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Cluster Bombs: An Evil We Must Ban Outright
Welcome to Cluster's last stand - the final fight of a weapon that has shredded a hundred thousand legs and arms and eyes since it was lovingly created by the Nazis in the 1940s.
This week, the Austrian government has banned cluster bombs and begun to dismantle its stockpile of 10,000. Official delegates from 138 countries, representing two-thirds of humanity, are now on their way back from the turning-point conference in Vienna to prepare for a treaty in 2008 that will ban them outright. But a handful of superpowers - most notably Russia, the US and China - are clinging to their right to shred civilians, and the British government is dancing awkwardly between the two camps.
Cluster munitions are bombs that, as they fall, separate into dozens of smaller, bright yellow "bomblets", each about the size of a can of Coke. Every one carries flying shards of metal that can tear through a quarter-inch of steel. They fall as "steel rain" over an entire kilometre, and they cut up anything they hit.
These weapons are wildly indiscriminate. You can't aim them, any more than you can aim your handbag when you empty it out on to the floor. When the British dropped 2,000 cluster bombs on Basra in 2003, they landed on the roofs of schools and civilian homes as much as on Saddam's men. Worse still, many of the submunitions do not explode when they hit the ground; instead they stay there for year after year, waiting for someone - anyone - to stumble across them.
Children are particularly fond of picking them up, since they look like brightly-coloured toys. That's what happened recently to four-year-old Aya Zayoun. She found one of the 4 million bomblets dropped on Lebanon by the Israelis in the last 72 hours of the 2006 war, and she thought it was a toy bell.
Aya excitedly toddled into her living room to show it to her parents and big sister and brother - where it blew up, the steel ripping through all their flesh. They were lucky: they lost only limbs, not their lives. Some 255 Leban-ese civilians have not been so fortunate. Last month, there was a hailstorm for the first time since the war, and the hills of Lebanon echoed to the sound of hundreds of submunitions exploding.
They can wait patiently for decades. A few weeks ago, 17-year-old Choen Ha and two of his friends in Vietnam stumbled across four steel balls in the jungle. They took turns tossing them to each other, and then began to play marbles with them. Finally, one of them detonated. Choen was only saved by his family spending their entire life savings on his treatment; his best friend was shredded in front of him. The UN estimates that at the current clear-up rate, explosions like this will continue in Vietnam every week for another century. These bombs were dropped before I was born. They will still be killing after I am dead.
War is sometimes justified, to save life - but not if it needlessly slaughters as it goes, and leaves a legacy of death for generations. So how soon can we get a ban on these lingering people-shredders? Pessimists should remember that when a ban on landmines was first mooted in the 1980s, it was mocked as a utopian fantasy. Today, only the leper state of Burma is laying them anew.
There are two potential tracks to end cluster-bombs. One is the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CWW), which almost every country is signed up to. The pro-cluster bomb states are adopting a "go slow, aim low" approach to these talks, obstructing any progress. Frustrated with this failure, last year Norway broke away and set up a rival Oslo Process, as they did with landmines. It now looks like they will get most of the world, but not the very worst offenders, to sign up to a ban next year.
The British government is the most high-profile cluster-bombing state to take part in the Oslo Process. At first, it looked like they wouldn't show - but at the last minute they did. Gordon Brown pledged to ban "cluster bombs that cause unacceptable civilian casualties". It looks like a heartening pledge, but it contains a whopping loophole - what is "unacceptable harm"?
Simon Conway, the former soldier who is now director of Landmine Action, says it seems like the British strategy "was made up on the back of a fag packet".
The British have started bargaining for a definition of cluster bombs that would simply exclude all the cluster bombs they happen to have left on the shelf. The army has a lot of cluster bombs with a self-destruct mechanism, where the bomblet supposedly disables itself after 15 seconds if it doesn't explode on impact. So the government proposed that cluster bombs with a "fail rate" of less than one per cent should be permitted. This definition has also been picked up by the Democrats in the US Congress, who are passing legislation with the same clause.
