Ambitious development on fragile foundations: Criticalities of current large dam construction in Afghanistan

High social, environmental and financial costs of dam construction during the past century provide valuable lessons for improving large infrastructure governance and enhancing dam safety. The Italian Vajont dam tragedy in 1963, for example, where the urgency to boost post-war economic development overruled cautionary site selection and reservoir filling, led to improved safety regulations. Today, Afghanistan is facing similar pressure to spur economic development. Revisiting Afghanistan's own dam history may inform decision-making over large scale dam development. For this, we refer to dam development in Afghanistan during the Cold War institutional constellation, which combined with the discourse on the role of dams in state formation, modernisation and development, profoundly shaped Afghanistan's landscape. Current dam development shows little evidence that any historic reflection is taking place; instead the discourse of infrastructure-as-prerequisite-for-development is consistently repeated. We argue that four factors compromise dam development in Afghanistan today: (1) lack of security; (2) an institutional context under transition; (3) absence of transboundary dialogue and agreements and (4) uncertain and fragmented aid provision. The complexity of dam development and operation is exacerbated by the extended temporal and spatial scale of their impact, thus placing a heavy burden on management- and planning capacity. Given these conditions, these dam development plans are built on fragile institutional foundations. To address their feasibility under such circumstances this paper links lessons from the past with the criticalities in future Afghan dam development.