A promise fulfilled in a Taliban stronghold

KAJAKI DAM, Afghanistan - Five shipping containers marked with the Afghan flag, some of them still wrapped in plastic, now sit in the construction camp at Kajaki Dam, Afghanistan’s biggest hydroelectric project, according to an International Herald Tribune report.
They hold the US government’s largest single gift to Afghanistan of the past seven years: massive pieces of a 200-ton hydroelectric turbine that, when installed, will double the electricity supply to the towns and districts of southern Afghanistan.
The $180m project, which includes distribution lines and substations, is intended to reach 1.8m people and provide jobs and economic renewal to the most troubled and violent part of the country.
The governor of Helmand Province, Gulab Mangal, paid a brief visit by helicopter to the dam in his province in Oct to emphasize its importance. Speaking to reporters over the roar of the water, he said that even if the immediate benefits were not apparent, future generations would appreciate the assistance coming into Afghanistan. “The children of Afghanistan will not forget the work done for this power station,” he said.
The Chinese-made turbine remains in its packing cases, and it will not be installed and working for perhaps a year. But its arrival in this isolated camp, deep inside Taliban territory, was one of the great feats of Nato forces in southern Afghanistan this year.
It has been a rare instance of a fulfilled promise in the effort to build up Afghanistan’s infrastructure. But even with the step forward, the improvements to the dam, in an inaccessible area of northern Helmand Province, are still being held hostage by the Taliban’s growing ability to mount offensives in recent years. The overall power project has been repeatedly delayed because of the difficulty of security and logistics. And the rest of the original $500 million proposal to augment the capacity of the dam itself has not been approved, cast in doubt by the Taliban’s gains.
“In the case of the Kajaki Dam or others, the security situation impedes the delivery of the service,” the US ambassador to Afghanistan, William Wood, said in Washington in June. “The reason that there isn’t more light at night and more warmth in winter for south Afghanistan is because the Taliban has not let us do everything, work as effectively as we’d like to on the Kajaki Dam.”