If all goes as planned, one engineer sitting at a single computer with four flat screens will be able to run the state-of-the-art diesel facility built by Black & Veatch of Kansas. Some 285 million dollars in U.S. taxpayer funds have flowed into this power plant outside Tarakhil village. Afghan President Hamid Karzai supported the project, convinced that it could help him win the 2009 presidential election.

In August, two weeks before the vote, at an opening ceremony for the unfinished plant, Karzai stood beside Karl Eikenberry, the current U.S. ambassador, who told the assembled media: 'I would ask the citizens of Kabul when you turn on your lights at night, remember that the United States of America stands with you - optimistic of our combined prospects for success, and confident in you and our mission.'

But much, so far, has not gone according to plan. The 280- million-dollar a year cost to run the power plant full tilt is more than a third of total tax revenues for the entire country; the plant would supply electricity to less than two percent of the population; and the plant's cost - already more than 300 million dollars - is roughly three times that of any similar plant in the region.

Power Plans for the Capital

Two major projects have been in the works for a while to provide power to the capital: a 35-million-dollar project to build a 220 kilovolt power line from Uzbekistan over the Hindu Kush mountains, and a second 28-million-dollar power line from Tajikistan. Each is expected to supply 300 megawatts to Kabul.

Engineers from KEC, an Indian company, have been hard at work since October 2005 on the Uzbek project with money from the Indian government, the Asian Development Bank, and the World Bank. The Tajik project was awarded in November 2008 with funding from the Asian Development Bank and OPEC Fund for International Development.

But, engineering difficulties and cost aside, U.S. officials were worried that there was no political guarantee that either project would work. Tajikistan was a failed state, and the Uzbeks, who kicked U.S. troops out of their country in July 2005, were seen as an unreliable political partner to the U.S.-backed Karzai regime.

In April 2006, shortly before he left Afghanistan, U.S. ambassador Ronald Neumann dreamed up an alternative to the Central Asian transmission lines.

According to former finance minister Anwar-ul-Haq Ahadi, Neumann asked USAID to offer the Karzai government a 100 megawatt diesel plant. Budgeted at 120 million dollars, it would be able to supply 500,000 people with basic electricity.