Pakistan’s security circles believe that the recent US act of freezing $700 worth assistance to Islamabad and linking it to action against improvised explosive devices (IEDs) is unjustified as the IEDs have killed 2,073 security forces personnel and civilians in 2,053 such attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Balochistan, thus proving to be the deadliest insurgent weapon in the country. Insurgents operating in the country use those IEDs and suicide jackets mostly made from smuggled, unexploded Soviet ordnance, intelligence sources said.
Calcium Ammonium Nitrate, a product used in making IED, is being produced all over the world since last 60 years and its total yield goes beyond 3.7 million tonnes, while Pakistan only produces 1 percent of this total production, that too purely for agriculture needs in arid regions of the country which face acute shortage of water. And production of ammonium nitrate started in Pakistan about 40 years ago. “Pakistan is amongst those countries having acutest shortage of water and per capita water availability ranks dead last in the list of 26 Asian countries,” said a source. The US authorities have totally ignored this fact that huge quantities of ammonium nitrate are produced in half a dozen neighbouring countries of Afghanistan – Iran, Uzbekistan, Central Asia and China with 68 percent nitric acid composition. And porous nature of the Afghan border with its neighboring countries also makes it vulnerable for smuggling of ammonium nitrate which is used in the making of IEDs.