Excerpt: [War On The Rocks] No other weapon shaped the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan like the IED. It required that troops charged with enhancing population security confine themselves to massive, armored vehicles and travel at high rates of speed or plow through farmers’ fields to avoid roads entirely. It slowed dismounted troops forced to sweep with metal detectors and divert around empty intersections. It partitioned Baghdad with 12-foot high concrete walls and caused a fertilizer shortage for farmers in Afghanistan. It was the only insurgent weapon that could cause mass civilian casualties, undermining local governance, the credibility of counter-insurgent efforts, and ensuring a steady stream of atrocities -- of the horrors of intervention -- could be broadcast globally.
Whether you measure in blood or treasure, the IED also proved the costliest feature of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for American forces. 60 percent of all American fatalities in Iraq and half of all American fatalities in Afghanistan, more than 3,500 in total, were caused by IEDs. The same proportion holds for Americans who were wounded, totaling more than 30,000 service members. When history looks back on these wars, the dominant images will be of the aftermath of these improvised bombs, of their devastating effects on a Baghdad market or of veteran and Afghan amputees. |