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Cluster Bombs in the News

As the items posted below show (at the very end), TalkLeft has an excellent track record in opposing the use of cluster bombs.  However, it has been a while this this topic has been broached.

I believe that the use of cluster bombs is immoral no matter which nation-state resorts to it.  As indiscriminate weapons, they should be banned by international law.  Using them should become recognized as a war crime.  

Even if one believes (as I do not) that Israel's recent war on Lebanon and Gaza was justified, the just war tradition as codified in international law still requires that a war be conducted in a justifiable way.  That means respecting noncombatant immunity and avoiding indiscriminate weaponry.

I am well aware that the Hague and Geneva conventions were widely violated during the long, terrible and bloody 20th century.   Tens of millions of combatants and civilians were slaughtered without mercy.  There were aerial bombardments of cities, indiscriminate killings, the burning of villages, the erection of death camps, the commission of genocides, the refinement and proliferation of torture, the widespread incidence of rapes and pillagings, and more.

The prospects for the human race are not good.  Among the several reasons is the scourge of war.  Now more than ever it remains true that humankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to humankind.  

Banning cluster bombs and condemning their use would be a modest but important  place to begin.

Lebanon's War With Cluster Bombs

The 40% of Israeli-dropped 'bomblets' that didn't explode during this summer's war continue to kill Lebanon's most vulnerable.

By Saree Makdisi

SAREE MAKDISI is a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA.

October 21, 2006

OF ALL THE statistics to emerge from Israel's recent war on Lebanon, the most shocking concerns the number of cluster bombs that Israel dropped on or fired into Lebanon.

A cluster bomb is made up of a canister that opens and releases hundreds of individual bomblets, which are dispersed and explode over a wide area, showering it with molten metal and lethal fragments.

About 40% of the bomblets dropped by Israel (many of which were American-made) did not explode in the air or on impact with the ground. They now detonate when someone disturbs them -- a soldier, a farmer, a shepherd, a child attracted by the lure of a shiny metal object.

Cluster bombs are, by definition, inaccurate weapons that are designed to affect a very wide area unpredictably. If they do not discriminate between civilian and military targets when they are dropped, they certainly do not discriminate in the months and years after the end of hostilities, when they go on killing and maiming anyone who happens upon them.

When the count of unexploded cluster bomblets passed 100,000, the United Nation's undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, Jan Egeland, expressed his disbelief at the scale of the problem.

"What's shocking and, I would say to me, completely immoral," he said, "is that 90% of the cluster-bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict, when we knew there would be a resolution, when we really knew there would be an end of this."

That was on Aug. 30, by which time U.N. teams had identified 359 separate cluster-bomb sites.

Since then, the true dimensions of the problem have become even clearer: 770 cluster-bomb sites have now been identified. And the current U.N. estimate is that Israel dropped between 2 million and 3 million bomblets on Lebanon, of which up to a million have yet to explode.

In fact, it is estimated that there are more unexploded bomblets in southern Lebanon than there are people. They lurk in tobacco fields, olive groves, on rooftops, in farms, mixed in with rubble. They are injuring two or three people every day, according to the United Nations, and have killed 20 people since the cease-fire in August.

"What we did was insane and monstrous," one Israeli commander admitted to the newspaper Haaretz. "We covered entire towns in cluster bombs."

Calls rise for ban on cluster bombs

By John Zarocostas,The Washington Times

September 26, 2006

GENEVA -- The massive use of cluster bombs by Israeli forces in the final days of the border war with Lebanon has spurred diplomatic momentum for talks on an accord to curb the use of the weapons, diplomatic and arms-control sources said.    
Exploratory talks on such an initiative -- strongly backed by human rights groups -- were held quietly on the sidelines of an international meeting here last week by the 151 signatories to the 1997 Ottawa Treaty, which bans the manufacture and use of anti-personnel mines. The United States is not a party to the treaty.    

Sources familiar with the deliberations said support for the move has "picked up and broadened" since the idea was first floated at a U.N. arms-control forum a few weeks ago by Sweden, Austria, Mexico, New Zealand and the Vatican. The idea also is backed by the International Committee of the Red Cross. ...

Israel's lethal bomblets keep 200,000 Lebanese away from homes

by Haro Chakmakjian

Tue Sep 26, 2006

BEIRUT (AFP) - The return home of some 200,000 people displaced by the Israel-Hezbollah war is being held up by hundreds of thousands of unexploded bomblets, the United Nations refugee agency has warned.  "Displacement is going to continue for many months to come," Arjun Jain of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) told a news conference in Beirut.

From about one million people displaced during the war, which cost more than 1,200 lives in Lebanon alone, the return of 200,000 residents of the south faces the lethal obstacle of bomblets sprayed by cluster bomb attacks, he said.

