Canada’s Afghan legacy: Failure at Dahla dam

Locutus

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Jun 18, 2007
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SHAH WALI KOT, AFGHANISTAN—Heavy snow falling high in the Hindu Kush lifts the spirits of farmers far to the south as they scrape out a living in the Taliban’s desert heartland.

The harder winter pounds the distant peaks, the happier they are.

Their fate rides on the rivers of meltwater that flow south each spring, winding through a parched land, filling a network of canals that bring new life to dust-blown furrows.

Kandahar’s dirt-poor farmers feel blessed this year: winter was harsh in the mountains, so spring brought lots of water to give their crops a good start. But now the water is running low as the scorching summer heat rises.

And the farmers worry that most of God’s fleeting gift will hurry past them along the province’s main irrigation system, as it has for decades, leaving crops to shrivel under a punishing summer sun.

Canada had committed $50 million to cleaning up and repairing the irrigation network and the dam that supplies it, but Afghan farmers and officials complain that the project wasted money, taught villagers to expect handouts and lined corrupt people’s pockets.

And after all those costly mistakes, the outdated Dahla Dam’s reservoir is so full of silt that it can’t hold enough water to get crops through the driest months.

“I just want to say to Canadians that if you pave our canals with gold, what can we do with it?” chided Meerab Zakirya, 52, a Mandisar village canal manager. He has to answer to about 1,000 angry Daman district farmers when water runs out.

“If we don’t have water, our main problem is not solved,” he added, both hands clenched to the arms of a white plastic patio chair. “Me, I don’t need money. I want real work. If you want to do something, do it the right way.”

Similar complaints echo across the thousands of desert farms that Canada has struggled to irrigate, into crumbling schools Canadian aid money built, and through the halls of a deeply corrupt justice system Canada helped support despite good intentions.

There are two cardinal rules of development aid: projects must be closely monitored to make sure money isn’t wasted or lost to theft and corruption; and they should be sustainable, so projects survive after foreign experts move on.

After a month-long investigation in Kandahar’s war zone, it’s clear that Canada failed on both counts, tarnishing a legacy that thousands of Canadian troops and civilians died or suffered debilitating wounds trying to build.


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dumpthemonarchy

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Jan 18, 2005
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There was polling done a while back and the Afghans said they wanted jobs, so Canadians gave them schools and more ideas about equality.

Canada's legacy will fade from Afghanstan like a dream, a bad dream. The zealots we have in govt who just won't take no for an answer. No means more beer for activists for those who don't understand their agenda. Our money and lives there were for nothing.