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'Iraq influence' on Afghan fighters
(CNN) -- Improvised explosive devices (IEDs) used by anti-coalition forces in Afghanistan appear similar to those used by insurgents in Iraq, a U.S. commander has said. "We're trying to figure out how the technology is transferred," Maj. Gen. Benjamin Freakley, the U.S. commander in charge of security operations in Afghanistan, said on Thursday. "How they got that, where the bombmaker came from ... we're still trying to get full awareness of." Asked whether the people involved with IEDs in Iraq might be the same ones involved with IEDs in Afghanistan, Freakley said: "That's a question we're working on." But Freakley told reporters in Washington from Bagram via a video feed set up by the Defense Department he did not believe the bombs themselves or the bombmakers were transported from Iraq. "I think that the techniques and some of the technology may have come from similar personnel who were instructed on how to build a bomb." He added: "We are trying to determine how the technology transfer is occurring; who is doing the bomb training." Over the past "several months," coalition forces have encountered 75 IEDs across Afghanistan, he said. "Only 75 percent of those were what you would call effective -- detonated at or near perhaps what was viewed as the target," the commander of Joint Task Force 76 said. He added that the 21,000 coalition military forces -- 15,000 of whom are U.S. -- were receiving help from the local populace. Freakley noted predictions by some observers that the Taliban -- toppled from power by a U.S.-led attack on Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States -- are planning to increase their activities, based on increased movement of military-age men in the country. But Freakley said he was not persuaded that was the case, noting that such movement could simply indicate that they are searching for work. Still, he said, military authorities were on the alert for an increase in attacks against coalition and Afghan forces. Crime in the country's interior is centered on the resurgence in poppy farming, he said. A number of primarily poor farmers in Afghanistan's interior -- "with a small investment of time and labor" -- have been growing the lucrative crop, encouraged by the soil, climate and water from the Helmand River, he said. Though U.S. forces are not carrying out counternarcotic operations, local Afghan officials have taken it upon themselves to do so, eradicating more than 1,200 hectares of poppies "at their own peril," he said. Coalition and Afghan forces are working together "at every level," he said. In some cases, seven- to 10-man coalition teams are embedded with Afghan troops, who are shouldering more of the responsibility in the battle, which has entered its fifth year, Freakley said. "As they grow in capacity and capability, they will be able to conduct more unilateral actions," he said, noting that there are 27,000 Afghan soldiers and 55,000 Afghan police. Still, he added: "U.S. troops are going to be needed for a period of time." Asked whether he has sought more troops, Freakley said he had not. "I think we have the force that we need to defeat this threat," he said. 
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