KABUL — The Taliban have sabotaged a major power line in the northern province of Baghlan, officials said Wednesday, cutting a supply of electricity from Uzbekistan to Kabul, the Afghan capital, and exposing a vulnerability in the nation’s rickety infrastructure at a time when the insurgency has government forces thinly stretched.

Wahidullah Tawhidi, a spokesman for the national power company, Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat, said insurgents destroyed one electricity transmission tower and damaged two others late Tuesday in the area of Dand-e-Shahabuddin, near the highway that links Baghlan and Kunduz provinces. Utility workers reached the area, he said, but could not begin repairs until Afghan security forces had dismantled mines left by the insurgents and secured the area. He predicted that service would soon be restored.

Afghanistan suffers from a chronic power shortage, with less than 40 percent of the population even connected to the grid, according to World Bank data. Three-quarters of the country’s electricity is imported from the neighboring countries of Uzbekistan, Iran, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. The long transmission lines leave Kabul vulnerable to outages from sabotage. As a result, backup generators are de rigueur among those who can afford them.

Baghlan province is between Kabul and Kunduz, the northern city that the Taliban seized and held for 15 days last autumn. The sabotage of the line also hit Parwan, Nangarhar, and Laghman provinces. It marked the first time that militants had targeted the capital’s electricity supply. But such incidents have been rife elsewhere in the country.

New York Times