an older article from 2010 talking about a newly located Lithium deposit (Itself estimated at appx $1 trillion dollars.)

However, on the other side of the argument there was an article shortly thereafter put out by wired trying to debunk the NY Times article that had ran earlier revealing this, which later had an "update" added to it which seems to then go ahead and support the Times article. The crux of their argument at that point then solely revolved around, "Well, we don't know if that 1 Trillion is completely accurate and the government already knew about this." which was hardly compelling

UPDATE:

One retired senior U.S official is calling the government’s mineral announcement “pretty silly,” Politico is reporting. “When I was living in Kabul in the early 1970s the [U.S. government], the Russians, the World Bank, the U.N. and others were all highly focused on the wide range of Afghan mineral deposits. Cheap ways of moving the ore to ocean ports has always been the limiting factor.”

At least two American geologists have been advising the Pentagon on Afghanistan’s wealth of mineral resources for years. Bonita Chamberlin, a geologist who spent 25 years working in Afghanistan, “identified 91 minerals, metals and gems at 1,407 potential mining sites,” the Los Angeles Times reported in 2001. In 1995, she even co-wrote a book, “Gemstones in Afghanistan,” on the topic. And Chamberlin worked directly with the Pentagon, after they commissioned her to report on sandstone and limestone caves mere weeks after 9/11.

“I am quite surprised that the military is announcing this as some ‘new’ and ‘surprising” discovery,’ she told Danger Room in an e-mail. “This is NOT new. Perhaps this also hints at the real reason why we would be so intent on this war.”

And Jack Shroder, a geologist at the University of Nebraska, told the Associated Press in 2001 that mineral deposits in Afghanistan were so rich, they could be vital in rebuilding the country. He’s collaborated with Pentagon officials since the 1970s, when he worked on mapping the country. In 2002, Shroder was approached by several American companies who hoped to start mining the area.

It’s not clear exactly what those experts shared with military honchos, but the Pentagon’s knowledge of Afghanistan’s minerals clearly preceded the 2004 discovery of “an intriguing series of old charts and data,” as the Times reports. In 2002, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that the U.S. Department of Interior’s Mineral Yearbook, among other atlases, noted Afghanistan’s “significant deposits of gold, precious stones and other minerals waiting to be mined.”

But whatever the U.S military knows, and no matter how long they’ve known it, Russia likely has ’em beat. At a 2002 conference on rebuilding Afghanistan, reps from several countries complained that Russia continued to withhold decades-old information about mineral deposits in the country.

From the Wiki:

Lithium is a vital metal that is mostly used in the manufacture of rechargeable batteries for mobile phones, laptops and electric cars. It is believed that Afghanistan has plenty of lithium. The country’s lithium deposits occur in dry lake beds in the form of lithium chloride; they are located in the western Province of Herat and Nimroz and in the central east Province of Ghazni. The geologic setting is similar to those found in Bolivia and Chile. The deposits are also found in hard rock in the form of spodumene in pegmatites in the north-eastern Provinces of Badakhshan, Nangarhar, Nuristan, and Uruzgan. A pegmatite in the Hindu Kush Mountains in central Afghanistan was reported to contain 20% to 30% spodumene

The existing and new mineral reserves that have been discovered (not counting the likely others that remain "undiscovered") estimate that Afghanistan alone contains anywhere between 22 and 35 TRILLION dollars worth of relatively easily accessible mineral supplies. (depending on who's numbers you look at)

Even if those estimates are inflated by as much as 50% that is still no small piece of change for such a relatively tiny nation.