Newsgroup: it.politica.polo
Titolo: Bombe intelligenti, politici stupidi

Cluster Bomblets Litter Afghanistan
Human Rights Watch, November 16, 2001
 An Afghan man lifts the head of a child who along with 11 other civilians
died during US air raids in Kabul on October 28, 2001, witnesses said a man
and his seven children were killed when a bomb crashed through their home.
(AP photo)
More photos
(New York, November 16, 2001) Nearly 5,000 unexploded and highly volatile
cluster bomblets may be littered across areas of Afghanistan that were
targeted by U.S. warplanes, Human Rights Watch said today.
"These unexploded bomblets have in effect become antipersonnel landmines,"
said Mark Hiznay, senior researcher of the Arms Division of Human Rights
Watch. "They pose an extreme hazard to civilians, not just now but for years
to come." Human Rights Watch repeated its calls for the United States to
immediately stop using cluster bombs in Afghanistan.
Human Rights Watch learned from U.S. military sources that as of last
Thursday, November 8, 2001, the U.S. had used 350 cluster bombs in the air
campaign in Afghanistan. Of these, 150 were the CBU-87 Combined Effects
Munition; the remaining 200 were the CBU-103, a recent variant of the CBU-87
with the Wind Corrected Munitions Dispenser kit added to make it more
accurate. Each CBU-87 and CBU-103 releases 202 BLU-97 bomblets over a wide
area, dimensions of which are dependent on several factors such as release
altitude, spin rate of the munition, and wind speed.
This means that 70,700 BLU-97 bomblets have been dispersed from these 350
cluster bombs. The BLU-97 bomblets have a high initial failure rate, meaning
an unacceptably large proportion fail to explode on contact as designed.
These unexploded duds remain highly unstable, capable of exploding on the
slightest disturbance or contact. They become, in effect, antipersonnel
landmines. BLU-97 duds have led to high casualty rates in Iraq and
Yugoslavia following the conflicts there.
Using a 7 percent initial failure rate for the BLU-97 bomblet, an estimated
4,949 hazardous duds may now be littering areas in Afghanistan where these
cluster munitions have been dropped. Historically, the failure rate of
submunitions can range from 5 to 30 percent depending on the type of
munition used and other operational and environmental conditions. Human
Rights Watch obtained the 7 percent failure rate for BLU-97 bomblets from
statistical reports by the United Nations Mine Action Coordination Center in
Kosovo on unexploded ordnance and mine clearance operations in Kosovo since
June 1999.
Human Rights Watch believes that the fluid situation in Afghanistan now,
more than ever, dictates that coalition air forces immediately discontinue
use of cluster munitions. Un-uniformed combatants, civilian refugees, and
relief personnel are intermingled and some or all of them may be using
similar, sometimes commandeered, vehicles. The use of area weapons such as
cluster bombs is clearly inappropriate in this situation because any
military advantage gained by their use is outweighed by the risks to the
civilian population.
The unexploded BLU-97 bomblets are yellow soda-can-size objects. The U.S.
Defense Department, acknowledging on November 1, 2001 the tragic
possibilities of confusing these objects with similarly colored food
packets, began dropping leaflets warning the civilian population of the
danger and also announced it would change the color of the food packets.
Human Rights Watch welcomes the step of changing the color of the food
packets and the efforts to warn the population, but stresses that it hardly
solves the enduring problem of unexploded dud cluster bomblets.
The United Nations office in Islamabad has so far publicly confirmed one
civilian death and three civilian injuries (including two children) from
handling unexploded cluster bomb duds in the villages of Eshaq Sulaiman Zai
and Shakar Qala. The manager for the U.N. Mine Action Program for
Afghanistan at a November 9, 2001 news conference also stated the coalition
force is being cooperative and is providing some information on locations of
strikes, which may contain unexploded ordnance.
"The United States will have a special responsibility to clean up the
unexploded submunitions and other unexploded ordnance once the fighting
stops," Hiznay said. "The U.S. should make available the necessary
information and resources so that this can be done promptly and safely."
NATO eventually provided to the U.N. Mine Action Coordination Center in
Kosovo a database of all of the locations where they knew cluster bombs had
been used.
For more information on the use of cluster bombs in Afghanistan, please see:
Cluster Bombs in Afghanistan (HRW Backgrounder, October 2001) at
http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/arms/cluster-bck1031.htm
International Humanitarian Law Issues and the Afghan Conflict (HRW Letter,
October 17, 2001) at
http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/10/nato1017-ltr.htm
For more information on human rights in the aftermath of the September
11 attacks on the United States, please see:
September 11 Attacks: Crimes Against Humanity (HRW Focus Page) at
http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/september11/
--
2001: con il fascismo al potere inizia il revisionismo degli ignoranti e
degli imbecilli:
"Mah, non so se le istituzioni democratiche fossero buone solo perchč
democratiche.
La sospensione dei diritti civili non durň un ventennio, ma molto meno.
Veramente il fascismo fu una dittatura autoritaria, e non totalitaria."
                                            rixandros 22-11-01
"gli ebrei? La popolazione piů razzista e xenofoba che la storia ricordi."
                                            rixandros-artamano 2-6-00
"Il fascismo italiano fu una dittatura all'acqua di rose, inquinata dai
soliti caporioni esaltati che
si ritrovano sempre ed ovunque."
                                           Ciccio Brambilla (detto Balilla)
10-7-01
"Il nazionalsocialismo non e' altro che biologia applicata"
                                           R. Hess citato da Caudan il
23-11-01

l'unica bomba davvero intelligente é quella che ritorna al mittente