That still means a typical cluster-rocket strike would leave 40 landmine-style duds on the ground - and even that hasn't ever been achieved in practice. The cluster-bombs dropped on Leban-on were marketed by the Israelis as having a less than one per cent fail rate. The Norwegian Defence Research Establishment and British Explosive Ordinance conducted a detailed study, and found that it actually topped 10 per cent.
The British have also tried a different get-out clause. They argued that if a cluster bomb releases fewer than 10 submunitions, then it shouldn't be called a cluster bomb. It turns out that each CRV7 rocket stockpiled by the British army has - surprise! - nine submunitions. But this redefinition would be pure sophistry. It is fired from a rocket pod that can shoot 19 rockets at a time - meaning it can dump 171 pieces of submunitions on an area. And you can fit four rocket pods into a helicopter at once - so in practice, using these bombs, you could still be indiscriminately dumping 684 submunitions on an area at once.
If we set the bar this low, the ban will be worthless. Privately, the British government excuses its behaviour by arguing that it is necessary to set a lower standard so they can coax the US and Russia to sign up.
We would never have banned any unacceptable weapons with this strategy. When a treaty was created to ban dum-dum bullets in 1899, only nine countries signed up - but gradually, other countries were pressured to join. Similarly, the US has never signed up to the landmine ban - but since it was agreed firmly by the rest of the world in 1997, they have been shamed into not using them. If we hadn't shown that commitment, if we had filled it with loopholes and sub-clauses, the US would have seen it as a green light to carry on laying landmines regardless.
Next year we need a cast-iron ban. But if the British government carries on with its wriggling and writhing, we may end up with nothing better than a cluster-bomb con.
© 2007 The Independent
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24 Comments so far
Show AllLady Di, wherefore art thou?
This is the problem with war. Once engaged in battle... torture, cluster bombs, civilian casualties, chemical warfare, etc... become "necessary" things that "must" be supported to achieve victory. That is why we need to achieve victory without war. It is our choice to make.
Last year Senator Feinstein (the other Lady Di?) and co-sponsor Senator Leahy, tried to attach an amendment (S4882) to the 2007 Defense Appropriation Act. The amendment would have blocked the sale of cluster bombs to any country that refused to ban their use "in or near any concentrated population of civilians." The amendment failed by a vote of 30 to 70. Fifteen Democrats joined every single Republican and Lieberman in voting against the ban.
Among those fifteen Democrats were three Democratic presidential candidates. The three who made the hall of shame were: Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd. Cluster's last stand? Not if the Democratic Party keeps offering candidates like these.
Here's a link to the vote on the amendment: http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=2&vote=00232
And here's the text of the amendment:
"No funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be obligated or expended to acquire, utilize, sell, or transfer any cluster munition unless the rules of engagement applicable to the cluster munition ensure that the cluster munition will not be used in or near any concentrated population of civilians, whether permanent or temporary, including inhabited parts of cities or villages, camps or columns of refugees or evacuees, or camps or groups of nomads."
No one with a conscience could have voted against this.
Don't count on Hillary Clinton to help ban cluster bombs:
She was also among a minority of Democratic Senators to side with the Republican majority last year in voting down a Democratic-sponsored resolution restricting U.S. exports of cluster bombs to countries that use them against civilian-populated areas. Each of these cluster bomb contains hundreds of bomblets that are scattered over an area the size of up to four football fields and, with a failure rate of up to 30%, become de facto land mines. As many as 98% of the casualties caused by these weapons are civilians.
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4803
Johann Hari, Good article! And thank-you to all who are working to ban cluster bombs! Cluster bombs are horrific weapons. Hold fast to a solid ban on cluster munitions, and let those who continue to use them be seen and held accountable for their brutality.
Red seems to be the dominant color in the red, white, and blue.
