Campaign newsletter (Issue 13), four articles: Cluster munitions and remotely delivered landmines, Dumb cluster bomb policy, A sensor fuzed solution? and Spiked!

campaignissue 13 | autumn 2007

A large number of states are now committed to conclude in 2008 a treatyprohibition on cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians. The

process of developing that treaty still faces tough arguments about how cluster munitions are defined and what, ifanything, might escape prohibition. This newsletter provides Landmine Action’s perspective on some of thosedifficult questions.

Lasamay, 17 years old, injured in 2004 while collecting scrap metalPhoto: Alison Locke

In this issue t

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landmine action campaign issue 13 • autumn 20072 Focus

Definition

The Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) has now proposed adefinition for what should be prohibited under a new treaty.

“A cluster munition is a weapon comprising multiple explosive submunitionswhich are dispensed from a container.

“An explosive submunition is a munition designed to be dispensed in multiplequantities from a container and to detonate prior to, on, or after impact.”

This definition is clear and broad. It offers no exceptions.

It offers no exceptions for solutions that do not work in practice: there is no exemption, for example, for submunitions fitted with self-destruct mechanisms.

The CMC proposal offers no exceptions on the basis of unsubstantiated claims: there is no exemption, for example, for ‘sensor fuzed weapons’.

During the process of negotiating an international treaty there will be numerous demands that this and that type of cluster munition should not be prohibited. This Landmine Actionnewsletter focuses on these issues and on the questions that they raise. In looking at them we see underlying themes regarding the burden of proof and the need for evidence. Given that real civilian lives at stake, it is striking how little substantive evidence governments have put forward to explain why their proposed solutions will be sufficient. Where demands forexemptions have already been made they have not been backed up with evidence that would be considered sufficient in any other area of public health policy. The requirement for evidence is particularly important against the background of a long history of misleading claims and failed solutions.

There are no exemptions in the CMC proposal because none are justified on the basis of theevidence that states have presented. Landmine Action believes any future prohibition should be based on this strong definition – to produce a treaty committed to the protection of civilians,without exceptions.


3landmine action campaign issue 13 • autumn 2007 Focus

By Richard Moyes

Cluster munitions and landmines are oftenlinked together. In conflict after conflict,cluster munitions have left areas likeminefields – densely littered with lethalexplosives. Like landmines, these itemsthen kill, injure and deprive those living in the post-conflict environment.

Many of the organisations now workingfor an international ban on cluster bombshave a history of working to eradicatelandmines. Given this, it should be nogreat surprise that the definition of clustermunitions recently adopted by the ClusterMunition Coalition should also captureremotely-delivered or ‘scatterable’landmines under its call for a prohibition.

Scatterable landmines – which can beused to create minefields from a distance –are among the most insidious of landminevariants. They can turn large areas intominefields at the push of a button. Theseare ‘victim-activated’ weapons, which will kill and injure soldiers or civilianswithout distinction.

But aren’t landmines already banned?The 1997 anti-personnel Mine Ban Treatyoutlaws the use of scatterable anti-personnel mines but scatterable anti-vehicle mines are not covered. Andalthough it is supported by more than 150 countries, there are still some majormilitary powers that haven’t signed up to that law.

The UN Convention on ConventionalWeapons (CCW) says that scatterablemines are legal weapons – but that theyneed to be used with certain restrictions.Under the CCW scatterable anti-personnelmines should include certain self-destructand self-deactivation mechanisms to limittheir active life. Many states at the CCWbelieve that scatterable anti-vehicle minesshould also be required to have suchfeatures, but after more than 5 years oftalking and watering down proposals, still no legally binding controls have been agreed.

In the process of drafting a clusterbomb treaty, argument is most likely to focus on the anti-vehicle variant ofscatterable mines – should they fall within

the scope of the treaty at all, and if soshould they really be prohibited outright?

First and foremost, it is very likely thatgovernments will argue that these arecompletely different weapons and need to be dealt with through separatediscussions. But is this really the case?After all, the definitions of clustermunitions and submunitions used in the International Mine Action Standards,by the United Nations and by NATO, allalso agree that scatterable mines aresubmunitions. The CMC’s inclusion ofthem is hardly radical then.

What is more, the different treatmentof scatterable mines as opposed to mineslaid by hand in the UN CCW suggests thateven in this very conservative forum it isrecognised that scatterable mine are adistinct type of landmine and one thatposes particular humanitarian problems.

What is more, certain more moderncluster munitions, with so-called sensorfuzed submunitions, are supposed only todetonate due to the presence or proximityof vehicles. This seems very like thedefinition of an anti-vehicle mine.

So it seems hard to argue that there isany intrinsic reason why scatterable minesin general, and scatterable anti-vehiclemines in particular, should not fall withinthe scope of a new cluster bomb treaty.

The next issue is the case for theirprohibition. Anti-vehicles are, after all,victim activated weapons that many wouldargue are inherently indiscriminate. Wherethe attackers cannot control the level ofcivilian access to minefields they havecreated remotely it can be argued that the effects of the attack cannot be limitedto military objectives in the way thatinternational law demands.

Where anti-vehicle mines have beenused in large numbers they have had asevere impact on the civilian population.This has been felt most acutely where theuse of anti-vehicle mines on roads hasblocked access by government andhumanitarian agencies to some of the mostvulnerable populations in post-conflictenvironments. Unknown thousands havebeen denied clean water, food, healthcareand other assistance as a result.

