November 11, 2008

Winning bidder expected soon for Afghan dam

$50 million CIDA project to provide badly needed farm irrigation

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan

The khaki plain is baked so hard that footsteps don’t even raise dust. Only thorny desert weeds grow here now, but the checkerboard of low dirt irrigation ridges stretching for kilometres suggests that, given water, this sun-blasted land can bloom.

This terrain southwest of Kandahar is the target of Canada’s largest single development project for the province — the $50 million Dahla irrigation dam, on which construction is expected to start in January.

Canadian and Afghan officials hope the dam will extend the growing season, make possible new crops and transform the local economy.

But behind the dream of greening the desert lies an even bigger idea: plant wheat, harvest peace.

“It’s much more than a dam,” says CIDA official Marius Oancea, who’s overseeing the project.

“Infrastructure is very easy. You put enough security around, you bring enough workers and cement and rebar and you do it all.”

“It’s changing mentalities and changing practices which is probably the hardest part.”

The Dahla dam, 35 kilometres north of Kandahar, is the second-largest dam in Afghanistan. It’s been around since the ’50s, but like almost every other piece of infrastructure in the country it has run sadly downhill.

Its reservoir has silted. Its canals have eroded.

Worse, the massive gates that control the flow from the dam are stuck nearly wide open. That means the dam’s ability to store water during dry months — and Kandahar got only 100 millimetres of rain all last year — is severely restricted.

The dam can only hold about six months’ worth of water and by this time of the year, says Oancea, “The kids are playing in the bottoms of the canals.”

Eighty per cent of the province’s population lives along its irrigation system. A properly functioning dam would irrigate 10,000 hectares — about half the arable land in a region where 80 per cent of the people rely on farming, says A. Hai Niamaty, Kandahar’s director of agriculture.

“The dam is really important,” he says.

Within weeks, the successful bidder for the three-year project to rehabilitate the dam and its hundreds of kilometres of canals is expected to be announced. Work is already proceeding — albeit slowly — on a new road and bridge to the work site.

Security experts have pointed out the project would be a tempting target for the Taliban. Oancea responds that the construction site and eventual dam will be protected by private guards, as well as a police post being erected nearby.

But a bigger challenge than building the dam — and the bigger idea behind it — will be teaching Afghans how to get the most out of the water it provides.

“You are teaching them to do proper water management,” says Oancea.

Afghans will be trained how to measure the flow into the dam and regulate its release into various canals, to adjust the amount and timing of water so that it goes where and when it is needed. The decisions will be made by Afghan officials under the guidance of local committees based on traditional Afghan models.

Husbanding the resource means farmers might be able to irrigate year-round. That could open more land for agriculture, allow the production of more water-intensive crops such as wheat, even allowing more than one crop a year. And farmers wouldn’t have to buy costly diesel fuel to pump well water.

Better water use could mean more water will be left in the river for the downstream districts of Zhari and Panjwaii, benefiting communities there as well.

Oancea’s hope is that local water management will become a seed around which respected local authorities will grow and learn to work together, ultimately strengthening state institutions.

Canadian Press

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