World: Cluster bombs

According to a Pentagon release, numbered 593-13, dated August 20, 2013, “Textron Defense Systems, Wilmington, Mass., has been awarded a $640,786,442 modification (PZ00001) firm-fixed-price contract (FA8213-12-C-0064) for 1,300 cluster bomb units. Work will be performed at Wilmington, Mass., and is expected to be completed by Dec. 31, 2015. This contract involves foreign military sales (FMS) to Saudi Arabia. FMS funds to the amount of $410,218,248 are being obligated at time of award. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center/OO-ALC/EBHKA, Hill Air Force Base, Utah, is the contracting activity.”

Nothing can be a bigger example of double-speak than this million dollar US-Saudi Arabia deal. On the one hand, the US slams the use of cluster bombs by Bashar Al Assad's forces in Syria and on the other hand it develops and sells such bombs to Saudi Arabia. Sarah Blakemore, Director of the Cluster Munition Coalition, has expressed her concern that "this transfer announcement comes at a time when Saudi Arabia and the US have joined international condemnation of Syria's cluster bomb use." This is just not one kind of destructive export that the US is sending to Saudi Arabia. Apart from cluster munitions, the American government is also equipping its Middle-East ally with cyber defense, choppers, helicopters, various genres of missiles and bombs – to say the least.

The use of cluster bombs has a very long history and the world has witnessed the destruction of its use on many occasions in the past. During the Vietnam War, the US used cluster bombs in air strikes against targets in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Since then, it has been used in many wars – the Nagorno Karabakh War (1992-94) and First Chechen War, 1995 – to name a few. The US and other NATO countries used large numbers of cluster munitions during the initial stages of operation in Afghanistan during 2001-02. A Wikileaks cable dated December 2010, states, “US military carried out a missile strike in south Yemen in December 2009 that killed dozens of local residents....

Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh is reported as having assured US General David Petraeus that his government would continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours”

The use of cluster bombs have cause long-lasting havoc on civilisations, prompting many international and global forums to call for its ban. Till date more than 38 countries are reported to be contaminated by cluster munitions. The global outcry against its use has had some effect. On December 3, 2008, in Oslo, Norway, the Convention on Cluster Munitions was signed by 94 states. Then on February 16, 2010, the Convention was ratified and eventually implemented from August 2010.

Currently the Convention has 112 signatories, out of which 83 are also State parties. However, the US, which prides itself on being a champion of human rights is not a signatory to the treaty, which is quite baffling. If America wants to see a peaceful world devoid of the atrocities that cluster bombs cause in their wake it should sign the treaty and desist from exporting such bombs to the Middle-East.