DUSHANBE, February 18, 2016, Asia-Plus — A Taliban attack on a power line from Uzbekistan to the Afghan capital has plunged large swathes of Kabul into darkness as nearly 70 percent of Kabul’s electricity is imported from Uzbekistan.
Afghan state-owned utility company Da Afghanistan Breshna Shirkat (DABS) has applied to the Tajik authorities asking to increase the power supply to Afghanistan.
The problem of supply of electricity to Kabul has been partially solved as Tajikistan now supplies 100 megawatt of electricity there, Wahidullah Tawhidi, a spokesman for Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat, told
Radio Liberty
on February 17.
According to him, the Afghan side has applied to the Tajik government with solicitation to increase the power supply to 150-180 megawatt.
We will recall that according to the Afghan authorities, the Taliban cut a supply of electricity from Uzbekistan to Kabul in late January, blowing up several power pylons in the Baghlan province.
On February 11, the power line from Tajikistan to Kunduz was also cut.
Barqi Tojik (Tajik national power company) says Tajikistan last year supplied nearly 1.2 billion kWh of electricity to Afghanistan.
Afghanistan suffers from a chronic power shortage, with less than 40 percent of the population even connected to the grid, according to World Bank data. Three-quarters of the country’s electricity is reportedly imported from the neighboring countries of Uzbekistan, Iran, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.
