U.S. Tries to End Flow of Bomb Item to Afghanistan - NYTimes.com: "With roadside bombs by far the leading killer of American troops in Afghanistan, the Obama administration has started a worldwide effort to stop the flow of ammonium nitrate, the fertilizer that is their basic ingredient, into the war ravaged country.
But the campaign, dubbed Operation Global Shield, is running up against stubborn hurdles in neighboring Pakistan, where the police routinely wave tons of ammonium nitrate shipments across the border into Afghanistan despite that country’s ban on imports of the chemical. It is unclear whether the border guards are fooled by clever attempts to disguise the shipments as benign or are paid to turn a blind eye, or both.
The problem is compounded by lax enforcement in Afghanistan. While the Afghan government has at least passed a law banning the chemical, Pakistan has not yet done so.
Ammonium nitrate is commonly used in agriculture as a fertilizer. But most Pakistani farmers use urea, an organic chemical, to fertilize their crops, and there is only one factory in Pakistan that manufactures ammonium nitrate. That suggests, American officials said, that some of the caravans of trucks rumbling over the border into Afghanistan are carrying shipments imported into Pakistan, usually under false pretenses.
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