Ban Cluster Bombs

Cluster bombs, like land mines, are among the most insidious weapons since they end up killing far more non-combatant civilians than actual combat forces. Cluster bombs pose a triple threat: they explode in the air, on the ground, and later when stepped on or otherwise disturbed. The "footprint" of a cluster bomb can be as large as three football fields.  One of the biggest threats of cluster bombs stems from the large number of "dud" (German: Blindgaenger) bomblets. These unexploded live munitions are a serious threat to civilians and function as defacto land mines.  Each year about 300 Vietnamese are killed each year from dud cluster bomblets left by the US Air Force during the Vietnam War.

The US is the largest producer of cluster bombs, the export of which generates huge profits for Lockheed Martin and Textron. Cluster bombs deployed by the US military have killed thousands of non-combatant Afghans and Iraqis - including many children.  In the final days of the recent Israel - Lebanon conflict, the US expedited cluster bomb shipments to Israel.  This has resulted in a major human tragedy, as reported by  Ha'aretz:

"What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs," the head of an IDF rocket unit in Lebanon said regarding the use of cluster bombs and phosphorous shells during the war. Quoting his battalion commander, the rocket unit head stated that the IDF fired around 1,800 cluster bombs, containing over 1.2 million cluster bomblets."

"The cluster rounds which don't detonate on impact, believed by the United Nations to be around 40% of those fired by the IDF in Lebanon, remain on the ground as unexploded munitions, effectively littering the landscape with thousands of land mines which will continue to claim victims long after the war has ended. Because of their high level of failure to detonate, it is believed that there are around 500,000 unexploded munitions on the ground in Lebanon. ...According to the commander, in order to compensate for the inaccuracy of the rockets and the inability to strike individual targets precisely, units would "flood" the battlefield with munitions, accounting for the littered and explosive landscape of post-war Lebanon."

Heide Wieczorek-Zeul, Germany's development minister, got into hot water after she called for an international investigation into Israel's deployment of cluster bombs. But last week, the Bundestag missed an opportunity to institute an outright ban on cluster munitions. Germany's Green Party proposed that Germany follow Belgium's example and eliminate its stockpile of cluster bombs while banning their deployment. As taz reports, the resolution proposed by the ruling coalition (SPD/CDU) - which ultimately passed - contained merely some watered down restrictions, and falls far short from being a ban:

Die Fehler in der Resolution der Koalitionäre: Einerseits sollen Einsatz und Export von Streumunition dann zulässig sein, wenn sich Quote der nicht explodierten Bomblets unter einem Prozent bewegt. Und aus den Beständen der Bundeswehr sollen die Streubomben des Typs MW-1, die vom Kampfflugzeug "Tornado" abgeworfen werden können, erst "nach Ende der Nutzung dieses Waffensystems" verschwinden.

First, there is no way to keep the level of "dud" bomblets under one percent; second, the Tornado will only be phased out sometime during the next decade. More on the efforts to ban cluster bombs in Germany at landmine.de; Neues Deutschland writes about Germany weapons export business.

Comments

[Joerg]

Thanks for writing about this.

I have signed the http://landmine.de/presse/index.htm
petition about two weeks ago. What a shame: still not yet a million signatures.

"In the final days of the recent Israel - Lebanon conflict, the US expedited cluster bomb shipments to Israel."

Really? Wow! I knew they expedited some military stuff, but did not about cluster bombs. Besides, in the last days of the war the US started an investigation into Israel's use of the cluster bombs in civilian areas. How serious is that investgation? I have not heard anything about it for weeks.

[Omar Abo-Namous]

Thanks David,

the really interesting part in Germany is in my opinion that the test results for the munition aren't publicized. So the limit of 1% duds (?) is really a farce, since it can't be sufficiently overviewed!

"Streumunitionen, die über eine Blindgängerrate von mehr als einem Prozent verfügen, will die Koalition außer Dienst stellen. 'Wie ein solcher Abrüstungsschritt verifiziert werden soll, ist allerdings schleierhaft', sagt Thomas Küchenmeister. Er verweist auf die grundsätzliche Weigerung des Verteidigungsministeriums, Testergebnisse von Streumunitionen zu veröffentlichen."

[Fry]

Put it on the list, right after napalm, landmines, depleted uranium, fuel-air (thermobaric) explosives, and phosphorus.

International law covering all of these rather nasty weapons is full of loopholes. Hardly surprising when the law seems to focus on weapons which may cause, "...excessive injury and unnecessary suffering." Err...how much suffering is necessary in war? Is death an excessive injury?

It's awfully nice that the imperial juggernaut Belgium has agreed to ban cluster bombs, but it's going to be extremely difficult to convince the only player that really matters in this case - the US. Air-dropped munitions covering large chunks of real estate fit perfectly into current US war fighting doctine.

I'd say that technical changes to decrease the rate of unexploded bomblets or render those bomblets which remain unexploded inert after a period of time are far more likely.

[David]

@Joerg,

The investigation by the State Department into Israel's use of cluster bombs will probably go nowhere. I'll write to the office of Condoleezza Rice, but at the moment she is trying to recall what she was told on July 10, 2001 (see "State of Denial")