DUSHANBE, February 24, 2016, Asia-Plus — Power to Kabul and other affected regions was reportedly restored late Monday.
The New York Times
notes that the supply of electricity to the capital by Afghanistan’s national power company, known as DABS, is never enough to meet demand, even at the best of times. But the loss of the Uzbek lines, and a separate attack that cut the electrical supply from Tajikistan, had left much of the capital without power through several winter weeks.
The United States’ action ensured that the lights were on in Kabul in time for a meeting on Tuesday of a four-nation group that is working to restart the Afghan peace process, according to
The New York Times
.
The so-called Quadrilateral Coordination Group, made up of diplomats from Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States, issued a statement after the discussions inviting the Taliban and other antigovernment groups to meet with representatives of President Ashraf Ghani in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, by the first week of March.
We will recall that Taliban militants cut a supply of electricity from Uzbekistan to Kabul in late January, blowing up several power pylons in Baghlan province.
The attack on a power line from Uzbekistan to the Afghan capital had plunged large swathes of Kabul into darkness as nearly 70 percent of Kabul’s electricity is imported from Uzbekistan.
On February 11, the power line from Tajikistan to Kunduz was also cut.
Afghan state-owned utility company Da Afghanistan Breshna Shirkat (DABS) 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.
Besides, Taliban militants blew up a power pylon in a village in Baghlan-e Markazi district on February 21, adding to power shortage in the Afghan capital, Kabul, local authorities of Baghlan were cited by Chinese new agency
Xinhua
as saying.
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.
