"The world's second-largest untapped copper reserve, and the Chinese have bought the mineral rights to the entire area"

From Mining threat to ancient Afghan monastery at Mes Aynak:

Ten years ago, the Taliban blew up Afghanistan's ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan, provoking international outrage. Now, the country's rich heritage is facing a new threat. A Chinese mining venture has set its sights on another ancient Buddhist site, reports the BBC's Quentin Sommerville.

Mes Aynak lies in Logar province, a short helicopter ride from Kabul.

The site was was once an al-Qaeda training camp, but is also home to an astonishing discovery - a Buddhist monastery more than 1,400 years old.

Unlike many archaeological sites, this is more than a few stones on the ground.

There are walls and corridors. Walking past the stupas, or shrines, and the still brightly painted red Buddhas, you get a real sense of a living monastery and the grandeur of the place.

The monks settled here because there was copper in the ground; it was part of a Buddhist kingdom. This was a way-station on the Silk Road, the route that would take Buddhism from India to Tibet, and beyond into China.

"The main thing for us is to document as much as we can before its destruction," said Phillippe Marquis, a French archaeologist who has been working on the site, and is assisting in an emergency evacuation of the site.

"It was the copper in the ground that brought the monks here, made them rich and allowed them to build this monastery."

But if it is copper that led to the creation of this monastery, it is copper that will also lead to its destruction.

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