Tagged Bird or Avian Bomb?
Afghan authorities shot down a bird that had a suspicious-looking antenna on it. But what was it?
Around 8 a.m. on November 29, Afghan authorities patrolling the northern Faryab Province saw an unfamiliar bird walking along the highway. It wasn’t just that they hadn’t seen such a bird—turkey-shaped, but half the size—before: The creature was also sporting an antenna. Since the Faryab Province is a known home of Taliban, the police assumed the worst—that the bird was wearing a bomb—and killed it.
“Bird Bomb? Afghan Police Kill Bird Bearing Antenna, Explosives,” the NBC headline states. Police chief Maj. Gen. Abdul Nabi Ilham told NBC that the bird exploded upon being shot, and that “suspicious metal stuff,” was found on the body. A video posted by NBC shows the remnants of the creature, which included part of a GPS device and a camera, according to Ilham.
But was the bird actually retrofitted by the Taliban to carry a bomb? Or did it appear to have an antenna because a conservation group had tagged it with a satellite transmitter to track its migration?
The NBC video scans over some of the equipment found on the bird, revealing a metal tag that identifies it as part of the ECCH, which stands for the Emirates Center for the Conservation of Houbara. As some noted on Twitter, the antenna that gave the police such a scare looked like standard scientific tracking gear.
And while the condition of the bird makes it hard to identify, it appears to be a Houbara Bustard, listed on the IUCN Red List as vulnerable—one step above endangered. (Arabic tradition prizes the Houbara Bustard’s meat for its supposed aphrodisiac quality, and each year wealthy Arabs travel to the Pakistani region to hunt them.) For a bird that supposedly had a bomb detonate inside of it, the bird is still largely intact. It’s possible the “explosion” Ilham says occurred may have just been the result of a bullet hitting the metal of the GPS tracker the bird carried.
Still, many news outlets are reporting that the bird was equipped with a bomb—the New York Post’s headline claims “The Taliban’s new DIY drone: A bird fitted with a bomb vest.” Humans have a long history of using animals in warfare, as Ruzsina Eordogh explains at Motherboard. This past summer, Hamas strapped explosives on a donkey and pushed it toward Israeli troops, the Washington Post reported.
Researchers associated with the Emirates Center for the Conservation of Houbara did not respond to request for comment—perhaps they will when they realize one of their bustards is missing.