"Now we feel it could take 24 months" because of unexploded ordnance in homes and gardens across villages and towns of the war zone in southern Lebanon that are endangering a return to normal life, Jain said.

"This is clearly the biggest threat to civilian life," said Jain of the UNHCR's emergency team in the southern port town of Tyre.

"Every step of the way we are going to face problems in terms of unexploded ordnance ... homes, rubble, fields need to be cleared," he said, although many farmers have had no choice but to return to their sole source of income.

Children's Bodies Found Months After Attack

September 26, 2006

Joseph S. Mayton - All Headline News Middle East Correspondent

Beirut, Lebanon (AHN)

More than two months since a house was destroyed in southern Lebanon, the bodies of two children were removed from the rubble on Sunday. First aid workers for Hezbollah placed the bodies in plastic bags after they were discovered.

Other than the two children, four-year old Ayat Aluiyeh and her cousin Zeinab, five, three other children killed in the July 17 attack are believed to still be under the debris of the house in the northern suburbs of the southern port city of Tyre.

The children, from Marun Al Ras village near Lebanon's border with Israel, took refuge with their families in the house after the war between the Shiite group and the Jewish state began on July 12.

The girls' fathers survived the attack because they were outside the home at the time of the bombing, but their wives and mother were also killed. Their bodies were discovered soon after the attack.

Israel's 34-day bombing campaign killed over 1,000 Lebanese civilians, a third of them children and destroyed more than 25,000 homes and 50,000 buildings in the country.

From the TL archives:

December 12, 2003

Human Rights Watch: Iraq Civilian Deaths are Preventable

Human Rights Watch says hundreds of civilian deaths in Iraq could have been prevented by abandoning two misguided military tactics--cluster bombs and the U.S. "decaptiation" strategy. Their 147 page report released today is available here. The use of cluster munitions...

Posted in "War in Iraq" with 0 comments

December 11, 2003

Cluster Bombs Kill in Iraq

From USA Today: A four-month examination by USA TODAY of how cluster bombs were used in the Iraq war found dozens of deaths that were unintended but predictable. Although U.S. forces sought to limit what they call "collateral damage" in...

Posted in "War in Iraq" with 0 comments

April 29, 2003

Should the U.S. Ban Cluster Bombs?

Human Rights Watch argues that the U.S. should either abandon the use of the cluster bomb, or at a minimum, refrain from using it in populated areas due to the high risk of civilian casualties.

Posted in "War in Iraq" with 0 comments

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    Re: Cluster Bombs in the News (none / 0) (#1)
    by Edger on Sat Oct 21, 2006 at 11:45:32 AM EST
    Great idea to remind of the evil of these things with your diary, Theologicus. Not only has the war in Iraq killed nearly three thousand US troops and permanently maimed tens of thousands more, it is just as important to rememeber - or for some, learn for the first time - that there are thousands of people all over the Middle East whose children are dead as a result of the use of cluster bombs in the bush administration's hegemonic war drive.

    When the parents of one of these children sees Al Qaeda or any other fringe group fighting the US in  Iraq, and are asked for their support in the fight against an invading and occupying army from a country they did not and could not attack, what do you think their response is? How many more "terrorists' are the American people going to let this administration create?

    Cluster Bombs: War Crimes of the Bush Administration

    All over Iraq, unexploded cluster bombs, originally dropped by U.S. troops in populated areas, are still killing and maiming civilians, farm animals, wildlife-any living thing that touches them by accident.

    Under Article 85 of the Geneva Conventions, it is a war crime to launch "an indiscriminate attack affecting the civilian population in the knowledge that such an attack will cause an excessive loss of life or injury to civilians." Under the Hague Conventions, Article 22 and 23, "The right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited," and "It is especially forbidden to kill treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army."

    A cluster bomb is a 14-foot weapon that weighs about 1,000 pounds. When it explodes it sprays hundreds of smaller bomblets over an area the size of two or three football fields. The bomblets are bright yellow and look like beer cans. And because they look like playthings, thousands of children have been killed by dormant bomblets in Afghanistan, Kuwait and Iraq. Each bomblet sprays flying shards of metal that can tear through a quarter inch of steel.

    The failure rate, the unexploded rate, is very high, often around 15 to 20 percent. When bomblets fail to detonate on the first round, they become land mines that explode on simple touch at any time.





    ==
    I was about to have breakfast, Theologicus. Then I read your diary...

    But you know, there are thousands of kids who will never have breakfast, thanks to the insane madmen who create and use things like cluster bombs.

    Death devices purposely made to look like playthings.

    Re: Cluster Bombs in the News (none / 0) (#2)
    by scribe on Mon Oct 23, 2006 at 05:21:04 AM EST
    Only slightly off topic, but still germane, is a report from German radio at noon (their time) today.

