Since the end of major combat in Iraq was declared, no larger threat to coalition troops has emerged than the improvised explosives hidden on and beside the nation’s roadways.
Cheap, brutal and anonymous, the bombs have prompted the U.S. military to accelerate production of portable devices that jam radio-controlled explosives and to assign troops specifically to tracking the bombers’ methods, predicting likely targets and scouring roadsides for bombs before they explode.
Their designs range from crude to sophisticated, from an old artillery shell hidden in the carcass of a dead dog to high-grade C-4 explosives molded into the shape of a curb. They are hidden in steel pipes, cardboard boxes, soda bottles and other trash, and detonated with everything from garage door openers to cell phones to remote controls for children’s toys.
From June 15 to Jan. 7, a total of 1,138 improvised explosives were detonated in attacks on coalition soldiers, an average of more than five per day, according to a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.
Since June 15, the earliest date for which bomb statistics are available, homemade explosives have killed 75 coalition soldiers, more than a third of the 214 coalition troops killed in hostile action during that time. An additional 970 soldiers have been injured by bombs since June 15, most of them in roadside attacks on convoys.
But for all the bloodshed they have caused, the bombs’ broader legacy is fear.
“It’s a psychological weapon, meaning that they are trying to cause us not only to feel the physical effects but the psychological effects,” said Brig. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the commander in charge of Baghdad.
Offering potential insight into the insurgency’s structure, bombs in Baghdad show signs of a rebel production and planning process, commanders say.
“I think that there is an element of central planning and central training and central supplying for improvised explosive devices,” said Dempsey, who commands the Army’s 1st Armored Division. “They just seem to have a quality about them that would lead me to that conclusion.”
In one indication of organized production, soldiers recently discovered an instruction booklet detailing how to plant roadside explosives. Lt. Col. Mark Calvert, commander of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment’s 1st Squadron, had stopped his patrol to investigate a suspected bomb buried in a grassy median in the northeast Baghdad neighborhood of Amin. In the surrounding shrubs and trash, Calvert spotted a small photocopied pamphlet explaining in Arabic how to set an explosive, he said.
“It looked like it had been copied from an army manual,” an officer on the patrol said. The pamphlet was turned over to military translators.
Adding to the challenge of finding bombs is the tendency of some insurgents to build them in stages to deflect attention.
“For example, you might take a burlap bag and put it on the side of the road one day,” Dempsey said at a recent news conference. “The next day you put something in it, the following day put something in it, and the following day wire it, and those activities may only take you a minute or so each time.”
An unknown number of other bombs have been discovered before they exploded, in most cases thanks to tips from Iraqis, commanders say.
That increase in tips and added emphasis on finding “bomb labs” before insurgents strike may have contributed to the decline in the number and effectiveness of recent bombings.
The design of bombs in the past month showed “less training, less technical ability,” said Maj. Gen. Charles Swannack, commander of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division in and around the city of Fallujah. “The IEDs explode, but away from the convoy or behind the convoy,” he said, using military shorthand for the bombs, called “improvised explosive devices.”
Homemade bombs have long been used by insurgent forces to attack a well-equipped modern military. Most recently, bombs stashed at roadsides have killed troops in Chechnya and Afghanistan.
In Iraq, they have exploded everywhere from dense commercial neighborhoods to open highways. Some of the most destructive are those hidden behind metal highway barriers because the barrier itself becomes deadly shrapnel.
Dozens of Iraqi civilians also have been wounded and killed in roadside bombings. On Dec. 5, rebels in a bustling marketplace in the capital’s New Baghdad neighborhood detonated a bomb in a road median as three U.S. Humvees passed, killing one American as well as three Iraqis who were aboard a mini-bus heading in the opposite direction.
Some U.S. military vehicles in Iraq are using a system known as Warlock, which blocks radio frequencies that set off remote-controlled explosives. On Dec. 29, Warlock’s manufacturer, EDO Corp., announced that the Army has agreed to spend $27 million for at least 1,000 additional units to be shipped in 2004.
The Warlock system consists of a suitcase-size device with an antenna that essentially provides a protective bubble around vehicles as they travel, William Walkowiak, head of EDO investor relations, said from New York.
The new batch of Warlocks, which will be stripped-down versions tailored to specific dangers in Iraq, was added to a fast-track purchase of military equipment under the $87 billion appropriation for military operations and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Electronic jamming technology was believed to have thwarted a recent attempt in Pakistan to blow up the limousine of a key U.S. ally, President Pervez Musharraf.
In Iraq, the U.S. military also is adding training in how to identify roadside bombs. A specialized new unit of bomb experts, known as Task Force I.E.D., has been established to train conventional units.
“It’s very slow and meticulous, but we go out and look for IEDs on the ground,” said Sgt. Marcus Foster, 29, of the 1st Armored Division’s 16th Engineer Battalion.
Even before the formation of the task force, Foster’s battalion, like others in Iraq, was assigned to new IED patrols along a major supply route in Baghdad.
They rumble along at less than 10 m.p.h., scouting for roadside bombs, and alert explosives experts when they find them. So far they have found more than 10 explosives hidden along the highway and developed a trove of information on bombers’ tactics and patterns.
They also conduct surveillance of suspected targets and gather information from Iraqis on who might be behind a spate of attacks in a local area.
“There’s no panacea,” said Lt. Col. John Kem, the battalion commander. “If they were only using doorbells and wires, we could work on something, but they are not. But we’re getting better and smarter at it.”
For Capt. Mike Baim, who heads a company that scouts for roadside bombs, the danger no longer is abstract. As he was driving back to his base Sept. 29, an explosion from the edge of the roadway showered him with shrapnel, leaving him bleeding from the ears and pocked with 26 small wounds. He knows he is lucky to have escaped with minor injuries.
“The thing that they don’t understand is that these [bombs] have no real military impact,” he said. “It won’t stop the progress here.”
