{"id":9198,"date":"2014-08-12T20:15:03","date_gmt":"2014-08-12T20:15:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kohelet.org.il\/article\/is-u-s-obligated-to-provide-free-electricity-to-afghanistan\/"},"modified":"2014-08-12T20:15:03","modified_gmt":"2014-08-12T20:15:03","slug":"is-u-s-obligated-to-provide-free-electricity-to-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/is-u-s-obligated-to-provide-free-electricity-to-afghanistan\/","title":{"rendered":"Is U.S. obligated to provide free electricity to Afghanistan?"},"content":{"rendered":"The U.S. occupied Afghanistan for perhaps a decade, continues to maintain a troop presence there, and retains significant \u201cadministrative powers,\u201d like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/11\/29\/world\/asia\/afghan-leader-lashes-out-at-us-allies-after-nato-drone-strike.html?_r=0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">killing people in drone strikes<\/a>. Yet no one thinks that this entails an obligation for the U.S. to provide electricity to Afghanistan, even during the occupation.\n\nIndeed, only 30% of Afghanistan\u2019s population currently has access to electricity, so if there is such a duty, the U.S. is massively remiss. And soon it is going to be less, as the U.S. does to Afghanistan what Israel supposedly cannot do to Gaza &#8211; cut off the free electricity they had been supplying:\nWhen the United States stops funding power generation in Afghanistan\u2019s southern city of Kandahar next year, the lights are set to go out and factories will fall idle, playing into the hands of Taliban insurgents active in the area.\n\u2026\nBut regular power in the city is still years away, and when the United States finally ends subsidies \u2013 currently running at just over $1 million a month \u2013 in September 2015, Kandahar could lose around half its severely limited electricity supplies, Afghan power officials and U.S. inspectors say.\n\u2026\n\nAlex Bronstein-Moffly, a spokesman for the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), said power shortages in insurgent heartlands would be a major setback 13 years after the Taliban were toppled in a U.S.-backed war.\n\u201cIf electrical service to Kandahar is compromised it could end up endangering counter-insurgency and economic gains made over the last few years,\u201d he said.\n\nIt is unlikely that America\u2019s turning off the lights in Afghanistan will be denounced as a international crime by anyone, let alone the group of Israeli law professors has argued that Israel is <a href=\"http:\/\/gisha.org\/UserFiles\/File\/publications\/letters\/letter-en-20-7-14.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">obligated to provide free electricity to Gaza<\/a>, despite hostilities. The professors wrote in response to a legal opinion from Prof. Avi Bell arguing the contrary.\n\nI already recounted <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/volokh-conspiracy\/wp\/2014\/08\/01\/does-israel-have-to-give-free-power-to-gaza\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">some problems with this view<\/a>. Now let me continue. The professors did not, as far as I understand their memo, suggest that providing power to a hostile belligerent was a general rule of international law, but rather based on some special relationship between Israel and Gaza. Some combination of Israel\u2019s occupation of Gaza and its current partial blockade require it to assume special duties to the territory, they claim. The blockade argument is really just a disguised objection to the legality of the blockade; in a proper blockade, one need not provide electricity.\n\nThe group opinion, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.kohelet.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/israel-may-stop-supplying-water-and-electricity-to-Gaza-updated-1.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">unlike Bell\u2019s<\/a>, cites absolutely no state practice in support of its positions. The rule they describe is not contained in any treaty, nor has it ever been applied to any state. Moreover, it dismisses the examples of contrary state practice cited by Bell, by saying that \u201cnothing can be concluded\u201d from it because \u201cinternational law is in constant development.\u201d\n\nThey are saying Israel would be violating a rule that has not yet formed. They tacitly acknowledge the lack of a concrete prohibition elsewhere, by saying that one must find an obligation for Israel to provide electricity because otherwise there would be a \u201clegal black hole,\u201d where no rule of international law applies. This is hardly a problem unless one assumes, contrary to the Lotus principle, that international law has a rule for everything.\n\nAnother strange source of international law they cite is whether an \u201cinternational body of import\u201d would \u201cview it favorably.\u201d I do not know what a \u201cbody of import\u201d is, and whether it includes such as eminences as the UNHRC. However, it is clear that the potential future view of a theoretical international body is not a source for determining international law. Past decisions of such bodies can be evidence of international law, but unlike domestic systems, the job of the international lawyer is not to \u201cpredict\u201d how a \u201cbody,\u201d which may or may not have jurisdiction, would view the matter.\n\nIt is worth noting that, unlike food, water and other essentials, access to electricity is not identified as a basic human right<a href=\"http:\/\/www.un.org\/esa\/sustdev\/sdissues\/energy\/op\/parliamentarian_forum\/bradbrook_hr.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> in any treaty<\/a>; indeed, it was, to the consternation of some,<a href=\"http:\/\/www.regjeringen.no\/en\/archive\/Stoltenbergs-2nd-Government\/Office-of-the-Prime-Minister\/taler-og-artikler\/2013\/speech-at-high-level-event-millennium-de.html?id=736220\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> omitted<\/a> from United Nation\u2019s Millennium Development Goals (H\/T Irene Kelly).\nWhen people invoke \u201crules\u201d of international law in relation to Israel, it is always worth asking, where if anywhere, they have been applied before. If the answer is that they are based on an \u201cemerging norm,\u201d or on Israel\u2019s unique factual circumstances, so that the rule by definition can only apply in one case \u2013 it means there is no rule.\n\nAnd by the way, while the U.S. prepares to stop giving electricity to Afghanistan, Israel is <a href=\"http:\/\/mfa.gov.il\/MFA\/PressRoom\/2014\/Pages\/Israel-Electric-Corp-begins-repairing-power-grids-for-Gaza-6-Aug-2014.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">repairing power lines to Gaza<\/a> in order to continue providing power to Gaza. The power lines, in Israeli territory, had been damaged by Hamas rocket fire. The repair work is done under close security for fear of sniping from Gaza.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The U.S. occupied Afghanistan for perhaps a decade, continues to maintain a troop presence there, and retains significant \u201cadministrative powers,\u201d like killing people in drone strikes. Yet no one thinks that this entails an obligation for the U.S. to provide electricity to Afghanistan, even during the occupation. Indeed, only 30% of Afghanistan\u2019s population currently has [&hellip;]","protected":false},"featured_media":9137,"template":"","article-category":[525],"custom-tags":[],"ppma_author":[60],"class_list":["post-9198","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","article-category-publications"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Is U.S. obligated to provide free electricity to Afghanistan? - kohelet<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/is-u-s-obligated-to-provide-free-electricity-to-afghanistan\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Is U.S. obligated to provide free electricity to Afghanistan? - kohelet\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The U.S. occupied Afghanistan for perhaps a decade, continues to maintain a troop presence there, and retains significant \u201cadministrative powers,\u201d like killing people in drone strikes. Yet no one thinks that this entails an obligation for the U.S. to provide electricity to Afghanistan, even during the occupation. 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