Six years later, in April this year, I remembered the boy from Laos. I was reading a report in The Independent of London on the first use of BL-755 cluster bombs in Kosovo by Harriers of the Royal Air Force. The Independent reported Wing Cmdr. Graham Wright saying, “People were over the moon, because we had done something productive.” I was sick and angry; not so much with the fliers as with myself. I was part of an international movement that could have changed all this, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). We failed, because when we supported the Ottawa Treaty in 1997, we gave up one of our founding principles.
The ICBL grew out of a desire by those working in postconflict areas to stop the damage being done by antipersonnel mines. Few of us were peace campaigners; indeed, many of us had served in the military. It wasn’t the weapon that interested us–it was its indiscriminate and persistent nature. We wrote a definition for an anti-personnel mine based on its effect rather than its design, and we campaigned for an end to any weapon that fell within that definition. Had our plans been codified in international law, cluster bombs would have been banned; once a bomblet fails to function as designed, it becomes, in effect, an antipersonnel mine. But when the government experts gathered to agree to the treaty, they defined prohibited weapons by their design, not their effect; the ICBL supported the treaty and hence became party to a betrayal of those who live with land mines and cluster bomblets.
Kosovo was a classic example of the refusal by authorities to accept evidence readily available on past battlefields, and the willingness of arms manufactures to play down the unreliability of their products. Less than a decade ago, the massive use of cluster munitions in the gulf war killed 1,200 Kuwaitis–the very people we fought the war to protect. In Kosovo, we are told, the primary objective of the bombing campaign was to allow refugees to return safely to their homeland; and yet widespread use was made of cluster bombs, which everyone knew would threaten their lives.
For two reasons, however, Kosovo may prove to be the last major occasion on which cluster bombs are used. First, there is now an opportunity to prove the disproportionate nature of the weapon. The number of weapons deployed is available, and their military effectiveness can be independently assessed. We now need to calculate a definitive failure rate for each type of bomb deployed.
Second, the people of Kosovo must not allow their gratitude to NATO to deter them from asserting their rights. The families of those who are killed, those who are injured and those whose land is made inaccessible by cluster bomblets should be encouraged to take legal action against NATO governments and arms manufacturers. If a company carries out its business using methods that cause death, injury and loss, it should stand to be sued by those who are affected. If, as in the case of cluster bombs, the manufacturer and the user have evidence that such damage is inevitable, they are negligent. It is perhaps only by threatening military budgets and profit margins that we can ensure that the manufacture, sale, transfer and use of cluster bombs is ended. Then we can concentrate on eradicating the millions of bomblets from past wars that still blight towns and playgrounds around the world.
