Consider This from NPR - The Impact of Cluster Bombs

Episode Date: July 10, 2023

Since the war began, military aid from the US to Ukraine has largely received bipartisan report. But a new planned 800 million dollar package has split Democrats and also riled up Human Rights Groups because of one weapon included in the package — cluster bombs.More than a hundred countries, including allies of the US, have banned use of the weapon, which releases a large number of bomblets over a wide area. Unexploded bomblets pose a danger to civilians. The Biden administration is defending the decision, citing Ukraine's desperate need for ammunition.To get a sense of the human cost of cluster bomb use during wartime, we take a look at Laos. Between 1964 and 1973, the U.S. dropped more than 270 million cluster bombs on Laos during the Vietnam War. Host Mary Louise Kelly discusses this with Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Lewis Simons, who reported from Asia and the Middle East for decades.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating tomorrow, today. More at iu.edu. Supporting Congress for military aid to Ukraine has mostly been bipartisan. Up to now. I have some real qualms about it. Cluster bombs should never be used. That's crossing a line. Those are Democrats raising real qualms. And what they and human rights groups are riled up about is cluster bombs and the Biden administration's decision to send

them to Ukraine. Sarah Gulabdallah leads the U.S. campaign to ban landmines and cluster munition coalition. Cluster munitions are horrific weapons for many, many reasons. And really, the folks who are making the decision to potentially transfer these weapons know know these, and still are not adhering to the dangers. So why so much concern? It largely comes down to how cluster bombs work or don't work. NPR's Greg Myrie explains. So a cluster bomb can be dropped from a plane, though the Ukrainians would likely be firing them from the ground in an artillery shell. And while the cluster bomb is in the air, it breaks open and releases dozens or even hundreds of little bomblets. However, some bomblets are duds. They don't detonate. They're small. They remain on the ground. They can become embedded just below the

surface. So years later, after a war is over, civilians can walk through these areas and step on the bomblets, causing them to explode and inflicting injury or death. The Biden administration is defending its new $800 million aid package to Ukraine, which includes cluster munitions. Here's White House National Security Spokesperson John Kirby speaking to NPR on Friday. Risk to civilians, we judge, and the Ukrainians judge, is greater by use of Russian munitions on their soil and Russian drones and Russian missiles. And, of course, these munitions then, the munitions themselves would cause to Ukrainian civilians. Kirby says the U.S. will work closely with Ukraine to remove any unexploded shells. I do want to also stress that while the Russian cluster munitions have a dud rate, a failure rate of something like 30 to 40 percent, the ones that we'll be providing are much, much lower than that, less than two and a half percent dud or failure rate. So the risk

will be mitigated somewhat. I'm not trying to say it's going to be eliminated, but it'll be mitigated. But Sarah Gulabdallah is not convinced. I would say that the failure rates that are reported from the Department of Defense are not as reliable. And I really point to the 2022 Congressional Research Service report, right? This outlines that the manufacturers claim that the failure rates are between 2 to 5 percent, but mine clearance experts, you know, point to a rate that are higher at about 10 to 30 percent. Consider this. The Ukrainian army is in desperate need of munitions, but history tells us cluster bombs will put civilians at risk. We take a look at the country hit hardest by this type of weapon to learn about the human cost.

From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Monday, July 10th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the Wise app today, or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. The most heavily bombed country in the history of the world. More than Japan, more than Germany, more than Britain. It's Laos. Between 1964 and 1973, the U.S. dropped more than 270 million cluster bombs on Laos.

Here's another way to think about that number. It works out to a plane load of bombs every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years. We brought Lewis Simons into the studio to talk about the legacy of cluster bombs in Laos and what we might learn from it as we eye their use in the war in Ukraine. Lewis is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who reported from Asia and the Middle East for decades. I started by asking him why the U.S. was bombing Laos when it was at war in a different country, Vietnam. Laos is right on the border of North and South Vietnam, now United Vietnam. So the North Vietnamese army was using a good deal of Laotian territory for what they called the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which sounds like it might have been a freeway or a highway, but it wasn't. It was just a jungle path, essentially, that ran

in large measure through the mountains and forests of Laos and then into South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese army ran personnel and material down the Ho Chi Minh Trail into the south. And it was by 1964, it was obvious that the Americans had to do something to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail. To try to shut down that passageway. Precisely. Okay. So President Johnson at the time ordered an operation primarily to interdict the trail and secondarily to attack the indigenous communist force of Laos, the Papet Lao. I just described, I just listed some of the numbers of how many cluster bombs we're talking.

