Afghanistan/ISAFEOD Teams Work to Keep Kabul Safe

KABUL, Afghanistan – Turk­ish and Greek explo­sive ord­nance dis­pos­al, inves­ti­ga­tion and bomb sniff­ing dog teams work 24-hours-a-day, 7‑days-a-week assist­ing Afghan forces as they pro­tect Kab­ul from insur­gents.

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Source: ISAF
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They’re con­tin­u­ing a tra­di­tion in which ISAF explo­sive ord­nance teams have ren­dered safe 392 devices in Kab­ul, includ­ing boo­by traps, unex­plod­ed ord­nance (UXO) and aban­doned explo­sives, since 2002. 

The teams respond quick­ly to ren­der safe explo­sive devices and also teach these spe­cial­ized skills to their Afghan partners. 

“One who is aware of the dan­gers of the explo­sives will have the chance of putting these dan­gers aside and will do his job in that man­ner,” said 1st Lt. Ersun Ozdemir, chief of Turk­ish EOD teams. “The more the ANSF are suc­cess­ful in this area the more their self con­fi­dence will be encouraged.” 

Keep­ing the near­ly three mil­lion res­i­dents of met­ro­pol­i­tan Kab­ul safe is an enor­mous task, accord­ing to Ozdemir. 

Afghanistan, Ango­la and Cam­bo­dia have suf­fered 85 per cent of the world’s land-mine casu­al­ties, accord­ing to Unit­ed Nations Children’s Fund sta­tis­tics. Land mines and impro­vised explo­sive devices are two of the main caus­es of injuries inflict­ed on the Afghan people. 

“The Afghan pop­u­la­tion doesn’t know how dan­ger­ous these explo­sives are,” said Ozdemir. “It is dif­fi­cult to make all peo­ple con­scious [of the threat].” 

The lieu­tenant said the large num­ber of UXOs in the Kab­ul region is made even more trou­ble­some because peo­ple have learned to live amongst the dan­gers. As an exam­ple, he said in June two chil­dren were injured when they caused a UXO to explode by throw­ing stones at it. 

ISAF uses radio broad­casts to remind civil­ians to stay away from any type of explo­sives, and con­tin­ues to build the num­ber of trained Afghan forces capa­ble of per­form­ing EOD techniques. 

Press release
Com­piled from Inter­na­tion­al Secu­ri­ty Assis­tance Force Joint Com­mand News Releases 

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