September 10, 2006: Some interesting developments in the IED (Improvised Explosive Device) world. In Afghanistan, the Taliban have been booby-trapping corpses. This is an old trick, of course, but not previously seen much coming from Islamic terrorists. That's because it represents a violation of the "sanctity" of the deceased. That is something Moslems seem to take very seriously. Attempts to use such tactics to discredit the enemy in the Western or Moslem media have been unsuccessful. If Coalition troops booby trap a body, that would be news. But the media goes on the assumption that you must expect that sort of thing from the enemy, and that's not news.
Meanwhile, in Iraq, the use of electronic means to detonate IEDs has been dropping off sharply. This is probably a result of increasing sophisticated Coalition technologies that can find, jam, or prematurely detonate electronically controlled IEDs. Greater reliance is being placed on command-detonated IEDs and on "victim-initiated" detonation.