In a desolate field outside Kabul, an Afghan soldier hunches over a knee-high robot equipped with cameras, multidirectional pincers and tank-treads built for rough terrain. Carefully, he attaches four bottles of water and a tiny explosive charge to the robot. He uses a remote control to guide it 50 meters away to his target: a simulated backpack bomb.
"Explosion! Explosion! Explosion!" shouts the soldier, Naqibullah Qarizada, in a warning to others nearby. Then he remotely detonates the charge.
A small dust cloud kicks up. If all has gone well, the blast has pushed the water into the bomb with enough force to knock out its triggering mechanism. But to be safe, his partner, Hayatullah, climbs into a heavy protective suit before lumbering over to pluck out the blasting cap and seal it in a fortified box.
The two men are among hundreds of Afghan soldiers training to take over the dangerous fight against the war's biggest killers: the Taliban-planted bombs known as IEDs.
A few years ago, there were almost no Afghan bomb disposal experts. Now, there are 369 - but that's far from enough. The international coalition is rushing to train hundreds more before the exit of most coalition forces by the end of next year.
Known in military parlance as improvised explosives devices (IEDs), the bombs have long been a favourite Taliban weapon that can be remotely detonated by radio or mobile phone when a target passes by or triggered by pressure, like a vehicle driving over it.
The US military has over the years developed advanced detection and disposal techniques that manage to defuse about 40 to 50 IEDs each day, says Col Ace Campbell, chief of the Counter-IED training unit.
The coalition is working to transfer that knowledge to the Afghans and Campbell says Afghan teams are now finding and disposing about half of the bombs most days.
The country's main bomb disposal school is located at Camp Black Horse.
Here, a team of about 160 instructors runs 19 different courses, ranging from a basic four-week awareness program for regular Afghan soldiers to the eight-month advanced "IED defeat" course that is a slightly shorter version of the U.S. Army's own counter-explosives training.
The goal is to have 318 full-fledged Explosive Ordnance Disposal teams, each with two or three Afghan experts, spread out around the country. But Afghan security forces now have less than 60 percent of the bomb specialists they need - hence the fever pitch of training.
