resembling soft drink cans are difficult to spot at first, in a few months when the grass is taller they will be impossible to see. Bashir, a Kutchi nomad is worried: "We know each mountain, each hill and valley in Afghanistan," he explains: "We have always travelled here, but now things have changed and we no longer know where we are safe."




he US air strikes brought down the Taliban regime,
however it also left a deadly legacy of unusable land as un-exploded cluster bomblets pollute large areas. According to manufactures the failure rate of cluster bombs is 5 per cent. However according to Bo Bischoff, director of Danish Demining Group (DDG), which has been clearing landmines and unexploded ordinance (UXO) in Afghanistan since 1998, and other organisations based in Afghanistan, the failure
rate is as high as 50 per cent in a few cases, a figure that even exceeds the much-criticized 12 per cent failure rate in Kosovo.

Each cluster bomb container dropped from an aircraft contains around 200 cluster bomblets. The cluster bomblets usually fail to detonate if they are dropped too low, as the individual bomblets arm themselves on the decent, or if the impact is too soft.


The yellow cluster bomblets, resembling soft drink cans are difficult to spot at first, in a few months when the grass is taller they will be impossible to see.


The partially armed and fully armed bomblets from one cluster bomb can cover large areas and make the land
unsafe, much like a minefield. And as with minefields the victims are random and often non-combatants.


he International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL),
which won the Nobel Peace prize in 1997, along with several demining organisations for the ban against landmines, has been campaigning for a ban on cluster bombs as these too are seen as indiscriminate killers.
According to Mark Hiznay, senior researcher of the arms division of Human Rights Watch, 'these unexploded bomb-lets have indeed become antipersonnel landmines.'

The controversial cluster bomb is a popular weapon if judged by its frequent usage in Afghanistan. The cheap and efficient cluster bomb can pierce thick armour and has a lethal range when it explodes of up to 50 meters, shredding everything with its razor sharp shrapnel and igniting organic material with its phosphorous contents. More...