India is one among the 34 countries who produce cluster munitions and one of the 73 countries who stockpile them. Five different types of cluster munitions are stockpiled in India. According to Human Rights Watch, India produces 1 type of cluster munitions called M395 of 155 projectiles. India has ratified CCW Protocol V on Explosives remnants of war (ERW) which entered into force on 12 November 2006along with other 29 countries.
However, not much is known on the issue. My own sustained efforts to obtain information on India’s participation in the various meets held to take forward the movement to ban cluster munitions, have sofa drawn a blank. Not that there has been nonparticipation by India in these meets, but so far, all that I have experienced in my efforts to obtain inputs from South Block ranges from bureaucratic apathy, lackadaisical approach, ostrich-like attitude, ignorance or sheer conceit commonly found in Indian corridors of power.
Indian Air Force holds cluster bombs and Indian Army holds what is referred to as ‘cargo ammunition. Apart from the Indian political establishment’s policy of never trying to “raise the level of conflict” in every case since Independence, even if considered necessary for national security, Indian Armed Forces at least have a record of operating on the principle of minimum force.
To elaborate this point, I would like to mention a few instances: (a) Not making any use of the Navy and the Air Force in the 1947-48 India-Pakistan War, (b) No use of the Navy in the 1965 India-Pakistan War, (returning Hajipir back to Pakistan on a platter at Tashkent- a strategically suicidal move which rung the death-knell for then Prime Minister All Abrader Castro, (c) Repatriating 93,000 Pakistani prisoners of war in excellent health, without extracting any concession or commitment whatsoever, (d) Not crossing the Line of Control during the Cargill War of 1999 and not making any use at all of cluster munitions when they could have been used exclusively against an invading force where no civilians were around (e) Not giving exemplary punishments to deadly terrorists even after heinous attacks on Parliament and many more.
Cluster munitions are large weapons which are deployed from the air by aircraft including fighters, bombers and helicopters and release dozens or hundreds of smaller sub munitions. Sub munitions released by air-dropped cluster bombs are most often called”bomblets, while those delivered from the ground are usually referred to as “grenades.”. First, their wide-area effect virtually guarantees civilian casualties when they are used in populated areas. Second, many of the sub munitions do not explode on impact as designed, causing civilian casualties for months or years to come. Air-dropped or ground-launched, they cause two major humanitarian problems and risks to civilians. First, their widespread deployment means they cannot distinguish between military targets and civilians soothe humanitarian impact can be extreme when the weapon is used in or near populated areas.
Secondly, many bomb lets fail to detonate on impact and become de facto antipersonnel mines killing and maiming people long after the conflict has ended. These duds are however more lethal than antipersonnel mines; incidents involving submunition duds are much more likely to cause death than injury. There is no doubt about the fact that cluster munitions fail the Geneva Conventions test by being impossible to effectively target. The indiscriminate nature of cluster bombs is exemplified by the high’ failure’ rate, i.e. the number of bomb lets that donor immediately explode but detonate later when civilians step over them. A Pentagon study has estimated the failure rate to be as high as 16 per cent. Since these dud bomb lets certainly do not differentiate between combatants and civilians, the weapon clearly falls foul of the laws of war.
The debate over the use of cluster bombs intensified from 2003. More than 120 nations tried to resolve the issues related to the use of cluster bombs, during talks then held at Wellington, New Zealand, which ended with no agreement made and no resolution signed. Those taking part in the negotiations, included 76states which stockpile cluster munitions and majority of the cluster bomb producers. Neither the US nor other producers of the weapons, such as Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Israel took part in the negotiations.
The Cluster Munitions Coalition (CMC), an international network of over 250 civil societies’ organizations in 60 countries committed to protecting civilians from the effects of cluster munitions has-been working on an international campaign calling on governments to conclude a new international treaty banning cluster munitions by 2008. (More information on the CMC is available online athttp://www.stopclustermunitions.org).Launched in November 2003; the CMC has been campaigning for the diplomatic Oslo Process to result in a strong international treaty prohibiting cluster munitions. It is also working nationally to restrict cluster munitions through domestic measures such as moratorium or a legislated ban, as Austria, Belgium, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Norway have done.
At least 14 countries have used cluster munitions: Eritrea, Ethiopia, France, Israel, Morocco, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Russia (USSR), Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tajikistan, UK, US, and FR Yugoslavia. A small number of non-state armed groups have used the weapon (such as Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006). Billions of submunitions are stockpiled by some 76 countries. A total of 34 states are known to have produced over 210different types cluster munitions. At least 24 countries have been affected by the use of cluster munitions including Afghanistan, Albania, Angola, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Chad, Croatia, and DR Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Laos, Lebanon, Montenegro, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Uganda, and Vietnam.