    In short, an aircraft bomb left over from the Second World War exploded today during construction work along the A3 autobahn in the vicinity of Aschaffenburg, about 25 miles southeast of Frankfurt am Main. At least one person was reported killed.  Apparently, the bomb had been disturbed during the work.  The entire autobahn in that area (one of the busier stretches in the country) is closed in both directions.

    One still hears on their radio reports (usually in the form of a traffic advisory) about street closures and area evacuations so duds can cleared be a couple, three or four times a year.

    Sixty-plus years after the fact, these things are still lurking, live and waiting.  It's bad enough these (relatively few) bombs are out there.  It's whole orders of magnitude worse, when governments deliberately drop large numbers of weapons with fuzes which don't work.  Either these cluster bombs are being used as area denial weapons - to keep out putative terrists who happen to farm Lebanese hillsides - or the governments have been taken for a ride by their contractors.

    In the most recent Israel-Lebanon episode, given the timing of dropping large numbers of cluster bombs in the few hours and days immediately preceding the cease-fire, I can only conclude the Israelis decided the easiest way to keep their border safe, was to booby-trap the landscape on the other side, and leave it safe for no one to enter.  A war crime, in so many words.

    More barbarism (none / 0) (#3)
    by theologicus on Mon Oct 23, 2006 at 07:44:03 AM EST
    Official: israel used phosphorous bombs
    23 October 2006

    JERUSALEM (AP) -- The Israeli army used phosphorous artillery shells against Hezbollah guerrilla targets during their war in Lebanon this summer, an Israeli Cabinet minister said, confirming Lebanese allegations for the first time.

    Until now, Israel had said it only used the weapons -- which cause severe chemical burns -- to mark targets or territory, according to Israeli media reports. The Geneva Conventions ban using white phosphorous against civilians or civilian areas and Israel said the weapons were used solely against military targets.

    Cabinet Minister Yaakov Edri said Sunday that Israel used the weapons before an Aug. 14 cease-fire went into effect, ending its 34-day war against Hezbollah. Edri's spokeswoman Orly Yehezkel said he was speaking on behalf of Defense Minister Amir Peretz.

    "The Israeli army holds phosphorous munitions in different forms," Edri said. "The Israeli army made use of phosphorous shells during the war against Hezbollah in attacks against military targets in open ground." ...

    The United States acknowledged last year that U.S. troops used white phosphorous as a weapon against insurgent strongholds during the battle of Fallujah in November 2004, but said it had never been used against civilian targets. ...

    Hezbollah, meanwhile, has been criticized for failing to distinguish between Israeli civilian and military targets. Human Rights Watch also said the militant group fired cluster bombs into civilian areas of northern Israel during the fighting.

    The usual pattern is immediate denial followed by a belated admission, long after the fact, when no one much seems to care.  No one except the victims, and those who remember them.

    Re: Cluster Bombs in the News (none / 0) (#4)
    by scribe on Mon Oct 23, 2006 at 11:42:18 AM EST
    Following up on my earlier, I took the time and translated the article from Bavarian Radio's website.  Here's the link;  go there and look at the pictures, in the "Bildergalerie".

    Chaos after Explosion on the A3 near Aschaffenburg

    The scene brought to mind something from 1945:  a crater, eight meters wide and 2.5 meters deep left by the explosion of a dud bomb from the Second World War that tore asunder the asphalt surface of the A3 autobahn this morning at 10:53.  The bomb's explosion tore apart a construction worker with his milling machine.  The 46 year old was dead at the scene;  colleagues and people passing in vehicles suffered severe shock.  The cleanup is underway.

    Police report that the accident occurred during milling operations for the expansion to six lanes of the heavily traveled Autobahn between Wuerzburg and Frankfurt in the vicinity of Aschaffenburg.  The 25 ton specialized milling machine, used to mix dry cement underground*, was thrown into the air and totally destroyed by the explosion.  Colleagues of the deceased construction worker, who were held back [by police] approximately 400 meters from the scene, heard a dull thudding boom, before feeling a strong shockwave.

    Some of the debris flew hundreds of meters away and damaged cars passing by the scene.  Four construction workers and one auto-driver suffered severe shock.  The total blockage of the Autobahn lasted about five hours, and the backed up traffic diverted into the surrounding local streets and Aschaffenburg and created a chaotic traffic situation.  About 3 pm, the traffic headed in the direction of Frankfurt was stopped for approximately 20 kilometers.

    Bomb damage 61 years after the end of the war.

    It was unclear and undetermined whether the dud was an aircraft bomb or a(n artillery) shell*. Specialists are proceeding on the thought it was a 500 pound bomb from the Second World War:  the "Damm" neighborhood in Aschaffenburg was bombed by the Allies through 1945 because uniforms were manufactured there*.

