Afghan protesters from the Hazara minority clash with riot police in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Monday. They were protesting the controversial rerouting of a new power line. (Jawad Jalali / European Pressphoto Agency)
Ali M. Latifi
Residents of the Afghan capital awoke Monday to stacks of multi-colored shipping containers meant to protect the presidential palace from the latest anti-government demonstration — this time over an electricity line from Turkmenistan.
The demonstrators — mainly members of the Hazara ethnic minority — were demanding that a 500-kilovolt power transmission line from Turkmenistan be routed through the central province of Bamiyan, home to a large Hazara population.
Bamiyan suffers from chronic electricity shortages, and when it was revealed recently that the power line would instead be routed through the rugged Salang Pass — the highway connecting northern and southern Afghanistan — before reaching Kabul, many Hazaras criticized what they saw as a racially and politically motivated decision.
Police fire water cannons as protesters from the Hazara minority protest the rerouting of a power line.
Bamiyan had been part of the original route for the Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan-Tajikistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan power project, known as TUTAP, which officials say will unite Afghanistan’s 10 separate power grids and bring electricity to millions of homes that lack it...Continue Reading....
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