Taliban running short of IEDs, says British general

Source: Guardian
Attacks on Taliban supply lines cause tenfold price rise in key ingredient of improvised explosive devices

US marines assess an improvised explosive device in Nabuk, Helmand province. Photograph: Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters

  

The Taliban's ability to produce large numbers of its most effective and lethal weapon, the improvised explosive device (IED), appears to have been severely constrained in the south of Afghanistan, including Kandahar, after months of US-led operations.
According to the region's British outgoing commander, General Nick Carter – who briefed journalists before handing over to his US successor today – anecdotal evidence suggests growing shortages have meant the cost of the key chemical ingredient, ammonium nitrate, has increased tenfold in recent months.
The price of other components such as detonators, Carter claimed, had increased 11 times, reflecting disruption of the Taliban's supply networks both in the country and across the Pakistan border.
IEDs are the biggest killers of British and US troops in Afghanistan, accounting for more than half of all fatalities. Placed on paths, in fields, alongside roads and throughout villages, the 180 that exploded in September claimed the lives of 24 US soldiers. They also account for two out of every three non-fatal casualties.
A bomb killed two coalition service members in the volatile south yesterday, Nato said.
The trend had been for IEDs to become ever larger, more numerous and sophisticated, usually with a small charge – perhaps a conventional anti-personnel landmine – detonating a larger device packed with homemade explosives, whose main ingredient is ammonium nitrate.
Their use has escalated hugely over the last six years. In 2004, according to analysis of the Afghan war logs, there were 308 makeshift bombs. Last year there were 7,155. In total the Taliban has planted more than 16,000 IEDs in those six years.
The reported shortages of materials for the devices follows two months this year when the Taliban and allied groups planted record numbers of the bombs in response to the surge of almost 30,000 additional US troops deployed in Afghanistan. In July 1,374 bombs were detonated or defused, and in September 1,321 were detonated or detected, the two largest totals in almost a decade – which might also explain the shortages.
Nato and Afghan troops began an operation to wrest back control of the south from the Taliban insurgency in July. They have established some pockets of security but insurgents still carry out daily attacks and bombings.
In some rural districts around Kandahar, villages have been so heavily mined that it has proved impossible to clear them safely by conventional methods and some areas have been bombed to set off the devices.
Carter said: "We have many more resources in the area. We have restricted [the Taliban's] freedom of movement in districts like Arghandab and Zhari, which had been key areas for them to influence the city of Kandahar.
"They also no longer have the same resources. The price of ammonium nitrate has increased 10 times. Basic IED components by 11 times. With these constraints and the economic impact of the poppy blight this year, we believe it is difficult for them to go on the offensive."
He said 80% of IEDs now being discovered were handed in by Afghans to local police.
At the weekend Isaf and Afghan forces destroyed a significant Taliban shipment and storage site in the Barham Chah bazaar, in Helmand province. That uncovered an explosives factory with stores of 23.7 metric tonnes of ammonium nitrate, detonator pressure plates, 500 litres of acid, and 2,000 kilos of precursor chemicals – enough materials to make 2,000 IEDs.
Carter warned that it would take until at least next summer to determine whether the campaign around Kandahar and in the south had produced a lasting impact.
"Timelines are always dangerous," he said. "We have seen progress. But the point I am making is that we will only know if those gains are irreversible when we get to next July."