Inside the Pakistan army's counter IED school скачать в хорошем качестве

Inside the Pakistan army's counter IED school

(31 Jan 2014) Militants in Pakistan are ruthless about where they plant their homemade bombs. They've been found strapped to children's bicycles, hidden inside water jugs and even hung in tree branches. But the most shocking place that Brigadier Basim Saeed ever heard of such a device being planted was inside a hollowed out book made to look like a Quran, Islam's holy book. "Normally if that book is lying somewhere on the floor, you tend to pick it up immediately just for respect," said Saeed. The soldier who picked it up was killed. At the military's Counter IED, Explosives and Munitions School, where Saeed is the chief instructor, it is exactly these types of scenarios that Pakistani forces learn about in their efforts to combat improvised explosive devices. They're often referred to as homemade bombs because they're made by hand from scavenged ingredients such as fertilisers for explosives and cell phones to activate the weapon. The Pakistani military sharply ramped up efforts to deal with such devices in recent years as leaders recognised the toll they were having on military personnel and civilians and the devices became increasingly complex and deadly. The Pakistani military has also moved to restrict the availability of calcium ammonium nitrate-based fertilisers in Pakistan. Bombs using this type of fertiliser have often been used in Afghanistan. But Pakistan has been developing a fertiliser, dubbed CAN+, that would work on in for agricultural purposes but would not detonate. Pakistan has also increased training for security personnel at check-points to prevent the free movement of fertilisers and have barred the use of certain fertilisers in Baluchistan and the tribal areas which border Afghanistan. Roughly 4,000 security personnel have been killed in connection with the war on militants in the country's northwest, according to the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies; the homemade bomb has generally been the militants' preferred weapon. The school, formally opened in 2012, is part of those efforts. At the school, located on a Pakistani military base in the northwestern city of Risalpur, the goal is to teach students about the threat of such homemade bombs, where they can be placed, how to look for them and their components and how to gather intelligence from them such as fingerprints so that authorities can track down militants. The Associated Press was the first foreign media outlet to be allowed access to the facility, according to the Pakistani military. The classes are from three to eight weeks. During a recent visit, students were practicing using equipment to search for devices hidden in the ground or using remote controlled vehicles to approach possible explosive devices. Other students had cleared a path to a suspected militant house and marked the path with yellow flags so that troops coming behind them would know where to walk. Students learn how to get evidence from the devices. The school is designed to mimic scenarios the security forces might find in real life. They've built a mock urban environment including a market, a petrol station and other buildings, and explosive devices are even hidden in a pond and a graveyard. Troops practicing a search of a residential compound may accidentally open a cupboard, setting off a loud buzzing that signals a bomb explosion. There's even an escape tunnel leading from one of the houses, rigged with trip wires. "It is always in our mind that there could be some IEDs," said soldier Noor ul Ameen, who has served in the northwest and the insurgency-plagued Baluchistan. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...