For remotely delivered anti-vehiclemines, which cannot even be mapped andfenced off effectively at the time of use, theonly solution short of a prohibition – assuggested by the CCW – is that thesemines must have self-destruct and self-deactivation mechanisms. The standardproposed by the CCW for such mechanismsis that no more than 10% of the mines willfail to self-destruct after 45 days and thatno more than 1 in 1,000 of the mines willbe capable of functioning after 120 daysthrough the combination of self-destructand self-deactivation. There are three keyconcerns with this proposed solution:● The time delay is so long that any

number of civilians could try to use the area within that period. 120 days is longer than the main combat phaseof a number of recent conflicts,meaning that 10% of the mines couldcontinue to be active even when post-conflict recovery operations were beingimplemented.

● If the munitions do not self destructthey are left lying on the ground. Localpeople and clearance organisationswill have treat all of these mines as if they are live – meaning that roadscontinue to be blocked andhumanitarian assistance is denied.

● Reliability: The self-destruct and self-deactivation mechanisms on thesemines are not relied upon so much in case the main fuse fails as becausethe mine simply has not registered the presence, proximity or contact of avehicle. This makes these mechanismsarguably more reliable than backupself-destruct mechanisms on impact-fuzed submunitions for example.However, much more substantivereliability data would need to bepresented by states in order provideconfidence that these systems reallydo function as claimed.These are serious short-comings in the

only proposals states have yet offered tolimit the humanitarian impact of theseweapons without banning them outright.

States should explain and demonstratehow they will overcome these concernsand thus demonstrate that they canreliably limit the impact of these weaponson the civilian population in the way thatinternational law demands. Unless theycan do so, there are no grounds forexcluding scatterable anti-vehicle minesfrom a prohibition on cluster munitions.

Cluster munitions and remotelydelivered landmines


4 Focus landmine action campaign issue 13 • autumn 2007

By Richard Moyes

The UK Government wants to keep clustermunitions with self-destruct mechanismsand so-called ‘direct fire’ cluster munitions.However, its arguments for the exemptionof these systems from a future ban havefailed to convince key parliamentaryoversight bodies. The justifications that government officials have musteredmake little sense and the confusing claims look set to create a legal tangle for Ministers, civil servants and militarycommanders alike.

Against this backdrop, the UK’s efforts toturn its national policy into an internationallaw look all the more cynical.

In a ruse apparently copied from theGerman Government’s widely rejecteddraft cluster munition Protocol to the CCW,the UK proposed in June 2007 that so-called ‘direct fire’ munitions should not beeligible for definition as cluster munitions.A few months later, and without anyannouncement, it turned out that this‘draft definition’ for the CCW was now UKGovernment policy.

This change is particularly confusingfor Parliamentarians in the UK. At thebeginning of 2006 these weapons weresimply cluster munitions, by the end of theyear they were smart cluster munitions,and a few months later they were notcluster munitions at all.

To make matters still more confusing,the justifications provided by UK officialsdon’t make any sense either. Officials haveexplained that “in the direct fire role thefiring crew has line of sight from theplatform to the target and has asophisticated target identification andacquisition system to aid discrimination.”However, there is no explanation at all of why these weapons will not causeexactly the same post-conflict harm asother forms of cluster bomb. Being able to see the target at the time of attack hasno bearing on the post conflict effects of a weapon.

When the Government was challengedabout its sudden decision to claim thatthese weapons were no longer clusterbombs, officials scored another own goal.Ministry of Defence sources told the BBC

that the UK’s position on this wasendorsed by both the NorwegianGovernment and the InternationalCommittee of the Red Cross (ICRC) – thisclaim was straightforwardly untrue (a factthat the BBC reported) and the MoD had to issue a public retraction.

The UK’s handling of its direct fireexclusion has weakened its credibility onthe issue of cluster munitions as a whole.Its explanations don’t make any senseand, most bizarrely, the whole line ofargument seems anyway unnecessary. If its primary desire was to protect itsApache-launched CRV7 cluster munitionsfrom a future prohibition, then the UK hasalso proposed that weapons with less than10 submunitions should not be consideredcluster munitions. This numbers basedexclusion can and should be challenged –but it at least can be argued seriously withmeaningful points on both sides.

Self-destruct mechanismSince November 2006, when it unveiled its ‘dumb’ cluster bomb policy, the UK has been arguing that submunitions withself-destruct mechanisms are an adequatesolution to the post-conflict problemscaused by cluster bombs.

UK officials have no evidence to backup this opinion and the policy itself seemsto be based primarily on the fact that thearmy still has 2.8 million of thesesubmunitions left on the shelf.

Back in 2005, the UK had told the UN CCW, in a formal paper, that by 2015 all of its cluster munitions would have aself-destruct mechanism that wouldreduce their failure rate to “less than 1%.”Six months later the MoD tested its self-destructing munitions in Norway andfound the failure rate, even in ideal testconditions, was more than double whatthey had claimed.

As a result, the UK quietly dropped its“less than 1%” target and now argues thatany old self-destruct mechanism will do.