    It is unclear whether the bomb was previously buried in concrete by an oversight during the decades-ago construction of the most important east-west Autobahn.  "Our ongoing investigation must show whether this is so" said a spokesman for the Landes-Kriminalamt* expert team, which arrived at the scene by helicopter this afternoon.

    Background:  Deadly instrumentalities left behind

    In Bavaria, since the end of the Second World War the most old aircraft bombs have been found and uncovered during construction work.  In July the Bavarian Interior Ministry reported (made known) that in the last year over twenty tons of WWII munitions were dug up and destroyed.  Among those were 33 high-explosive and fragmentation bombs.  The last fatal accident in the Free State took place in May 1999, during the construction of the Legoland Amusement park in Guenzburg.  In that incident a tank shell which had already been excavated exploded and killed a 54 year old demolitions "meister".

    - - -

    Later reports from Bavarian Radio indicate the bomb was buried no more than one foot below the surface and that authorities are fairly certain it was a 500 pound aircraft bomb.

    • - -

    •  The methodology which appears to be in use in this construction project is something Americans call soil-cement.  In this, raw cement powder is milled into the in situ subsoil, and water is then added and milled in, too.  This is then shaped and compacted in place to form a very solid, stable base for highways, parking lots and the like.  This method is common in Germany for building autobahns, is a lot more economical and much faster than pouring reinforced cement, and eliminates a lot of earthmoving effort, too.  It can only be used in soils suitable for the purpose, which are present in that area.  The specialized milling machine is best compared to a gigantic, tractor-mounted version of a garden roto-tiller, albeit with a hood over the rotating blades (to keep rocks and dirt from flying around).  The blades can reach only to one foot below the surface;  the depth is limited to that because of the limitations of compaction equipment.  

    Scribe lived in and knows the area, has done soil-cement work, and knows about autobahn construction.

    * Given the size of the hole, my money's on a 500-pound aircraft bomb
    *
    * My look at google maps also indicates there is a sizeable rail yard within a mile of the scene, also a WWII target.  Speaking politely "the stuffing was bombed out of it" definitely applied to Aschaffenburg.
    ** Roughly, the State Police.

    Commentary - for whatever reason, a dud from more than sixty years ago killed a man who was nowhere near being born when the plane which dropped it took off.  Shoot, the plane was probably long scrapped before he was born.  Maybe the ground crew messed up fuzing the bomb, maybe the manufacturer did a bad job making the fuze, maybe it just hit at an odd angle, maybe everything worked and the thing just didn't go off.  Could be any number of "reasons", but the end result is the same - some guy ended his life in a flash, not knowing what hit him.  And, still, the beat of dropping from planes explosives with dubious fuzes goes on, and people not born yet will someday be killed by the actions of those following politicians' orders today.

    Think about how others must feel, when they start to dig a garden in their yard, not knowing if their spade will hit something buried for decades in the dirt which, in a flash, will kill them.  Using cluster bombs is a sure way to make enemies for generations;  that Germans are still friendly to the US after all this is a testament to the power of forgiveness.

    A Move to Ban Cluster Bombs (none / 0) (#5)
    by theologicus on Wed Oct 25, 2006 at 08:00:39 AM EST
    A call to abolish cluster bombs
    Like land mines, they can plague affected areas for years, and should be banned.
    By Curt Goering
    Christian Science Monitor
    October 25, 2006

    Last month, Democratic Sens. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Dianne Feinstein of California submitted an amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill designed to prevent cluster-bomb use in or near populated areas. It failed.

    Senators Leahy and Feinstein should reintroduce their amendment next year. Ideally, this bill would include a ban on the use of all cluster bombs that have high failure rates - which leads to the danger zones of unexploded bomblets - and a ban on the stockpiling or transfer of these submunitions. It deserves the support of every senator.

    As with the movement that led to the 1999 global treaty banning land mines, there is mounting international pressure to stop the use of cluster munitions altogether. Belgium has already banned them, Norway has imposed a moratorium, and other countries back a convention to prevent their use. The Review Conference examining the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons meeting next month in Geneva is a key opportunity to build momentum for the international ban.

    The stakes for civilians in Lebanon are high. They will suffer the effects of these weapons for years to come. But if action is taken now, the impact could be reduced. That's why Israel must share the coordinates of the areas it cluster-bombed with the UN Mine Action Coordination Center. The center also needs greater funding to clear the land of this contamination.

    The human cost of using cluster bombs in this summer's conflict should provide enough impetus to abolish these indiscriminate killers once and for all.

    * Curt Goering is the senior deputy executive director for policy and programs at Amnesty International USA.