I went to a meeting today held by Landmine Action (www.landmineaction.org) and they gave the most fascinating talk that I just had to blog something about it.
Cluster munitions are a kind of bomb/landmine that many countries, including the UK, produce and use in war zones. Try and picture this - a rocket container is launched from a plane, and inside is up to 147 sub munitions or bomblets which come flying out and arm on the way down. Each sub munition, when it detonates, breaks up into 2,000 metal fragments and in total this weapon hits an area of 90,000 sq miles (several football pitches in size someone said), killing and maiming anything in its path. It can pierce anything metal and also has a lining which sets fire to anything flammable in it's range. And then you can launch multiple rockets at a time. Quite scary!
The problem with this weapon is twofold:
- A large area is indiscriminately targeted - there is no distinction between civilian and combatant, no matter how much you claim the weapon is reliable and accurate.
- Lots of the sub munitions and fragments do not explode and are left by the warring sides for some unfortunate person (often a child) to step on them after the conflict has finished.
One guy who gave a talk had just come back from a 5 day trip in Lebanon. In Lebanon alone there are at least 100,000 unexploded sub munitions as a result of the recent war and 465 confirmed cluster bomb sites (with more to be discovered). It has very bad consequences for the locals who rushed back after the ceasefire came into place, to make sure their land wasn't taken. Many, in removing the rubble from their homes, also touched upon sub munitions . The result was burns, lost limbs, fingers and 78 deaths (of which 28 were children). The Lebanese army doesn't have enough money to remove all the munitions so it has to proritise - roads, hospitals and homes first. So sub munitions in agricultural fields will most probably stay there for at least 6 months and so families won't get their annual harvest.
Belgian has been the first country to ban the use of cluster munitions and they are hoping others, including the UK, will follow, to eventually bring about an international treaty on the subject. It will take probably about 2 years but is definately possible as long as enough public support is mobilised. The UK government has claimed they are legal under international humanitarian law as long as they strike a balance between protecting civilians and the necessity of protecting our own troops. However although coming across initially as having investigated and on that basis achieved the right balance, they then admitted to never doing any research at all on the subject.
I'm pretty much in favour of this weapon being outright banned because of its indiscriminate nature. If you want to join the petition to have it banned, please go to www.clusterbombs.org, run by handicap international. There is also more information on www.stopclustermunitions.org and www.spreadingourvalues.com.
