Tuesday, August 09, 2011 – According to officials in a top US joint organisation which fights IEDs, there has been a sevenfold increase in the use of roadside and remote-controlled mines against foreign troops in Afghanistan.
Irene Smith, Pentagon’s Joint IED Defeat Organisation (JIEDDO) spokeswoman quoted by AFP said, “During the last 12 months, an unending supply of calcium ammonium nitrate, originating almost exclusively from Pakistan, has been used to produce IEDs in Afghanistan despite a countrywide ban on importing the fertilizer.”
According to JIEDDO, at least 3,485 IEDs exploded or were found in the war-ravaged country from April to June, which indicates a 14 percent increase over the same period last year.
The volatile southern province of Helmand, the spiritual home of the Taliban, is the worst affected, along with Kandahar province and the country’s east along the border with Pakistan.
Infantry forces are particularly more vulnerable to IED attacks. Use of roadside bombs against them increased 59 percent in the spring.
According to JIEDDO, nearly 1,900 weapons caches were discovered in the spring, three times more than in 2010.
In 2010, IEDs were responsible for 60 percent of coalition deaths, even if only one in 10 bombs leads to casualties.
According to officials in Pentagon, at least 1, 738 US soldiers had been killed and 7,857 wounded by IEDs since the beginning of combat in 2001.
Better cooperation with Pakistan is seen as essential to ending the flow of fertiliser into Afghanistan.
Irene Smith, Pentagon’s Joint IED Defeat Organisation (JIEDDO) spokeswoman further added, “Unless we neutralise this network, through a whole-of-government approach, we will never defeat the IED threat confronting our troops in Afghanistan.”
If Russia, China or IRAN will supply our adversaries with packages of 10 kg CYCLOTOL 77/23, with delay detonators 0.2 to 0.5 sec, then no armor can withstand a 20 to 40 kg CYCLOTOL 77/23, IED. The question isn’t IF but WHEN.