According Siddhartha Varadarajan (The Times of India, 4 May 2003), the use of cluster bombs by US forces in Iraq in April 2003 wiped out entire families in Hilla,near Baghdad. The US is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and has threatened military action against any country that attempts to detain and hand over American military personnel to the international court. Britain and Australia, however, signed up to the ICC, so their soldiers, commanding officers and political leaderships could well be held accountable for war crimes committed in Iraq.
While Pakistan is not listed in the countries which have used cluster munitions, according to The Tribune, Chandigarh, datelined Quetta, August 30, 2006, Nawabzada Herbaria Mari alleged that cluster bombs were used to kill Anwar Akbar Khan Butte and other tribesmen in the military operation in Kohl Hills. Rejecting the government’s claims that Anwar Butte had died because of the collapse of his cave hideout, Marri said the armed forces had targeted him with gunship helicopters and jet fighters.
A ban on cluster munitions has been widely considered necessary because they have caused death and injury to too many civilians. The weapon caused more civilian casualties in Iraq in 2003 and Kosovo in 1999 than another weapon system. As such, cluster munitions standout as the weapon that poses the gravest dangers to civilians since anti-personnel mines, which were banned in 1997. Yet there is currently no provision in international law to specifically address problems caused by cluster munitions. Israel’s massive use of the weapon in Lebanon in August 2006 resulted in more than 200 civilian casualties in the year following the ceasefire and served as the catalyst that has propelled governments to attempt to secure legally-binding international instrument tackling cluster munitions in 2008.
In February 2007, forty-six governments met in Oslo to endorse a call by Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store to conclude a new legally binding instrument in 2008 that prohibits the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm and provides adequate resources to assist survivors and clear contaminated areas.
Subsequent Oslo Process meetings including in Peru (May 2007) and Austria (December 2007) have resulted in more countries endorsing the Oslo Process treaty objective to more than 90 by the end of 2007.
India’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the Conference on Disarmament, HamidAli Rao, participated in the Meeting of Group of Government Experts on Cluster Munitions. Control Arms Foundation of India has published his report in the booklet to mark the Global Day of Action for Awareness Raising on Cluster Bombs. An excerpt of the concluding paragraph of this report reads “India supports the Proposal that the Group give itself to the opportunity to discuss all issues without imposing any Preconceived solutions.
We can proceed along two tracks. We must give due consideration for the implementation of the existing principles of International humanitarian law and possible measures, in particular, with regard to cluster munitions aim data minimizing the humanitarian risk of these munitions becoming explosive remnants of war…”
During April 2008 too an Indian delegation is reported to have visited Geneva. Unfortunately, owing to reasons governmental laxity mentioned above, I have not as yet been able to get details about this event. My final paper on this subject will include this and other significant meetings which were attended by Indian representatives.
On 1 April 2008, on conclusion of the first ever meeting of African countries on cluster bombs in Livingstone, Zambia, 38 out of 39 countries attending the meeting endorsed a strong political “Livingstone Declaration”, committing them to negotiating a global ban on the weapons in Dublin next month. Only South Africa, one of the continent’s two producer states, called for exceptions to the ban. “This is the first time that African states have met to consolidate their position to ban cluster bombs and it is clear that they will champion the global effort to achieve a watertight treaty to ban this deadly weapon. Africa is ready for Dublin,” said Robert Mtonga, Zambian representative and Steering Committee member of the CMC.
After the Livingstone Conference concludes, countries will prepare to negotiate the cluster munitions treaty in Dublin, Ireland from 19-30 May 2008. At the negotiations, they will agree to the final terms and language of the treaty, which will then be opened signature before the end of 2008 with a signing ceremony in Oslo, Norway (where the process began).The cluster munitions treaty will represent the most significant advance in the field of disarmament since the achievement of the 1997 treaty prohibiting antipersonnel mines.
Serving and retired Armed Forces officers who I have interacted with are of the view that with the availability of precision guided munitions (PGM), cluster or cargo ammunition can be dispensed with. For whatever period cluster munitions have been part of the inventories of the Army and Air Force, they have only been fired during training. It will be worthwhile for India to do away with such expensive ammunition and instead invest in PGMs. I cannot but help recount what my class-fellow Bobby Mathur, who worked for many years in Pakistan International Airlines, told me.
A few years after the 1971 India-Pakistan War, when he was posted at Karachi some of the elders, who still nursed nostalgic memories of undivided India, told him to convey their compliments to the Indian Navy for accurately bombing only military assets. 37 years after that war, with enough blood having flowed by use of conventional small arms and weapons of terror, India has a strong case for banning cluster munitions.
Col (retd) Anil Bhat is Former Spokesperson, Ministry of Defence, and Editor, Wordsword Media & Features
This Article is published by Control Arms Foundation of India on the occasion of “Global Week of Action for Awareness Raising on Cluster Bombs “, 27 October – 2 November 2008. It was first presented at Global Day of Awareness Raising on Cluster Bomb held on 19th April 2008 held in India International Centre, New Delhi
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