The Afghan Taliban blew up several electricity power lines early on Monday, leaving parts of Kabul in darkness in an act of sabotage that follows a funding dispute with the government.
The insurgents earlier this month said they would target power lines that feed the city's supply if public welfare projects in Kunduz and Baghlan provinces, both of which have a strong Taliban presence, were not speeded up.
The pylons were blown up in Baghlan, north of the capital, in a step that comes despite President Ashraf Ghani's proposal to have peace talks.
"Insurgents attacked some towers last night around 2am," Waheedullah Towhidi, an official with Afghanistan's state-owned electricity department, told The National.
"They detonated mines around the pylons, fracturing the power supply."
Power was out for 16 hours on Monday and expected to be out for most of Tuesday.
In a statement issued last week to Afghan media outlets, the Taliban warned that the transmission lines would be hit.
In what appears to be an attempt to appear as champions of the people, the Taliban regards the welfare projects as vital.
The impasse is a further complication to the chances of peace.
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Afghanistan: Taliban drop first hint about peace talks
The Afghan governor who is defying government
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Mr Ghani last month offered incentives to members of the Taliban willing to renounce violence, including political recognition, a release of prisoners, as well as passports. The offer also said the Taliban would be allowed to establish a political office in Kabul and the president said efforts would be made to remove sanctions against the group's leaders.
Since Mr Ghani issued his peace offer without preconditions. The Taliban, however, has continued its attacks and not publicly given a formal response to the president.
And in its threat to damage the power system the group said the government had not only failed to implement public projects in districts under their control but had also cut electricity supplies in regions that they dominate.
Mr Towhidi denied that this was the case.
"We provide electricity to all Afghans across the country irrespective of whether the Taliban operate in those regions," he said.
Pictures showed the pylons smashed to the ground by the force of the blasts.
"It could be a while before these lines can be fixed and restarted," said Ajmal Omari, who lives near the site that was hit, noting that the area targeted is difficult to access due to security as well as poor roads.
Soldiers from the Afghan National Army, however, had reached the area and secured it.
The Afghan Taliban first targeted the capital's power system in 2016, destroying several pylons in the same province and plunging the capital into darkness.
They then targeted government workers and engineers, preventing them from fixing the damage that caused major disruption to Kabul's electricity for almost five weeks.
Towhidi said repairs on the pylons that were blown up on Monday had started and would be completed in two days, adding that Kabul would receive back up power from hydroelectric stations outside the capital as well as diesel powered generators.
Those sources, however, are not nearly sufficient to meet Kabul’s increasing electricity needs of 680 MW, per day. Of this, 260 MW is supplied from abroad, including a power line from Uzbekistan that was destroyed on Monday.
Despite billions of dollars of investment in the power infrastructure in Afghanistan, the country remains heavily dependent on external sources of power which are vulnerable to not only insurgent attacks but also the country's inclement weather. In 2015, a snow storm in the Salang pass, the mountain range that connects Kabul and Baghlan province, destroyed several pylons, leaving the citizens of Kabul without power.
Oppenheimer
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2025 Fifa Club World Cup groups
Group A: Palmeiras, Porto, Al Ahly, Inter Miami.
Group B: Paris Saint-Germain, Atletico Madrid, Botafogo, Seattle.
Group C: Bayern Munich, Auckland City, Boca Juniors, Benfica.
Group D: Flamengo, ES Tunis, Chelsea, Leon.
Group E: River Plate, Urawa, Monterrey, Inter Milan.
Group F: Fluminense, Borussia Dortmund, Ulsan, Mamelodi Sundowns.
Group G: Manchester City, Wydad, Al Ain, Juventus.
Group H: Real Madrid, Al Hilal, Pachuca, Salzburg.
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COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
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Lewis Hamilton in 2018
Australia 2nd; Bahrain 3rd; China 4th; Azerbaijan 1st; Spain 1st; Monaco 3rd; Canada 5th; France 1st; Austria DNF; Britain 2nd; Germany 1st; Hungary 1st; Belgium 2nd; Italy 1st; Singapore 1st; Russia 1st; Japan 1st; United States 3rd; Mexico 4th
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
Europe’s rearming plan
- Suspend strict budget rules to allow member countries to step up defence spending
- Create new "instrument" providing €150 billion of loans to member countries for defence investment
- Use the existing EU budget to direct more funds towards defence-related investment
- Engage the bloc's European Investment Bank to drop limits on lending to defence firms
- Create a savings and investments union to help companies access capital
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
ANATOMY%20OF%20A%20FALL
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Brief scores:
Day 2
England: 277 & 19-0
West Indies: 154
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
