The Taliban's IED war

Times:

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With an oath, Corporal Mount left the shade of the pomegranate orchard and went back to the spot on the narrow path where, moments earlier, he had been lying down, grubbing around in the dust with his fingers and a paintbrush. As he scraped away he uncovered a large bomb - an artillery shell wired up to a radio receiver. Somewhere a watching insurgent - he needed to be close by - would be trying to detonate it. The bomb had been put there at some point between the hours of night when the patrol had used the track and the light of early morning as they now returned.

There was no disturbed earth to give away the position of the bomb, or Improvised Explosive Device (IED). The Taleban urinate on the ground above buried devices so that the summer heat quickly bakes the turned soil into a uniform shade and texture. Instead, the double-tone alarm of a ranger's metal detector sounded and Corporal Mount, a Para engineer, had been sent to check it out.

He had to hope that the electronic counter-measure (ECM) devices carried by the rest of the patrol were jamming the signals sent out by the watching bomber's transmitter. The alternative was the end of Corporal Mount. The rangers, from the 1st Battalion the Royal Irish Regiment, seemed unfazed either way, right up to the point when an American team arrived and destroyed the device.

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Ten days earlier they had set up a small patrol base in an abandoned Taleban safe house, named it “Armagh” and got on with their chess games with the insurgents. The rangers tried to hamper the Taleban's movements on the east side of the Helmand River. In turn the Taleban tried to block the rangers in by planting bombs along the few paths leading through the orchards and walled farm compounds to their patrol base.

This was the second device the soldiers had found in less than 24 hours. As the insurgency in Helmand changes, IEDs have become the Taleban's weapon of choice. Their use has more than doubled compared with the summer of last year. An average of three a day were found in Helmand last month alone.

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They need to get some UAV's in the area to stalk the bombers. They also need some night patrols and snipers in areas where the bombs are planted. The US got very good at dealing with the IED threat in Iraq. Forces in Afghanistan should also start focusing on the bombers.

Where are they being built? They will eventually develop that kind of intelligence. There are some logistical restraints on this kind of weapon. It is not the kind of thing that can be humped in on teh back of a man infiltrating from Pakistan.