Afghans suffer power outages

Gul Hussein was standing under a pale street lamp in a poor section of east Kabul when the entire neighborhood suddenly went black.

"As you can see, it is dark everywhere," the 62-year-old man said, adding that his family would light a costly kerosene lamp for dinner that evening. "Some of our neighbors are using candles, but candles are expensive, too."

More than five years after the fall of the Taliban -- and despite hundreds of millions of dollars in international aid -- dinner by candlelight remains common in Kabul. Nationwide, only 6 percent of Afghans have electricity, the Asian Development Bank says.

The power shortage underscores the slow progress in rebuilding the war-torn country. It also feeds other problems. Old factories sit idle and new ones are not built. Produce withers without refrigeration. Dark, cold homes foster resentment against the government.

In Kabul, power dwindles after the region's hydroelectric dams dry up by midsummer. This past fall, residents averaged only three hours of municipal electricity a day, typically from 7pm to 10pm, according to USAID, the US government aid agency. Some neighborhoods didn't get any.

"That's a scary sounding figure because it's pretty tiny," said Robin Phillips, the USAID director in Afghanistan. "So we're talking about the relatively poorer people in Kabul who have no access to electricity at this time of year."

Electricity was meager under the Taliban too, when Kabul residents had perhaps two hours of it a day in fall and winter. The supply has since increased, but not as fast as Kabul's population -- from fewer than 1 million people in the late 1990s to more than 4 million today.

Meanwhile, souring US relations with Uzbekistan have delayed plans to import electricity from that country. Power is not expected to arrive in a significant way until late this year or the middle of next year.

Some in Kabul do have electricity: the rich, powerful and well-connected.

Municipal workers -- under direction from the Ministry of Water and Energy -- funnel what power there is to politicians, warlords and embassies. Special lines run from substations to their homes, circumventing the power grid. International businesses pay local switch operators bribes of US$200 to US$1,000 a month, an electrical worker said anonymously.

If high-ranking government officials visit the substations, workers race to cut off the illegal connections. Large diesel generators, which the wealthy own as a backup, rumble to life.

Ismail Khan, the country's water and energy minister, dismisses allegations of corruption as a "small problem."

"The important thing to talk about is that in six months all of these power problems will be solved, and everyone will have electricity 24 hours a day," he said, an optimistic prediction that relies on heavy rains next spring and quick work on the Uzbekistan line.

India, the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on new power lines to import electricity from Uzbekistan.

Though the line from Kabul to the Uzbek border is in place, a 46km section in Uzbekistan has not yet been built. And the US has little leverage to speed it up, said Rakesh Sood, the Indian ambassador.

Initially, Uzbekistan supported the war in Afghanistan, but the Uzbek government hasn't seen Washington as a friend since US leaders criticized the country's human rights record when forces massacred demonstrators in 2005.

The US is buying fuel-powered generators that will provide 100 megawatts of power for Kabul by late next year. The power will not come cheap at US$0.15 to US$0.20 per kilowatt-hour, compared with just US$0.35 for electricity from Uzbekistan.

But until the Uzbek power comes in, Afghans have no choice.