IEDs a threat to peace and security

The Times ran an interesting article earlier this week entitled 'The success of the home-made bomb: increased use of improvised electronic devices poses threat to peace and security'. The article is the latest in a steady trickle of media reporting about what are frequently described as Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), which are a frequent weapon of insurgents in Iraq, the Taleban in Afghanistan and by various other violent actors in many conflicts around the world.

IEDs certainly aren't a new phenomenon, but they've become of increasing concern and profile for Western militaries this decade as they've found themselves in zones in which their troops are exposed to the weapons to a greater extent. The Times article mentioned above contends that up to 300 IEDs are detonated somewhere in the world every month. The countries affected include Algeria, Chechnya, Pakistan, Colombia and Sri Lanka as well as Afghanistan and Iraq mentioned already. Moreover, the Washington Post reported in July that suspected Shiite militiamen in Iraq have even begun using powerful rocket-propelled bombs described as Improvised Rocket Assisted Munitions, or IRAMs:

"They are propane tanks packed with hundreds of pounds of explosives and powered by 107mm rockets. They are often fired by remote control from the backs of trucks, sometimes in close succession. Rocket-propelled bombs have killed at least 21 people, including at least three U.S. soldiers, this year."

(You can see some pictures of IRAMs on the Long War Journal.)

Increasing amounts of money and other resources are being spent by some governments on detection and countermeasures in order to protect their troops. But, of course, beyond the military threats there are also the deadly hazards to civilians of IEDs - who usually have no protection whatsoever, and are, indeed, often the intended victims of IED attacks. Nor is this just a headache in places like Iraq: at least one media report indicates that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the FBI agree that "the homemade explosive devices that have wreaked havoc in Iraq pose a rising threat to the United States." Intelligence and law enforcement agencies in many other countries are also concerned.

More focused and systematic data collection about IEDs is needed, as well as some policy dialogue at the international level in the arms control field about whether and how work in this area might be of benefit. Unfortunately, we're headed into arms control silly season from here until the end of the year, with UN First Committee in New York, the biological weapons, anti-personnel mines and Certain Convention Weapons Conventions' meetings in Geneva, and the Convention on Cluster Munitions signing ceremony in Oslo where most multilateral arms control attention will be - not to mention an upcoming U.S. presidential election and an unfolding world financial crisis.

However, someone thinking and blogging on these things on a frequent basis is Landmine Action UK's Policy & Research Manager Richard Moyes, whose Explosive Violence blog Disarmament Insight also has a link to at right. Richard is also, it seems, keeping a useful ad hoc log of explosive violence incidents, many of which pertain to IED use: you can check that out here.

We certainly can't claim ignorance that IEDs are a problem, even if a lot more investigation and attention is needed.

John Borrie

Image credit: borrowed from Richard's Explosive Violence blog.

The Anthropocene question

The International Herald Tribune ran an unusual article a couple days ago with the by-line 'Maybe science can save the planet: But should it?'.

The article took as its starting point a proposal by a private American company, Plantos, for

""fertilizing" parts of the ocean with iron, in hopes of encouraging carbon-absorbing blooms of plankton. Meanwhile, researchers elsewhere are talking about injecting chemicals into the atmosphere, launching sun-reflecting mirrors into stationary orbit above the earth or taking other steps to reset the thermostat of a warming planet."

Well, wasn't sticking chemicals in the oceans and in the atmosphere part of the problem in the first place? What really struck me, however, is that nowhere in the IHT article was there mention of the phrase 'unintended consequences' - although, at one point, the article quotes a philosopher at the American 'Center for Engineering, Ethics and Society,’ who said new technologies such as nanotechnology and robotics were so powerful that ""our saving grace, our inability to affect things at a planetary level, is being lost to us," as human-induced climate change is demonstrating."

This strikes me as a bit contradictory. It looks like we are facing human-induced climate change, but this goes back to the industrial revolution and the transfer of massive amounts of fossilized carbon locked up in the earth's crust (primarily coal, oil and gas) to the atmosphere. These sources of energy certainly aren't emerging technologies - they're well established and could even be considered 'old'. Although our ancestors didn't know it way back then, they'd stumbled on planet changing technology before we even had a global view of the planet.

Indeed, the Geological Society of America has argued that the industrial revolution, which really got underway during the 19th century, has caused a new geological epoch - the Anthropocene:

"Stresses to the planet's atmosphere, oceans, life forms, and very surface are dramatic enough to end the Holocene epoch, the geologists say. That period began about 12,000 years ago as the last Ice Age melted and the planet warmed enough to allow people to farm and thrive."

