Bomblets are exactly what they sound like: small bombs. They are, however, encased in big bombs, or shells. The complete package is called a cluster bomb: a big bomb filled with bomblets, or submunitions, that are blanketed over an area. Not only are cluster bombs (by design) not precise, and therefore an immediate threat to civilians trapped by war, they leave unexploded bomblets, or duds, to be happened upon like antipersonnel landmines long after they've been dropped or launched.
When a cluster bomb is dropped in an airstrike, its shell opens midair and releases a multitude of bomblets. Attached to each bomblet is a nylon drag ribbon, giving it a somewhat controlled descent. This is necessary because, in order to explode, the ribbon must flutter in the wind to arm the bomblet and the cylindrical bomblet must land perpendicular to the ground to detonate. The falling bomblets are reminiscent of the toy paratroopers with which I played as a child. Tragically, children often mistake unexploded bomblets for toys, a mistake that potentially costs the child his or her life or limbs.
 |
| BLU-97 |
Cluster bombs are also fired from the ground by multiple launch rocket system (MLRS) launchers.
Cluster bomb technology was first developed by the Germans during WWII. The butterfly bomb, as the Germans called it, wreaked havoc on the Allies during the war and is still causing problems today.
Since WWII cluster bomb technology has been used extensively, especially by the US. Hundreds of millions of submunitions have been dropped or launched by the US since the 1960s. According to the Landmine and Cluster Munitions Monitor, the US has used cluster bombs in the Middle East (Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Libya, Lebanon), Central and Southeast Asia (Afghanistan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Lao PDR), Eastern Europe (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo), and on the small island of Grenada in the Caribbean Sea.
In Iraq alone, during Operation Iraqi Freedom, nearly 250,000 submuntions were dropped from the air, and upwards of two million were launched from the ground. According to a Human Rights Watch report, ground-launched cluster bombs were used extensively in populated areas and residential neighborhoods, killing and maiming civilians by the dozens and hundreds.
These number are dwarfed, however, by the number of bomblets dropped in the Gulf War: twenty million. Of these twenty million, the duds alone have killed 1,600 civilians and injured 2,500 (see video below).
Most recently, the Obama administration covertly fired at least one cruise missile loaded with BLU-97 submunitions (pictured above) into Yemen, causing immediate civilian casualties as well as multiple deaths and injuries in the following days.
Obama, though a Nobel Peace Laureate, has refused to sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), to which 108 states, including Iraq and Afghanistan, have acceded. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, who is the first Secretary of Defense to serve two different political parties consecutively, said that the US cannot become a party to the CCM because "cluster munitions are an integral part of our and many of our coalition partners' military operations." Gates has also said that cluster bombs are "legitimate weapons with clear military utility." Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, like Gates, believes cluster bombs are legitimate weapons: in 2006, she voted against Senate Amendment No. 4882, which had a stated aim to ban cluster bomb use "in or near any concentrated population of civilians, whether permanent or temporary, including inhabited parts of cities or villages, camps or columns of refugees or evacuees, or camps or groups of nomads." (The amendment failed.)
Instead of banning cluster bombs, the US put in motion a policy that "improves" the reliability of bomblets, i.e. lowers the dud rate. Under the new policy, set to fully take effect in 2018, the US will not produce, acquire or use cluster bombs that exceed a dud rate of one percent; meanwhile, the US hypocritically believes it's acceptable to use cluster bombs with high dud rates.
The 99 percent reliability rate seems to safeguard civilians from harm, but it begs the question: If the US is acting on bad intelligence, as it often does (and let's not forget Iraq's phantom WMD program), or a bomb goes off-target and strikes civilians, as happened in Qala Shater, Afghanistan, won't more bomblets exploding on impact kill more civilians immediately (as opposed to later)? The fact that these bombs are inaccurate and indiscriminate is reason enough to discontinue their use. Not to mention the fact that one percent of the twenty million bomblets dropped in the Gulf War equals 200,000. That is, even under the new policy, hundreds of thousands of duds--effective landmines--would have still littered farmland, fields, city streets, roads, schoolyards, etc.
JUST IMAGINE
Imagine you are granted a look into your future. Giddily, you prepare yourself to see if, or to what extent, you've achieved your short-term goals. Tragically, devastatingly you see your actual future: a life without legs, bound to a wheelchair like Soraj Ghulam Habib. Or, like Ali Hussein Chibli, you see you've become a one-legged, destitute man, crippled even further by the death of your son.
Imagine how often you'd be reminded of your injuries and losses, how often you'd come to ask yourself, "For what?" I imagine Habib asking himself, "What did the US gain by dropping the bomb that eventually took my legs, an index finger, and my cousin?"
In Chibli's case, I imagine he asks himself, "Is Israel safer now that they've taken my son, my leg, and my farmland? Does the Israeli government sleep better now that my son's dreams have vanished and I can only dream of my son?"
I imagine Habib and Chibli, like me, are stunned and terrified by the fact that major powers, including the US, Russia, China, and Israel, oppose a ban on cluster bombs. Certainly no moral objective has ever been, or will ever be, achieved through such a wicked and iniquitous weapon.
