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TechnoratiViengkeo Kavongsone had lived in fear of such a catastrophe all his life - in the jungle, in the paddy fields, on the mountain - but never in his own back yard. It was late afternoon when it happened, and his wife, Van, and three young children were at home in their village in the province of Xieng Khouang in northern Laos. They were clearing the ditch that drains rainwater from their little wooden house.
The tin shovel scraped upon something hard and metallic - and that was the last thing they recalled.
The explosion peppered shrapnel into the legs of Van and her six-year-old daughter, Phetsida. The oldest boy, Soulideth, took the blast in the face and may lose his sight. Closest to the explosion was the youngest boy, Bounma. "He was the littlest," his father said as he stood by the hospital beds of his wife and surviving children, "and he was right next to it." The blast threw the child six metres (20ft) out of the ditch, and he died immediately - the latest victim of a spectral war that came to an end a generation before he was born.
The South-East Asian nation of Laos is not a country in conflict - in fact few places in the world are so torpid and peaceful. The weapon that killed Bounma was a tennis ball-sized pod of ball bearings that fell to earth when Lyndon Johnson was US President and the Beatles were at the height of their powers.
It was part of a cluster bomb - one of the most stubborn, long-lasting and cruelly undiscriminating weapons of modern war - scattered by American B52 bombers in the so-called "Secret War" intended to drive back communist guerrillas and block supply lines for US enemies in Vietnam.
Cluster bombs consist of an outer casing that splits open to release as many as 700 individual "bomblets" designed to explode on impact, spreading blast and deadly fragments over soldiers and armoured vehicles in a 30 metre radius. But invariably, between 10 per cent and 40 per cent of the bomblets fail to detonate.
They are small, innocuous looking, and often colourful - almost as if designed to attract the attention of playful children. And like the bomblet that killed Bounma, they can lie in the ground for a generation until the chance touch of a spade or a curious hand triggers them into deadly life.
"I remember when the bombs fell," said 54-year-old Mr Viengkeo, who was a teenager at the time. "I remember seeing them falling. I taught the children to be careful: 'If you see something and you don't know what it is, leave it and tell an adult'. But I had no idea there was a bomb there all the time, under my home."
Finally, the world has started to take notice of cluster bombs. Next month in Dublin, about a hundred governments will gather to finalise an international treaty to restrict their use.
Many governments, including the victorious communists who still govern Laos, are pressing for a complete ban. The world's biggest military powers, including Russia, China and the US, are refusing to take part in the negotiations. And then there are those governments, including Britain, that want to retain the right to use certain kinds of cluster bomb.
"We refer to cluster bombs as the weapon that never stops killing," said Peter Herby, of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is lobbying for an unconditional ban. "It's bad enough when civilians get caught up and injured in conflict. But for us it's repugnant when killing goes on for years and decades simply because of the wrong choice of weapon. In the end politicians have to decide that some weapons are beyond the pale."
The first cluster bombs were dropped by the Luftwaffe on Grimsby in 1943, and since then they have been used in more than a dozen conflicts. The momentum for the present treaty negotiations gathered after 2006 when the Israeli army fired four million bomblets on to southern Lebanon, where they continue to cause civilian casualties. But no nation in the world has suffered more from cluster bombs than Laos.
Between 1964 and 1973, when the Secret War was abandoned, US aircraft flew 580,000 missions and dropped two million tonnes of bombs on Laos. These included 277 million cluster bomblets. Assuming a failure rate of 30 per cent, 84 million of these are still lying in the ground.
The best figure for casualties caused by cluster bombs is 4,847 since the end of the war, almost half of them children. Deadly explosives have become part of everyday life. In the town of Phonsavan there are fences made of shell casings. Unexploded bombs are forged into axes, sickles, cow bells, rice cookers, belt buckles, boats and ladders. One particular cluster bomb with a tripod-shaped fin is commonly fitted with a light bulb and used as a lamp.
"This familiarity is a real problem," said Joe Pereira, a British occupational therapist whose charity, Cope, supplies prosthetic limbs to victims. "People grow up with bombs in their houses and so when they see them in the forest they don't appreciate the danger."
Battle lines drawn
- About a hundred countries will meet in Dublin next month to negotiate the last details of a draft treaty on cluster bombs. The biggest military powers, including the US, Russia, China, Pakistan and India, are not taking part
- Britain wants the term "cluster bomb" to be defined as a device with ten or more "bomblets" - which would allow it to continue using the M73 bomb, with only nine
- Britain also argues for exemption of the M85 because of its "self-deactivation device". Such "smart cluster bombs" are said to have a failure rate of 1 per cent, but when used by Israel in Lebanon in 2006, up to 10 per cent failed to explode or deactivate
- Other controversies focus on the amount of time countries would be given to stop using cluster bombs, and over military co-operation between states that had signed a treaty and those that had not
© Copyright 2008 Times Newspapers Ltd.
13 Comments so far
Show All"Bombies," an excellent film to see about this horrible topic, details the legacy of cluster bombs in Laos. More info here: http://www.itvs.org/bombies/ In Laos, nearly every day people are still being killed from bombs dropped more than 30 years ago. Encourage your library to buy it, if it does not yet have it, or borrow it here http://mcc.org/clusterbombs/bombies/.
The article speaks to a United States of America, being and having long been, that genocidal monster spreading it tentacles through investment theft, robbery through trade, secret violently grasping CIA insidious undermining of societies and assassinating indigenous intellectuals until the time where the voracious beast finds it appropriate to strike a defenseless population of victims with all and every maniacal weapon in its arsenal without a shred of human inhibition. When it slithers away having been defeated of satiated, it leaves with slothful equanimity its unexploded seeds to go on killing and maiming with their horrible little pop, pop, pop, as imagined in its hearing a first world away in white marbled Washington DC., back with its criminally insane brood of self-centered selfish offspring desperately pretending at being good boys and girls of the holy and God-blessed empire of superiority and shame.
