Improvised explosive devices have plagued the U.S. military and its allies since the earliest days of the fight against terrorism, leading the Pentagon at one point to declare a “Manhattan Project” to battle the homemade bombs. Now, 16 years later, the number of IED deaths and injuries is falling overall among countries under U.S. Central Command’s authority, but not in Afghanistan.
Some 3,043 people were killed or injured by IEDs in 1,143 incidents in Afghanistan between the beginning of April and the end of June of this year, according to internal slides from the Department of Defense obtained by Foreign Policy.
The numbers represent an 8 percent increase in incidents and a 39 percent increase in deaths and injuries compared to the previous 90 days. It’s also a 17 percent increase the number of those killed or injured compared to the same period last year, even as the number of discrete incidents dropped 18 percent.
The report, produced by the Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Organization (JIDO), the Pentagon’s bomb-fighting agency, is marked for Official Use Only but based on open source reporting.
JIDO usually releases unclassified statistics two to three months after the events, a spokeswoman for the organization told FP in an email. She did not immediately respond to a request for those statistics.
Afghanistan was the only country in Central Command to see an increase in both incidents and casualties from IEDs compared to the previous 90 days, the JIDO report says. Iraq in the same period saw 15 percent fewer incidents and 30 percent fewer casualties than it had in the previous 90 days.
The question, of course, is why?
“In Afghanistan you have a stalemate that favors the insurgents,” said Anthony Cordesman, an Afghanistan expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
IEDs give insurgents “visibility, power, and influence,” he said.
The Taliban may be turning to IED attacks because they can’t control cities, Cordesman suggested. Whereas the Islamic State was able for a time to occupy cities in Iraq and Syria, the Taliban hasn’t had the same success at home, and IEDs present a dramatic show of force with a terrible human cost. “IEDs, particularly attacks on civilian populations, get them immense visibility,” he said.
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Source: Foreign Policy