Ever since I took a class with legendary peace activist Marv Davidov I’ve been following the “cluster bomb” debate. It seems a big step forward was made yesterday when the UK decided to not only ban cluster munitions from the military but also ban the US from storing stockpiles on UK soil. Read the story here.
According to a recent article a senior United States official said that cluster bombs are not bad when used responsibly. Of course, cluster bombs are bad precisely because they cannot be used responsibly.
For those of you who don’t know:
“Cluster bombs are small explosive bomblets carried in a large cannister that opens in mid-air, scattering them over a wide area. The bomblets may be delivered by aircraft, rocket, or by artillery projectiles.The CBU (cluster bomb unit) 26, which was widely used in Laos, is an anti-personnel fragmentation bomb that consists of a large bombshell holding 670 tennis ball-sized bomblets, each of which contain 300 metal fragments. If all the bomblets detonate, some 200,000 steel fragments will be propelled over an area the size of several football fields, creating a deadly killing zone. Because the fragments travel at high velocity, when they strike people they set up pressure waves within the body that do horrific damage to soft tissue and organs: even a single fragment hitting somewhere else in the body can rupture the spleen, or cause the intestines to explode. This is not an unfortunate, unintended side-effect; these bombs were designed to do this.
Because cluster bombs disperse widely and are difficult to target precisely, they are especially dangerous when used near civilian areas. In addition, they are prone to failure: if the container opens at the wrong height, or the bomblets don’t fuse properly, or their descent is broken by trees, or they land on soft ground - they may not detonate. With a high dud rate estimated to be 10 to 30 percent, unexploded cluster bombs lay on the ground becoming, in effect, super landmines, and can explode at the slightest touch. They have proven to be a serious, long-lasting threat, especially to civilians, but also to soldiers, peacekeepers and bomb clearance experts. Children, who are sometimes attracted to the bomblets’ bright colors and interesting shapes, represent a high percentage of victims.” Bombies
Cluster bombs have been a favorite of the United States dropping them on Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Iraq. It is estimated that 400 million people live near unexploded cluster bombs. In Israel’s offensive against Lebanon in 2006 they were extensively used as well. In recent years, Norway has led an international effort called the “Oslo Process” to ban the weapons and nearly 100 countries have signed on, but the United States has again refused to sign.
When I told people I was taking a class with veteran anti-war activist Marv Davidov, I received a variety of responses. From coffee shop junkies who informed me that “Marv is a legend” to my own father who said “Oh yeah, who hasn’t heard of Marv Davidov?” Indeed, anyone from Minneapolis and probably any long-time peace activist will know the name Marv Davidov. Noam Chomsky reflected on Marv’s life saying, “Marv’s dedication and courage have been demonstrated in a way that has led to the creation of a community of committed people, whose ongoing activities have been an inspiration to others.”
Besides my Nain (Grandma in Welsh), Marv was the first person to introduce me to active nonviolence. In a class co-taught with Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, Marv recounted, full of personality, his “oral history” of activism. After coming home from war in Vietnam, Marv became an outspoken critic of the Minneapolis-based weapons manufacturer, Honeywell. He led a campaign known as the “Honeywell Project” that directly confronted the company’s manufacturing of cluster bombs. I remember when Marv brought in his exploded “bomblet” from a cluster bomb. He told us that he used to carry it everywhere he went. Marv’s story of his fight against cluster bombs was compelling and left us all wanting to carry on his tradition. Today, Alliant Techsystems manufactures these bombs and you will still see Marv’s face out at the site at the once a week vigil.
After my class with Marv I had the opportunity to spend time with him while we campaigned together for, in his words “the second coming of Paul [wellstone],” his hero Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer for US Congress. I also had the opportunity to spend a weekend with him traveling by van to Goshen for a peace conference.
Today, according to an Associated Press article, 48 countries meet in Oslo, Norway, not least because of the work of Marv Davidov, to discuss a drive that will call for the end of the use of cluster bombs.
To hear this makes me think of Marv and his legacy. It also makes me think of how fortunate I am to have studied nonviolence under such a living legend. Most of all, however, when I think of Marv I don’t think of his legendary character. Instead, I think of the Marv I have known - the man who loves to the talk shit, swear, and smoke cigarettes; the man who was the first to jump in front of every camera at every protest in order to speak out against injustice. When I think of Marv I begin to laugh because he is one funny son-of-a-bitch. Marv’s legacy will endure, of course, and one day my baby boy will live in a world without cluster bombs. I thank Marv for this.
