But if the primary fuel for an entire area of people is wood, and their supply of this fuel is limited, soon to be gone, is this not like the homeless man who sleeps under the bridge, with a heavy winter approaching. He uses up his last food, and his last wood. This is Desperation Economics, and the end of time. Is that how Afghanis think of themselves.

Right this moment, in the news, the talk in Afghanistan is about the presidential runoff election, and how a big factor in the turnout will be the weather. It’s the end of October and the weather is cold, and getting colder. Will voters brave the cold. This makes us wonder how they heat their homes, and places of employment (jobs - is there such a thing). Few of us here, reading this article, have any inkling of what life is like in Afghanistan.

Countries around the world use other fuels…and also practice reforestation. Mountainous, yes, but Afghanistan has always been a caravan crossroad - this area has not been completely isolated. Why have these people not modernized. The answer is in that word I used - “reforestation” implies and requires community cooperation and interaction…to build an infrastructure. People need to organize an effort to reforest. All these people-activities show cultural development, but that isn’t how Afghanistan is.

Tradition - tried, true and habituated, this is what they know - clan structured and tribal. Like using wood, they do as they have always done. Afghanistan is not an industrialized nation; it is agricultural at best - when a cultivated field isn’t being used as a battleground. Their two major crops are wheat and opium. But for any and all humans, there must be a life beyond drugs. If the opium-growing situation in Afghanistan is hopeless as some say, that in itself is a good reason for leaving.

Or if you believe nothing is completely hopeless, consider the Afghan literacy rate which hovers at 18 %. It’s only now with western world exposure that Afghanis would ever think of their children as going to school and needing to read after dark.

Last month, the inventor, Peter Sumaruck, was heading east, returning from an energy tradeshow in Los Angeles. He called me just as he passed the army coming west, somewhere on a highway in New Mexico. Pete understands military movements. He counted 5 convoys with 25 to 30 vehicles per convoy, some Predator missiles, and 20 to 30 diesel-powered portable generators, each on a trailer - probably from either Fort Bliss or Fort Hood. The Army was on maneuvers.

“I saw those things - damn if they weren’t the very same ones they were using in 2002.”

Portable generators are needed to supply power to a mobile army: the mess halls, barracks, infirmary, offices - anything that need lights and power of any kind. Pete has had an up close relationship with Army portable generators. In 2002, for a year and a half, Peter Sumaruck was commissioned to design and build a prototype of a new generator using his power production system (Sumaruck has more than 30 patents pending).

At that time, the ones used by the Army produced 25kW (thousand watts), powered by 57 gal. of diesel fuel which had to be replaced every 24 hours. Pete’s new system produced 35kW and used only 6 gal. of gas (no diesel) for an entire year - gas only for ignition. Or it could run forever if never turned off. No diesel costs, and because it runs cool, there was/is never any pollution. See “The secret Life of Energy,” (see photo of Pete and photo of the generator). In 2002, the government’s concept was to power the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with Pete’s generators.                          

Other than wood, where does Afghan civilian power come from. Kabul is a city of 3 to 5 million people (depending on your source). I was astounded; I think of it as a town, not a mega-city. Comparisons give us perspective - last year the population of San Francisco was 809,000. Getting current and accurate data on Afghanistan is difficult; perhaps the logic is that information only feeds the enemy…but then how else do we form an accurate picture of what is really going on.

Only about 7 per cent of the country’s population has access to electricity - did you hear me correctly - only 7 % have electricity, according to 2007 government figures from IEEE Global. A year and a half ago (Jan. 2008), Kabul had an average of 3 hours of electricity a day. And nine months ago, Dec. 31, 2008, from David Pugliese’s Defense Watch, “some parts of Kabul have electricity once in two nights for only a couple of hours,” and “Some citizens say, Kabul is the only dark capital in the world.”

In Afghanistan, the infrastructure is in overload with an influx of people who participate in military maneuvers as well as those who contiguously support the military - in some places, this more than doubles the normal population, thus stretching an already-threadbare infrastructure - “snap,” and the lights go out.

Now we know, technologically, electricity can be produced without fuel. It’s simple as long as you know how. Not only can this system be used for mobile generators, but also in large applications to power multi-story structures, even entire towns.

When Pete Sumaruck’s prototype was finished and running perfectly, two Texas politicians - U.S. Congressman Michael "Chet" Edwards, Democrat, 17the district, and Texas State Senator Kip Averitt, Republican, 22nd district, both from Waco, Texas - shelved the project in favor of promoting contracts with the McDowell Research/Ultra-light Battery and for diesel fuel.

One of these two politicians said he worried soldiers would figure out how the new generator worked and go into business making them himself. Ha, there’s a twist on Yankee ingenuity.

