US look to crackdown source of Pakistani fertilizer CAN explosive

Washington: The US government has decided to clean-up the major source of fertilizer CAN which is a key component for making any improvised explosive device (IED).

CAN stands for calcium ammonium nitrate, the raw element for as many as 75 percent of the IEDs in Afghanistan, according to a U.S. military official.

IEDs have killed more U.S. troops than any other weapon and have been extensively used by the Taliban against US forces.

The US military built multi-million dollar trucks that ward off the blow of an explosion but this didn't affect the Taliban as they built better and stronger explosives.

Now US army has decided to reach out to the root of the problem, which according to them lies in Pakistan.

"We're not going to solve the IED problem inside Afghanistan. If we don't go after the supply, we're playing defense," said a senior U.S. military official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Pakarab is Pakistan's major maker of the fertilizer calcium ammonium nitrate (CAN) and is deemed illegal in Afghanistan, The ABC News reports.

Enough of CAN is crossing the border to reach Afghanistan and will help to create an estimate of 16,000 bombs this year, which is a 200 per cent rise since 2008.

"We are capturing hundreds of thousands of pounds of CAN, much of it in original bags, with detonation cord, with plastic caps, with time fuses from Pakistan. You get a complete system, including CAN, to make hundreds if not thousands of IEDS. There's no doubt it's all coming from Pakistan," says a US military official. (ANI)