I'm Scott Horton and our next guest is Bonnie Daugherty.
She is a clinical instructor with the International Human Rights Clinic and a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School.
She spent the previous five years at Human Rights Watch, participating in fact-finding missions to Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, and Darfur in Sudan.
Her Human Rights Watch publications include Fatally Flawed Cluster Bombs and Their Use by the United States in Afghanistan, Off-Target, the Conduct of the War and Civilian Casualties in Iraq, co-authored, and Reading Between the Red Lines, the Repression of Academic Freedom in Egyptian Universities.
She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School and her A.B. from Harvard University.
Welcome to the show, Bonnie.
How are you doing?
Good.
Thank you very much.
Well, I really appreciate you joining us on the show today.
So the big news is that the world has bombed cluster bombs, right?
It has.
As of Sunday, the Convention on Cluster Missions, which completely banned the weapon, has become binding international law.
Okay, now there's, what, 192 countries in the world, right?
Around there, yeah.
And how many of them sign this thing?
It's been signed by 108 and ratified by 38 right now.
But it creates a stigma that make it very difficult for even those who haven't signed and ratified to use the weapon again.
Well, does anybody use them nowadays other than the United States?
Well, the most recent use was in Georgia in 2008 when Russia and Georgia both used them, causing many civilian casualties.
Have the Russians signed it?
The Russians have not signed it, and neither has the U.S.
But many producers, users, stockpilers, et cetera, have indeed joined the treaty.
Okay, well, I'll tell you what, let's stick with Russia for a minute, and then we'll talk about some of those, because that's the important precedent-setting part.
But it seems like if America and Russia are the two biggest military powers still, really, when you count hydrogen bombs and all that, that that's the perfect solution, really, for the other, whatever, 80-something countries or 70-something countries that haven't signed yet is if our guys and the Russians can sit down and work out that they'll both agree to sign on to this, then they can really have the bully pulpit, so to speak, saying we're giving them up and say that to the rest of the world.
Well, we certainly are doing a lot of campaigning, both in the U.S. and Russia and any other state that hasn't signed a convention, and it would be great to see those states come together and agree to join the treaty as soon as possible.
Okay, now, which are those states that you say have produced, have used, have stockpiled these and now have signed this treaty and agreed to get rid of them?
Well, there's a large number.
I think the United Kingdom is one of the best examples, because it fits in all of those categories.
It's the third biggest user of cluster munitions, and yet it's already ratified the treaty and produced national legislation that criminalizes any use of cluster munitions by its citizens or in its territories, and it has also ceased production of the weapon and is starting to destroy its stockpile.
Wow.
That's really something.
So, tell me a little bit about the campaign in Britain that made that possible, because I know it wasn't just that the Labor and the conservative parties and whoever just found Jesus all of a sudden or something.
The Cluster Munition Coalition, along with many of its members based in the United Kingdom, such as Action on Armed Violence, formerly known as Landmine Action, worked very, very hard to lobby the various parties in the United Kingdom, and the CMC, the Cluster Munition Coalition, has actually done advocacy around the globe.
Just recently, on the day of the entry into force, they had a slogan called, Bang the Drum to Ban Cluster Munitions, and all around the world, campaigners bang drums to raise awareness, both celebrate the milestone of entry into force and to raise awareness by lobbying their government officials.
Is it the kind of thing where you try to get the public involved a lot, or it's mostly just focused on opinion leader types?
I would say it's both.
There are definitely many efforts to get the public involved, to have signed petitions, to write letters, etc., and then there's also efforts, particularly those at Human Rights Watch, where I work, that work at the government level, trying to persuade governments to join the treaty as soon as possible.
Is there much of a movement in the United States?
Is there a way that my listeners might be able to participate?
There's definitely a growing movement, and last year, for example, Obama signed into law a transport ban, so the United States can no longer export most cluster munitions, which is really key, because its cluster munitions have been used, for example, by Israel in Lebanon.
So we want people to take a stronger stand, and really a call for the complete ban for signing onto the treaty, but steps have been made so far.
Yeah, well, people might remember that George Bush actually sent emergency shipments of cluster bombs during the 2006 Lebanon War.
It was in the New York Times.
The bombs with wide blasts, they called them.
Right, right.
And there was also a report, and I forget now, pardon me, if it was Human Rights Watch, I think it was maybe Amnesty International that did a report where they asked war crimes or collateral damage, or maybe the other way around, and it was about how Lebanon was just littered with cluster bombs, and you know, I guess we started this conversation with just the assumed premise that these things are an absolute nightmare and an insult to humanity that they ever existed, but really the problem, more than anything else, is that we're not talking about these are used against tanks and troops on some mythical battle field.
These litter the ground where little children play.
Exactly.
The ones that don't explode on impact wait until some six-year-old picks it up and says, oh, look at this.
That's exactly right.
Children are among the most common victims, and I've actually seen children carrying submunitions around crowds of people in Iraq, and I've arrived at a scene in Lebanon a couple hours after a child picked one up, not knowing what it is, to throw it at his brother, and it exploded, killing him and injuring his brother.