Peace, peace. As terrible as cluster bombs and their cute itty, bitty bomblets and as tragic as the maiming and deaths of innocents, I maintain that all weapons of war are horrific and should be banned. The more technologically sophisticated we have become, the lower seems to be the threshhold of what is considered to be an OK weapon to use against our fellow human beings. Although arguments against using weapons on civilians are strong, they are not strong enough to overcome the military conviction that the most effective way to subdue a nation is to massively reduce the number of its non-combatant citizens. Achieving a ban on using weapons of war against civilian populations is certainly to be desired, but this doesn't go far enough, in my opinion. Until humanity matures to the point where war is no longer an acceptable way of resolving international conflicts, humans that are recruited or coerced into military service are subject to PTSD, abandoned by their nation and too many survive military service to be subjected to a living death.
"War is sometimes justified, to save life " which is why Raytheon makes the AGM-154 JSOW , read their literature and the same thing is written creatively for the "peace mission" these tools are made for. The authors point might be: we need a weapon that destroys human life, to save human life, but not to do it in a "bad" way. Quick, hire more defense contractors to build this weapon.
Great article by Hari. The nazis used such bombs first as stated: they were called "bouncing bettys"by our troops in WWII. Also, during the Vietnam war the U.S.military used them as well. They were designed by Honeywell and perfected by the Army Math Research Center at UW-Madison under the direction of Prof. J. Barkley Rosser. Army Math was partially blown up by a group of anti-war folks in 1970 as a protest aagainst the killing research done at Army Math. Unfortunately, a graduate student researcher was in the building at the time and he was killed(he had nothing to do with Army Math). The facts are,however, that the cluster bombs developed at Army Math killed or maimed thousands of Vietnamese. Most of the bombers got jail(except one still on the run). No one ever brought the Army Math war criminals to justice. And the beat goes on..."Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it."-George Santayana
Any talk of banning an individual weapon such as cluster bombs or land mines is futile. A treaty may be in place, but when the first shot is fired in the next war, it will go out the window.
Put your energy into banning war.
Whoa here, there's bucks to be made in US made cluster busters. The great Politicians who are spreading democracy via guns, bullets, as well a cluster bombs, have sold good old amerikan made cluster bombs to Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, France, Greece, Honduras, Indonesia, Italy, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Poland, Saudia Arabia, Spain, South Korea, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, and the good old UK.
Cost of 2000 US made cluster bombs around K Street in DC: $2.8 Million, Cost of cleaning up 2000 cluster bombs around K Street in DC: $6.1 million,
Cost of transportation for congress critters and lobbyist fleeing in fear from DC: Priceless.
ATK makes cluster bombs, landmines, depleted uranium munitions, missile guidance systems and other fun instruments of death. If you'd like to, er, thank them, here's their contact info:
Corporate Headquarters
5050 Lincoln Drive
Edina, MN 55436
Phone: 952-351-3000
atk.corporate@atk.com
Alliant Action is a Minnesota-based activist group that has been standing up to this despicable company for years. Check out their activities at:
http://www.alliantaction.org/home.html
You can't ban evil. Evil means economic growth, prosperity, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
I have to echo Peace Coup's call for finding victory without war, or at least the current forms of war. I also echo 1dress' shout out about radioactive weaponry - if we continue to disburse uranium into the environment it won't matter what we try to do to curtail carbon emissions - the world's atmospheric system won't be able to go through it's normal conversion process toward equilibrium. Of course the life force depletion will become so bad we'll all succumb to cancer or some form of genetic disintegration regardless of what we do with carbon.
These fact are why I use pictures of "du babies" along with the stats that in WWI 10% of casualties were civilian with the progression to the Iraq "war" where the figure is around 90%.
Of course, working in the field of human development, I balance this out with pictures and testimonials of what can be (human potentialities) accomplished when humans are treated with dignity (see anatbanielmethod.com ).
