Three years on, Israeli cluster bombs keep killing and maiming
BY: Patrick Galey, The Daily Star (Lebanon)
August 15, 2009
TIBNIN: Lieutenant Monnoyer clasps the dull metal cylinder by its ribboned thread and deftly shakes his wrist. The object whirs into motion, oscillating smoothly before stopping with a click. "The bomb is now armed," he says. He is holding a replica M42 submunition, identical to the hundreds of thousands of cluster bomb fragments which still cover an estimated 16 million square meters of south Lebanon.
Even as the country commemorates the end of the 2006 war with Israel – three years to the day on Friday - people in the south are still dying in the conflict. In the war's final 72 hours, Israeli warplanes carpeted the south with cluster bombs, munitions designed to spread indiscriminate damage over a wide area. In three days, it is thought that Lebanese soil was showered with up to four million bomblets.
Although each bomblet became armed the moment its housing shell disintegrated, up to 40 percent didn't explode on contact with the ground. Some were buried in the fertile soil, becoming de facto landmines. Others nestled in the scorched shrubbery, making any passage through the scrubland a potentially deadly pursuit.
These small, innocuous tubes, each no larger than a matchbox, are lethal from a range of 25 meters and, unlike most other weapons, don't choose their victims. It could be a farmer tilling his field or a curious child scratching in the dirt. Touch a cluster bomb and you'll be added to the ever-increasing list of dead from that fateful summer of 2006.
At the latest count, 350 people have been injured in cluster bomb-related incidents in Lebanon. On Wednesday, two young siblings were wounded by a cluster bomb as they gathered firewood in Toulin, close to the Israel border.
Bonnoyer supervises a team of six UNIFIL cluster bomb clearers from the group's Belgian contingent (BELUBATT). They have the unenviable task of clearing 80,000m2 of farmland one kilometer south of Tibnin.
The "highly polluted" plot, named simply "158" - after the serial number of the first Israeli bomblet discovered there in September 2006 - will take the team up to a year to make safe.
Two previous Battle Area Clearance rotations have uncovered nine unexploded bombs in the grassland. The work is painstakingly slow.
Three teams of two workers scan the ground, half a square meter at a time. In the searing midday heat and saddled with protective equipment weighing over 20 kilograms, the intricate work becomes positively arduous.
Nor is it very sociable. The minimum "safe" working distance between teams is 50 meters, meaning that if any munition was accidentally detonated, a team working across the field could be killed in one hundredth of a second.
"Some parts of the field are difficult to work in, the terrain makes it hard for my men," says Monnoyer. "With the terrain, you can see it's very difficult for evacuations if someone is injured. It's hot, and physically demanding. The stress is always there. It's very difficult, we clear 100 meters a day on average."
Far from making good progress, three years on, Lebanon's landmine clearing operation is stalling. Dr Christina Bennike, country program manager with the Mines Advisory Group (MAG), says that a lack of funding could further slow bomb disposal.
"Due to the funding crisis we have lost 10 teams this year," she says, adding that further downsizing could be expected. These cuts will lead to an "increase in civilian casualties," according to Bennike.
MAG alone has cleared 11 million square meters of Lebanese soil since 2006, but there is still much to be done.
"It's a small country and we can finish clearing it, it just depends on the amount of funding we have. There will always be a danger until [cluster bomb fragments] are removed," says Bennike, adding the process "is not moving as quickly as we would like it to."
She calculates that even with 30 teams of workers - double the current amount - it would take eight years to clear Lebanon of cluster bombs.
Half the problem is knowing where to find them. Israel has provided the United Nations with information on the whereabouts of its attack sites, but a dispute is raging over its accuracy. In June, Lebanon's ambassador to the UN sent a letter to the Security Council charging that the Lebanon Mine Action
Center had collected data suggesting up to 600,000 cluster bomb fragments have not been accounted for by Israel.
On Friday, Brigadier Mohammad Fahmi, Head of the Lebanese Demining Center, claimed the information provided by Israel was useless.
"What benefit can we get from such information after three years, and after incurring 50 casualties and 350 injuries?" the National News Agency quoted him as saying.
The Oslo Treaty, an international agreement to ban the use of cluster munitions, was signed by almost 100 countries last year. Several states, including Israel, have refused to sign up, raising fears that the weapons may one day be used again.
Bennike says that international condemnation over the use of cluster bombs "demonstrates that the personal harm [they inflict] clearly undermines their military use."
BELUBATT continues to clear areas of south Lebanon, so the land can be safely handed back to its owners. The teams finish work early, before the unrelenting heat makes concentration impossible.
"They do what they do and they stop if they don't feel fully focused. What's important for us is that everyone goes back to Belgium with both of their arms," says Monnoyer.
"Sometimes I have men coming and saying it's too hard to work and I can't tell them to keep going. It's better for us to stop work safely today and still have all our men tomorrow."
They are right to be cautious. Last year a Belgian UNIFIL explosives expert was seriously wounded by a cluster blast. The previous summer, a French surveyor was killed after an evacuation was called on a site where an unexploded bomblet had been found.
Chief Warrant Officer Reiser is part of BELUBATT's Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team. These guys do the really dangerous work.
Reiser explains how small the margin for error is in the perilous procedure of disposing of cluster bombs once located. The slightest mistake could prove lethal. "It depends if you touch it on a sensitive place like the detonator," he says. "It could only take 100 grams but if you touch [a bomb] on this place, you're out of here."
The bombs are disposed of by carefully placing explosive charges close to each fragment.
"We can remove it, but we usually [only] do this in built up areas where an explosion would cause a lot of collateral damage," says Reiser.
"The danger [is] fragmentation. [When exploding] these things can travel at 5,000 m/s and fly up to 1,200 meters; therefore we are especially careful to avoid the fragmentation."
Reisner says Lebanon needs "a sensibilization of the people" so that they "don't underestimate the dangers" of these unremarkable but deadly objects.
"Three years after the conflict there are still munitions on the ground and they get more and more sensitive," as their fragile metal casings begin wear down, he adds.
Bennike says that more funding needs to come from the Lebanese community if the country is ever to be free from the horrors of cluster bombs.
"Lebanese people need to take some responsibility for finding funding in this country. People should support this," she says. "That children are injured and dying three years after [the war] is heartbreaking."