Sadly, we all know what an IED is nowadays. No longer dismissed as roadside bombs, booby-traps, or bomb-blasts, the basic terrorist tactic, of improvising an explosive device to consume peoples' lives in a rushing blast of fire and energy, is now their chosen strategy. It's creating fear from Afghanistan to Indonesia.
Making the unforgivable somehow familiar by assigning it an acronym helps us feel as if we understand what's going on. We lump together the perpetrators of the Jakarta bombings and the Taliban as being ''Islamic militants'', and assume we've begun to understand the problem. But our linguistic rubric fumbles if we use these simple definitions in an attempt to make sense of the world.
The two attacks that have killed Australians in the past few days emerge from very different situations. Different, nuanced strategies are required in both instances if we're to have any hope of avoiding more people being killed. Unfortunately, the obvious, simplistic response to the tragedies is not the correct answer.
Our army has a special unit devoted to analysing the techniques of bomb-making. Experts have been attached to the US forces in Iraq. They keep up with the latest ways the terrorists have devised of packing the explosives around the detonator, and getting a trigger to initiate the blast.
More than a third of US fatalities in that country have been caused by bombs (the Washington Post estimated IEDs are responsible for 63 per cent of deaths, but military sources dispute this).
At first these were often just old mines, buried along roads and detonated when a vehicle drove over it. Then vehicles were hardened by bolting more armour underneath. So the insurgents started placing their weapons at body height and shaping the charge to focus the explosive force directly at the vehicles occupants. The obvious response was to up-armour transport.
Unfortunately, the addition of reinforced armour barriers between coalition forces and the population they were meant to protect resulted in new psychological barriers further distancing the troops from the people. Instead of winning the war by fighting amongst the people, the soldiers became locked into armoured bubbles determined to preserve their lives until their conclusion of their tour of duty in the country.
When they emerged for operations their adrenalin was already pumping, everything around them looked threatening, and too often the standard operating procedure became to react with extreme violence to unexpected events.
Then insurgents began disguising booby-traps, putting them under animal carcases and discarded containers, and controlling the detonation with devices as simple as the remote controls used in model cars.
For patrolling soldiers, every moment spent outside the safe base areas took on additional layers of fear and suspicion. This further distanced the US forces from the people they were meant to be protecting. Although the original target of the guerrillas was just to kill Americans, they were now scoring in other ways, by alienating the occupying forces from the people.
The Australian forces in Afghanistan have developed a reputation amongst our allies for being ''kinetic'' focussing on attempting to contact the enemy and attempting to bring them to battle where they can be killed. The current sweep through Helmand by US and British forces, however, has been (very publically) advertised as an attempt to bring security to the population first, relegating the destruction of the insurgents to second place.
The issue is whether either of these laudable objectives can be met.
Robert McNamara, who died earlier this month, was the US Secretary of Defence during the Vietnam War. A devout believer in the ability of systems analysis to provide insights into correct military strategies, he tried to quantify the numbers of casualties in an effort to determine if the war was being ''won''. This statistical effort resulted in disaster, with every effort to reduce the war to a numerical formula for victory failing, because the charts and figures seemed to bear no relationship to what was happening to the increasing chaos on the ground. But numbers are useful as strategies are developed and analysed. The simplest numerical figure in combating an insurgency is a comparison of force ratios of soldiers to population. It wasn't the US-led invasion that caused the rapid collapse of the Taliban in 2001; it was developing effective alliances with local forces that resulted in the installation of Hamid Karzai's government.
With elections due next month, finding a political solution is again just as necessary as any military effort directed at killing insurgents. The numerics dictate this, because no matter how successful the current sweep in Helmand is, there just aren't enough coalition forces to remain and secure the countryside forever.
That's why Australian forces won't be taking over from the Dutch when they leave in 2012, but Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is wrong to link events in Afghanistan with what's happening in Indonesia, because that's where Australia needs to make a far more subtle contribution.
That's the significance of the other bomb blast last week. Just hours before the attack, Carl Ungerer, from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, had been briefing the Australian Professional Intelligence Officers Association about regional radicalisation. He was asked why he was focussing so much on Indonesia.
Presciently, he asserted everything was pointing to a resurgence of the terror campaign in the immediate future. Hours later he was proved correct, but it's important to note the significant differences between what's happening here and in Afghanistan.
Analysing Internet radicalisation and the massive crowds attending meetings of radical Islamic organisations in Indonesia, he's warning that these represent an emerging threat that can't be ignored. Or, obviously, dealt with in a ''kinetic'' manner.
The objective of these groups is simple, and dangerous. It's the return of the Caliphate, a fundamental Muslim state run by Sharia law across the archipelago.
However this objective isn't shared by the majority of Indonesians.
Any choice to implement hard responses and strategies to deal with this soft challenge will fail, dramatically.
It's vital that we engage positively and supportively with Indonesia, because this is a war we can't afford to lose.
Nicholas Stuart is a Canberra writer.
nicstuart@hotmail.com
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