Afghanistan may be sitting on mineral riches worth a trillion dollars, but analysts say digging up any newly-found wealth will be difficult because of the war, now in its ninth year.

US and Afghan officials say Afghanistan has significant quantities of metals such as iron, gold, copper, cobalt and lithium, which according to recent calculations could be worth at least $900 billion.

But Afghanistan faces a dilemma if it is sitting on a fortune, with some fearing the security risks could outweigh the financial rewards.

Paul Jordan, who served in the Australian Army's Special Air Service regiment for a decade and is now the operations manager for Hart Security Australia, is familiar with the risks of operating in the war-torn country.

"Some areas you can access quite easily simply by establishing good arrangements with the various tribes, being advised into those areas and then forging on," he said.

"Other areas are far more hostile."

He sees several challenges for mining companies.

"Afghanistan is far from a democratic country, so it's more of a conglomerate of tribes and tribal leaders running that particular country," he said.

"The difficulties will be negotiating arrangements and having some continuity with those arrangements with those various tribal elders or tribal leaders, rather than assuming that Karzai can come up with a mining or resources policy for that country."

But Mr Jordan says even establishing a relationship with local tribal groups can be risky.

"The danger of being invited in is that you set yourself up into a routine or a pattern, because people know where you're going to be at a certain time," he said.

"So the danger is there that 90 per cent of the local tribes might be good people but there might be one or two who might inform others and you might find yourself walking into an ambush or into a kidnapping situation. So you do have to still be very cautious."

It is a dangerous way to make a dollar. But oil companies have been doing it for a while in unstable parts of the world.

"We're pulling oil out of the ground in some quite high risk places in the world, but the first step with all those operations is that those mining companies would do a threat and risk assessment," Mr Jordan said.

China and India have already bid for the right to develop mines in Afghanistan. The Chinese have won a copper contract and an iron ore contract is due to be awarded later this year.

And Afghanistan could do with the money. It depends on foreign aid to build schools and hospitals and to pay for guns and ammunition for its army to fight the Taliban.

Waheed Omar, a spokesman for Afghan president Hamid Karzai, says he hopes the newly-found mineral wealth will be a resource for Afghanistan.

"It's very heartening that Afghanistan has a very bright future if the Afghan mineral resources are properly extracted," he said.

Mohsin S Khan, director of the Middle East and Central Asia department of the International Monetary Fund, agrees.

"It could very well be that this country is not going to be dependant on the United States aid or foreign aid forever," he said.