The use of M85 submunitions by Israelin Lebanon in 2006 has created furtherproblems for the UK Government. Ameeting of respected international expertsconvened by the ICRC (and eagerlysupported by UK officials before theyheard what the experts had to say)produced a number of presentationsattesting that the failure rate of thesemunitions in Lebanon was significantlyhigher than was being claimed bygovernments like the UK on the basis ofunrepresentative tests. Influential SelectCommittees in the UK House of Commonsstarted looking into the matter and havepublished a number of reports drawing the same conclusions: that even forsubmunitions with self-destruct mechanismsthe “potential to inflict death and injury oninnocent non-combatants entering the fieldafter the engagement is … substantial.”

Faced with mounting evidence that thisself-destruct solution does not in realityprotect people trying to rebuild their livesafter conflict, UK civil servants have beenforced to act; but not to protect civilians.Instead they have been forced to findexcuses as to why the expert evidencefrom Lebanon is not relevant to theweapons held by the UK.

Their first line of argument was toclaim that there was “confusion” amongthe expert sources as to whether theseM85 actually had self-destruct mechanisms.This line of argument had to be droppedbecause the only people who were sufferingfrom this confusion turned out to be theUK officials themselves.

The next line of argument, and oneofficially provided by the Government tothe Foreign Affairs Select Committee, isthat they are awaiting the findings of“Israel’s internal investigation into their

Dumb cluster bomb policy17 May 2007: Lord Triesman (The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State,Foreign and Commonwealth Office)

“I have always accepted that there are liable to be proven differencesbetween systematic testing and the figures generated by real conditions.It is very hard for obvious reasons to make an accurate estimation,although it would be valuable to continue working towards doing so.”


5landmine action campaign issue 13 • autumn 2007

systems’ performance.” However, whenquestioned further, it turns out that thereare no actual grounds for thinking Israelwill be publishing an estimate of M85failure rates. Given that Israel does nothave access to the areas where the clustermunitions landed (and hence would not beable to gather information on the numbersleft unexploded) it is hard to imagine howany such analysis could possibly be doneby Israel anyway.

The trump card of UK officials dealingwith this issue is to point out thatsampling of sites of contamination afterthe conflict, without having all of the dataon the numbers fired in specific locations,“can only have the status of an estimate.”But this has been clearly acknowledged byall of the individual experts and NGOs thathave analysed this issue.

The problem that UK officials have toface up to is that their own tests, conductedon flat, hard ground, without vegetation orstructures, with ideal weather conditions,and firing only a small sample of the M85sthat the UK holds in its stockpiles, arethemselves only capable of producing anestimate of the actual contamination thatthese weapons will create when used in

conflict. Despite numerous officialstatements over the years noting howground conditions and other factors affectperformance, the testing done by the UKmakes no efforts to simulate actualoperational conditions. There are noscientific grounds on which the UK canargue that its tests present a moreaccurate indicator of performance incombat than the sampling and estimationsmade after actual combat use.

While UK civil servants may thinkadopting a posture of wilful ignorance will be sufficient to convince the SelectCommittees (and this seems highlyunlikely) their posture is also creating a serious legal liability should UKcommanders use M85 in combat.

Only last year, the UK declared that theforeseeable unexploded ordnance risk ofan attack should be considered whencommanders assess whether an attackwould be legal under the laws of war. TheMoD has also asserted that it draws oninformation regarding the failure rates ofthe munition as a guide.

If the UK did use M85 submunitions in the future, and if post-conflict civiliancasualties did occur (as they did when the

UK used these weapons in the past) theapproach taken to the Lebanon evidence by UK officials would no doubt come underserious legal scrutiny. Perhaps the civilservants involved can reassure themselvesthat it will be the commanders on theground, not them, that would bear criminalresponsibility for not having this informationon possible higher failure rates that theyshould reasonably have known.

The price of confusionThe UK’s approach to the issue of clustermunitions is in danger of creatingexcessive levels of confusion. For example,probably the biggest problem with theUK’s proposed direct fire exclusion is that the justifications proffered for it are so irrelevant and insubstantial thatParliamentarians and other key decisionmakers presume they are missingsomething. This does make it moredifficult for civil society campaigners whoneed to keep clear arguments to the forein order to mobilise the widespread publicsupport that exists on this issue and theconvince Ministers to take action.

In the long run though, with more than80% of the UK public consistently in supportof a ban, this confusion may be more of aproblem for the civil servants that havecreated it.

For example, having muddied thewaters considerably with its ‘dumb’ and‘smart’ definitions, not to mention itssudden but unannounced redefinition ofcertain cluster munitions as ‘not clustermunitions’, UK officials may face an uphillstruggle explaining over the months aheadhow they plan to replace M85 whilst alsoarguing that M85 needs to be retained.According to current intelligence thereplacement for these so-called ‘smart’cluster bombs will be further ‘smart’cluster bombs – but really smart this time,not dumb like the last smart ones – andnot cluster bombs at all actually becausethey will have too few submunitions… Ifthese munitions happened also to becalled SMArt then the confusion will be all the greater.

Short-term thinking and hastilyconstructed policies and proposals are in danger of creating a tangle that UKofficials will struggle to find away out of.With the recently published CMC definitionrejecting an exclusion for ‘sensor fuzed’munitions, the future of UK clustermunitions policy looks long and arduousfor NGOs and civil servants alike.

Focus

Suraj, 15 years old, injured in Afghanistan 2003Photographer: Alison Locke



By Richard Moyes

Some states have suggested that ‘sensorfuzed’ submunitions should be exempt from the coming prohibition on clustermunitions. These submunitions use infra-red and other sensors to search for and engage targets on the ground. The container disperses a number ofsubmunitions over a broad ‘target area’ and within that area the submunitions aredesigned to identify ‘point targets’ –usually vehicles – and attack them by firingan ‘explosively formed projectile’ while thesubmunition is still in the air.

