Taliban officials on Thursday inaugurated a small hydroelectric dam in Panjshir province, a project that was more than a decade in the making and one they say marks a step toward greater energy self-sufficiency for Afghanistan.
The Paranda hydropower project, located in the mountainous province north of Kabul, is designed to generate up to 4 megawatts of electricity. According to Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat (DABS), the country’s state-owned power utility, the project will provide stable electricity to more than 4,000 homes and government offices in the region.
First contracted in 2011 between the then-Ministry of Energy and Water and a private construction firm, Kanteshkast, the project was originally slated for completion within two years. But years of conflict among other reasons kept the project dormant until recently.
Speaking at the inauguration ceremony, Abdul Bari Omar, the CEO of DABS under the Taliban administration, said the Paranda dam had now been completed using only domestic funds.
“This project began in 2013 but was left unfinished by the former government,” Omar said. “Today, we are proud to complete it without foreign assistance, relying entirely on internal resources.”
The final cost of the project, he added, was approximately $8 million.
Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s chief prime minister for economic affairs, also attended the event. He framed the dam’s completion as part of their broader push to reduce Afghanistan’s reliance on imported electricity and to harness the country’s natural energy potential.
“Electricity is the soul of civilization,” Baradar said. “Afghanistan has the potential to generate energy from its rivers and natural resources, and we are now taking practical steps to use these capacities.”
The Taliban governor for Panjshir, Mohammad Agha Hakim, called the project’s completion a sign of their administration’s commitment to serving residents of Panjshir — a province that has historically been a center of resistance to Taliban rule.
Despite small-scale energy projects like Paranda, Afghanistan remains heavily dependent on imported electricity. More than 75 percent of the country’s power is supplied by neighboring countries including Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Iran, according to DABS data.
Only 20 to 25 percent of Afghanistan’s electricity demand is met through domestic sources, primarily small hydropower stations and local diesel or solar generators. Widespread blackouts and inconsistent access to electricity remain common across much of the country, particularly in rural and conflict-affected regions.