Published on Monday, August 21, 2006 by the Guardian / UK
Four dead as mine-clearing teams fear death toll from Israeli weapons could soar
by Declan Walsh
When the guns went silent in Aitta Shaab, a war-ravaged village close to the Israeli border, three children skipped through the rubble looking for a little fun.
Hurdling over lumps of crushed concrete and dodging spikes of twisted metal, Sukna, Hassan and Merwa, aged 10 to 12, paused before a curious object. Sukna picked it up. The terrifying blast flung her to the ground, thrusting metal shards into her liver. Hassan’s abdomen was cut open. Merwa was hit in the leg and arm.
“We thought it was just a little ball,” said Hassan with a hoarse whisper in the intensive care ward at Tyre’s Jabal Amel hospital. In the next bed Sukna, a ventilator cupped to her mouth and a tangle of tubes from her arms, said even less.
Her mother watched anxiously. “The Israelis wanted to defeat Hizbullah,” said Najah Saleh, 40. “But what did these children ever do to them?”
Israel may be pulling out of Lebanon but its soldiers leave behind a lethal legacy of this summer’s 34-day war. The south is carpeted with unexploded cluster bombs, innocuous looking black canisters, barely larger than a torch battery, which pose a deadly threat to villagers stumbling back to their homes.
Mine-clearing teams scrambling across the region have logged 89 cluster bomb sites so far, and expect to find about 110 more. Meanwhile, casualties are being taken into hospital - four dead and 21 injured so far. Officials fear the toll could eventually stretch into the thousands.
“We already had a major landmine problem from previous Israeli invasions, but this is far worse,” said Chris Clark of the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre in Tyre, standing before a map filled with flags indicating bomb sites.
Cluster bombs are permitted under international law, but UN and human rights officials claim Israel violated provisions forbidding their use in urban areas. “We’re finding them in orange plantations, on streets, in cars, near hospitals - pretty much everywhere,” Mr Clark said.
The bombs are ejected from artillery shells in mid-flight, showering a wide area with explosions that can kill within 10 metres (33ft). But up to a quarter fail to explode, creating minefields that kill civilians once the war is over. A decades-old campaign to ban them has failed.
Israel turned to cluster bombs in the last week of the war, apparently frustrated at the failure of conventional weapons to rout Hizbullah fighters from their foxholes. Mine-clearance teams are finding evidence pointing to their provenance: the US, the world’s largest cluster bomb manufacturer, which gave Israel $2.2bn (£1.2bn) in military aid last year.
In Nabatiye, 15 people were injured in just one day along a bomb-strewn road. In Tibnin, 210 bombs were found around the town hospital. “That’s about as inappropriate [a use of cluster bombs] as you can get,” Mr Clark said.
In Yahmour, a hilly frontline village that has become a complex urban minefield, minesweepers from the UK-based Mine Action Group have cleared the main roads and some house entrances. But danger lurks everywhere. One elderly woman lost her leg in an explosion last Monday as she swept her yard.
Now holes pock the road, yellow tape appears around fields and houses, and residents tip-toe around the “grape bombs”. Ilham Tarhini, 45, stood at her front door appealing for help. After returning from refuge in Syria three days ago she found tiny bomblets poking from the soil of her garden of olive trees. From where she was standing she could count eight: “I’m afraid to step into the streets.”
But the most volatile payload sat in Jamil Zuhoor’s living room. During the war an unexploded rocket packed with bomblets punched through his front wall, skidding to a halt before a chest of drawers. “I can’t see us moving back in here for another year at least,” he said, shutting the door of his shattered house.
The UN is appealing for money and minesweepers. With such help it hopes the worst-hit areas can be cleared within six months, Mr Clarke said. But until then residents live in fear.
Many share the blame equally between Israel and the US. “It’s like we are living in a prison,” said Aisa Hussain, 38, a Yahmour resident who has ordered his children to remain inside his house.
Strolling through the village he pointed to yet another tiny black canister perched under a tree. “You see what America is sending us,” he said bitterly. “This is their idea of democracy.”
Backstory
Cluster bombs were first used by the Germans in the second world war but have become a standard weapon for many countries, including Britain, France and Italy.
The most popular delivery device, the American-made M26 rocket, scatters 644 bomblets over 20,000 square metres. Under test conditions up to 23% of bomblets from the M26 failed to explode on impact. The United States keeps 370,000 such rockets in stock.
The M26 inflicted hundreds of civilian casualties in Iraq in 2003, says Human Rights Watch, over populated areas. The British army used M26s in the 1991 Gulf war
The US halted cluster bomb exports to Israel in 1982 after indiscriminate use against civilians but rescinded the ban in 1988. Belgium is the only country in the world that has banned cluster bombs.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
###
