With the Berger Group there, all hard at work - that's cheery - but look, the lights are still dim in Afghanistan. Why does it take 8 years to turn on the lights. One reason is that transmission towers make good targets. With all-electric generators, the need for transmission towers is eliminated.
From tdworld.com, http://tdworld.com/projects_in_progress/announcements/black-veach-louis-berger/ August 5, 2009, marks the completion of the first 5 year plan (5 of those initial 8 years) and the beginning of the 2nd five year plan. "The people of Afghanistan will directly benefit as a result of this new five-year reconstruction activity. Afghan companies will be strengthened and local jobs created," in a $1.4 billion contract from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
These are public statements by the Berger Group to reassure you and our country that there will actually be, at some future time, a real infrastructure in Afghanistan. You do understand, that is the basic issue here, almost as basic as wood"this fragmented collection of tribal areas, collectively known as Afghanistan, does not have, what in the West, is termed an infrastructure.
That makes it a tabula rasa of sorts, not that it was born with a blank slate, but that there is so much to be accomplished in Afghanistan, the slate is still almost blank. Building an actual infrastructure, ground up can be one of the only truly creative experiences left in the world (if you are retaining key points in this article; this is surely one of those).
We keep getting second chances. If our government had used the new technology that was offered to them in 2002, by now all the lights would be on in Afghanistan. And with that kind of power, Afghanistan would be a real country now, there would be industry and actual jobs (not promised jobs), where people could earn a living without that single crop of opium. Abject poverty could actually be defeated in one generation, and when poverty is the missing factor, there is no reason for war.
Can two men actually alter the world - send it backwards several generations in only 8 years? Those two politicians from Texas certainly did, or at least they are easy to blame, as well as a Republican administration.
The first phase of energy/power development by the Berger Group was dedicated in a ceremony on August 5. That project produces 35 megawatts (MW) of electricity at the Tarakhill station in Kabul http://www.bv.com/wcm/press_release/08052009_3410.aspx, again remember our comparison to 619MW serving 600,000 homes in New Jersey, in an area nowhere near the population of 5 million in Kabul.
Berger Group's output represents the first one-third of a total 105 MW, which they say will come online "later this year." This 105 MW will supposedly serve 500,000 people in Kabul.
Using this rule of approximation, the 40MK coming in from Uzbekistan will serve another 325,000 or so individuals, That means that, including the modicum of power they had in the past, maybe, only maybe, a quarter of Kabul will have power (then there's the rest of the country). The majority of that quarter of the populace is/will be powered by diesel, a fuel that is unnecessary. Who pays, will pay the fuel bill? Who will clean up the pollution from this new infrastructure? The country of operation, or the United States - is there any difference?
