Fertilizer is Key Ingredient in Afghan Bombs and Drug Trade

Who would have thought that what makes grass greener in America would make blood spill faster and druglords richer in wartorn Afghanistan, putting a tragic twist on the old saying about "the other side."

Ammonium nitrate fertilizer is the key ingredient in the Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) of which the deadly effects make headlines daily, being the primary weapon that claim the lives of American soldiers and Afghan civilians alike. Like the six that were killed yesterday. Like the dozens killed last week. Like the thousands killed so far … you get the picture. And the environmental consequences are also relevant here because this fertilizer isn't just being put in the ground, bodies from blasts made from it are. And that's only half the problem.

The fertilizer is apparently produced in neighboring Pakistan and trucked across the border into Afghanistan. There's huge stores of it scattered around the country, with hostile militants taking advantage of both its low cost and easy usage. It's one thing to stop rockets and grenades from entering and being used in a warzone, and totally another for agricultural products with double uses.

And it's safe to say that fertilizer isn't on the minds of most disarmament experts and practitioners. They are generally more concerned with the nuclear materials of atomic bombs that have never been used than with common industrial products like fertilizer that are used daily, destructively and as deadly impromptu weapons.

The U.S. is investing $3 billion to counter the use of fertilizer as bomb material. The problem is so serious that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has totally banned ammonium nitrate from the country. "With fertilizer bombs now the most lethal weapons used against American and NATO soldiers in southern Afghanistan, the bomb-making operation in Kandahar was something close to astonishing," the New York Times reported.

Just days ago, NATO and local troops uncovered more than a half-million pounds of fertilizer in two separate stashes. Despite or because of the war, Afghanistan remains the world's largest producer of opium from its vast poppy fields, though marijuana is quickly becoming the crop of choice because it is more profitable and less risky. So the ban on fertilizer could be meant to dull a double-edged sword.

The connection between the fertilizer, the drug trade and the IEDs is rarely made in media coverage. This suggests, to me at least, that diversifying Afghanistan's agricultural output and integrating sustainable farming techniques that do not use chemical fertilizers can kill two birds with one stone, so to speak: the fertilizer bombs and the narco-trafficking, making the "grass greener" in Afghanistan, too.

Photo Credit: DVID SHUB