ARLINGTON, Va. — U.S. forces are seeing roadside bombs in Afghanistan similar to the devices insurgents are using against U.S. forces in Iraq, said the commander of Joint Task Force 76.
“What we’ve seen in the past primarily are IED cells that are Afghan-led, but some of the devices that we are seeing are similar to the devices that are being used in Iraq and our current line of thinking is determining what connects those two and how is that technology transferred — or that technique transferred — from one to the other, and we’re looking for those threads as we continue to fight this common enemy,” said Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin Freakley.
Freakley said he did not believe the people who use roadside bombs are themselves migrating from Iraq to Afghanistan.
“I think that the techniques and some of the technology may have come from similar personnel who were instructed on how to build a bomb,” he said.
Freakley said U.S forces continue to look for a “migratory pattern” of roadside bombs from one area to another.
“We do some similar techniques and so we’re trying to determine how the technology transfer is occurring and who is training the bombmakers — how are they being trained and how are they getting ideas from one another.”
Afghanistan shares a border with Iran, from where roadside bomb components have allegedly shown up in neighboring Iraq, according to British Maj. Gen. J.B. Dutton, commander of Multinational Division Southeast.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Tuesday that it is impossible to know definitively if the Iranian government is helping to move roadside bombs into Iraq.
“All you know is that you find equipment — weapons, explosives, whatever — in a country that came from the neighboring country,” he said.