We now face the prospect of the human species "changing geologic time".

But will we be around to see it? The development of weapon systems over the last century should be a rich vein of cautionary tales about the hazards of depending on technology without considering the prospect - no, the certainty - of unintended consequences. Investment in bomber forces from the First World War for so-called precision bombing contributed to massive bombing of civilians in World War Two. Carpet bombing by the U.S. and its allies in South East Asia in 1960s and 70s caused great damage to the environment, in addition to all of the human misery it caused to civilians - many of whom lived in countries not officially at war with those bombing them.

And then there was the large-scale use of chemical defoliants such as 'Agent Orange' to strip away vegetation in the hope of spotting North Vietnamese forces, with all of its longer term environmental and human consequences. According to the Sunshine Project, this helped to build pressure for the 1977 Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques (or ENMOD). (Curiously, ENMOD is not spoken about in disarmament and arms control circles much, although it entered into force internationally in 1978, and the U.S. and Russia are both state parties.)

The IHT article picks up on biotechnology and nanotechnology as two general areas of technological advance with big potential risks for our planet. It also notes that the ethics of emerging technologies are often not something scientists who "have their nose to the bench" necessarily think about much. This certainly matches my own experience a few years ago in working to promote the International Committee of the Red Cross's 'Biotechnology, Weapons and Humanity' appeal to practitioners in the life sciences, in order to prevent their hostile misuse. There has been some modest awareness-raising since then, and states parties to the Biological Weapons Convention have given official focus to it, in addition to the good work of many national scientific academies and medical associations. But synthetic biology, in particular, is one likely area full of difficult ethical dilemmas.

The biggie for the present though is nuclear technology. The scientists involved in the Manhattan Project believed that were developing a weapon to win the Second World War, and many hoped nuclear technology would then be turned to peaceful purposes. Few were likely aware that it would became the basis for a Cold War arms race in which the effects of nuclear war would truly have world changing consequences because each side would deploy tens of thousands of warheads each.

Richard Rhodes' book Arsenals of Folly discusses how the design of the reactors installed in Chernobyl was compromised by the demands of the Soviet Union's military programmes. The RBMK reactor was originally a production reactor developed in the 1950s to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons - a factor that meant it was chosen rather than the safer VVER light water reactor design to be adapted for civilian power operation in the 1970s. Rhodes also relates how, in 1986, the Soviet Union's new leader Mikhail Gorbachev was aghast when the scale of the human, environmental and economic consequences of the Chernobyl reactor accident finally sank in - and horrified at what would happen if these facilities became deliberate targets in war. Yet the Chernobyl explosion, fire and radiation were only fractions of the damage nuclear weapons could do.

This is all salient when we hear of new technologies being offered as panacea to contemporary problems, whether figuring out how to keep the lights on, what to run our cars on or how to build a better minefield. (A major challenge for many former Soviet countries trying to destroy Cold War stocks of anti-personnel mines under the Mine Ban Convention is that, for instance, the ubiquitous PFM-1 mine contains hydrogen chloride and so is highly toxic.)

The road to hell is paved with good intentions and perhaps more than a few handy-sounding inventions. Responsible policies are needed to tackle global challenges, and not just new technologies - and that means thinking further ahead than the next election cycle, a hard thing for politicians to do.

John Borrie


References
Richard Rhodes, Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race, London: Simon & Schuster: 2008.

NASA image AS8-14-2383 ("Earthrise") taken by Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders on 24 December 1968, and downloaded from Wikipedia.org. "Earthrise", although now almost visual cliché has been described as "the most influential environmental photograph ever taken." Earthrise is sometimes confused with a December 1972 photograph taken by Apollo 17 astronauts taken of the brightly lit face of the Earth from 29,000 kilometres ("The Blue Marble").

Cluster Munition Fact Sheet: A view from the field

Last week, we posted on the blog a U.S. public document on “Putting the impact of cluster munitions in context with the effects of all explosive remnants of war” issued on 15 February. In this blog post, Andy Smith offers a view from the field.

It’s always good to know what the official U.S. Department of State attitude is on a given subject. That said, a recent "Fact sheet" or “White Paper” seems to me, as a professional in demining, to present only one side of a polemic. The timing of its release seemed clearly intended to counter the Wellington Conference on Cluster Munitions.

