IEDs in Afghanistan Double Over Past Year

The number of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) lining the roads in Afghanistan have doubled over the past year, and twice as many troops died in the first quarter of 2010 than in the first quarter of 2009.

The US has been scrambling to find a solution to the ever increasing number of attacks in the nation, a backdrop to the ever increasing overall violence, and is said to have spent billions of dollars on new equipment and adding to the number of road-clearing teams in the nation.

Lieutenant General Michael Oates insisted that the US was making “headway” toward containing the attacks despite the spike in deaths, and predicted that the situation would soon be well in hand.

But the cost of producing the primitive IEDs is comparatively trivial, while the cost to defend against them is astronomical (and rising every time a new piece of technology is developed). What officials are touting as “headway” may in fact be the insurgents’ strategy, draining billions of dollars in war funds annually tackling easily replicated explosives.