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Cluster Bombs Look Similar to Food Aid Packages, Rights
Group Slams U.S.
WASHINGTON, Nov 1 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The Pentagon announced Thursday it planned to change the color of the bright yellow food aid packages being dropped on Afghanistan after dropping cluster bombs wrapped in a similar yellow color, as Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged U.S. forces to stop using cluster bombs because of the "unacceptable" risk to civilian lives.
"The United States should immediately stop using cluster bombs in Afghanistan because they pose an unacceptable risk to civilians," the New York-based rights group said in a communiqué.
HRW called for a global moratorium on the use of the devices, citing a study on the effects of cluster bombs in U.S. military campaigns in the Gulf and Kosovo.
"Cluster bombs ... have been shown to cause unacceptable civilian casualties both during and after conflict," the study found.
"Cluster bombs have a wide dispersal pattern and cannot be targeted precisely, making them especially dangerous when used near civilian areas," it said.
HRW drew particular attention to CBU-87 cluster bombs containing 202 bomblets the size of grenades that do not always detonate on impact, in effect becoming anti-personnel mines that are difficult to locate and make safe.
"Recent experience in Kosovo, and before that in the Gulf War, has shown that the exact 'footprint,' or landing area, of the CBU-87's bomblets is difficult to control and that an initial failure-to-explode rate of some seven percent can be expected," HRW said.
According to the British defense weekly "Jane's," cluster bombs are 1,000-pound munitions that break into the 202 bomblets, and each bomblet fractures into 300 fragments of steel.
"At a minimum, cluster bombs should not be used in or near populated areas," the HRW communiqué said.
On Capitol Hill, Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), a critic of U.S. policy in Afghanistan, in an opening statement at a House International Relations subcommittee hearing on Afghanistan and the Taliban Wednesday held up both an unexploded cluster bomb packet and a food aid package, strikingly making the point of their similarity in size and color.
General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, addressing the similarity between food aid packages and cluster bombs said, "It is unfortunate that the cluster bombs - the unexploded ones - are the same color as the food packets."
"We have dropped flyers that show the pictures in the proper language explaining why you want to go to one and you don't want to go to the other. We hope that helps."
"The other thing we're doing with the food packets is changing the color of their design. I think it's going to be blue," he told reporters, adding that the design change could take some time.
Kevin Kavanaugh, a research scientist specializing in defense affairs at the Federation of American Scientists who opposes use of the bombs, explained "unexploded munitions are also a concern, the bomblets are yellow, with a little white umbrella, they're very attractive to children."
During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, Russia misleadingly disguised exploding devices as toys or butterflies painted in bright colors in order to attract people to the deadly mine fields. As a result, children - thinking they were finding toys to play with - would become the major casualties in these minefields.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was brutally direct on the reason U.S.-led forces were using the bombs in Afghanistan.
"They're being used on frontline al-Qaeda and Taliban troops to try to kill them is why we're using them, to be perfectly blunt."
Myers explained the food aid drops probably had been wrapped in yellow "because they were very visible and people could see them lying around; same for the cluster bombs - unfortunately, they get used to running to yellow."
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