Perhaps a Boycott and shuning of the corporations and the people that design and produce these baby butchering WMDs is in order. Don't hold their stock or funds that do.
"British government carries on with its wriggling and writhing, we may end up with nothing better than a cluster-bomb con."
get-out clauses,sophistry, bargaining..
Just watch 'Yes Minister' or " Yes Prime Minister' and you'll realize that Britain has duplicity down to a very very fine art.
Wasn't it Napoleon who once dismissed the Brits as being a 'nation of shopkeepers'. Yet as anyone who has crossed their path - and lived to tell the tale -will tell you - they're the most lethal bunch of 'shopkeepers ' ever.
Ban cluster bombs? What? Ban war first...
Great link to a map showing US cluster bomb exports by country plus other priceless information you won't see on the MSM. Note the number of clusters in the US.
http://www.fcnl.org/weapons/cluster_use_exports.html
Why ban cluster bombs? Let's ban war!
Cluster bombs, depleted uranium, dumdum bullets, napalm, agent orange - they are all evil ways of waging war.
I will not support my own country in any way, with respect to Iraq and Afghanistan, but when it comes to blaming the UK for what other countries fail to do, then that is a bit rich.
The US have a history of doing what they please in the World - Vietnam was a good example. At the time Lyndon Johnson threatened the UK with economic sanctions (he used the phrase "rubbish Sterling), if we did not join in the war. Thank God for our Prime Minister at the time Harold Wilson, who said "no".
The Kyoto agreement is a different example - the US always refusing to sign up - the British attempting to find some common ground.
I personally think that, admirable as the article may be, Johann Hari cannot expect anybody to suddenly dispense with all forms of cluster bombs (I am not counting Austria, because I can't remember the last time they were actively involved in a war).
If the US, Russia and China will not get rid of them, then we need to get the ball rolling somehow, that is how politics works.
Please ban cluster bombs.
As I recall, the Clinton administration was not in favor of banning landmines. What makes anyone think that the new Clinton administration, if there is one, will do anything to ban cluster bombs or landmines? We might not be using landmines in our lovely wars, but that does not mean we have banned them or that we would not use them in the future. As an aside, doesn't Israel get lots of these kinds of munitions from, yes, the U.S.?
"....Senator Hillary Clinton has opposed restrictions on U.S. arms transfers and police training to governments that engage in gross and systematic human rights abuses. Indeed, she has supported unconditional U.S. arms transfers and police training to such repressive and autocratic governments as Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Pakistan, Equatorial Guinea, Azerbaijan, Cameroon, Kazakhstan, and Chad, just to name a few. She has also refused to join many of her Democratic colleagues in signing a letter endorsing a treaty that would limit arms transfers to countries that engage in a consistent pattern of gross and systematic human rights violations.
Civilian Casualties
Not only is she willing to support military assistance to repressive regimes, she has little concern about controlling weapons that primarily target innocent civilians. Senator Clinton has refused to support the international treaty to ban land mines, which are responsible for killing and maiming thousands of civilians worldwide, a disproportionate percentage of whom have been children.
She was also among a minority of Democratic Senators to side with the Republican majority last year in voting down a Democratic-sponsored resolution restricting U.S. exports of cluster bombs to countries that use them against civilian-populated areas. Each of these cluster bomb contains hundreds of bomblets that are scattered over an area the size of up to four football fields and, with a failure rate of up to 30%, become de facto land mines. As many as 98% of the casualties caused by these weapons are civilians."
-----------Stephen Zunes
I wouldn't vote for warmonger Hillary Republican Clinton if I were paid to.
This vote says all about Hillary I need to know to vehemently oppose her. It is reminiscent of her husband's opposition to the Land Mines treaty. Killing and maiming children, farmers and other innocents is about as evil as anything; indeed, isn't that why we detest and fear Osama bin Laden? So what is the moral distinction between the neocons (including Hillary) and al Qaeda? Other than their preference for one ancient tribal text over another, they're no different.