37Bloomberg Businessweek / SEPTEMBER 2, 2019THE ELEMENTSHAJIGAK: MAURICIO LIMA/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX
“MPs started fighting amongst them-
selves,” she recalls. “They were blaming
each other, like, ‘Why did we do this?’ ” In
the end, Ghani kept her on without push-
back from parliament. “I said, ‘Now that
you didn’t give me the vote, that means I
can double and triple my reform.’ ”
Nehan was born in Kabul, a middle
child with three brothers and five sis-
ters. When she was 11, her family fled
the Soviet occupation, and she grew
up in Pakistan as a refugee. She was a
voracious student, eager to learn more
than local schools could offer, but Afghan
families traditionally prioritize male
children’s education, and there were
nine kids to consider. Still, her father
found the money. “He said, ‘What I saw
in you I didn’t see in your brothers and
the rest of the sisters,’ ” she remembers.
She repaid this trust by graduating
from a university in Peshawar and get-
ting a job with a foreign nongovernmen-
tal organization, becoming the family’s
main breadwinner. She returned to
Kabul in 2002, in the aftermath of the
U.S.-led invasion. The city was shat-
tered, but it was full of opportunities forA
s a female politician in a country
where many women still strug-
gle for basic rights, Nargis Nehan
is used to standing out. In December 2017,
at age 38, she was the only woman of
12 acting ministers seeking confirma-
tion to the cabinet by Afghanistan’s par-
liament. Winning approval to remain
head of the ministry of mines and petro-
leum was the highest-profile test of her
political career—and initially it seemed
like she’d failed.
Afghanistan’s rugged, landlocked ter-
rain holds vast mineral wealth, including
Hajigak, one of the world’s largest iron
deposits, as well as copper, gold, lith-
ium, chromite, manganese-rich forms
of columbite and tantalite, precious and
semiprecious stones, rare-earth metals,
and uranium. Some estimates peg the
collective value of these resources at
$1 trillion or more—if they can be brought
to market despite extreme security, logis-
tical, and political challenges.
When President Ashraf Ghani
appointed Nehan acting minister in
2016, with a mandate to reform the sec-
tor and attract international investment,
she knew she’d be fighting corrupt,
entrenched interests. “I never learned
the art of keeping quiet, and I don’t want
to learn it,” she says, sitting in her heavily
guarded office in Kabul. By the time she
came up for confirmation, she’d been in
the job almost a year. She’d upset some
powerful people by canceling a num-
ber ofirregular-looking contracts, and
she’d refused, she says, to engage in the
horse-trading and bribery that commonly
precede confirmation votes. “All my
friends were telling me, ‘Look, you’re
going to lose,’ ” Nehan says. They proved
correct. “Deep down I kind of knew,” she
says. Yet it stung to learn she’d been the
only one rejected.
The apparent sexism of the decision
brought an outcry from civil society. Construction of a road leading to HajigakBy Matthieu Aikins Nargis Nehan is
working to reform
a troubled ministry
and get Afghanistan’s
vast mineral resources
out of the groundPhotograph by Kiana Hayeri
an English-speaking, computer-literate
Afghan woman. She helped open the
Norwegian Refugee Council’s office,
then was hired by Afghanistan’s minis-
try of finance.
Nehan considers two people to be
inspirations for her career. The first is
Mahatma Gandhi. The second is Ghani.
One of the raft of Afghans who were
abroad during the country’s decades of
war, he’d pursued an academic career
before returning to become finance min-
ister and develop a reputation as a fastid-
ious reformer. Even though Nehan was
just 23, Ghani appointed her director gen-
eral of the treasury, where she oversaw
its computerization. When he left the
ministry, she followed him to become a
vice chancellor at Kabul University and
then to a number of increasingly senior
government roles.
Nehan joined Ghani’s team as an
adviser when he became president in
2014, but she was soon diagnosed with
breast cancer. After she returned from
treatment abroad, her cancer in remis-
sion, he offered her a choice of two min-
isterial positions. She chose the harder
one: mines. “I thought, Here I can do
something that will repay the trust he
has given me,” she says. “It was a totally
messed-up sector.”
Even granted Afghanistan’s other
problems, her new portfolio was
notorious. “It’s a corrupt ministry. It’s
an anarchic ministry,” says Naser Timory,
head of advocacy and communications
for Integrity Watch, an Afghan moni-
toring group. “There is interest in min-
ing from the Afghan parliament, from