The most promising solution, recommended by all four working groups, involved adding coated urea fertilizer granules to the bags of ammonium nitrate. The combination of urea and ammonium nitrate has a strong affinity for water and would be very difficult for insurgents to dry into an explosive powder.
The urea additives would not stop the insurgents from processing the fertilizer into bombs, but it would complicate their task and potentially make the blast less potent.
Making homemade bombs in Afghanistan
On the conference’s last day, groups reported their findings and the attention shifted to Fatima Group representative Farrukh Qureshi, the sole Pakistani at the conference.
A British military officer at the conference suggested that only the Fatima Group plants should have to change their method of production because they were the lone source of the problem in Afghanistan.
“It is a near-monopoly,” the British officer said. “And if those two plants would adjust their processes, it would make it very difficult for the insurgent to shop around.”
Qureshi bristled at the suggestion that Pakistan plants were the only problem. “There is a lot of trade taking place with India. There is Iran and Indonesia,” he said. “And I am not even discussing about the former Russian states. . . . The extremists will find ways to get calcium ammonium nitrate. These are very smart people.”
Another conference participant suggested banning ammonium nitrate in Pakistan and forcing farmers to shift to other kinds of fertilizer, such as urea, which is used heavily in the United States and is harder to make into a bomb.
Qureshi said that Pakistan’s impoverished subsistence farmers would need expensive machinery to spread urea. Ammonium nitrate fertilizer is spread by hand and is better suited to Pakistani soil. “Our customers are very change-sensitive and very cost-sensitive,” he said.
A few minutes later, the conference ended. Barbero’s command will pay for some quick studies in the next few months to determine whether adding coated urea granules, dyes or radio tags to the ammonium nitrate bags really will mean fewer bombs.
The goal is to have any potential solution in place at the Fatima Group plants before the 2012 summer fighting season in Afghanistan.
Correspondent Karin Brulliard in Islamabad contributed to this report.
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