What was the human toll? How many people in Laos died as a result of these cluster munitions? 10% of the population, which at the time was only 3 million, about 200,000 people, Laotian people died. They were civilians and military. Of the civilians, half were children, young children. And mostly they died because they were attracted to these glittery, brightly painted toys, which is pretty much what the cluster bombs look like. To explain, they scatter everywhere and they're supposed to blow up, but they don't always. And so what's left is something that a child might pick up and think, oh, what's this? Correct.

Yeah. Correct. They're supposed to blow up on impact. They're dropped from airplanes. They were dropped from airplanes over Laos. And the fail rate, i.e. the dud rate that did not explode, was somewhere around 45%. The numbers are just so hard to wrap your head around. I wonder if we can take it down to the level of just one person.

Tell me about your encounter. You were on a dusty road. You're in this tiny village and you've written you ran into five boys, including one who told you he was seven years old. His name was Nai? Yes, Nai. Yeah. I had gone from Vientiane, the capital of Laos, to the northern part of the country. The country is only about twice the size of Pennsylvania,

by the way. Very small, landlocked. And I was there to look at a landmark lotion, landmark called the Plain of Jars, where hundreds of thousands of prehistoric lotions were buried in massive stone jars. And it was a main target for the bombings, it and the area directly around it, because that's where the Pathet Lao had their bases. So while I was there, I walked through a tiny, tiny village, maybe 50 people lived in this little village. And as I was walking with my interpreter along the dirt road through the center of the village, a little group of boys, as you said, five of them, young all, were running toward me and then stopped. They saw me, the foreigner, very unusual at the time. And I began questioning

them. And this little boy, Nye, was the one I picked out because he was missing one arm from above the elbow and one eye was completely gone. And I asked him how it happened. And he said that he, like these other boys and like everyone in the village, both children and adults, made a living, so to speak, by digging up unexploded bomblets or cluster bombs. And he had one that he was using his hands, his fingers to scrape out from the dirt and it blew up in his hand. It took his left arm and his left eye. And then he turned from me to the others in his gang of kids. They were all about the same age. And most, not all, but most of them had similar wounds, parts of bodies missing, scars on faces, on bellies, and that sort of thing. And that's the way it was. And the irony, the horrible thing really is that this is going on to this day.

Yeah. This gets to what happens after the guns are silenced, after the fighting stops. And in the case of Ukraine, the Biden administration is promising to support the cleanup of cluster bombs. In some areas, it's already helping with that because Russia is using cluster bombs in Ukraine. You're painting a very ugly picture of what the president ever to visit Laos, went there and made a speech in which he promised $90 million for a joint operation between the two governments to clean up the cluster bombs, anticipating it was going to take three years, it is now 1%. It's estimated 1% of the unexploded cluster bombs in Laos have been— Seven years later.

Seven years later, not three. It's still going on. Have been recovered. And there are knowledgeable, trustworthy experts who anticipate it's going to take 100 years. Part of the White House argument today for reintroducing these weapons into a different conflict in Ukraine is that they should be seen as a bridge, that they will buy time to ramp up production of more conventional artillery shells. I want you to listen to what John Kirby said on this program last week. This is the White House National Security Council spokesman. Because of the fight that they're in, which is really heavily dependent on artillery, and given the limits in their inventory of artillery shells and ours,

these cluster munitions are being viewed as sort of a bridge to get us to more conventional and increased production of more conventional artillery shells. So a bridge to something more conventional. Lewis Simons, does the history you witnessed in Laos suggest that as a valid argument? Yeah, it's a valid argument the way most arguments given by governments, not just the U.S. government, but most governments in the world give during wars. And it seems to make total sense in advance. And then things go haywire because it's war. And this is something that Americans, that all people need to bear in mind. I'm sure Vladimir Putin, when he invaded Ukraine, was not anticipating that a year later, he would be struggling for his life politically and otherwise. So things go go

wrong. And it sounds like a nice plan. Maybe it'll work. Maybe it won't. The White House is also arguing, yes, there is a risk to civilians, they acknowledge that they argue the greater risk is that the war continues, that Russia continues to pour in troops and munitions and bombs into Ukraine. Again, drawing on your reporting in last, what's your reaction to that argument that, look, Ukraine just needs to be all in? Well, I agree. I mean, what we're doing now, I remember during the Vietnam War, people used to complain, people who were pro-war complained that the U.S. was fighting the communist North Vietnam with one hand tied behind its back. And in a sense, that's what's going on now.

We've made a limited commitment. in the long run because very few peoples of the world want foreign troops on their ground, whether they're fighting for them or against them. And so, you know, the notion of committing troops and more material without end to this war carries all the risk that the war in Vietnam carried. Journalist Louis Simons. He is the author of To Tell the Truth, My Life as a Foreign Correspondent. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.