Cluster Bombs have been employed by various nations for decades. When dropped, the initial casing releases ‘bomblets’ that then spread across a target area. There are numerous classifications for various purposes ranging from incendiary to anti-tank to anti-personnel, and numerous others aimed at affecting specific targets such as runways and electrical infrastructures. The problem with Cluster Bombs is that not all of the bomblets explode on impact and can lay dormant for decades waiting to be triggered by innocents that happen upon them. In the 70’s the United States dropped two million tons of ordinances on Laos. Of that, it is estimated that some 260 sub-munitions did not explode and, to this day, claim the lives of innocent Laotians. In Vietnam, it is estimated that 300 civilians are killed every year by unexploded bomblets. During the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006 Cluster Bombs were also used by the Israeli Air Force. It is estimated that a quarter of the bomblets failed to explode and have since resulted in over 200 civilian casualties.

I mention this because tomorrow in Dublin a conference begins at which participants will attempt to negotiate a treaty that will ban the production, use, stockpile, and sale of cluster bombs. Unfortunately, some of the world’s foremost powers (the United States, China, and Russia) have refused to attend and, not surprisingly, oppose the treaty. Business is, after all, business.

Unfortunately, that’s a difficult perspective to try and explain to a 13-year-old that’s had their legs blown off, but that’s the world we live in.

May 19, 2008 10 Comments

Roy sent me a link to this. All he wrote was holy shit! That about sums it up. Ladies and gentlemen of the United States of America, a glimpse at how The War On Terror is being fought…

“Since 2006, when the insurgency in Afghanistan sharply intensified, the Afghan government has been dependent on American logistics and military support in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

But to arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur.

With the award last January of a federal contract worth as much as nearly $300 million, the company, AEY Inc., which operates out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, became the main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan’s army and police forces.

Since then, the company has provided ammunition that is more than 40 years old and in decomposing packaging, according to an examination of the munitions by The New York Times and interviews with American and Afghan officials. Much of the ammunition comes from the aging stockpiles of the old Communist bloc, including stockpiles that the State Department and NATO have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed.

In purchasing munitions, the contractor has also worked with middlemen and a shell company on a federal list of entities suspected of illegal arms trafficking.

Moreover, tens of millions of the rifle and machine-gun cartridges were manufactured in China, making their procurement a possible violation of American law. The company’s president, Efraim E. Diveroli, was also secretly recorded in a conversation that suggested corruption in his company’s purchase of more than 100 million aging rounds in Albania, according to audio files of the conversation.

This week, after repeated inquiries about AEY’s performance by The Times, the Army suspended the company from any future federal contracting, citing shipments of Chinese ammunition and claiming that Mr. Diveroli misled the Army by saying the munitions were Hungarian.

Mr. Diveroli, reached by telephone, said he was unaware of the action. The Army planned to notify his company by certified mail on Thursday, according to internal correspondence provided by a military official.

But problems with the ammunition were evident last fall in places like Nawa, Afghanistan, an outpost near the Pakistani border, where an Afghan lieutenant colonel surveyed the rifle cartridges on his police station’s dirty floor. Soon after arriving there, the cardboard boxes had split open and their contents spilled out, revealing ammunition manufactured in China in 1966.

“This is what they give us for the fighting,” said the colonel, Amanuddin, who like many Afghans has only one name. “It makes us worried, because too much of it is junk.” Ammunition as it ages over decades often becomes less powerful, reliable and accurate.

AEY is one of many previously unknown defense companies to have thrived since 2003, when the Pentagon began dispensing billions of dollars to train and equip indigenous forces in Afghanistan.

March 27, 2008 40 Comments

Steve recorded this short video to explain the purpose of Ceasefire and help raise awareness with regards to Canada’s participation in Afghanistan. Please watch it if you have a moment.

November 15, 2007 7 Comments