Having just updated the Database of Demining Accidents, I have found time to respond to several of the points in the U.S. “Fact sheet”…

"...For example, there are practically no United States-produced landmines being found by de-miners anywhere in the world today."

This is simply not true. U.S. mines are being cleared in large numbers today. For example, the minefield on the border between Syria and Jordan has more than 57,000 M14 anti-personnel blast mines. There are also more than 15,000 M15 and M19 anti-vehicle mines. Clearance of this minefield is happening now. These numbers don’t seem insignificant to me.

U.S. mines aren’t common. That much is true. Most of the mines found around the world are old Soviet stuff, with mines from Italy, China and Pakistan also common. But the USA cannot claim to be clean. M14 and M19 mines have featured in demining accidents in Iraq, Cambodia, Laos and Afghanistan. The US makes well-designed mines – and unfortunately they continue to function thirty years after they were placed (which is a large part of the reason for wanting to ban their use).

"...some are claiming that unexploded cluster munitions constitute a major category of post-conflict hazard, warranting new mechanisms beyond those that already exist in Amended Protocol II and Protocol V of the CCW."

Actually, unexploded “cluster munitions” do constitute a major post-conflict hazard for deminers. Cluster-bomb submunitions feature in more demining accidents than any other ordnance type other than mines. And, unlike mines, the submunitions that have featured in demining accidents are predominantly of U.S. design and manufacture.

The order of frequency in recorded demining accidents is as follows: M77, BLU-97, KB-1, BLU-26. All except the KB-1 are made in America. From a wealth of anecdotal reports, I strongly suspect that the accuracy of this record is slightly skewed by the lack of independent post-bombing data from Afghanistan and that the BLU-97 would come out top if access to the demining accident data from that period were available. (Nevertheless, the M77 is also of U.S. manufacture, so the top two would simply change positions.) When all data is in from Lebanon, the M77 is likely to re-emerge as being the most frequent offender. But deminers often survive an M77 incident. They are rarely that lucky with the BLU-97.

It should be stressed that I am only writing about accidents during demining, and not accidents to the general population. And it is true that there are some countries heavily contaminated with submunitions that have never caused post-conflict injury without the kind of human intervention that boggles the mind. (My favourite is the shepherd on the Tajik mountain who was cold and whose campfire needed fuel. He knew that explosives burn – he’d seen soldiers making tea on a TNT fire – so he put a few submunitions into the fire to try to keep it going. The next surprise is that two out of three shepherds sitting around the fire survived.) The point is that people do interact with ERW in unpredictable ways – and all of it must be removed if the innocent are to be protected from the effects of past conflicts in which their role was always limited to that of unwilling victims.

Outside Vietnam and Laos, most areas contaminated with submunitions that are reliably not movement sensitive are strewn with old Soviet submunitions. These submunitions have simple impact fuze systems; that is, "all-ways" acting fuzes, but requiring a real IMPACT. A lot of early U.S. stuff was like that, but inside Vietnam and Laos the range of experimental submunitions dropped by the USA was so wide that you can never be confident about the sensitivity of what you find - and there have been demining accidents. And, of course, here have been many civilian accidents with submunitions in Laos.

It’s disingenuous to suggest that submunitions are no worse than mortar bombs. Yes, deminers and civilians die in accidents when quantities of mixed ordnance detonate - and civilians sometimes die when taking mortars apart with hammers or when playing with grenades. However, leaving mines aside, in humanitarian demining no category of ordnance comes close to “submunitions” in the accident record.

In my opinion, the Mine Ban Treaty definition of a mine was always flawed. It includes the weasel word "designed" - as in "designed to be victim initiated". If it had not done so, it appears obvious to me that many US submunitions would be justifiably classed as mines. It is not the design, but the outcome that matters – and when an outcome of long-term civilian hazard is undeniable, the continued use of the weapon includes knowledge of that outcome. In my view, ignoring the known outcome is irresponsible. Foreknowledge and “design” begin to merge and the outcome begins to look deliberate.

And, in general terms, regardless of how they are designed to be used, U.S. cluster munitions have been used against civilian areas. Their delivery in combat is often not "precise" and their deliberate spread means that they can never be better than broadly "accurate". Their failure rate everywhere has been far higher than in user trials. They are indiscriminate weapons, which I believe breach the spirit of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, if not the treaty’s letter. And, they kill deminers, who are cleaning up after our wars, which is really rather important.

"U.S. policy for its own cluster munitions is that new types must have a 99% functioning rate in testing".

