# Dahla Dam Security Problems?



## The Bread Guy (9 Jun 2010)

If the _Toronto Star_ is correct (usual caveats about unnamed sources), it doesn't appear to be security threats from _outside_ that are the problem.


> .... Foremost among the setbacks, insiders say, was a dramatic confrontation on Feb. 20, when rising tensions between Canadian security officials hired to oversee the project and members of Watan Risk Management, a group of Afghan mercenaries with close ties to the Karzai family, culminated in a “Mexican standoff” — the guns hired to protect the project actually turned on each other in a hair-trigger confrontation.
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> “That was the day Canada lost control. The thugs from Watan won, and the Canadian security managers involved were put on the next plane home, lucky to be alive,” a witness to the standoff told the Toronto Star on condition of anonymity.
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## tomahawk6 (13 Jun 2010)

My favorite Afghanistan blog opines about this CIDA project. Its quite a good read.

http://freerangeinternational.com/blog/?p=3209



> A few days ago an excellent investigative report by Mitch Potter of the Toronto Star was published informing the citizens of Canada that their “signature project” in Afghanistan, the Dahla Dam irrigation project, appears to be failing.  It is a story well told and yet another example of the insanity of doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. Both the “Big Army” and the “Big Aid Agencies” insist on working large projects as if they have all the time in the world to design and implement the “perfect plan.”  Having spent years developing the “perfect plan,”  the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and their implementing partner find themselves locked down inside their compounds unable to accomplish anything.  Developing a perfect plan is meaningless if you can’t implement it.   At exactly the same time and in exactly the same place (plus lots of other worse places) outside the wire legends, Tim of Panjwayi, Mullah John and their motley crew of internationals from CADG have implemented US AID projects which have constructed over  1000 kilometers of irrigation canal in the southern, eastern, and western regions of the country.
> 
> In the face of high risk and uncertainty; small agile mission focused organizations will function where large bureaucratic organizations fail.  How much longer will it take before somebody at the top of our government figures this out?  We are swamped with hundreds of FOB bond bureaucrats who have all the good intentions in the world and can explain in excruciating detail exactly why they can’t translate their good intentions and piles of OPM (other peoples money) into effective projects. Good losers lose and I am sick and tired of being on the side that is losing due to self imposed constraints.
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## The Bread Guy (2 Aug 2010)

....we have the _Los Angeles Times_:


> .... Silt and debris have been dredged from the main canal and small feeder canals, bringing life-giving irrigation to some small farmers and contributing to a bumper pomegranate harvest predicted for this fall. More than 2,000 local Afghans have been hired as workers since the project began in 2009, with a goal of 10,000 workers as the 10-year project expands.
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> Not even the assassination of the Arghandab district governor, Abdul Jabar, in June or Taliban threats against Afghans who cooperate with Westerners has stopped the steady, if fitful, pace of the project.
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## The Bread Guy (12 Dec 2010)

An update:  the U.S. is reportedly blacklisting Watan.....


> The U.S. military is cutting ties with an Afghan security firm run by relatives of President Hamid Karzai that has been accused of bribing both government officials and Taliban commanders, according to documents obtained Thursday.
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> The move is part of U.S. efforts to clean up a contracting process in Afghanistan that has been riddled with corruption and allowed U.S. funds to pass to insurgents.
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....while Canada is reportedly standing behind it:


> Canada is standing by a controversial Afghan security firm that’s controlled by Afghanistan’s ruling Karzai family despite a U.S. military decision to sever ties with it, The Star has learned.
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> The Watan Group, which safeguards Canada’s signature Dahla Dam restoration project in Kandahar, was blacklisted this week as part of a U.S. effort to stop aid dollars slipping into the hands of corrupt officials and Taliban commanders.
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> ...


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## dogger1936 (12 Dec 2010)

And to think I had friends killed bringing civilians out to that dam. wow.


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