What impact will MOAB have in the fight against ISIL?
The US military’s dropping of the largest conventional bomb in eastern Afghanistan has drawn mixed reaction.
The US has dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb it has ever used in combat in eastern Afghanistan on a series of caves used by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, known as ISIS) group, according to the Pentagon.
Afghanistan’s defence ministry says the 9,797kg GBU-43 – nicknamed the “mother of all bombs” – did not cause any civilians deaths.
Recommended Stories
list of 4 items- list 1 of 4At least 23 killed after blasts hit Nigeria’s Maiduguri, police say
- list 2 of 4West African regional army: Why thousands of soldiers are deploying
- list 3 of 4Syria confirms ‘mass escape’ from camp housing relatives of ISIL fighters
- list 4 of 4Syria faces twin battles as Assad loyalists and ISIL attack in west, east
But not everyone is in favour of the strike. Former Afghan president Hamid Karzai called it a “brutal misuse of our country”.
So what difference will it make to the fight against ISIL? And how big a threat does the armed group pose to the country?
Presenter: Sohail Rahman
Guests:
Mirwais Yasini – Member of the Afghan parliament, representing Nangarhar province where the bomb was dropped
Omar Samad – Former senior adviser to Afghanistan’s chief executive
Vyacheslav Matuzov – a former Russian diplomat