Cluster bombs can threaten lives and limbs long after they’ve been deployed: 11-year-old Abdul-Ghafar was killed and his two friends lost their legs in an accident five years after their village was bombarded.
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A member of MAG’s Community Liaison staff in Iraq meets with Abas, who lost his right leg in a cluster submunition accident. Top: In the foreground, one of the 11 'BLU-97' cluster bomb submunitions located and destroyed in Bawa Mahmod. "My economic situation will be much better from now on," says the landowner Haji Barzan. "The money that the land will generate will improve my life and the life of the two families working in my land and all that is because of MAG's life-saving work." [Photos: Annelise Dennis and MAG Iraq] |
During the 2003 conflict in Iraq, the village of Bawa Mahmod, a couple of hundred kilometres north-east of Baghdad in Diyala governorate, was bombarded by cluster submunitions.
Five years later, in May 2008, the explosion of one of these bombs caused the death of 11-year-old Abdul-Ghafar and resulted in his two friends, Hamed and Abas, losing their legs.
The explosion also started a large fire which subsequently detonated several other ‘BLU-97’ cluster munitions. When firefighters began tackling it, one of them was injured by an explosion of another BLU-97.
The incidents took place on Haji Barzan’s land, half of which had been covered by these deadly weapons. “The firefighters asked us to stay away from the fire,” the farmer recalls. “But watching that hero fighting the fire and getting injured because of the cluster munition was like hell for us.”
In September 2009, Community Liaison staff from MAG and partner non-governmental organisation Work for Peace visited Bawa Mahmod, to deliver Mine Risk Education to a number of groups of villagers.
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Cluster munitions |
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Cluster bombs, or cluster munitions, are weapons which can be dropped from the air or fired from the ground. They release numerous explosive fragments – bomblets, or submunitions. Bomblets which fail to explode on impact pose the threat of death or injury long after conflict is over. Their presence means a lack of access to safe land, limiting agricultural development, the reconstruction of vital infrastructure, and the work of relief and development agencies. MAG welcomed the ratification in February 2010 of the international treaty banning the use of cluster munitions. This news had even more resonance for people in Lebanon, Lao PDR and Iraq, where the lethal threat from unexploded cluster munitions continues to affect daily life in countless communities. [Photo: A KB-1 cluster bomblet in Iraq] |
The sessions included how to identify the various threats, with information on different types of mines and unexploded ordnance.
Information gathered was reported back to MAG's Sulimaniyah operations base and in January this year a Mine Action Team began clearing Haji Barzan's land.
By early March, the task was completed, 52,710 square metres of contaminated land having been cleared and 11 deadly 'BLU-97' cluster bomb submunitions [see top photo] safely removed and destroyed.
Haji Barzan and the two displaced families living on his land can now plough the farmland and are planning to plant wheat and different types of vegetables. The land will generate more than US$400 every growing season.
"My economic situation will be much better from now on," says Haji Barzan. "The money that the land will generate will improve my life and the life of the two families working in my land and all that is because of MAG's life-saving work."
With land now able to be used for agricultural production, more than 500 individuals have benefited directly from MAG's work in Bawa Mahmod.
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52,710 square meters of contaminated land was cleared in Bawa Mahmod from January to early March this year. |
PHOTO GALLERY: Worldwide scourge of cluster bombs
Click on main image for caption
These images taken by MAG photographer Sean Sutton from a number of countries – Bosnia, Cambodia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Kosovo, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Lebanon, Sudan and Vietnam – show the problems caused by cluster bombs and the solutions provided by MAG.
Click here for more photo galleries from MAG's work around the globe.
More on cluster bombs
MAG welcomes ratification of Cluster Bomb Ban Treaty
Cluster munitions in Vietnam and Lao PDR: new era, old problem
LEBANON: "We want our country to become like Europe"
LEBANON: Improving quality of life in Sejoud
VIETNAM: Meeting the wife of a cluster bomb victim
25 March 2010
MAG would like to thank the following donors to the Iraq programme: Stichting Vluchteling; Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement, US Department of State; Irish Aid; Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government of the Netherlands; Marshall Legacy Institute; German Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Sida (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency); UNICEF. Click on Tags below for related articles.
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