Different kind of power struggle in Kandahar

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan

About 90 factories sit vacant in the economic capital of southern Afghanistan. They could fight militants in a way no army could, employing thousands of people and giving them a reason to shun the Taliban.

A lack of reliable electricity is what’s keeping the factories silent and useless in the fight against the insurgency. And it’s the insurgency, in large part, that’s keeping them that way.

The dilemma is the same throughout Afghanistan’s ungoverned south, where NATO is gearing up for a major offensive: Development is needed to wrest people away from militants, but fighting regularly thwarts such projects - wasting millions in the process.

The main power source for Kandahar city should be the Kajaki Dam in neighboring Helmand province, but a six-year-old plan to repair it has been repeatedly delayed by fighting and the difficulty of securing roads long enough to get supplies in.

Two existing hydroelectric turbines at the dam were repaired by helicoptering in supplies at a cost of $7 million, according to a report by the U.S. government, which is funding the effort. Officials managed to get a new third turbine up to the dam with a weeklong, 4,000-troop convoy in September, but now have decided the road is too insecure to truck in supplies. They aren’t sure it’s worth the expense to fly in 900 tons of cement and aggregate to complete the project.

The dam reconstruction, originally budgeted at $47.9 million, has already cost nearly double that much, according to a report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. One additional cost: a Chinese subcontractor backed out because of kidnapping threats, stalling work.

The agency is now holding onto another $50 million in earmarked funds in the hope that there will be a lull in the fighting long enough to get another convoy in, said John Smith-Sreen, who oversees energy projects for the U.S. government development agency.

“And the proper moment has not come, sadly. Now we’re looking at a situation that if it doesn’t come in the next several months we have to make a decision as to other opportunities within Afghanistan,” he said, explaining that a number of power options in other parts of the country may be a better use of the money.

This is bad news for Kandahar city - home to the bulk of people in one of Afghanistan’s most volatile provinces. People here regularly complain that their real problems are economic: Help them get jobs and build businesses, they say, and support for the Taliban will wane.

Taliban leaders in the south pay wages to young men who otherwise wouldn’t have jobs to become guerrilla fighters or suicide bombers. Poor rains push farmers to the most resilient crop: poppy used for opium production.

The senior U.S. civilian representative for the province has a computer printout on his office wall that makes the same point. It uses arrows to show security decreasing as support for insurgents increases, then proclaims: “It’s the electric power stupid.”

“We do a lot of polling in the city and we have a lot of eyes and ears out there,” the representative, Bill Harris, said. “Everybody has electricity at the top of the list.”

Forty-year-old Mohammad Naim can’t afford a backup generator for the Kandahar factory where he makes plastic sandals. He says running one of the diesel machines would raise costs so much that he’d be selling his shoes at a loss. So he gets by with about 12 hours of power every other day.

“We have 15 workers and we have to pay them, even if we don’t have electricity,” Mr. Naim said. “If there’s no power for a long time, I’ll have to quit my business and fire my workers. Then there’s the fear that they will start illegal activities in the city or join the militants.”

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