Struggling for Power in Afghanistan

„The Western campaign for hearts and minds in Afghanistan is based heavily on providing roads, dams, buildings and, especially, electricity. The United States Agency for International Development, or U.S.A.I.D., expects to spend $2.1 billion this year in Afghanistan. It has been working there for half a century, since the Soviets and Americans were competing to be the country’s development partners.

So you’d think that a new five-year, $1.2 billion program that U.S.A.I.D. has proposed to create a modern electrical grid there would be a model. You’d be quite wrong.

When it comes to electricity, the agency has a dismal record, one that needs to be reviewed now, before the grid plan moves ahead. Afghanistan is in the bottom 10 percent of the world in electricity consumption per capita; if recent patterns hold, it will stay there as U.S.A.I.D. and the State Department try to appease the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, and also give American officials a veneer of victory over Afghanistan’s problems as American troops start to withdraw. President Obama’s desire to speed the withdrawal makes the issue more urgent.

As in Iraq, the main American electrical reconstruction effort in Afghanistan is divided between U.S.A.I.D. and the Army Corps of Engineers. Of the two, the Corps has proved far more efficient.

The biggest project until now has been a 105-megawatt diesel power plant at Tarakhil, outside Kabul. It took the aid agency nearly three years to get it built. And as documented by the reporters Pratap Chatterjee of the CorpWatch news service and Marisa Taylor of McClatchy Newspapers, the Kabul plant became emblematic of the agency’s struggles. Its contractors were the Louis Berger Group and Black & Veatch. Last year, U.S.A.I.D.’s inspector general said delays and contracting problems at the project had cost nearly $40 million, out of a total outlay of more than $300 million.”