XIENG KHUANG, Laos - Nang Wan lies in a
hospital bed in this remote area's provincial
hospital, her body covered in small black wounds.
The 35-year-old woman was digging a shallow
drainage ditch around her house on April 16 when
her world exploded.
Her youngest,
five-year-old, son was killed instantly in the
blast. Her other two young children are in the
room across the hall, with shrapnel wounds to
their bodies and faces. Their injuries are
tragically common in this northern province of
Laos, a legacy of the country's war with the
United States.
During the US's so-called
"Secret War" in Laos, which spanned from
1964-1973, the US military dropped more than 2.4
million
tons
of bombs on the country, including around 270
million cluster bomb sub-munitions. According to
the government-run unexploded ordnance (UXO)
disposal organization UXO-Lao, 4,837 people have
been killed or injured by cluster munitions, many
of them decades after the war's end.
The
tragedy that continues in Laos has been repeated
in countries across the globe, from the Western
Sahara to Sudan, Chechnya to Lebanon. In each one
of these conflicts the legacy is felt by the
civilian population. Unexploded cluster munitions
wait at or just below the surface of the ground to
be stepped or hit with a shovel or plow. All of
the munitions are unstable and become increasingly
more so with time, often set off by the slightest
movement or touch.
The brief 2006 conflict
between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas in
southern Lebanon saw some of the most extensive
use yet of cluster munitions, mostly by Israel, in
highly populated areas. Civilian casualties caused
by these weapons, both during the war and after,
have refocused global attention on the weapons'
most frequent users and producers, including in
recent or ongoing conflicts in Kosovo, Afghanistan
and Iraq.
Later this month, around 90
countries are expected to sign the Ban on Cluster
Munitions Treaty at a conference in Dublin,
Ireland. The likely signatories include some of
Europe's biggest traditional users and stockpilers
of the weapons, including France, Germany and the
United Kingdom - the most frequent user that has
entered the process.
The meeting is part
of a multilateral negotiation known as the Oslo
Process, which was initiated by 30 countries in
February 2007 after their previous attempts to ban
the weapons through a Convention on Certain
Conventional Weapons' (CCW) mechanism failed. The
convention was signed by 106 countries that seeks
to restrict the use of fragmentation weapons,
landmines, incendiary and blinding laser weapons
and works for the removal of unexploded ordnance.
The Oslo Declaration, signed by 46
countries in February 2007, calls for the
conclusion of a legally binding treaty by 2008
that prohibits the use and stockpiling of cluster
munitions, as well as provides for care and
rehabilitation of survivors and the clearance of
unexploded munitions.
According to the
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC),
the weapons should be banned due to their
inaccuracy, unreliability and massive numbers in
global circulation. As militaries have over time
become more efficient in their destruction, the
risk to civilian populations from cluster
munitions has grown exponentially.
In
Kosovo in 1999 around 290,000 sub-munitions were
dropped over a 10-week period by North Atlantic
Treaty Organization aircraft. During the five
weeks of the 2006 conflict in Lebanon, as many as
four million sub-munitions were spread by Israel
across the country's southern regions, according
to the ICRC.
Cluster munitions were also
used in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002 and over
10,000 were used in Iraq during the US's 2003
invasion. According to the ICRC, at least 24
states are now contaminated. The Cluster Munitions
Coalition, a network of civil society and rights
organizations engaged with the ICRC to secure a
ban on the weapons, claims that cluster munitions
caused the greatest share of civilian casualties
in Kosovo 1999 and Iraq in 2003.
Bomb
lovers unite There are an estimated 3
billion cluster munitions in stockpiles held by at
least 75 different countries worldwide. At least
34 countries are known to have produced over 210
different types of cluster munitions. According to
rights advocacy group Human Rights Watch, the US
currently has over one billion individual
sub-munitions in their stockpiles, contained
within over 40 types of surface or air deliverable
cluster bombs, rockets, artillery shells and
missiles.
Some of the world's most
powerful militaries, including the United States,
Russia, China, India and Pakistan, remain firmly
outside of the Oslo process. The US is currently
engaged in two conflicts in Asia where it has used
cluster bombs - Afghanistan and Iraq. Pressure has
been brought to bear on these military powers by
the media and international aid and rights groups,
exposure which some contend convinced European
countries to back the process.
After
extensive negative media attention and in-depth
investigations by Human Rights Watch, the US
stopped using cluster munitions in Afghanistan
after its invasion and their use in Iraq was
quantitatively limited compared to the first Gulf
War, although US ground forces have been censured
for their more indiscriminate use in populated
areas.
The US continues to argue that an
international instrument for dealing with cluster
munitions already exists - the CCW. In a February
2008 White Paper, the US outlined its policy on
cluster munitions, which said any new treaty would
be superfluous and could have a negative effect on
other international mechanisms aimed at unexploded
ordnance.
It also argued that in certain
situations cluster munitions may be more effective
and cause fewer civilian casualties than regular
bombs and that it is working to improve the
reliability of its cluster bombs, making an
outright ban on their use unnecessary. The White
Paper also claimed that the US is already
addressing the cluster bomb issue by spending more
money than any other country on the cleanup of
unexploded bomblets - most of which are produced
in the US and have been used by the US and its
clients.
The US and other nations
currently outside the Oslo process insist that
they want to work through the CCW, which because
of its consensus-driven mechanisms and member veto
power over new initiatives means almost no
important or binding agreements have originated at
the body. Nor is the idea of banning cluster
munitions especially new: the ICRC initially
raised the issue during the Indochina War in the
1960s and 1970s.
