Aynak : a world-class sediment-hosted stratiform copper deposit in Afghanistan

The Aynak copper deposit, 30 km south of Kabul in Afghanistan, was discovered by Afghan-Soviet geologists in the 1970s. Extensive exploration from 1974-89 included drilling, trenching and adits. This delineated several large ore bodies and smaller lenses with a reported resource figure of 240 Mt at 2.3% Cu (ESCAP, 1995). Mineralisation is stratabound and consists of disseminated bornite and chalcopyrite in a cyclic sequence of metamorphosed sediments of late Precambrian age. A model proposes copper was leached from underlying volcanic rocks by circulating brines and then moved up faults to deposit copper sulphides within the overlying sediments.