The IEDs can be buried in roads and roadsides, packed into cars or bicycles or hidden in garbage cans or animal carcasses. They are made from materials easily and readily available in war zones such as abandoned bombs, mines, unused artillery shells, construction explosives, dynamite or fertilizer. They are the weapon of choice for insurgents and terrorists: Cheap, simple and easy to build, but very hard to detect, evade and, of course, to counter.They have posed a very serious threat to US forces in Iraq. In fact, they have caused many of the American deaths and injuries. Although the Iraq war is now winding down, since last year the IEDs have been leaving their mark in Afghanistan.
According to US military sources, there were 3,611 instances in which IEDs had been used in Afghanistan in 2008, a 50 percent increase over the previous year. Besides US and NATO forces, many Afghans, both military and civilian, were killed by these IEDs last year.
In fact, having seen their impact in Iraq, the Taliban have, in a sense, copied the Iraqi insurgents in this respect, just like they copied the suicide attacks and other tactics used in Iraq. Of course Afghanistan's topography and primitive infrastructure have played to the Taliban's advantage in the IED attacks. Unlike Iraq, where most of the streets are paved and the main roads are covered with asphalt, Afghanistan has a network of undeveloped roads and streets where it is far easier to lay the IEDs. Furthermore, the dirt roads make it easy for Taliban insurgents bury the IEDs. On top of that, weather conditions also help them in many ways. Dust storms and strong winds can easily camouflage the IEDs.
Even Afghanistan's most important paved highway, the Ring Road, which is the primary route for both commercial and military convoys between Kabul and other important cities, is not immune to the IED traps and attacks. Its thousands of culverts can easily conceal the IEDs. The US military, which depends heavily on this highway, plans to use satellites, new portable Global Positioning System (GPS) devices and monitoring systems to make this highway more secure.
The US military, which plans to overwhelm and defeat the Taliban within one year, has been devoting resources and time to tackle the IEDs because they are the single most effective menace facing the troops in Afghanistan today, as has been experienced recently.
In this respect, the Pentagon created the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIDDEO) in 2006. Its budget has ranged from $3.5 billion to $4.4 billion, not including the cost of the armored carriers and other related programs and systems, among them new jamming technologies and counter electronic measures, which have been successful in foiling some of the IEDs used by the Taliban. For this reason, Taliban insurgents are resorting to simpler methods to detonate the IEDs, such as using ropes, wires or cables as triggers.
However, this does not mean that they have abandoned other methods of detonating the IEDs. In view of this, the US has been trying to develop other countermeasures in order to complete the anti-IED system. Among them, the ground-penetrating radar, which recently finished being tested, stands out. In addition to the radar, more sophisticated electronic jammers, wheeled robots, laser guns that can detonate an IED from a safe distance and new hardened troop transport vehicles are all being used as countermeasures. These new troop transport vehicles will have heavy rollers extended at the front to detonate IEDs triggered by pressure plates.
These are some of the tools the US thinks can counter the IED menace, which can tip the military balance decisively. Whether they will be successful or not, only time will tell. Turkey, which faces a serious native IED menace in the south and east posed by the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), should closely observe what is happening with the IEDs in Afghanistan.
