Wakeup call on cluster bombs from Serbia

More than eight years after NATO pounded Serbia and Montenegro with cluster bombs in the Kosovo war, the organisation last month finally released its target data including 218 sets of coordinates so groups like the Serbian Centre for Demining can get down to work to save more lives from being lost.
NATO used 1,080 cluster bombs in its 78-day air strike campaign in 1999. The Serbian government said 350,000 submunitions or bomblets were used - victimising hundreds of people during the war, and many later from unexploded ordnance (UXO). Twenty-three square kilometres of land are still contaminated.
It is the responsibility of the United Nations, with the assistance of non-governmental organisations, to clean up UXO in this region. “… Neither NATO nor individual Allies take any potential responsibility or liability with respect … to incidents or accidents that might have occurred or could occur in future in relation to unexploded ordnance,” a September 25 NATO release read.
NATO’s individual members, not the organisation itself, decide on the weaponry used in war, a NATO spokeswoman told New Europe. “NATO does not prescribe or decide what kinds of ordnance” is used, she said. “It is up to the nations conducting a NATO operation.”
The Netherlands, UK and US all used cluster bombs in the NATO campaign, according to the “Yellow Killers” report by the Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA).
Users bear a special responsibility, Thomas Nash, coordinator of the Cluster Munitions Coalition, told New Europe. The weapon’s biggest users and producers “should be the ones helping to rehabilitate these states” - providing economic resources and especially information as to the target location.
With poor funding and little strategic information, the cleanup process in Serbia has been slow-going – leaving civilians in  constant risk of coming into fatal contact with these weapons.
Cluster bombs are inaccurate and indiscriminately strike an ample area the size of a football field - maiming and killing civilians and army personnel alike. Either dropped from aircraft or shot from ground artillery, each cluster bomb opens mid-air, releasing hundreds of bomblets. Their failure rate is between 5-20 percent, by differing estimates - leaving unexploded bomblets above and below ground.
There is a false sense of security with these ordnance. Landmines are hidden underground, making them a known danger in a specific area, while bomblets many times are visible, making them seemingly safe if untouched. The yellow-coloured, US-produced BLU-97 bomblets left over after the war can attract children. Serbs call them yellow killers, the NDA report said.
However, many bomblets are also concealed – essentially acting as landmines.
Cluster bombs have been in use since WWII; but it was the humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo that raised awareness among governments, analysts have said.
One-hundred and twenty-two states inked the comprehensive Mine Ban Treaty in 1997 – referred to as the Ottawa Convention. Instead, the movement for a global ban on cluster bombs has met with opposition from dominant global powers such as Russia and China, among others, and has been pushed aside by the US. Thirty-four states have produced over 210 different types of cluster bombs, and at least 75 states still maintain a stockpile (the US has the largest stockpile).
States have tried to water-down the ban to exclude “reliable” bomblets. However, in wartime, they continue to be unreliable.
According to Landmine Action, after pledging support for the ban, the UK went as far as reclassifying one of its cluster bombs to keep it free from the ban – a move Nash sees as an “unacceptable” and “illogical decision”.
Twenty-two of the 26 states fallen victim to cluster bomb attacks met last week for the first time in Belgrade for a two-day conference spearheaded by the Serbian government. The meeting was part of the so-called Oslo Process launched in Norway in February 2007 to conclude a global ban by next year. Eighty-two states support the initiative.
To save civilians today and tomorrow from the aimless cruelty of cluster bombs, there is a paramount need for both a strict comprehensive ban and for information-sharing by aggressor states with those affected.