Afghanistan Times
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When the international community started pouring billions of dollars as donation to the reconstruction program in the post-Taliban Afghanistan, everybody had hopes and dreams about a future for the war-hit country to be like developed countries in Europe or the ones like South Korea.
Electricity power was one of these dreams to be fulfilled as the major part of the reconstruction program since Afghanistan in general and the capital city of Kabul in particular did not enjoy stable electricity and used to usually live in dark with small manufacturers lacking enough power even since 1980s.
Unfortunately, the people’s this dream was not fulfilled either just like others such as security, public health and education improvement.
The country with great water, solar and wind resources could be changed to a giant of electricity producer and our electricity product was enough to help us stand on our feet economically besides the domestic needs.
But lack of honesty and existing of administration corruption that surrounds the government, disappointed the people who knew that nobody either those proud of their jihad and the technocrats who had spent years of their lives in the West wanted to serve the poor country.
The people were deceived once when the government purchased old and out of date diesel generators from a neighboring country. When the generator project did not work, officials decided to import electricity from other neighbors. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent and many years were wasted so that the project completed.
But this was not thought that importing of electricity was not free of danger. The route that the pylons pass was in mountainous areas such as Salang where an avalanche destroyed several pylons in 2015.
Taliban fighters target the pylons from time to time. Now the exporter countries plan to decrease Afghanistan’s need capacity. This unfriendly plan makes residents of more than 10 provinces particularly the capital city lives in dark in the cold season of winter.
This could be also due to Kabul’s improper policies that cannot convince the exporter countries not to violate the contract articles. Otherwise, Kabul residents have to suffer an endless blackout, a big shame for government authorities.