Since their initial use
by the German air force in 1943, cluster munitions
have been used in over 20 conflicts including by
UN forces during the Korean War by the UN forces,
in Afghanistan by the former USSR, in the
Falklands by the UK, and more recently in Chechnya
by Russia and in Sudan by the Sudanese government
and Angola.
The proposed new treaty calls
for the prohibition on the use, development,
production, stockpiling and transfer of cluster
munitions. It also will require signatory nations
to destroy their current stocks of the weapons and
includes provisions for assistance to victims,
clearance of unexploded sub-munitions and
activities to minimize the impact of unexploded
remnants on civilian populations.
Although
still a matter of debate, including disagreement
over how many "bomblets" necessarily constitute a
"cluster", the ICRC's definition of cluster
munitions states that they are "weapons consisting
of a container that opens in the air and scatters
explosive sub-munitions or bomblets over a wide
area" and may be delivered by aircraft, artillery
or missiles.
Some countries are already
arguing for exceptions to be included for
self-destruction munitions and so-called "smart"
sub-munitions. For the ICRC, exceptions are
allowable if the technology can be proven.
However, so far manufacturers have a poor track
record in the field; many of the munitions used by
Israel in Lebanon produced by the United States,
Israel and China failed to self-destruct.
Explosive
divide The bigger debate, however,
surrounds the treaty's interoperability clauses,
which if passed in its current draft form will ban
countries' militaries who are signatories from
conducting joint operations with other militaries
who do use cluster munitions. This issue has
already caused problems during military operations
in Afghanistan where nations adhering to the
Landmine Ban Treaty have been required to operate
alongside the United States, which is not a
signatory to that pact.
Once the treaty is
signed in Dublin, the US and other non-signatory
nations may find themselves having to go it alone
on military operations where the potential exists
for cluster munitions use, or goaded into the
decision not to use the munitions to keep key
partners in military coalitions, something which
has become crucial in the multinational NATO
operation now underway in Afghanistan against the
Taliban.
Only 15 of the estimated 75
nations that stockpile cluster munitions have
actually used them in conflict. Many countries'
stockpiles contain models that are now 20 years or
older and with age are becoming increasingly
unreliable and unstable. Meanwhile, the ICRC and
others note that even the most advanced cluster
munitions fail.
Guarantees of low failure
rates given by big cluster munitions
manufacturers, including the US's Lockheed Martin,
Raytheon, Textron, Gen Corp, France's Thales
Group, China's Northern Industries Company
(Norinco), are usually based on tests in
conditions often completely different to those
where the munitions are dropped in combat,
according to experts. Freshly plowed fields, trees
and muddy rice paddies often cushion the bombs'
impact, preventing them from detonating.
Munitions experts note that unexploded
bomblets are often more dangerous than landmines
because they are designed to kill rather than
maim. For Peter Herby, head of the ICRC Arms Unit,
"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."
As
many as a million sub-munitions are estimated to
have failed in Lebanon, meaning the civilian
landscape there is now littered with explosive
debris. According to the United Nations, as of
December 2007 they have caused 19 deaths and 170
injuries among civilians. Human Rights Watch
claims that more than 1,600 Kuwaitis and Iraqis
have been killed and 2,500 injured from cluster
munitions after the first US-led Gulf War.
There have been 13,000 confirmed deaths or
injuries from cluster munitions globally, with the
vast majority in Laos, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq
and Lebanon. The large footprint of cluster
munitions, experts say, is what makes them so
lethal and rights groups say raises issues of
whether governments who use them should one day be
held liable for the damage wrought and clearance
costs.
Unlike regular bombs that have a
specific target, cluster munitions are designed to
spread their bomblets over an area sometimes as
big as two football fields. Originally designed
for a war in Europe between huge armies and that
never materialized, they have instead been widely
used in counterinsurgency campaigns and smaller
civil conflicts.
Depending on the type,
there can be 600 or more sub-munitions in a
so-called container. This large area combined with
a failure rate of as high as 30-40% has resulted
in large areas of land being contaminated and
uninhabitable until cleared. Meanwhile, the
arduous and time-consuming process of clearing
unexploded sub-munitions has in many areas
exacerbated already grinding poverty and made
economic development and reconstruction after war
even more difficult.
Within Southeast
Asia, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia are still
suffering from the after effects of cluster bombs
dropped on their countries by the US over 35 years
ago. The legacy of the weapons' use has been
thousands of deaths and injuries as well as
retarded economic development in various affected
areas.
That's the case in picturesque Ban
Vene village on Laos' Plain of Jars. Sawatdi, an
ordnance disposal team leader for UXO-Lao who only
gave his last name, said that over a one-month
period his team had cleared 83,000 square meters
of contaminated farmland that had nonetheless been
used by farmers for years. He says his team found
and removed 87 unexploded bomblets left over from
the US war - all of them BLU-26 cluster bomblets.
He says that over the past 10 years of
operations, UXO-Lao has only cleared 130 square
kilometers - or less than one-tenth of 1% of the
country's total land mass - out of a total
estimated 87,000 kilometers affected. Yong
Chanthalangsy, spokesperson for the ministry of
foreign affairs in Laos, said, "With its limited
capacity, it will take Laos 100 years to clear the
[cluster munitions]." At current rates of
disposal, that's a sadly optimistic projection.
Brian McCartan
is a freelance journalist based in Chiang Mai,
Thailand. He may be reached at
brianpm@comcast.net.
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