GHAZNI, Afghanistan — When it comes to navigating the dusty, rutted byways of eastern Afghanistan, off-road driving skills are a matter of life and death.

Roughly four months into their deployment in Afghanistan’s eastern Ghazni province, troops with the 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment are finding that the weapon of choice among Taliban insurgents here is the anti-tank mine.

“They know it’s the only effective thing they’ve got against us,” said Capt. Aaron White, Company D commander. “They know we can’t see too well out of our vehicles and that they’re a little sluggish. They also know that they don’t stand a chance against us face to face, on the ground.”

The explosives pepper centuries-old dirt pathways linking area villages. A newly paved highway connecting Afghanistan’s major population centers offers safe passage to military vehicles, so U.S. troops here avoid unpaved roads. Their preferred route is to cruise cross country.

“Once you get blown up you learn not to use the same roads over and over,” said 1st Lt. Scott DeWitt, leader of Company D’s 2nd Platoon. “In fact, it’s better not to use the roads at all.”

In the span of a little more than 24 hours recently, the battalion, part of the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, saw one soldier killed and a handful injured after mines destroyed two Humvees and an Afghan National Army pickup truck.

A monthlong operation now under way south of the city of Ghazni has uncovered “countless” caches of mines, according to a spokesman for Task Force Fury.

However, there are still enough of the explosives in insurgent hands to complicate ground travel in Ghazni’s Andar District, a hotbed of Taliban activity. In fact, to some soldiers, it seemed as if insurgents were stepping up their use of the weapons.

“If you ask me, they’re getting a little carried away,” Sgt. Matthew Emberson, 23, of Toms River, N.J., said sarcastically. “One (roadside bomb) a week was fine, but this?”

Due to the threat of mines, missions that involve traveling just a short distance by road are instead routed across vast, dust-blown plains. Seven-ton Humvees that are already straining under the weight of progressively stronger and heavier armor kits lurch and shudder over shallow wadis and embankments, amid boiling clouds of dust.

During one recent spine-hammering trip across acres of fields south of Ghazni, Humvee driver and Spc. Josh Neuser, 26, of Manitowoc, Wis., gunned his vehicle through waist-high seas of wheat, mud berms and irrigation ditches while his passengers howled as if they were on a roller-coaster ride.

For his part, Neuser said that barreling through the countryside was no big deal.

“I grew up on a farm,” Neuser said. “You just get the feel for this kind of stuff.”

Just a few days earlier, Company D’s 3d Platoon found itself on a road that was rumored to contain numerous roadside bombs. After losing a Humvee and an Afghan National Army truck on the route, the company summoned an explosives ordnance team to clear a path to open fields where trucks could operate more safely.

Sgt. Josh Gutowski, 23, of Black Mountain, N.C., was driving the Humvee that was destroyed that Friday. Gutowski was driving past a local bazaar on a narrow portion of road bordered on one side by a deep gully and on the other by mud-brick buildings.

Gutowski said he heard a loud blast when the inside of the truck filled with smoke and felt himself covered in a wet greasy substance. The blast destroyed the rear half of the vehicle, but left Gutowski and his turret gunner — the only occupants — free of serious injury.

It was Gutowski’s first one-on-one roadside bomb, even though he had served two prior deployments in Iraq. He said he always figured that if he ever hit a roadside bomb, it would be in Iraq, not Afghanistan.

“I don’t know if that was stupidity on my part or my just not knowing this country,” he said. “They set that mine up pretty good though. They were tricky about it.”

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