大象传媒

An epic tale of dreams, grit and folly half a century in the making, Monica Whitlock tells the story of the Helmand valley dam complex, the biggest engineering project in Afghanistan.

The project, still unfinished, began more than 50 years ago when American engineers first arrived in Helmand. They brought their families, drive-in movies and even Santa Claus. Afghans and foreigners rubbed shoulders without a thought. Lashkar Gah became a model town with electric lights and the first school in the country in which boys and girls studied together. As Afghanistan experimented with modernity and technology, a great future seemed in touching distance.

But then came the Soviet invasion. The engineers fled; the optimistic schoolchildren turned into refugees. The Americans in their turn bombed the dam in 2001; paying millions once again to reconstruct it and fit a hydropower turbine, transported across the desert by the British army in one of the most famous operations of the current Afghan war.