In a high-stakes gamble, a combat force of multinational troops has delivered a 200 metric ton turbine to a hydroelectric facility in Afghanistan's Helmand Province. The initiative posed security risks in its delivery phase and will provide many more in its installation and operations phases to come, according to informed sources. To get the massive turbine from the city of Kandahar to the town of Kajaki in southern Afghanistan, a convoy under British command secretly moved 100 miles over rugged roads through some of the war-torn nation's most hostile territory. A report from the British Army on Wednesday states that the operation involved more than 2000 U.K. soldiers and an additional 2000 Afghan and NATO troops. The objective of the mission is to help repair a hydroelectric dam at Kajaki that had been damaged by decades of fighting in the region. The Kajaki power station was built in 1975 with funding from USAID, an American civilian aid agency. At its peak, the dam's three turbines had an output capacity of 53 megawatts (MW), delivering electricity to the 1.5 million inhabitants of the remote province, as well as serving as a water resource for irrigation in the agricultural basin. However, years of turmoil saw two of the turbines fail, reducing its capacity to 16 MW. The British Army account said that its armored troops not only took part in the secret convoy but cleared the path ahead of enemy activity, engaging Taliban fighters c ...
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