Types currently in service include the U.S.air-launched ‘Sensor Fused Weapon’ (with 40 submunitions), the German SMArt 155and Swedish BONUS artillery projectiles(both with 2 submunitions each). Proponentsof these types of weapons, includingapparently progressive states, claim thatthese weapons are not indiscriminate in the area they affect and they leave a very low number of ‘dangerous duds’. However,despite repeated requests fromhumanitarian organisations since 2003, nodetailed evidence from actual use or testingof these weapons has been presented inpublic to justify such assertions.

There is a well documented history ofgovernments making unsubstantiated claimsabout the performance and acceptability ofcluster munitions. In the 1970s the UK’s BL-755 cluster bomb was feted by Governments’because it saturated only a “small area” bycomparison with some of its predecessors.Thirty years and many civilian casualties laterthe UK has finally acknowledged that theseweapons have an unacceptably high failurerate and declared a moratorium on their use.In the last year, analysis of the performanceof Israeli M85 submunitions with self-destruct mechanisms in Lebanon hasundermined assertions by the manufacturersand countries like the UK which stockpilethem, that these submunitions present nosignificant post-conflict threat. Civilianscontinue to be killed and injured by thesesubmunitions.

The history of misleading governmentclaims about the effectiveness andefficiency of their cluster munitions shoulddemand that current claims are treated withthe greatest scepticism.

Given that only a few of these newsensor fused weapons have ever been usedin combat, and certain models have notbeen used at all, the issue of sensor fuzedweapons is actually quite simple. It boilsdown to a question: what is a sufficient levelof proof that these weapons will not causehumanitarian problems? Given that civilianlives are at stake, surely it is notunreasonable to demand more thanunsubstantiated assertions? Is there anyarea of public health where such a lowstandard of proof would be required beforenew and potentially dangerous technologywas introduced for use by governments? Arobust treaty process that takes protectionof civilians as its priority, should requiresubstantiated answers to several questionsbefore any assessment of the acceptabilityof these weapons can be made.

These questions regarding sensor fuzedand target-detecting submunitions include:

● How accurate is the container munition?If the container munition is not accuratethen the submunition search area willnot be in the right place. This mayincrease the risk of civilian objects beinginadvertently identified as targets.

● What area is covered by thesubmunitions?The US Sensor Fuzed Weapon (BLU-108),for example, covers an area of some 30acres (more than 120,000 m2). Such awide target area increases the likelihoodof the target area overlapping areas ofcivilian population. The larger the areacovered the more likely it is that the area will also contain civilian objectsthat may be identified as targets by the submunitions.

● What type or level of heat source will betargeted by the weapon?Although they are intended to strikemilitary vehicles the sensors on thesesubmunitions are designed to respondto heat sources of a rough size andshape. This means that any heat sourcethat matches the basic profile will betargeted by the weapons and civilianvehicles are just as likely to be struck as military vehicles.

● Within areas of civilian population howcommon are the sorts of object thatmight be targeted?In areas of civilian population,particularly in the developing worldwhere grid electricity supply isintermittent, heat sources of the sizeand shape equivalent to a vehicleengine are likely to be commonplace. Asnoted above, more information would beneeded to determine what other types ofobject, for instance householdgenerators, might also trigger attacks.

● How reliably or accurately do theindividual submunitions strike theindividual targets?Another point of risk for the civilianpopulation relates to how accurately the individual submunitions strike theirintended targets.

Detailed assessment of these points is necessary to determine whether theseweapons are distinct from other clustermunitions and whether consideration shouldbe given to excluding them from the comingban. Some proposals to exempt theseweapons have referred to their ability tostrike ‘point targets’ without identifying thespecific characteristics of a point target oracknowledging that in this case a ‘pointtarget’ may refer to a civilian ambulance justas much as a tank. As a point of comparison,would it be considered acceptable for groundtroops to spread out across a 30 acre areaand, without specific warnings, to randomlystrike military and civilian vehicles alike?Within the area affected by these weapons,commanders would be giving up anycapacity to distinguish between military and civilian objects.

The post-conflict threatWhere governments have suggested that‘sensor fuzed’ weapons be exempted fromthe ban on cluster bombs, they have to dateoffered no evidence that weapons of thistype will not also fail in large numbers andcause post conflict contamination. Thus adraft text proposed for the Lima conferencesuggested an exemption for sensor fuzedsubmunitions without requiring them tohave any features that would ensure againstan excessive post conflict impact. If a sensorfuzed weapon had 100 submunitions andfailure rate of 50%, would it be acceptable?

A sensor fuzed solution?



Under the terms of the Lima draft text, andother proposals that have been put forward,the answer would be yes.

All the sensor fuzed weapons currentlyon the market are thought to featureelectronic fuzes – with self-destruct andself-neutralisation mechanisms – butgiven the history of claims regardingcluster munitions wouldn’t it be sensibleto see some proof that these mechanismsactually work, and to a very high degree of reliability?

In the Convention on ConventionalWeapons many states have agreed inprinciple that scatterable mines designed tobe detonated by the presence, proximity orcontact of a vehicle, should require bothself-destruct and self-deactivationmechanisms, such that only 1 in 1000 ofthese weapons might continue to functionafter a certain period of time. Why wouldthis obligation not be required for sensorfuzed weapons as an absolute minimum?

