IEDs killed 20 of the 32 of the coalition troops who died in the first weeks of January. Almost all of the bombs were made from nitrate fertilizer. President Hamid Karzai, in a decree issued Friday, banned the use, production, storage or sale of ammonium nitrate, and gave Afghans 30 days to turn over any supplies to authorities. Last year, Pakistan banned the fertilizer in its Northwest Frontier province, a center of Islamist resistance.
NATO estimates that as little as 5% of the nitrate fertilizer entering Afghanistan goes to legitimate use. |