Who can realize the importance of electricity more than Afghans, who are still suffering from the severe load shading even after the ten years of international engage ment in Afghanistan? Tens of billions of dollars came and spent here but Afghans yet to see the tangible change in their routine lives. Although, we have the capacity of generation of tens of thousands of MW electricity but still lack the self-sufficiency in power sector.
At the moment Afghanistan is importing electricity from Uzbekistan through 420km transmission line funded by India and the Asian Development Bank. Electricity started flowing from Uzbekistan to Afghanistan in January 2009 with the vision to supply capital Kabul an uninterrupted powers supply around the clock but unfortunately even after this huge power project worth $570 millions, Kabulis' dream for the electricity round the clock seems to be far from reach.
The Afghan Ministry of Water and Energy doesn't have the capacity to distribute uninterrupted power through a well calculated manner. There might be many reasons for this power shortage, probably mismanagement over the top.
On the other hand, neighboring country Pakistan is also suffering from the same problem. In addition to the common people suffering from long load shadings, the heavy industry of Pakistan is also shattered by the power shortfall which ultimately negatively effecting the Pak economy. Regardless of the issue of Pakistan's electricity generation capacity, the country decided to import power from Central Asia
Earlier, one of the options was to import 1000MW of electricity from Tajikistan through a 750km transmission line worth $6.5 billion via Afghanistan but it was opposed by Uzbekistan calling the project a violation of international laws. Pakistan had to rethink the legal issues moving around this matter. In spite of the urgency of the issue Pakistan didn't move forward for further engagement in this project.
Yesterday, Afghan Cabinet led by President Karzai approved the transit project of electricity from Uzbekistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan.
It might be a new gesture toward Pakistan but rather than a political issue it should be dealt as a humanitarian issue since common people in Pakistan is suffering the most from the power shortage. It is a good sign that the neighboring countries don't mix the political and security matters with the issues may cause miseries for the ordinary people.