Well, you know, the Christian Science Monitor has a piece about the view from Laos on this, and I had read something just a couple of months ago that says that they still have hundreds of casualties a year from cluster bombs laying around in Laos from Richard Nixon's days.
Yeah, the initial use of cluster munitions was in Southeast Asia, and Laos is the most affected country in the world, and actually, states will be gathering in Laos in November to have the first meeting of all the countries that have joined the treaty, so it's a very key meeting, and it's a key place to have it.
It's very symbolic to have it in this affected country, and one statistic I find very interesting is that, I believe it's a Red Cross statistic, is that if clearance occurs at the same rate as it has occurred in Laos, it will take 180 years to clear the country.
Yeah, well, and we're talking about people who are basically peasants who live off of the land.
You know, they're lucky if they make enough extra to sell to anybody else.
They're out there with a hoe in a field, and then, blam, they get their body ripped apart by superheated shrapnel.
That's true, that's true.
In addition, we talked about children being common victims, but farmers are also very common victims, because the submunitions lay around, as we said, like landmines, but they hide in fields, and farmers often can't see them, and they hit them with their plows or their hoes when they're planting or harvesting, and are killed or maimed.
And those submunitions also cause socioeconomic harm.
Farmers who do know that they're there cannot always farm, and therefore, they lose their livelihoods.
Yeah, I'm thinking about the interview earlier on the show with Christopher Busby, and I'm wondering how long before they start putting depleted uranium in the cluster bombs.
You know?
Might as well.
Well, hopefully, there won't be any more use of cluster munitions.
I think the treaty creates a very strong stigma, and the international support shows that the international community has condemned these weapons, and it'll make it difficult for anyone else to use them.
I sure hope that's true.
And now, you can hang on through the break, right?
Sure.
Okay, great.
Everybody, it's Bonnie Dougherty from Human Rights Watch, talking about the brand-new, almost global ban on cluster munitions, and we'll be back after this.
Listen to LRN.
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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Bonnie Dougherty from the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, formerly with Human Rights Watch, I think, formerly or currently, Bonnie?
Currently.
I've actually been at Human Rights Watch for nine years, and also working at Harvard Law School for the past five.
Wonderful.
Okay.
Now, you're talking about the cleanup, and how difficult it is, and how it would take, was it 800 years to clean up Lebanon, if they do it at the rate of the cleanup in Laos, something like that, would you say?
It was 180 years to clean up Laos.
To clean up Laos.
Well, so, I mean, what do you do?
Do you just send bulldozers out with extra armor, or, I mean, who's got to do that job?
I mean, if there was, say, for example, all the money spent on dropping the things on people, if that money was spent, the resources put toward trying to clean them up, how is that even doable, really, when you're talking about a whole countryside littered with little things probably buried under the topsoil, and who knows what?
Well, it's a very complicated process, actually, and it's usually done by individuals.
Obviously, the UN plays a major role in coordinating clearance activities, and nongovernmental organizations actually do the clearance, eventually handing it over to the government.
But the actual clearance requires going out with metal detectors, and locating submunitions either on the surface, or later under the surface, and then actually removing them by hand.
Right.
So, that's why it'll take 180 years.
Jeez.
Exactly.
For most of the time, the submunitions are so sensitive, they have to actually blow them up on-site.
Sometimes, the more stable ones, they can move elsewhere and blow them up there.
But it's a very dangerous process.
Legacy bombs.
There was something a few weeks back about a guy in Germany, I think it was, plowing a field, got blown up by a World War II bomb.
I heard something about that.
Sometimes it's World War I bombs that get them.
That's true.
So, jeez, 180 years, I guess, that'll be a while.
Maybe they'll invent a great new cluster bomb cleaning technology in the future, or something.
But that's quite a legacy for the people of Laos to have to deal with, as well as the rest of these countries.
And what about Afghanistan?
I see here that you wrote this article, Fatally Flawed Cluster Bombs and Their Use by the United States in Afghanistan.
Is this about they look just like pudding packets, or whatever, like David Cross said?
The article, or the report, documented the use of cluster munitions in Afghanistan and the problems they caused, both after the effect, as we've talked about, but also during attacks.
Particularly when cluster munitions are used on populated areas, or in near-populated areas, they almost always cause civilian casualties.
And that was true in Afghanistan, as well as all the other conflicts I've covered.
And do they litter the ground to this day by the thousands or millions, or whatever?
I guess it couldn't possibly be as bad as Laos, but what about Lebanon?
Does it compare to that?
Are they still laying around?
Well, there are some still laying around.
I don't have the exact statistics.
Are they still using them in Afghanistan?
No.
The U.S. hasn't used them since 2003.
And that's just according to them, or is there a secondary source for that?
Well, that's what we've heard, and we haven't documented any use since 2003.
We definitely keep an eye on such reports.
Right.
You guys are the source.
All right.
I'll take it.
Well, that's good news, at least.
