[LCM Articles] The 'Toys' that Kill in Lebanon

[Elias Muhanna]

Time Magazine
Friday, Feb. 02, 2007
The 'Toys' That Kill in Lebanon
By Nicholas Blanford/Marakeh, Lebanon

To 17-year-old Rasha Zayoun, the small metal canister with a ribbon 
attached to the top looked like a toy. Her father, Mohammed, had found 
it while harvesting wild thyme in a field near her house in the southern 
Lebanese village of Marakeh, and had taken it home in his bag of herbs.

One evening four weeks ago, Rasha picked up the strange object and 
played with the ribbon, wondering what it was. "Then I felt a tingle of 
electricity," she says. "I threw it from me and it exploded before it 
hit the floor."

The blast tore off her left leg and wounded her mother, Alia, and 
brother Qassem, 21, who were in the room at the time. The "toy" was a 
cluster bomblet, just one of the estimated 1 million unexploded 
sub-munitions scattered across the valleys and hills of south Lebanon 
during last summer's war between Israel and Hizballah. Cluster bombs — 
an anti-personnel and anti-armor weapon that disperses dozens or 
hundreds of grenade-sized bomblets across a wide area — have killed at 
least 30 people and wounded over 180 according to U.N. figures since the 
Aug. 14 ceasefire ended the month-long conflict.

Last week, the U.S. State Department announced that a preliminary 
investigation had concluded that Israel may have breached agreements 
with Washington on the use of U.S.-supplied cluster munitions during the 
Lebanon war. "The Department takes very seriously its responsibility to 
ensure that U.S.- provided weapons are used for purposes authorized 
under U.S. law," said an official of the State Department. The U.S. Arms 
Export Control Act restricts the use of U.S.-made weaponry to "internal 
security" and "legitimate self-defense," which Israel would certainly 
claim were the purpose of its actions against Hizballah. But more 
precise "end-use restrictions" are contained in U.S.-Israel contracts, 
according to a State Department official, although the wording is 
classified. These restrictions are believed to require that Israel 
refrain from endangering civilians in its use of the munitions. Human 
rights groups have accused both Israel and Hizballah of committing war 
crimes through indiscriminate targeting of civilian areas during the 
war. If the State Department's preliminary finding is confirmed, it 
could pressure the White House to censure Israel, possibly through a 
freeze on cluster bomb exports to the Jewish State.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said earlier that "Israel 
takes the concerns raised by the U.S. extremely seriously" and had been 
as "forthcoming and transparent as possible," adding that "Israel is 
itself conducting an ongoing internal investigation as to the use of 
munitions during the Lebanon conflict."

Cluster sub-munitions are supposed to explode on impact. Manufacturers 
claim a dud rate of around 5 percent, but the U.N. estimates that more 
than 30 percent of cluster bomblets fired into south Lebanon failed to 
detonate. When hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced by the 
fighting began to return to the area, they found thousands of cluster 
bomblets in gardens, houses and streets, orange orchards, banana 
plantations and olive groves, often hanging from the branches.

Chris Clark, Lebanon program manager for the United Nations Mine Action 
Coordination Center (MACC), said that his organization had logged some 
840 individual cluster bomb strikes, covering an area of 13 square 
miles. A decorated former British soldier who oversees global operations 
for the U.N. Mine Action Service and has cleared munitions in Kosovo and 
Sudan, Clark says the cluster bomb situation in south Lebanon "is the 
worst I've ever seen," adding "It's unprecedented and unbelievable." 
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev says that Israel "fully 
supports the U.N. efforts to clear up munitions in Lebanon."

A map of cluster bomb strike sites in south Lebanon pinned to the wall 
of his office illustrates the severity of the problem. A red rash covers 
much of the map, concentrated on the areas south of Tyre, and around the 
towns of Tibnine and Nabatieh.

By mid-February, Clark hopes to have 55 teams in the field collecting 
cluster munitions, and hopes that the area could be cleared by year's 
end. "That doesn't mean that there won't be any more cluster bombs, but 
they won't be causing casualties on a daily and weekly basis," he says.

Clark says his mission is hampered by a lack of cooperation from the 
Israeli military. Israel has been repeatedly asked to aid the 
bomblet-clearing mission by providing such information as the grid 
coordinates of cluster-bomb selected targets, the number of strikes and 
the types of submunition. He says that the U.N. has received "nothing" 
from Israel. Israeli spokesman Regev counters that Israel is considering 
the U.N. request for "more information," but he says that Israel has 
already given the U.N. maps of strike areas and technical information 
that are "sufficient" for helping the bomb-clearing effort.

On a wind-swept hilltop outside the village of Halloussiyeh, 10 miles 
northeast of Tyre, a team from Bactec, a British ordnance clearing 
company, inches its way along a terrace of small olive trees, hunting 
for BLU-63 cluster munitions. Most of the tennis-ball sized metal 
bomblets are easily visible, although some have begun to sink into the 
chalky mud.

"We are prioritizing agricultural land," says Simon Lovell, the site 
supervisor. Each bomblet is cordoned off with red and white tape before 
being linked together with explosive cord and destroyed in a controlled 
blast. One of the three sites he is clearing has yielded over 300 of the 
1970s-era bomblets. The BLU-63s found in south Lebanon were manufactured 
between 1973 and 1978, according to Clark, which explains their high dud 
rate.

"They are well past their shelf life," he says. "The Israelis knew how 
old they were and they knew that they weren't going to work."

Whether the Bush administration chooses to rebuke Israel or not will 
make little difference to Rasha Zayoun, who faces a bleak future. She 
spends her days lying in bed in the family sitting room waiting for her 
leg to heal before doctors can begin fitting her with a prosthetic limb.

"I'm not thinking about my future," she says with a shy smile. "But I 
feel okay and I don't have any sadness. I have a strong heart."

—With reporting by Tim McGirk/Jerusalem and Elaine Shannon/Washington

-- 
Elias I. Muhanna
Arabic & Islamic Studies
Harvard University
6 Divinity Ave.
Cambridge MA, 02138
emuhanna at fas.harvard.edu