by Our Foreign Desk

KABUL went into lockdown yesterday as tens of thousands marched to demand a proposed power line goes along its orginal route.

Embassies were shuttered and the US warned its citizens to “limit” their movements.

The demonstrators, mostly of the Hazara ethnicity, are calling for the proposed Tutap (Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan-Tajikistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan) 500 kilovolt power transmission line to follow original plans by running through their native Bamyan province.

A subsequent decison to alter the route and bypass Bamyan is seen by the Hazaras as discriminatory, since they claim theirs is one of the least-developed regions of Afghanistan and few homes have access to electricity.

Hazara MPs walked out of parliament on Saturday to highlight the importance of the issue to them.

Former vice-president Karim Khalili, addressing the protesters from the back of a lorry, called on President “Dr Ashraf Ghani and [chief executive] Dr Abdullah Abdullah to change the decision.

“Our movement will continue, we will follow this until we get a result.”

Non-Hazara demonstrators included Pashtun Abdul Malik, who told reporters he supported the movement “to show unity for their rights, as in the past 15 years very little has been done for Hazaras, and people need electricity in their homes.”

Afghanistan’s Centre for Research and Policy Studies’ Haroun Mir noted that the power line has become an “umbrella issue” uniting opponents of Dr Ghani’s government.

“This is a mobilisation and I know many Tajiks are supporting it, not because they absolutely want this thing to go through Bamyan but because they hate this government,” he said.