Other obstacles exist, however. One is political. America had hoped that the CASA line would add zip to its lacklustre “New Silk Road” strategy, a plan that Hillary Clinton backed when she was secretary of state. The idea was to lessen Russia’s influence over its former vassals while helping Afghanistan to trade more and improve its infrastructure. But the influence of America in Moscow’s backyard is fading as it winds down its military efforts in Afghanistan. In June the Americans quit their airbase outside Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek. In its place, China is gobbling up energy contracts, and Russia is making efforts to drag some Central Asian countries into a new political-economic union.
The electricity project is proving divisive even among those who are meant to gain from it. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are both keen to build giant dams, and the idea of generating electricity to send south gives the plans internal legitimisation. But that infuriates downstream Uzbekistan, which fears losing water supplies. Its president, Islam Karimov, has even said that the dams could provoke a war.
Tajik officials speak as if the new power line and their dream dam, Rogun, which would be the world’s tallest, are inseparable. “With Rogun we can ensure energy not only for ourselves, but also for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Just as Arabs sell oil, we will sell electricity,” says Davlatbek Salolov, deputy director of Tajikistan’s largest hydropower plant. Yet that would depend on Tajikistan’s unsavoury regime resisting the temptation to divert the energy it produces to pet projects, such as a subsidised state-owned aluminium smelter, whose profits are hard to trace.
In Kyrgyzstan, which is heavily indebted, support for the power line is lukewarm. Officials sound as if they are being coerced into the project, pointing to local energy shortages and to Kyrgyzstan’s $200m share of the costs. Outside the government, there is outright hostility. Nurzat Abdyrasulova of UNISON, an energy watchdog in Bishkek, says that the project is not going to make money and will generate friction with Tajikistan, whose territory Kyrgyzstan’s trade must cross. The two countries already disagree so strongly about half their mutual border that soldiers have twice exchanged sustained fire this year. That is hardly the best environment for putting up pylons.