My question to anyone in the military: do you believe soldiers would walk off their posts to start factories building generators. In thousands of soldiers, perhaps one might…or two. Imagine that these two soldiers are separated by hundreds of miles, never met the other, but each is stationed in a place where they see one of Pete’s generator’s in use. There is talk among the soldiers a special generator used to cook their food. A group of the soldiers stands around looking at the wonder unit, but it appears much like any other generator, except no diesel. Hummm. And the soldier’s barracks are powered by another portable generator; sleep is easier because this generator is quiet, no diesel motor sound.

From Ken Rasmussen, an expert on alternative energy, June 17, 2009, from his website, “…going electric would solve other issues too, not the least of which is noise. I thought attacks were supposed to sneak up on the enemy. But with a big diesel engine revving, how stealthy is that?”

The imagined soldier finishes his tour of duty, but can’t get that generator out of his mind. Pete Sumaruck would champion anyone to get involved in economical, pollution-free energy. The more power generated without oil-based products, without coal, natural gas and nuclear, the better off we all are…much more than an understatement.

If the Army had developed Sumaruck’s all-electric generators in 2002, much would have been saved. Do we want to forget that diesel is flammable. It can be fire in liquid form. With Pete’s system, not only would portable generators not explode on impact, but by now military vehicles would be powered by electricity, and without a batteries, and the danger of roadside bombs would have diminished. If the military was driving all-electric vehicles, then car manufacturers would have followed suit. If begun in 2002, would this have saved Detroit, all those jobs, all the government bailouts. One can only imagine the possibilities.

A race of sorts is now on - Oct. 05, 2009, from indianexpress.comIndia has built a 260 kilometer transmission line (towers) for power, to Kabul. Some see this as a political manipulation to establish an Indian presence in the region where none had been before. And, “A successful transmission of 40MW of power imported from Uzbekistan,” will come online by January, 2010, but will hardly make a dent in Afghanistan’s need for power. Compare this to 619 MW from Oyster Creek Power Plant in New Jersey, which services 600,000 homes and businesses.

The American company, Louis Berger Group has combined with Black & Veatch in a joint venture and awarded a contract for the Afghanistan Infrastructure and Rehabilitation Program. The Berger Group’s mission is to develop infrastructure for Afghanistan; the company has been in that country since 2001 and was, “the first US contractor to fully engage in Afghanistan.” So you see, Berger was entrenched; they wouldn’t want any new technology to alter their plans.

With the Berger Group there, all hard at work - that’s cheery - but look, the lights are still dim in Afghanistan. Why does it take 8 years to turn on the lights. One reason is that transmission towers make good targets. With all-electric generators, the need for transmission towers is eliminated.

From tdworld.com, August 5, 2009, marks the completion of the first 5 year plan (5 of those initial 8 years) and the beginning of the 2^nd five year plan. “The people of Afghanistan will directly benefit as a result of this new five-year reconstruction activity. Afghan companies will be strengthened and local jobs created,” in a $1.4 billion contract from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

These are public statements by the Berger Group to reassure you and our country that there will actually be, at some future time, a real infrastructure in Afghanistan. You do understand…that is the basic issue here, almost as basic as wood…this fragmented collection of tribal areas, collectively known as Afghanistan, does not have, what in the West, is termed an infrastructure.

That makes it a tabula rasa of sorts, not that it was born with a blank slate, but that there is so much to be accomplished in Afghanistan, the slate is still almost blank. Building an actual infrastructure, ground up can be one of the only truly creative experiences left in the world (if you are retaining key points in this article, this is surely one of those).

We keep getting second chances. If our government had used the new technology that was offered to them in 2002, by now all the lights would be on in Afghanistan. And with that kind of power, Afghanistan would be a real country now…there would be industry and actual jobs (not promised jobs)…where people could earn a living without that single crop of opium. Abject poverty could actually be defeated in one generation…and when poverty is the missing factor, there is no reason for war.

Can two men actually alter the world - send it backwards several generations in only 8 years. Those two politicians from Texas certainly did, or at least they are easy to blame, as well as a Republican administration.

The first phase of energy/power development by the Berger Group was dedicated in a ceremony on August 5. That project produces 35 megawatts (MW) of electricity at the Tarakhill station in Kabul, again remember our comparison to 619MW serving 600,000 homes in New Jersey, in an area nowhere near the population of 5 million in Kabul. Berger Group’s output represents the first one-third of a total 105 MW, which they say will come online “later this year.” This 105 MW will supposedly serve 500,000 people in Kabul.

Using this rule of approximation, the 40MK coming in from Uzbekistan will serve another 325,000 or so individuals…That means that, including the modicum of power they had in the past, maybe, only maybe a quarter of Kabul will have power (then there’s the rest of the country). The majority of that quarter of the populace is/will be powered by diesel, a fuel that is unnecessary. Who pays…will pay the fuel bill? Who will clean up the pollution from this new infrastructure? The country of operation, or the United States - is there any difference.