Chinese engineers and the Taliban government officially started work on a massive project in Afghanistan to mine the world’s second-largest deposit of copper. At the July 24 event at Mes Aynak, some 40 kilometers southeast of the capital, Kabul, Taliban officials along with Chinese businessmen and diplomats carried out a ribbon-cutting ceremony as work began on the construction of a road to the mining site. A $3 billion deal signed in 2008 gave the Chinese state-owned China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC) a 30-year mining concession, but…