Bomb Haters, Unite!

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Who was it that said, if you live with a cripple, you would learn to limp.

By Anwaar Hussain

kandahar_crutch.gif Walk down a busy Kabul street and try coming back unscarred.

Legless men rattle down bazaars in wheelbarrows, little children with missing limbs crab along like some decapods, one-legged men hobble about on ugly crutches among the throng of people. The common threads; they are all war victims, they are all beggars. Welcome to the land of the wretched.

Perhaps no other place on earth has a larger proportion of disabled citizens living out their miserable existences in such heart rending circumstances as Afghanistan. Three decades of war, millions of mines and unexploded ordinance (UXO) for children to trip over, not to include the hordes of suicide bombers now killing in the name of God, have turned Afghanistan into a wasteland of the mutilated and the crippled.

War-related disabilities, primarily loss of limbs, account for an overwhelming proportion of non-birth-defect cases. Cluster munitions and land mines are among the main causes. Out of a population of 25 million, 123,000 Afghans have directly been so incapacitated by war and its consequences.

The Afghans are not alone in their suffering though. Owing to these horrific weapons of war, countless more human beings today live in similar misery in Laos, Iraq, Chechnya, Kosovo, Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Of the two weapons, landmines are the deadlier ones. Let us, however, concentrate on the lesser evil today. It will give us some idea about the greater one too. Here is a brief backgrounder on cluster munitions;

A total of 34 states are known to have produced over 210 different types of air-dropped, surface-launched, or submarine-launched cluster munitions including projectiles, bombs, rockets, missiles, and dispensers. Cluster munitions are stockpiled by at least 75 states and have been used in at least 24 countries and disputed territories. A minimum of 13 states have transferred over 50 types of cluster munitions to around 60 other states as well as non-state armed groups.

An estimated 50 million submunitions were used in the 1991 Gulf War, 1.8 to 2 million in Iraq in 2003, 295,000 in Serbia/Kosovo in 1999, 4 million in Lebanon and 248,000 in Afghanistan in 2001/2002. With a dud rate of 2 to 6 percent, millions of these UXO are waiting to turn thousands more into ugly cripples any time.

Existing cluster munitions contain billions of individual explosive submunitions. The reported active stockpiles on the United States’ inventory alone contain nearly 730 million submunitions. Stockpiles in Russia and China are likely to be comparable in scale.

The US sold 7,087 early-generation cluster bombs (CBU-52, CBU-58, CBU-71), containing 4 million submunitions, to Greece, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and Thailand between 1970 and 1995. She also transferred over 61,000 surplus artillery projectiles, containing 8.1 million submunitions, to Bahrain and Jordan between 1995 and 2001. BL-755 cluster bombs produced in the UK have been exported to, or ended up being possessed or used by, 15 other countries. Cluster munitions of Soviet origin are reported to be in the stockpiles of 22 countries.

Though there are several types of cluster munitions on the inventory of various countries, let us talk of just one type; the BL-755 bomb.

A total of 52,500 BL-755 bombs were produced containing 7.7 million submunitions. This bomb has an average submunition dud rate of 6.4 percent based on 15 years of tests. BL-755 bombs have been removed from the inventories of Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland and United Kingdom. These bombs are still retained by India, Iran, Italy, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Thailand and United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The bomblets contained in the existing world stockpiles of Rockeye and CBU-87 bombs are around 23 million and 17 million respectively. While most of the inventory holders have removed these weapons from their stockpiles, Pakistan, India, Israel and the United States continue to hold these.

Many cluster munitions in stockpiles are nearing or are beyond the end of their storage life and will become dangerous to use. Prolonged storage may also increase the number of unexploded submunitions left after use. The manufacturers claim that to lessen collateral damage, time delayed self destruct devices are now being used in these munitions. Self-destruct devices, however, can give militaries a false impression that cluster munitions are safe to use in populated areas. Failure rates in combat conditions are invariably higher than those established by production acceptance or surveillance testing regimes. Self-destruct has not proven to be sufficiently effective or reliable solution.

