Afghanistan Times
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Blowing up power pylons and disrupting the supply of imported power in Afghanistan has turned into a tool of pressure for the illegal armed groups, who squeeze it at will when times are hard for them. Following last week’s blowing-up of a transmission tower in the capital that cut off electricity to Kabul and some other provinces for a few days, two pylons have now been destroyed in Parwan province. This is while ongoing clashes have also damaged two electricity transmission towers in Baghlan – a province where power facilities are always targeted. The Da Afghanistan Brishna Shirka (DABS), which is the only power utility in the country, has been strained by such constant attacks on the electrical infrastructure. The incident in Parwan brings the total number of such attacks against power infrastructure to five merely in the past 20 days. Despite inflicting huge financial losses on the order of millions of dollars, the personnel of DABS is also not safe as four of its workers were injured as a result of two back-to-back explosions in Kabul on Sunday. The security forces have informed of arresting six suspects in connection with the assault and similarly, a six-member gang on charges of blowing up the power pylon in Kabul was busted last week. But the question is who these unidentified gunmen are if not insurgents? Whoever that is behind these deeds – most likely to be the Taliban who have a notorious track record of carrying out such subversive activities – are in fact committing national treason to this land. These ruinous activities and power crisis punish the Afghans and destroy the national infrastructure. History bears witness that whenever they are crushed on the battleground, the insurgents resort to such acts of destroying Afghanistan’s infrastructure – from blowing up power pylons to culverts on roads. By doing so, they have set up a precedent for other spoilers and enemies of the nation to follow suit. In the case of Kabul and Parwan, these unidentified men with primitive and backward ideology are Afghanistan enemies’ puppets, who are merely doing their lords’ bidding. Such attacks are a deliberate attempt to reverse Afghanistan’s development because the enemies know that building infrastructure takes ages. But who benefits from destroyed infrastructure? A true Afghan would never do so. It’s our vicious neighbors’, who cannot tolerate seeing a developed Afghanistan, deliberate attempts to resort to damaging our infrastructure in one way or another to see Afghanistan in ruins. The Afghan government should find a solution to these constant power outages and destruction of pylons – a situation that is taking its severe toll on Afghanistan. Arresting a few unidentified people is not going to resolve the issue and is hardly going to scratch the surface of the problem. Therefore, the Afghan government and security personnel should rather properly investigate this recent spike in destructive activities and bring to justice the true enemies of Afghans.
