India and Afghanistan inaugurate Friendship Dam

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Afghanistan on June 4 to inaugurate a multi-million-dollar hydroelectric dam with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

The dam named “Afghan-India Friendship Dam” in Herat province, which borders Iran, was built with the Indian financial aid at a cost of $300 million. 1500 Indian and Afghan engineers worked to build the dam.

Indian Prime Minister Modi said, “On this summer day, in Herat, we came together to honor and celebrate Afghan determination to build a future of prosperity. Afghans and Indians dreamt of this project in the 1970s. The lost decades speak to us about the ravages of a long drawn war. It was a war not of Afghan making, but it was one that stole the future of an entire generation of Afghans. And, when a new dawn broke over Afghanistan in 2001, we resumed the project,” The Times of Central Asia reports.

NDTV reports that the project has an installed capacity of 42 MW with three power units of 14 MW each and has a gross capacity of 633 million cubic meters. The project is planned to provide stabilized irrigation to 35,000 hectares of land and an additional irrigation facility to 40,000 hectares. It has a height of 104.3 meters, has a length of 540 meters and is 450 meters wide at the bottom. There is a 70-metre deep curtain grouting – a barrier to protect the foundation of the dam from seepage.

India is implementing projects worth $2 billion to help rebuild the infrastructure of Afghanistan.