Vast majority of cluster munitions are not sophisticated weapons any way. Most are demonstrated to be unreliable and inaccurate with neither the dispensers nor the submunitions being guided. Many stockpiles are approaching or are well beyond 20 years of storage life and most are not designed to reduce or minimize UXO problem as the weapons were not intended to be used in areas to which users would be returning.

Just to give the reader an idea about the severity of the problem, the one month long conflict in southern Lebanon in 2006 left a land area estimated at 37 million square meters contaminated with close to one million unexploded submunitions.

Here is a bit of good news that should put a smile on the faces of the would-be victims of these weapons i.e. you and me. On 28th May 2008, in Oslo, Norway, more than 100 governments have agreed on a draft convention to ban cluster bombs. The agreement outlaws the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of this weapon. It also entails a commitment to remove cluster bombs from national arsenals within eight years and to provide for the welfare of the victims of cluster bombs. 111 states are expected to approve the draft text on Friday the 29th May, the final day of the conference. It will be signed in December in Oslo.

The bad news; just like in the landmine treaty of 1997, the biggest producers/inventory holders/users/likely users of cluster bombs the United States, Israel, China, Russia, India and yes the land of the pure Pakistan are among the chief opponents of the treaty making it unclear what effect it will have once it comes into power.

Bomb haters, unite!

Others can smile at their own risk and try remembering who was it that said, if you live with a cripple, you would learn to limp.

–X–X–

Anwaar Hussain: eagleeye@emirates.net.ae



Comments

10 Responses to “Bomb Haters, Unite!”

  1. RG Gregory on May 30th, 2008 12:08 am

    The greatest sickness on earth today is Authority. The system by which Authority is appointed, or appoints itself, is of little relevance. Voted-in Authority, in today’s circumstances, is probably the most dangerous; its voters the most deluded, being offered an apparent choice between divisions of the same. In the West, in the name of relative comfort (for most) and sheer greed for the favoured, we are deprived of any real say in the matter of the abominations perpetrated in our name. Cluster bombs, land mines, nuclear warheads, chemical weapons: only the start of the list of murderous presents we gift to those we are ordained not to like, and by our standards deigned not to count.

    The following poem was written over 40 years ago. Its despair has intensified since.

    participation

    step this way
    my friends
    step this way

    here governments retreat
    here the people
    stand on their own two feet
    you haven’t seen the like
    for donkey’s years

    i go in
    it is true

    the people strut
    in their new glory
    their drinking hand
    a never-ending
    fountain of champagne
    out of their pockets
    ooze
    banknotes and confidence
    more or less tax-free
    they are busy
    converting their children
    into gold
    their wives
    to diamonds

    it is true
    there haven’t been such people
    for donkey’s years

    but o the millions
    of non-people
    crunched into the patterns
    of the carpet
    their blood rivers
    their bones mountains

  2. Chuck on May 30th, 2008 6:08 pm

    Anwaar…I am a bomb hater.

    Chuck

  3. Virgil on May 30th, 2008 6:09 pm

    An excellent and timely piece. The best report I have read on the subject.

    Regards, Virgil

  4. Pervaiz on May 31st, 2008 12:08 pm

    A heart wrenching article. It is a somber reminder of the barbarities perpetrated by the Huns, the Visigoths,the Vikings, the Tartars and the recently crumbled great empire where the Sun never set. Perhaps barbarity is the uglier side of our genetic endowment that we invariably avoid looking at. Nevertheless, our multi faceted collective unconscious comprises of kindness, empathy, compassion and need to nurture too.

    Hence, unite.

  5. Anwaar on May 31st, 2008 2:52 pm

    Ban Cluster Bombs Petition

    As well as signing the online petition you can help to gather signatures by printing off the form below and asking family, friends and colleagues to sign it.

    Once the form is completed you can send it to:

    No More Landmines

    4th Floor, Charles House

    London, W14 8QH

    Or you can scan and e-mail it to info@landmines.org.uk

    Thank you for your support!