The following questions should beaddressed regarding the post-conflict threatproduced by these weapons:● How has any self-destruct reliability

been tested and evaluated?● How accurately are these tests thought

to predict performance in actualcombat? What issues of uncertaintyremain?

● What level of reliability has been foundin operational and test conditions for theperformance of the submunitions and ofany self-destruct or fail-safemechanisms?

● If explosive submunitions are notreleased due to a failure in one of thecarrier munitions are they also designedto self-destruct in these circumstances?

● How dangerous are any unexplodedsubmunitions and under whatcircumstances would they be consideredsafe to handle (Are they considered safeto move in explosive ordnance disposalprotocols? Would they be consideredsafe to bring into a public place and bepassed around amongst the public?

ConclusionsIn calling for a prohibition on sensor-fusedweapons, NGOs are displaying a level ofprecaution that would be consideredcommon place in any other area of publichealth where new technologies are beingintroduced that may put the public at risk.

A further challenge for NGOs comes withthe recognition that states may reject thiscall. Such a rejection may be based ondetailed analysis of evidence resulting in aconclusion that these weapons aresufficiently different to other clustermunitions not to present the same problemsof excessive civilian risk. Rather more likelyis that these weapons will be excluded fromthe prohibition as a result of political horse-trading that is not backed up by evidence orrational argument. If this were to be thecase, then NGOs and committed statesshould not allow such weapons to fallcompletely outside the scope of a treaty. Ifthe political process of negotiation leadsthat way, then a future treaty could bancluster bombs and still exert controls over‘other submunition-based weapons.’

The decision to prohibit ‘clustermunitions’ as a category should not blindpeople to this possibility. If excluded on thebasis of political horse-trading, rather thansubstantive evidence and analysis, suchweapons may go on to cause excessivecivilian harm in the future.

In the ten years since the anti-personnelMine Ban Treaty, Governments have triedand failed within the consensus-basedConvention on Conventional Weapons (CCW)to agree to enhanced regulations governingthe use anti-vehicle mines – weapons thatare not prohibited by the Mine Ban Treaty. A large body of states seem to considerenhanced legal control over anti-vehiclemines to be necessary but neither the MineBan Treaty nor the CCW have provided aneffective mechanism for them to achievethat. Sensor fuzed weapons, which aredesigned to be detonated by the presenceor proximity of a vehicle, may yet be part ofthe process of international legislation overanti-vehicle mines.

Given the difficulty of opening up thepolitical and diplomatic space in whichgenuinely progressive humanitarianlegislation restricting the means andmethods of warfare can be developed,unnecessarily contracting the scope of such legislation would be a grave error.

Zahra, 11 years old, injured in Lebanon 2006

Photographer: Alison Locke

15 December 2006: The Bishop of Coventry

“In medicine, if an apparently effective drug has too many bad side-effects it is withdrawn from circulation. Cluster bombs produce toomany bad side-effects. I believe that any society that claims to becivilised should outlaw practices that may at present be legal but that future generations will undoubtedly see as immoral”



By Simon Conway, Co-Chair, Cluster Munition Coalition

When considering the history of the useof cluster munitions, particularly theAmerican saturation bombing of the Plainof Jars in Laos during the secret war therein the 1970’s, the shelling of Afghanvillages with rockets during the Sovietoccupation in the 1980’s or the morerecent Israeli assault on Lebanon, whenmore than four million clustersubmunitions – most of them fired withinthe last 72 hours of the conflict – raineddown upon the impoverished Shiitevillages of the south, it is tempting todraw a parallel with a scene from theopening chapters of Conrad’s seminal1899 novel Heart of Darkness. Marlow,the main protagonist, witnesses a Frenchwarship lying off the African coastindiscriminately shelling an impenetrableforest. The image of the boat’s six inchguns hurling explosive-filled steel shellsinto the darkness of a continent becamea powerful metaphor for the vanity andhypocrisy of turn-of-the-century Europeanimperialism, its high ideals so easilyreduced to an atavistic and ultimatelyfutile desire to punish.

For forty years, from Laos to Lebanon,cluster munitions have been the weaponof choice of industrialised nations for useagainst poorer, agrarian nations, but, as is clear from Iraq today technologicalsuperiority is not in itself sufficient toprevent failure. In 1975, Harry G Summers,an army colonel who later wrote a historyof the Vietnam War, told a NorthVietnamese colonel, ‘You never defeatedus on the battlefield,’ and the colonelreplied, ‘That may be so, but it is alsoirrelevant’. The US may have consistentlydefeated North Vietnamese Army and VietCong units, but the manner in which themilitary success was achieved – over 380million submunitions dropped – had a vastpolitical cost, such that any benefit of localtactical victory was entirely nullified.

War always involves killing people anddestroying things, but whether or not this

death and destruction comes at too high apolitical cost is dependent on the choice oftargets and the types of weapons used –simply put, it is the method of overcomingthe enemy which determines the outcome– to quote General Rupert Smith in hisbook, The Utility of Force: “If the militarysuccess is achieved by bombing civiliantargets and causing the loss of manycivilian lives, which results in a strongnational and international public reaction,the chances are it will not be easilyconverted into political capital”.

The reason that the use of clustermunitions has proven to be socontroversial and has so consistentlyfailed to achieve the results intended is as

a consequence both of their design and of the nature of modern warfare. The verywide area effect of cluster munitionsmeans that when used in modern conflictin which the enemy is embedded incivilian areas – “amongst the people” – it is inevitable that there will be large scale civilian casualties.

