Touted to be the ‘mother of all bombs’, the United States dropped a MOAB in afghanistan to target ISIS militants who were believed to have been hiding in the mountain caves. There were claims of large-scale destruction of militants as well as properties but these claims appear to have been exaggerated if analysts are to be believed.
Variation between facts and figures
According to Fox News, an analysis of the effects of MOAB was done by Alcis which is an institute that carries out geographical analysis. It has surveyed the targeted area in the Nangarhar province where the bomb was dropped.
The bomb is described as the largest non-nuclear bomb ever used in combat.
Alcis considered available evidence of aerial photographs and concluded that the actual destruction was not as severe as had been indicated by the United States. They took stock of the number of buildings and trees that were lost and the contradiction came to surface. Local residents had mentioned damage to buildings located at least two miles away but there was no proof of such large scale devastation. Moreover, there was no abnormally large crater visible and there are grave doubts about the number of ISIS militants killed.
How to filter out the truth?
The use of MOAB was justified by officials of the Afghanistan military and government officials because the ground was riddled with landmines which posed a major challenge to root out the militants.
If normal procedures were followed it would have led to a loss of military personnel. Hence, it was decided to go in for the bomb.
There are claims that there was no loss of civilian lives. However, the incident took place less than a month before the harvest season when the fields would have had farmers out in the open attending to their crops.
Afghanistan forces supported the action of dropping the bomb because it destroyed everything in the neighborhood making it useless for the militants. A spokesman for the U.S. military in Kabul, has also spoken in favor of the action taken and mentioned that it was meant for a specific purpose on the battlefield.
But, Richard Brittan, the managing director of Alcis is a confused man – he is still unable to figure out how the details of the damage were calculated.
Afghanistan has been a safe haven for terrorists for many years and efforts to curb their activities have been undertaken by teams from NATO. The United States has also been involved and with the entry of ISIS militants in the Taliban affected areas, problems have escalated. Therefore, the decision to drop the MOAB was a timely one. The confusion about the extent of damage and loss of lives is immaterial at this juncture because the main purpose was to check the growth of ISIS in the region and that has, reportedly, been achieved.