Bright future for Mazar as grid power returns

Northern Afghanistan’s largest city, Mazar-e Sharif, will be reconnected to neighbouring Uzbekistan’s electricity network on Friday launching a new era in the city's post-Taliban development. "People are happy and look forward to electricity," Abdul Rehman, director of the UN and NGO branch at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Mazar-e Sharif, told IRIN on Wednesday. The border river port of Hayratan some 50 km north of Mazar-e Sharif has already been connected to the electricity grid and repair work is in progress on the lines to Mazar-e Sharif," he said. The electricity supply to Mazar-e Sharif and other towns and cities in northern Afghanistan was disconnected four years ago because Afghanistan’s hard-line Taliban regime did not pay Tashkent for the power. The provinces of Samangan and Faryab along with the towns of Sheberghan, Andkhvoy and Kholm will receive electricity from the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan. "Electricity will boost the cottage industry in the city," Najeeb Kamdar, a UN employee in Mazar-e Sharif told IRIN. He adding that the local media and radio depended on power to publish and broadcast and that reliable power would be a great boost for the city. Although some electricity was provided by Turkmenistan - those who could afford it were using generators. A near-obsolete power station near Mazar-e Sharif sometimes worked but the energy it produced was insufficient for the city. Providing sustainable electric power to villages, towns and cities across Afghanistan is a major challenge for the new government - much of the power supply network has been destroyed over decades of fighting. Although the capital Kabul, Jalalabad in the east and Kandahar in the south have hydro-electricity large cities such as Herat in western Afghanistan do not have any grid electrical at all.