The most significant event in thedesign and subsequent use of clustermunitions was the Korean War, whenAmerican military might was challenged by an enemy that was technologicallyinferior but with massive supplies ofmanpower. US commanders confrontedthe nightmare of seeing their forcesoverrun by hordes of enemy soldiers. The

Dtar, 33 years old, injured while fishing in Laos 2003

Photographer: Alison Locke

Cluster munitions: they won’t makefriends and they won’t win wars



result was a revolution in the design ofanti-personnel weapons with an emphasison the production of large quantities offast-flying fragments designed tomaximise the damage to soft tissue overthe widest possible area. This emphasison killing as many people as possible overthe broadest possible area had a kind oflogic to it as long as the threat of WarsawPact invasion was imminent. But it ignoresthe fact that in parallel to the threat ofinterstate industrial war, the US fought analmost continuous series of non-industrialwars, either directly or via proxies in bothAfrica and Asia, using the same area effectweapons designed for use against theSoviet horde and with predictably horrificeffects. On their side, the Soviets didmuch the same and then, in the chaos thatfollowed the Soviet collapse, the Yeltsinadministration extended their use into theformer Soviet Republics. Since the end ofthe Cold War, non-industrial or asymmetricwar has become the norm and clustermunitions have continued to bemanufactured, used and sold. We havesold them to irresponsible governments inEritrea, Ethiopia, Iraq and Iran. They havenow begun to fall into the hands of non-state actors, first in the former Yugoslavia,then in post-Soviet Afghanistan and mostrecently – from China via Iran - into thehands of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

There have been attempts, particularlysince the end of the Cold War, to downplaythe anti-personnel effects of the weaponand to emphasise the armour-piercingcharacteristics as if that might make themmore acceptable. And you can see howtheir minds’ are working: anti-personnelmines are illegal but anti-tank mines arenot. At the time of the conflict in Kosovo,

the British Foreign Secretary argued that“There is a use of cluster bombs but in thiscontext what that refers to are antitankweapons. Each of the clusters in them isdesigned to penetrate heavy armour”. Itwas a misleading claim, firstly because the240,000 submunitions dropped on Kosovo– causing more than 75 deaths andinjuries to civilians at the time of use andat least 152 post-conflict casualties – were“combined effects” munitions deliberatelydesigned to create antipersonnelfragmentation and not exclusively anti-armour, and secondly because it suggeststhat the targets they were dropped onwere primarily armour when in fact thiswas not the case.

In response to criticisms of the use ofcluster munitions in built up areas defenceofficials have stated that a far greaterweight of high explosive would have to bedelivered to achieve the same probabilityof destroying enemy forces when usingblast bombs instead of cluster munitions –in nutshell, if you don’t let us use clustermunitions we’ll have to flatten city blocks.Setting aside the fact that parties to aconflict “must at all times distinguishbetween the civilian population andcombatants and between civilian objectsand military objects” under the terms ofthe 1977 Geneva Conventions, the realsignificance is that in order to destroy apoint target such as an artillery, mortar oranti-aircraft position dug in at a roadjunction an area weapon is used, and fromthe fact that the weapon disperses anti-personnel fragmentation throughout thearea it follows that any civilian personnelwithin the area have become an integralpart of the target. The target area has beenenlarged as a consequence of the design

of the weapon – the death of civilians is anintrinsic consequence of the design of theweapon. A far better alternative to usingan area weapon against a point target is toimprove the accuracy of delivery of a pointweapon against a point target. We needweapons that hit the right targets and killthe right people. Killing the wrong peopleis the best recruiting sergeant for a newbreed of terrorists and the best way toperpetuate a conflict for generations. TheBritish Army learned that the hard way asa consequence of Bloody Sunday. Thesimple truth is that our opponents havelearned to drop below the threshold of theutility of our weapons. Their method is toforce our military to react in an excessivemanner against a guerilla force that isfighting amongst the people. The result isthat we end up killing the very people thatwe are supposed to be deliveringdemocracy or basic human rights to.

What we should now recognise is thatthe cluster munitions that we have andthat we continue to use are not fit forpurpose. War is no longer a singlemassive industrial event that delivers aconclusive result. The wars that we fightnow be it in Kosovo, Iraq or Afghanistanare wars to impose order. Our aim infighting them is to achieve and maintainorder in which political and economicmeasures can to take hold. Once again toquote General Rupert Smith, “there is agood principle of English Common Lawthat when you are faced with violentdisorder and it is your duty to quell itthen you are to take the course of actionwith the least likelihood of causing lossof life and property”. There is no betterargument for an immediate prohibition ofcluster munitions.

The capacity to kill large numbers ofpeople is not in itself sufficient to justifyclaims that cluster munitions have utility.If, by our choice of weapon systems we killlarge numbers of civilians it doesn’t matterhow noble our cause might be, we willalienate the very people that we areseeking to save. Using cluster munitions isnot the way to win wars in fact it’s the wayto lose wars.Let’s stop losing wars. Let’s stop killingcivilians. Let’s ban cluster bombs.www.stopclustermunitions.org

Field Marshall Lord Bramall

“If you liberally employ munitions that were designed for entirelydifferent circumstances but which under modern conditions of conflictare more notable for the appalling and abiding legacy of death andmutilation that they provide for our own follow-up troops and even more the countless innocent civilians in the area, you would be makingsubstantial inroads into any moral high ground and greatly weaken the chances of achieving your all-important political aim”.