Sadly, this was also true of those in current use. It proves that the "testing" does not accurately reflect how they are used and the resultant failure rate. While for many munitions, a dud is usually a dud, it could be fatal to think that of a U.S. made submunition. Indeed, such submunitions have been fatal for many serving U.S. soldiers, as well as for a few well-trained Explosive Ordnance Disposal specialists in humanitarian demining and some unfortunate deminers.

The Fact Sheet also provides a country-by-country analysis using selected figures. In each case, its claims could easily be argued against. From my own experience, I took pictures of BLU-97 strikes on Iraqi buildings, with the submunitions in place and the US "rapid reaction force" nowhere to be seen in late 2004. Other examples abound but a brief summary would only repeat the DoS error of citing selected details to support a conclusion that was not derived, and so appears to have been a hidden premise.

I can sympathize a little with the United States over the anti-personnel mine ban – because the North/South divide in Korea is probably impossible to demine to humanitarian standards without many casualties. That said, despite U.S. claims that anti-personnel mines are essential weapons, they haven’t reported using them in conflicts since the Mine Ban Treaty, which indicates they weren’t THAT essential – and that they do have some flexibility in meeting the concerns of allies. So, we should take claims about the operational necessity of cluster munitions and portents of doom about the implications for military interoperability if U.S. allies decide to ban them (a big issue in the Oslo Process, I understand) with a big grain of salt. It seems obvious to me that the U.S.A. really doesn’t need indiscriminate submunitions either.

"...assistance to victims should be provided purely on a humanitarian basis and not be made conditional upon a state's agreement to any politically motivated international agreement, whether that agreement concerns landmines, cluster munitions or any other conventional weapons."

Professionals in Mine Action know how "political" the decisions over where to give humanitarian assistance are - and how frequently national self-interest dictates humanitarian demining spending. In my experience, the U.S. is certainly no exception here. Nevertheless, if you’re going to have rational criteria for providing support to solve a finite problem (and clearing ERW is a finite and measureable task), then making the delivery of humanitarian demining funds dependent on a commitment not to use the most indiscriminate weapons (mines and submunitions) again makes a lot of sense – because it limits the potential for that country to become similarly contaminated at a later date. The logic of this is rather more compelling than some other highly “political” criteria for the provision of aid that I have encountered.

To complete the picture and offset any impression of this being an attempt to bash the U.S.A., that minefield on the border between Syria and Jordan I mentioned above contains thousands of antique British-made mines in really poor condition. It probably also has a few of the very nasty Canadian C3A1/2 AP mines that include a small shaped charge to really make your day (the "Elsie). No country is squeaky clean.

From the perspective of one who has to pick the things up, the Department of State release of a spin-doctored cluster munition "fact-sheet" built on hidden premises and selective number-crunching mixed with factual errors looks distinctly "grubby" and not a little desperate..

This is a guest blog by Andy Smith. Andy has been working in humanitarian mine action since 1994. He has demining experience in Afghanistan, Angola, Bosnia Herzegovina, Cambodia, Croatia, Iraq, Kosovo, Mozambique, Namibia, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan and Zimbabwe and is currently working on the border between Jordan and Syria. Andy is involved in the Database of Demining Incidents and Victims and is an independent member of the International Mine Action Standards Review Board.

Picture shows the author trialing water jets and mine boots in a minefield on the border between Jordan and Syria on 5 March 2008. The blue stick at Andy’s feet is an M14 anti-personnel mine.

Cluster Munitions: Putting impacts (and policies) in context

On 15 February 2008, the American Department of State distributed a White Paper entitled 'Putting the Impact of Cluster Munitions in Context with the Effects of All Explosive Remnants of War'. In some respects, this document elaborated on U.S. statements in the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) process in June and November 2007.

The U.S. document raised many issues, and represented a view contrasting with those of some others on effectively addressing the humanitarian impacts of cluster munitions. We're aware that it's generated considerable discussion, both publicly and in humanitarian demining and arms control circles.

To that end, we wanted to bring the U.S. White Paper to the attention of our readers and, in the spirit of constructive debate, to invite your comments. We've reproduced the White Paper text (which is in the public domain) in its entirety below for your reference. Where the original text indicated web-links, we've activated these as hyperlinks for your convenience.


