Taliban's bombs came from US, not Iran

[FarCenter]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KI05Ak02.html
By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - In support of the official United States assertion that Iran is arming its sworn enemy, the Taliban, the head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Dennis Blair, has cited a statement by a Taliban commander last year attributing military success against North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces to Iranian military assistance.

But the Taliban commander's claim is contradicted by evidence from the US Defense Department, Canadian forces in Afghanistan and the Taliban themselves that the increased damage to NATO tanks by Taliban forces has come from anti-tank mines provided by the United States to the jihadi movement against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

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But according to the Pentagon agency responsible for combating roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, the increased Taliban threat to US and NATO vehicles comes not from any new technology from Iran but from Italian-made mines left over from the US Central Intelligence Agency's military assistance to the anti-Soviet jihadists in the 1980s.

In response to an inquiry from Inter Press Service (IPS), the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), a unit of the US Department of Defense, said in an e-mail that Italian-manufactured TC-6 anti-tank mines are "very common" in the Taliban-dominated areas of the country and that they had been modified to increase their lethality in improvised explosive device attacks.

The JIEDDO response said TC-6 mines were being "arrayed in two or three in tandem to ensure the charge is large enough to inflict damage against coalition vehicles". The TC-6 mines "continue to pose a significant threat to coalition forces", JIEDDO said.
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