By Richard Moyes

In June 2007, The U.S. made an interventionat the UN CCW arguing that the problem ofcluster munitions “is episodic, manageablewithin current response mechanisms and,on a global scale, less harmful than thethreat caused by other types ofunexploded ordnance.”

By focusing on a few examples we can draw out reasons why the overallarguments can be rejected or considered irrelevant.

The U.S. claims that among the 52countries where they have providedconventional weapons destructionassistance, “only ten have reported anythreat from cluster munitions.” Theargument here seems to be that clustermunitions are not a problem in countrieswhere they have not been used.

It was also argued that cluster munitioncasualties occur in a “spike” shortly afterthe cessation of hostilities. However, wherethis has been experienced, it might beattributed to focused efforts by theinternational community to address clustermunitions. In Kosovo and Lebanon clustermunitions clearly presented the principalunexploded ordnance threat in the wake ofthe conflict and were addressed as such.

UN casualty data for Kosovo showslandmines and cluster munitions casualtiesboth following a very similar pattern in theyear after the conflict. It is not then clearthat the “spike” that the U.S. has identifiedis a function of the munitions or of the typeof response mounted by the internationalcommunity (coupled with the developmentof coping strategies amongst the localpopulation) to the most severe forms ofpost-conflict threat.

The U.S. analysis draws on un-referenced casualty data taken overunknown periods. For example, it was claimed that in Lebanon cluster

munitions account for less than 10% of “total casualties.” According to MineAction Centre figures, casualties from14th August 2006 to June 23rd 2007 can be broken down as follows:

Type NumberCluster munition 217Anti-personnel mines 8Anti-tank mines 4Other unexploded ordnance 6Unknown 13Total 248

The U.S. claim only stands up if datais taken from a period before clustermunitions were used in massivenumbers. Added to the insight thatcluster munitions do not cause a problemin countries where they have not beenused, we can add the revelation thatcluster munitions don’t cause a problembefore they have been used.

Since the last major war, clustermunitions have accounted for at least87% of all landmine and ERW casualtiesin Lebanon. Their statistical analysis endsup falling into a trap of its own making. It is stated that submunitions inAfghanistan make up “less than 1 one-

hundredth of 1 per cent of contamination”in that country (i.e. <0.01%), andelsewhere it is noted that they make upless than 2% of the casualties. If we takethese figures as approximates it suggeststhat submunitions cause a proportion of civilian death and injury 200 timesgreater than one would expect given theirprevalence amongst the contamination.Thus, on average, a single submunitionpresents a risk to civilians equivalent to200 of the other items of contaminationthey are compared against when thoseare treated as a homogenous group.

The relative risk of cluster munitionsbecomes even greater if one acknowledgesthat they are much more likely to createitems of unexploded ordnance than othermunitions (whether as a result of higherfailure rates or simply because there areso many in a container.)

Given this, we can only be thankfulthat cluster munitions have not beenused in more countries, with greaterfrequency or in greater numbers.

Indeed, the first on their list ofpractical suggestions to reduce thelikelihood of civilian casualties is “usingfewer cluster munitions.” At least on thatwe can probably all agree.

Spiked!Comparison of cluster munition and landmine casualties per month after the conflict in Kosovo

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9 July 2007: Lord Elton

“ … the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, replied in a letter on 15 May to saythat the British Government had handed the co-ordinates to NATO andthat NATO would “in due course” hand them to Serbia? It has beeneight years for children to blow their feet off. If NATO has not yet donethis, why can we not send our co-ordinates to the Serbians direct andget others to do the same?”



By Matthew Bolton

Cluster munitions are a security threat –unexploded bomblets pose a serious riskto the safety of civilians in many conflictzones. However, the institutions wecommonly expect to safeguard our security– governments and the military – are rarelyseen at the forefront of protecting civiliansfrom the effects of cluster munitions.

Moreover, the so called ‘great powers’who have permanent seats on the UnitedNations Security Council, a body whosename suggests it is responsible forprotecting the world, have failed toprovide a lead in the international effort to regulate or prohibit cluster munitions.

Instead, just as was the case with theinternational effort to ban anti-personnellandmines, the responsibility for building a global framework to protect civilians fromcluster bombs has fallen to actors that lieoutside the traditional security complex:NGOs, religious groups and the media,backing the political lead of smaller states.

The diplomacy of committed states andthe campaigning of the Cluster MunitionCoalition have put the issue of clustermunitions on the global radar. More than80 countries are now part of the ‘OsloProcess’ that aims to create a prohibitionon cluster munitions analogous to theantipersonnel Mine Ban Treaty. A new norm shunning the use of cluster bombletsis emerging.

The Oslo Declaration of February 2007,is not the first proposal to ban clusterbombs - but previous efforts fell on deafears. In 1973, shocked by the impact ofcluster munitions on civilians in Indochina(Vietnam, Cambodia and Lao), Sweden, anda group of other smaller states, presented a direct and bluntly worded proposal torestrict the use of antipersonnel weapons,including a ban on fragmentation clusterbomblets and aerially dispersed mines.