    Attachments:

    Ban_Cluster_Bombs_Petition.pdf

  6. Shelley on May 31st, 2008 7:30 pm

    As a young boy living in Mogadishu in the 1960’s I remember the begging crippled children. They were everywhere. I would save the roll we were given at dinner when eating out and would toss it to someone upon leaving, being careful not to pass it to anyone other than a single individual so no fighting would break out. Many had horrible disfiguring diseases. Elephantiasis and rickets were everywhere. There were no girl beggars. The Somali don’t consider girl children who is crippled to be of any value so they are dispatched as soon as abnormalities are discovered.

    There is a natural human tendency to dislike the effects bombs, guns or anthrax has on the human body. Unfortunately it does not address the habit humans seem to have regarding aggressive and violent behavior towards his fellow man. Vlad the impaler would place live humans on spikes to die an agonizing death. American Indians were fond of the bashing of infant children to death in an effective effort to rouse the anger of the adults. The technology has changed but not the patterns of behavior. Most of us will likely witness the huge numbers of blind and burn victims mixed in with the slow incapacitation caused by radiation sickness. Modern society is getting easier to destabilize now that we no longer produce the products we use to survive ourselves. War has claimed fewer causalities since the discovery of nuclear weapons. I hope that trend continues but I doubt it will.

    Shelley

  7. Anwaar on June 1st, 2008 5:47 am

    Here are excerpts from today’s New York Times editorial;

    “On Friday, 111 nations, including major NATO allies, adopted a treaty that sets an eight-year deadline to eliminate stockpiles of cluster arms — pernicious weapons that scatter thousands of small bombs across a wide area, where they pose a long-term deadly threat to innocents. The Bush administration not only failed to sign the treaty but vigorously opposed it.

    After marching in lockstep for years, even Britain broke with America’s position and agreed to withdraw its weapons from use. That dealt a much-needed blow to Washington’s long-standing opposition to this sort of sensible arms control, and in particular to this treaty-averse administration.”

    “…No one has more invested in cluster munitions than the United States, which Human Rights Watch says has been the largest producer, stockpiler and user, using them in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Others that have used them include Britain, France, Sudan, NATO, Israel and Hezbollah….”

    “…As the main holdout, the United States gives cover to countries like Russia and China, which also rejected the ban. The treaty is weaker for it: together, these three nations have more than a billion cluster munitions stockpiled, far more than the number of weapons expected to be destroyed. Also weakening the pact is a loophole that will let America continue military cooperation with treaty signers, even if it uses cluster munitions….”

    CLICK HERE FOR THE REST.

  8. Anwaar on June 1st, 2008 1:18 pm

    Gordon Brown blows a loophole in ban on cluster bombs

    Times Online

    Gordon Brown has negotiated a loophole for Britain to continue using cluster bombs, despite his declaration of a full ban.

    The prime minister appeared to reinforce his humanitarian credentials when he dramatically overruled the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in talks at a 109-nation conference in Dublin on Wednesday.

    While Brown announced support for “a ban on all cluster bombs, including those currently in service by the UK”, the government quietly excluded new anti-tank cluster shells that are not yet in service.

    Britain will now press ahead with an £83m contract to buy a new generation of the munitions, signed last November with GIWS, a German manufacturer.

    Continue reading…….

  9. Jean Jones on June 6th, 2008 12:17 am

    WONDERFUL!!!!!!!!!!! And we have a new chance for a real statesman for president.Pray for peace for all especially our new leader Barack Obama.

  10. Jonathan Stephenson on June 15th, 2008 6:18 am

    That a people can turn their heads in indifference to these weapons, and to the people, many of whom are children demonstrates that in the 8000 years of recorded history, people have not changed, they are as merciless as they were in the days of Egyptian Pharoahs and Sumerian Kings, as Roman Emperors and The Mongol Khans.
    Until we learn shame and love, sorrow and forgiveness we are doomed to continue as cannon fodder for ruthless men and women, for the next 8000 years, should we last that long. The problem is us!!!!!

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Anwaar’s articles appear simultaneously here at Truth Spring and at Soul Vibes in The Pakistan Tribune.


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