“Attacks by the none-too-neighborly neighbors has never been constrained either geographically or temporally.”
Especially when it comes to a valuable and rare commodity like copper.
I worked briefly on a mine in Indonesia (The Grasberg Mine). The deposit was discovered in the 1930’s in a remote area. There was a dome of practically pure copper sticking up out of the ground. (Interesting book about the discovery. First mentioned by one of the early explorers of the area (Cook?) and a mining guy was going through his diaries and then a couple of expeditions to re-find it. The mine (2nd richest in the world?) now extends deep into the ground and includes lots of gold along with the copper.
90 years later the local rebels still keep attacking the facility, and Indonesia still hasn’t given them their Independence like they had promised decades ago.
They’ll never take the copper while they’re alive.