Peoples Geography — Reclaiming space

Creating people's geographies

With ‘Minefields’ at Home, War Isn’t Over for Lebanese

NY Times

Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

Sekneh al-Miri, 12, in the intensive care ward Friday in a hospital in southern Lebanon after being injured when a cluster bomb exploded.

TYRE, Lebanon, Aug. 18 — Marwa al-Miri, 10, and her 12-year-old cousin Sekneh could not resist the chance of a treasure hunt when they were finally allowed to go out and play on Thursday evening, three days after returning home to Ayt el Shaab.

Almost everywhere the girls and their playmates looked in their rubble-strewn town there was a gem — papers and books covered in dust, dented appliances and, best of all, the occasional toy. Even the metallic gray canister that Marwa held up, the size of a battery with a head that looked like a cigarette lighter, had some allure for the children.

But when she pitched it to her 10-year-old friend Hassan Tahini, it exploded in a loud bang that brought out all the adults in the area. In a split second, Hassan was on the ground unconscious, his gut split open; Marwa was screaming in pain with shrapnel wounds in her legs; and Sekneh was riddled with shrapnel in her chest and struggling for her life.

“It looked like a little can; it was interesting,” Marwa recalled Friday, moaning in pain at Jabal Amel Hospital in Tyre, where the three children were being treated.

Thousands of so-called bomblets, smaller than a hand grenade but far more deadly, have turned homes, schools and even hospitals in southern Lebanon into virtual minefields, threatening communities for months, possibly even years to come, say human rights campaigners and mine cleanup groups.


In towns like Yahmour and Nabatiye along the Litani River Valley, where Israeli troops prepared to face off with Hezbollah fighters in the final days of the conflict, thousands of bomblets released by shells fired into the area litter everything from streets to farmland.

In Tibnin, near some of the heaviest fighting along the Israeli border, the little bomblets landed in front of a major hospital, in the middle of the main road through town, in tree branches and even inside cars.

Cluster munitions like the ones used by Israel’s military are legal weapons under the Geneva Conventions. Israel acknowledges that it dropped cluster bombs during the month-long war, but says it tried to avoid using them in civilian areas.

On a battlefield, the multipurpose cluster bombs like the ones fired on Lebanon, many of them made by American contractors, are designed to penetrate thick armor as well as to kill or maim enemy soldiers within several yards, mine clearance officials said. They release small bomblets in midair, expected to fall to the ground and explode on impact across a wide area. That allows for much greater “coverage” than a single artillery shell can provide.

But groups like Human Rights Watch, which has led a campaign to ban the weapons, say they are too inaccurate and unreliable, especially when used in civilian areas, where they can pose a danger long after a war is over.

The bombs are especially dangerous because of their high failure rates, leaving hundreds of the bomblets unexploded on the ground, said Marc Garlasco, a senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch. The artillery shells used by the Israeli military in Lebanon delivered 88 bomblets per shell and have an official failure rate of up to 14 percent, though mine cleanup groups operating in southern Lebanon say the failure rate can reach 40 percent.

“A cluster bomb cannot differentiate between civilian and military areas,” Mr. Garlasco said. “You could say maybe the town was empty of civilians when it was fired, but the people eventually come home and have to face a minefield. It becomes a humanitarian nightmare.”

In effect, Mr. Garlasco says, when the shells are fired in triplets, as is customary with most artillery, “you’re creating 35 to 50 new landmines every time you use them.”

By Friday, several cases of deaths and injuries from exploding cluster bombs were reported as residents in southern Lebanon returned to their homes and began the cleanup. Two people were killed in Kafr Rumman and Masaydoun, according to the Mines Advisory Group, a British-based nongovernmental organization. In Yahmour, an elderly woman was seriously wounded when she set off one of the bomblets while sweeping inside her home and was hit by shrapnel in her head, legs and arms. In the town of Haboush, two children were killed when they uncovered a bomblet.

In all, at least 16 people have been wounded by unexploded bombs since the cease-fire on Monday, said David Shearer, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator in southern Lebanon. The bomblets have also seriously hampered reconstruction efforts.

“People can’t go into their banana plantations because they are scared of unexploded ordnance,” Mr. Shearer said. “It is the biggest obstacle to restarting the economy.”

“We consider these more dangerous than antipersonnel mines,” said Frank Masche, a technical field manager with the Mine Advisory Group, who was examining the main highway near the Tibnin hospital on Thursday for unexploded bombs. “When there’s a minefield, people know they can’t walk there. Here, people think it is safe to walk around anywhere.”

The group has been slowly looking over roads and homes in heavily hit areas of southern Lebanon, working in conjunction with the Lebanese Army to detonate the bombs. On Friday, crews inched up the main road in Yahmour, marking the bombs and then exploding them. The process can take 15 to 30 minutes per bomb; crews there estimate there are hundreds in the town alone.

“The war may be over, but we’re still living in a war,” said Suad el-Miri, the aunt of Marwa and Sekneh, as she watched over them in the intensive care ward at Jabal Amel Hospital on Friday. “People think it’s over, but there are still so many bombs around that our lives and our children’s lives remain at risk.”

Robert F. Worth contributed reporting from Beirut for this article.

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"Those who crusade, not for God in themselves, but against the devil in others, never succeed in making the world better, but leave it either as it was, or sometimes perceptibly worse than what it was, before the crusade began. By thinking primarily of evil we tend, however excellent our intentions, to create occasions for evil to manifest itself."
-- Aldous Huxley

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for lack
of what is found there"
-- William Carlos Williams, "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower"


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