The Afghan government banned a fertilizer chemical used in most of the homemade explosives that have killed and maimed hundreds of US and NATO soldiers.
NATO troops have seized tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertilizer in raids over the last five months in southern Afghanistan and the government has been discouraging farmers from using it for years for environmental reasons.
Still, the government believes the new ban, announced on Friday, will make it more difficult for the Taliban to replenish supplies of ammonium nitrate, which the US think tank Globalsecurity.com says has been used in more than 90 percent of the homemade bombs, the biggest killer of NATO troops in Afghanistan. Such “fertilizer bombs” have also been used in Iraq in attacks against government security forces.
In the latest bombing fatality in Afghanistan, a British soldier was killed on Friday by a blast in the southern province of Helmand.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai issued the decree banning the use, production, storage, purchase or sale of ammonium nitrate. Farmers have one month to turn in their stocks or face prosecution.
A number of countries, including Germany, Colombia, Ireland, the Philippines and China, have banned ammonium nitrate fertilizer and most US states regulate its use after the chemical was used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people, and the 2002 nightclub bombings in Bali in which 202 people died.
Mir Dad Panjshiri, an official in the Afghan Agriculture Ministry, said the government had discouraged the use of ammonium nitrate fertilizer for years because urea fertilizer is better-suited to Afghan soils. He said businessmen began importing ammonium nitrate fertilizer in large amounts last year, mostly from Central Asia and Pakistan.
“We detected an increase in the use of the fertilizer over the past year by poor farmers in the southern provinces,” Panjshiri said. “It’s not available everywhere. These poor farmers didn’t know what they bought.”
He said the government was confident it could enforce the ban on its northern borders with Central Asia, but “my concern is more in the south because we have a long border with Pakistan and it’s available there.”
Last September, the government gave US and allied forces permission to confiscate ammonium nitrate fertilizer, compensating farmers if the use appeared to be legitimate. Troops seized 9 tonnes of the fertilizer from a truck in the southern province of Kandahar earlier this month, and another 225 tonnes in Kandahar City in November.
Nevertheless, some farmers said they preferred ammonium nitrate fertilizer and expressed frustration over the ban.
“If the government and NATO forces want to stop fertilizer that they think is used in explosives, they should invest money and make a deal with some other country to import good quality fertilizers,” said Ezatullah, a farmer from Kandahar Province who like many Afghans uses only one name. “We haven’t received any improved seeds or fertilizers. We are not happy.”
Meanwhile, a US group that monitors Islamic extremist Web sites said a militant group reported 15 of its members were killed in a US missile strike in Afghanistan.
The SITE Intelligence Group said the report, posted on Friday by the Turkistan Islamic Party, said 13 Uighurs and two Turks were killed on Tuesday by a missile fired by a US unmanned aircraft in Afghanistan, but did not say where. Pakistani officials reported two missile attacks along the border on Tuesday.
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