Amerika* is truly insane. *different spelling in order to distinguish from 'America the Beautiful', that is the land itself without European invader colonializers.
There will never be an ethical correction in this sick country until millions more feel shame, anger and disgust. Or at least the guilt that makes us dissidents dedicated to action no matter the futility.
Jay Janson, OpEdNews writer
I think it more then a "War crime". The problem with labeling the use of such weapons as "war crimes" is that for far too many it gives it sanction. I could not begin to count the number of people who when told of these weapons and their effects on civilians put a sad little face on and nod but then add "Yes but such things happen in war. It is too bad". People the world over will defend what many others call "war crimes" because the word war placed in front of it somehow mitigates the crime.
Now it most certainly qualifies as a war crime in the legal sense of the term and by all the treaties signed , but it is mass murder from my own point of view.
Everyone responsible for this policy (from Pentagon undersecretaries to the pilots who drop this ordinance) should be made to walk the fields as "minesweepers" to clear up their mischief.
When one of these beasties blows up and they lose a foot, hand, leg, arm or other body part, they should be immediately transferred to the nearest overcrowded VA facility (or maybe Walter Reed Army Hospital) on a space available basis only.
They and their loved ones should be made to spend their days filling out endless forms asking for information difficult to impossible to find and being put on hold for endless hours listening to cheesy canned muzak and recordings saying,"your call is very imporetant to us and we'll answer it in the order it was received..."
It makes perfect sense to the people who hold shares in the companies that make the devices.
How, exactly, does hurting civilians stop a greedy government? If that were so we would have been able to get rid of the B/C Regime years ago.
By the time a regime can enjoy the wholesale murder of innocents it is well past the point where it listens to the citizenry.
If the manufacturers and deployers of hideous weaponry were held responsible for the results of their avarice; the maiming and murder would cease overnight.
Thursday, April 24th there was a great presentation at SF American Friends Service Committee on cluster bombs and their effect on Laos during the war and since. The movie "Bombies" is a must see for anyone concerned about these horrible weapons.
websites www.mcc.org Mennonite Central Committee, www.legaciesofwar.org Legacies of War and (415) 565-0201 (American Friends Service Committee)
As for the US and Israeli & others use of cluster bombs, call it what it is, a war crime. In Laos, in Lebanon, in Iraq.
A recent study done by a charitable group concluded that 98 percent of all casualties due to cluster bombs were Civilian casualties. If one even takes the lower number offered by UN agencies of between 80 and 90 percent the evidence is conclusive.
They are by intent designed to kill and target civilians. They have no military use. Arguing one uses them for military purposes is simply dishonest. The only difference between terrorist groups and the worlds militaries that use such weapons, is the terrorists at least are honest as to what they are trying to accomplish. The Militaries are just better at it and sell it to their partners in crime, the public , by claiming they somehow nobler because they did not really mean to kill those civilians.
The terrorists that plant bombs in marketplaces are brutish thugs, the worst of the worst and to be exterminated deserved of your disdain . Those that drop cluster bombs on civilians from 35,000 feet are brave and noble warriors deserved of your worship.
The populations of the "Civilized West" are hopelessly brainwashed.
they use them because they are cheap and can work long after the military unit who put them there has left the area. I don't feel they were intended to keep killing from the 60's into the 2000's. Today the countries that use them they want them to keep killing.
If Obama really wants to hit back hard (and truthfully), he should run an advertisement showing this family and pointing out his and Hillary's records on the issue. The next time Hillary waxes eloquent on how much she cares for people, the voters can get a reality check.
These monstrosities are called "anti- personnel weapons" which is military speak for people killers. generals are always insisting they must have them but i have never heard one say why. in any case whatever tactical purpose they might serve could not possibly justify the harm they do to civilians, and especially children. Other bombs could be used for any military action. the u.s., like Hitler before them, do in fact target civilians as part of their way of conducting warfare. but even if someone is so depraved as to justify such conduct, even this kind of war crime can be carried out with regular bombs. There can be no excuse for using cluster bombs any time anywhere.
Are the brave warriors of the u.s. really so determined to kill and maim little kids?
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Good points dixie. At least Obama voted to ban cluster bombs, while Hillary voted against the ban. Why has no asked her to explain that vote?
Trust the British to look for a loophole so they can keep on selling child killers. Americans don't concern themselves with loopholes, they just barge right on.
kathyodat
"the biggest military powers including the U.S., Russian, China, India and Pakistan are not taking part" in a treaty on cluster bombs. How does one stop the insanity? Mines and cluster bombs kill more innocent civilians than they do the military they are targeted at - they are inhumane, but humanity is not a part of war, indeed it is the antithesis, and now that our country is merely a war machine in the business of producing more and more guns, tanks and bullets and all the accoutrements that go with it (armored humvees, helmets, body armor, robot killers etc. etc.) our country has become dehumandized and humanity does not seem to enter our thoughts.
We have a candidate who actually appears to be human and who might be in favor of banning cluster bombs if he ever got elected. But the dehumanized press along with the dehumanized Democratic party and the dehumanized Republican party are probably not going to let that happen. While we obsess over whether Obama is wearing a flag pin or not ( Hillary or McCain are not wearing one any time I've seen them on tv) or blame him for remarks OTHER people have said, we let what little humanity is left in our nation slip away into the sewer.