CLUSTER BOMBS BAN PROBLEM FOR US MILITARY

This month an effort will be made by at least 90 countries to ratify a treaty ending the use of cluster bombs, but the U.S. and Israel, two nations that have most recently deployed cluster weapons, will not be at the conference table in the Irish capital, Dublin. The Russians and Chinese will not be there either but some of America’s allies like Britain, France and Germany will attend and if they sign the treaty it could negatively impact their joint military operations with the US in Afghanistan and Iraq.
A typical cluster weapon contain canisters with hundreds of explosive bomblets, each the size of a lemon. The canisters open in mid-air spraying a wide area with their deadly cargo. Whether they are dropped in artillery shells, bombs or missiles, they have high levels of inaccuracy and often fail to explode. As a result, unexploded bomblets can contaminate large swathes of land, killing innocent people decades after a conflict has ended. During the Vietnam War the US dropped an estimated 90 million bomblets on neighboring Laos. They were launched from B52s and in the decades since, 5,000 innocent men, women and children have been killed and many more have lost their limbs by handling or stepping on unexploded bomblets. The problem with trying to clear areas contaminated by cluster munitions is that the bomblets are so small and so widespread they are hard to find and do not deteriorate as a result of temperature or rain. In 1999, NATO dropped an estimated 200,000 bomblets during the Kosovo conflict. And, since the first Gulf War, several thousand Iraqis and Kuwaitis have been killed and maimed due to unexploded cluster munitions. More recently, the US has used the weapons in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Calls for a global treaty to ban cluster bombs have been ongoing for decades but gained momentum in 2007 when it was shown that Israel had cynically fired more than one million bomblets into Lebanon in the summer of 2006. The weapons were launched in artillery shells 72 hours before Israel agreed to a ceasefire in its short war with the Shiite guerilla army, Hezbollah. There was no apparent military value in launching the weapons and it was deemed by international human rights bodies to have been an act of revenge and a deliberate effort to contaminate large swathes of Lebanese land and villages close to the border with Israel so that people could not return to their homes.
An Israel military commander put it best in the Israel newspaper, Haaretz on September 12, 2006, when he declared: “What we did was insane and monstrous. We covered entire towns in cluster bombs.” According to him, the Israeli Defense Force fired 1,800 cluster bombs containing 1.2 million bomblets in the final days of the war. Haaretz also reported that phosphorous bombs, banned by international treaties, were also launched into Lebanon. The US was angered by Israel’s use of cluster weapons, all of which had been supplied by the US military as part of a regular supply of munitions to the IDF. It was clear to the State Department and Pentagon that Israel’s cynical firing of the cluster shells was bound to generate international outrage and provide the impetus for calls for a ban on cluster munitions and that is exactly what happened.
But even before the Israeli action, in March 2006, the Belgian government became the first country to pass legislation that made it criminal for its country’s banks to do business with companies involved in the manufacture of cluster weapons. The following year, the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, appealed to Israel to provide maps of the areas in Lebanon it targeted with cluster weapons. To this day, Israel has refused that request, as well as pleas for help from mine clearing times in Lebanon, even though unexploded bomblets have killed dozens of innocent civilians and injured or maimed over 200.
The dynamics for a treaty to ban the weapons worldwide took shape in February 2007 in Oslo, Norway, when 46 countries took the unusual step of declaring that:
"We prohibit the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians and we aim to establish a framework for cooperation and assistance that ensures adequate provision of care and rehabilitation to survivors and their communities, clearance of contaminated areas, risk education and destruction of stockpiles of prohibited cluster munitions."
There are approximately 34 countries that make the weapons and prominent among them are the US, Russia and China but none of them is keen to get rid of its massive stockpiles of cluster bombs. For the US, however, the prospect of a Treaty signed by European allies, most of them members of NATO, could pose serious military issues in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in any future conflict in which the US may seek to use its cluster munitions. Should Britain, France, Germany and, as is likely, as well other EU nations sign up to a ban in Dublin later this month that could prove complicated when troops from NATO nations are asked to fight alongside US soldiers in war zones where the US military has authority to use cluster bombs.
The treaty will demand that signatories should not take part in joint military operations with any nation engaged in the use of cluster weapons. That could mean that NATO nations like Britain may soon be required to order its troops not to take part in certain types of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan where cluster munitions are going to be used by US units.
The US has remained silent on the issue but it is one that is certainly not going to vanish. On the contrary, after Dublin there may be more pressure on the US to end its use of cluster bombs in situations where it is operating alongside many of its European allies like the British, French, Norwegians, Germans, Danes and Belgians to name but a few.