And now, I guess, when you say Obama's banned the export of them from now on, does that just mean that the Israelis have all they need for now?
Well, the Israelis are also producers, so they have old stockpiles of U.S. munitions, but they also produce their own.
Yeah.
Well, which American companies produce cluster bombs?
Well, right now, there actually aren't any, because there was a – well, Textron continues to produce one type, but most haven't been able to keep up with the standards that – even the U.S. has put some limitations on what kind of cluster munitions can be used, even though they haven't agreed to a complete ban.
So progress is being made, but there's still a long way to go with the U.S.
Now, do I have a right that the excuse for these is that they're supposed to be anti-tank weapons?
Well, they're designed – they're actually a Cold War weapon, and part of the problem is they're no longer useful in modern urban conflict.
But because they spread the submunitions over a broad area, they're designed to attack formations of tanks or troops, the idea being that you don't know exactly where each tank or each individual soldier is, so if you blanket a whole area, you're bound to hit some of them.
So they're not appropriate for modern warfare, and furthermore, regardless, they cause too much danger that the humanitarian side effects do not justify any use.
Right, of course not.
Well, and I guess, you know, you could imagine, I don't know, a valley full of Russian soldiers or something during the Cold War and using the cluster munitions on them, something like that, but at least from the YouTubes of them that I've seen and, you know, on the Discovery Channel when they pimp out all the war products and stuff, I'd be surprised to think that those could kill a tank.
I mean, and like you, you know, you mentioned the Cold War, nowadays they can guarantee see any tank that they're trying to kill, paint it with a laser, and then shoot a tow missile at it or whatever, a depleted uranium round, and one shot, one kill per tank.
That's how they do it now.
Right, that's much more appropriate.
Actually, most cluster munitions have, or submunitions, the bomblets, have two effects.
One is they target people with, they send out shards of shrapnel in every direction, and they also have a charge that attacks tanks or armored vehicles.
So they do have this dual use, and the problem is when the charge hits a school bus or a building, it doesn't, a civilian home, it doesn't damage a tank, but it damages a civilian object.
Yeah.
Well, you know, there's actually a YouTube, not just of the planes dropping them, but of, I know there's at least one YouTube of just an individual bomblet, I guess they call it, going off on the ground in Lebanon, and you know, it's from a very, you know, single human scale footage, you know, rather than looking at a battlefield from far away kind of thing.
That's a pretty big explosion, and I guess, you know, it's all about the shrapnel is what's in there to do the killing, right?
Correct.
Fill it with nails or whatever.
Well, it's, most of them are, they have a steel core, and if you look at it, it's fragmented into little sharp diamonds.
Some munitions have actually little steel spheres, little balls that spread in every direction.
Geez, well, did the Americans have an official statement, the American government, do they have an official excuse for why they still need these at all, or, I mean, because they must have been confronted with this when the whole world has just ratified the treaty on the first of this month.
Yes, they, well, their policy is that they will, they recognize the harm, or they claim to recognize the harm that these weapons cause and have pledged not to use them again after eight more years, but our argument is, of course, they're causing harm, why do you need to wait eight years?
Why not use them now?
I think part of the problem is that they are such a large portion of the U.S. arsenal, but that's no excuse to continue to use them when they're killing and maiming civilians.
Yeah, we already have them, we already spent the money, that's their excuse.
Oh, well.
Well, geez, so what other treaties are you working on to get weapons banned?
Did you work on the landmine thing?
My colleagues here at Human Rights Watch have done extensive work and at Human Rights Watch we're continuing to work to monitor the landmine treaty and to encourage new states, including the United States, to join it.
All right, well now, oh, I didn't really ask you about Iraq.
What about, how heavy was the use in Iraq, and how long-term do you expect it'll continue to be a problem?
The use was very heavy in Iraq by the United States and the United Kingdom, and I was there doing an investigation in every major city, Baghdad, Hilla, Najaf, etc., we found unexploded submunitions lying around, threatening civilians.
They also killed or injured civilians during the attacks themselves, so we estimate that cluster munitions caused more civilian casualties than any other weapon in Iraq besides small arms fire.
Really?
Wow.
So it was a major problem, hundreds of casualties, we estimate.
Of all the leaked bomb site footage, collateral murder being just the tip of the iceberg, just at LiveLeak.com there's a year worth.
Most of those seem to just be regular high numbers of pound bombs, but not necessarily cluster bombs.
I can't think of any footage I've seen necessarily of those.
It'd be interesting to see if anybody listening is in the government, has access to that Bradley Manning internet and could leak that kind of thing out, because, I mean, that's really how to get this thing banned, is not just to show the aftereffects, but show it happening to people.
You know?
It's got to be that exciting to get Americans interested, I think, Bonnie.
Sure.
So, anyway, well, best of luck to you, and thank you so much for your work on this and your time on the show today.
Oh, thank you for your interest.
We appreciate it.
All right, everybody, that's Bonnie Daugherty from Harvard and Human Rights Watch.
