It may be one of the more unusual tenders to appear on Merx, an online public sector tender service, but the bids are in and a contract is expected within the next month. Not only is the winner expected to repair a dam and canal system damaged by 30 years of war, it must complete the project with local employees, many illiterate, while fending off an insurgency intent on preventing any government success.
Restoration of the Dahla Dam, however, is a vital step to ensuring a reliable supply of water to a region of Kandahar province once known for its agricultural production.
Located roughly 40 kilometres northwest of Kandahar City on the southwest flowing Arghandab River, the dam is the second largest in Afghanistan. The river and the creeks that feed it are the principal source of water in an arid region.
Built between 1949 and 1951 by the United States, the dam has suffered years of neglect, hindering its ability to regulate water flow. Its gates, in fact, are stuck in position that drains it of water within six months in good year when the rains are heavy – within three or four months when they are not – affecting crop production and the livelihoods of thosuands of villagers.
And repairs can’t come soon enough to a country facing a food crisis. A harsh winter followed by drought across much of the country – to say nothing of a deteriorating security situation – have left aid agencies such as the World Food Program struggling to provide food to an average 1.8 million people each month.
The $50 million Argendahb Valley Irrigation Rehabilitation Project is one of three signature projects the Canadian government intends to complete before 2011, the official end of its current engagement in Afghanistan. Canada will also support the expansion and repair of 50 schools and increase support for polio immunization in Kandahar in the hope of eradicating the disease by the end of 2009.
The three-year project calls for far more than restoration to the Dahla Dam. In addition to fixing the gates, replacing generators and repairing water valves, work must also be completed downstream along the 80 kilometres of canal that includes bridges, gates, spillways and other structures.
Repairs to the canal system, however, will not increase the height of the dam or provide electricity generation for the region, stresses Marius-Adrian Oancea, a field-based project manager and the acting director of the Canadian International Development Agency’s programs in Kandahar. It’s a small point, but serves as an example of how easily good intentions can be misinterpreted. After the project was announced, rumours spread that villagers had stopped fixing their homes out of fear the valley would flood as it did when the dam was built in 1949. “We had to tell people this project has nothing to do with increasing the reservoir. This project is just fixing whatever is mechanical or electrical or broken.”
Finally, the project calls for training on water resource management – how to make better use of what’s available – and on crop production technique. “We are capacity building,” Oancea said. “We are building labs, meteorological stations, water level monitoring stations [and] other infrastructure to help them manage the flow of water.”
Once completed, the project should ensure the availability of more water for longer periods, allowing farmers to reclaim more land and rotate more crops. “The water from the dam and the river serves practically the entire agricultural area of province,” Oancea observed. “We know that poppy grows without much effort, and that other crops require more water, so hopefully this will bring more farmers into licit crops and take them away from the illicit crops.”
Mitigating threats
Though the RFP was open only to Canadian companies, repairs on the dam and canal system will be done primarily by Afghans. In fact, the project is expected to generate up to 10,000 seasonal jobs. That approach – Canadian companies as the prime and local firms as the sub contractors – is typical of many CIDA projects, Oancea said, and ensures a level of accountability in Ottawa. “Most of the activities on the ground – construction and everything that can be done locally – will be done by Afghan firms. At the Provincial Reconstruction Team, we require the contractor to have at least 75 percent of the labour from the area where the reconstruction is being built.”
The capacity of local companies, once a legitimate concern, is less so today. There will be logistical issues, however. Material such as turbines or electrical or mechanical components will likely have to be imported from outside the region.
The larger challenge is security, something CIDA readily acknowledges. Aid workers have been kidnapped and projects such as this provide a tempting target for insurgent groups. “We’ve asked the project leaders to provide their approach to developing a security plan,” Oancea said. “We want to make sure the winner of the contract understands the circumstances here and is prepared to deal with it.”
That includes not only the accommodation of offices and international personnel, but also the movement of all personnel involved in the project. And Afghan contractors often mean Afghan private security.
“There is always a problem moving along the roads,” Oancea said. “IEDs [improvised explosive devices] are sometimes embedded into the roads. You have to take care of yourself and you have to be aware of what is going on – to monitor the security situation on a regular basis and be prepared for emergencies and have quick responses and strategies to deal with injuries. It is part of the work here, for both civilians and military. It’s a very challenging environment. We acknowledge this and inform the company quite thoroughly about this issue.”
The growing presence of the Afghan national army and the national police in the district provide some measure of security, as does the presence of the International Security Assistance Force. However, CIDA hopes to mitigate much of the threat by instilling local ownership in the project. The plan is a joint initiative of the Afghan ministries of energy and water; agriculture, irrigation and livestock; and rural rehabilitation and development, and will involve a steering committee based in Kabul. But from the start Canadian officials also engaged district and village leaders, the chief of police, and provincial officials, ensuring they understood the benefits to the community and were prepared to support the project.
“If you secure the approval of the local communities, they will protect what they do. They have an interest in terms of employment – it is quite hard to secure a job. It makes a big difference for these villagers.”
The Argendahb Valley Irrigation Rehabilitation Project is the first phase of what the Afghan government hopes is a multi-phase program to increase the capacity of the reservoir – estimated at just 30 percent today – and build a new dam further upstream. Whether Canadians have a role remains to be seen. For now, the successful bidder faces enormous challenges, but also the prospect of restoring to an arid region its agricultural heritage.