The diplomatic move did not come as a result of great power politics. The US,unsurprisingly, actively worked againstinformation about the impact of ordnancein Indochina reaching the rest of the world– it had kept the bombing of Lao more orless secret until 1969. The USSR, notusually one to let a propaganda

opportunity go by, was also loath to seerestrictions that might impact its ownmassive military machine.

Indeed, Sweden’s proposal witheredand died under the pressure of the greatpowers, which spread disinformation, castaspersions on the information gathered bythe Swedes and misled the public on thehuman impact of these weapons.

The diplomatic effort led by Sweden inthe 1970s had its own roots in the work ofidealistically motivated individuals who hadborne witness to the suffering being causedby these weapons during the Vietnam War.It was journalists and peace activists whofirst sounded the alarm about the impact ofcluster munitions on the civilian populationduring and after attacks.

For instance, the 1967 International WarCrimes Tribunal, an inquiry organized byphilosophers Bertrand Russell and Jean-PaulSartre, sent investigators to North Vietnamto examine US use of cluster munitions andcommissioned research by medical expertsinto the injuries they caused. The tribunalconcluded that cluster bombs “must beregarded as arms prohibited by the laws and customs of war.”

The first significant attempts to clear up and mitigate the effects of clustermunitions in Indochina were also notfunded by the great powers or implementedby military engineers. It was the Quakersand Mennonites, historic peace churchesproviding relief and reconstruction aid toLao, that first sought ways to find and clearup the unexploded bombs. Such actionswere the direct precursors of ‘mine action’being undertaken in the region today.

Anti-cluster bomb campaigning in the1970s, led by countries like Sweden andactivist groups like the peace churches,

failed to develop substantive restrictionson these weapons in part because theywere conducted in the great-power-centriccontext of the Cold War.

While they were able to raise publicconcern, their energy was dissipated,depoliticized and stifled in the highlytechnical discourse and proceedings ofCold War arms control meetings. The ColdWar reification of ‘national security’ placedconcerns about weapons firmly in thehands of the military, diplomats and arms‘experts’, rather than affected orconcerned civilians. This tradition lingerson to this day in the UN Convention onConventional Weapons.

Luckily for today’s cluster munitionscampaigners, the end of the Cold War andthe rising power of organised civil societyhas meant that the public is less willingdefer to the judgment and capacity ofgreat powers – and their militaries anddiplomats – in protecting civilians fromthe cluster munitions crisis.

The Cluster Munition Coalition is alsobuilding on the international ban on anti-personnel landmines, which has created acreated a broader public consciousness ofexplosive remnants of war, framed inhumanitarian, rather than military terms,and has shaped new norms about theimpact of weapons on civilians.

The success of the landmine ban andthe new disability convention show thatcoalitions of smaller states, internationalorganisations, NGOs and committedindividuals now have the ability to shapethe international agenda in a way theynever could during the Cold War. We mustseize this opportunity to finish the workstarted by Sweden and the peace churchesin the 1970s.

The powerful will not protect usLord Hannay of Chiswick; Former Permanent Representative to the UN.Currently Chair of the UNA UK

“We really must not accept that smart cluster munitions are somehowokay. I am sure we will have to accept less than global membership inthe early stages of any ban, as we have in the ban on landmines, butthere must be plenty of naming and shaming and of compelling therecalcitrants to explain and defend their position; we must not simplyallow them to get away with it as unavoidable.”


landmine action campaign issue 13 • autumn 2007Campaign Update

A group of States, United Nations Organisations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Cluster Munitions Coalitionand other humanitarian organisations met in Oslo on 22 – 23 February 2007 to discuss how to effectively address thehumanitarian problems caused by cluster munitions.

Recognising the grave consequences caused by the use of cluster munitions and the need for immediate action, states committhemselves to:

1. Conclude by 2008 a legally binding international instrument that will: (i) prohibit the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians, and

(ii) 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.

2. Consider taking steps at the national level to address these problems.

3. Continue to address the humanitarian challenges posed by cluster munitions within the framework of international humanitarianlaw and in all relevant fora.

4. Meet again to continue their work, including in Lima in May/June and Vienna in November/December 2007, and in Dublin in early2008, and welcome the announcement of Belgium to organise a regional meeting.

84 states are now participating in this process Afghanistan, Albania, Angola, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Burundi, Cambodia, Canada, Chad, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador,Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Guinea Bissau, Holy See, Honduras, Hungary,Iceland, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Lao PDR, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg,Malawi, Malta, Mauritania, Mexico, Montenegro, Mozambique, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Panama,Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Senegal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Sweden,Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, UK, Uruguay, Venezuela, Yemen and Zambia.

Timeline to a treaty ● 4–7 December: Vienna Conference on Cluster Munitions

To ensure the continued success of the Oslo process, aimed at establishing a prohibition on cluster munitions by 2008 and to enter into discussions on complicated elements of the treaty

● 18–22 February 2008, Wellington Conference on Cluster MunitionsTo ensure the continued success of the Oslo process in establishing a treaty prohibiting cluster munitions and to prepare the ground for negotiations on the treaty text

● 19–30 May 2008: Dublin Conference on Cluster MunitionsTo negotiate an international convention that prohibits cluster munitions and has wide governmental support

● September/October 2008: OsloStates invited to Oslo to sign the treaty

The Oslo Process

Declaration

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The Diana, Princess of WalesMemorial Fund


Campaign newsletter (Issue 13), four articles: Cluster munitions and remotely delivered landmines, Dumb cluster bomb policy, A sensor fuzed solution? and Spiked!

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