Fact Sheet
Bureau of Political-Military Affairs
Washington, DC
February 15, 2008

White Paper: Putting the Impact of Cluster Munitions in Context with the Effects of All Explosive Remnants of War

The United States shares the humanitarian concerns expressed by many other countries with regard to the use of cluster munitions. In order to find an internationally-accepted way of effectively addressing the humanitarian aspects associated with cluster munitions, all relevant facts should be considered. Unfortunately, much of what is said for public consumption by certain advocacy groups and some foreign governments on this issue is not accurate. Therefore, as part of the United States’ overall policy of contributing to meaningful progress on concerns related to cluster munitions, including its strong support for the negotiation of a new Protocol to address the humanitarian impact of cluster munitions within the framework of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), this White Paper is being released in order to ensure that all parties interested in this issue have available the most accurate information possible.

Cluster munitions constitute a small portion of the total humanitarian threat presented by unexploded aerial bombs, unexploded artillery shells, and other conventional unexploded munitions – collectively known as explosive remnants of war (ERW) – that often remain in post-conflict environments. Yet, some are claiming that unexploded cluster munitions constitute a major category of post-conflict hazard, warranting new mechanisms beyond those that already exist in Amended Protocol II and Protocol V of the CCW. Rather than creating redundant treaty mechanisms, states need to remain focused on comprehensive post-conflict clearance of all explosive hazards, using the lessons that have already been learned from decades of successful humanitarian clearance of landmines.

This White Paper is intended to share what the United States has learned from its efforts to destroy surplus, abandoned, and unexploded conventional munitions in 52 countries.

The Gap Between Estimated Impacts and Actual Impacts

In almost every recent conflict – Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Iraq - the initial estimates regarding the degree of impact caused by cluster munitions have been grossly off the mark. Indeed, once clearance is started and accurate casualty data collected, initial estimates have been proven wrong. At the same time, the long-term impacts of other munitions have been ignored or under reported, to the detriment of affected civilian communities.

A careful examination of the 2007 edition of the “Landmine Monitor” reveals 289 known post-conflict casualties from unexploded cluster munitions around the world in 2006, far fewer than advocates of a ban on cluster munitions have claimed or implied. Even if one assumes that casualties from unexploded cluster munitions are probably under-reported due to difficulties in collecting accurate casualty data, a more expansive estimate would still be hard-pressed to find 400 cluster munitions casualties out of the world wide total of 5,759 from all ERW.

For example, advocates of a ban on cluster munitions cite their alleged ongoing impact in the Balkans, stemming from the conflicts there in 1999. Yet, there was only one recorded casualty from a cluster munition in the entire Balkans in 2006, according to the Landmine Monitor.

To further place this figure in context, more people (645 according to the Mozambican Information Agency) were harmed in one afternoon by an ammunition depot explosion in Maputo Mozambique in 2007, than were reported by the Landmine Monitor to have been killed or injured by cluster munitions throughout the world during an entire year. Such catastrophic explosions of old, poorly maintained munition depots around the world pose a far greater threat to civilians in adjoining communities than unexploded cluster munitions. This truly dire threat is one that the United States is also helping to address.

U.S. Contribution to Clearing Explosive Remnants of War Globally

Before proceeding further with this analysis, it is important to understand the United States’ role in post-conflict clearance of explosive remnants of war as well as of landmines. First, with the exception of the explosive hazards that remain in Laos and to a lesser extent Vietnam, the vast majority of the landmines and unexploded ordnance found around the world were neither produced nor used by the United States. For example, there are practically no United States-produced landmines being found by deminers anywhere in the world today. Second, the regulations and laws that govern the U.S. exports of weapons systems are among the strictest in the world. These laws provide extensive safeguards against the proliferation of U.S.-produced weapons, require proper storage and security of all U.S. weapons, contain prohibitions on unlawful use, and include extensive post-sales inspection procedures (see www.pmddtc.state.gov to learn more). With regard to use, the U.S. has consistently adhered to all applicable Laws of Armed Conflict in its past use of cluster munitions and has a demonstrated record of continuously improving the features of these munitions in order to enhance the safety of civilians. Finally, even though the preponderance of ERW and landmines around the world that remain a threat are of foreign origin, the United States is the most generous donor to humanitarian mine action, having spent over $1.3 billion dollars so far to help clean up other countries’ ERW and landmines.

Reality on the Ground

The following cases describe the current impacts caused by unexploded cluster munitions around the world. While these impacts should not be taken lightly or dismissed, they certainly are much less than ban advocates are actively leading people to believe.

AFGHANISTAN: During the Soviet occupation, vast quantities of cluster and unitary munitions as well as landmines were used against the Afghan freedom fighters. The ensuing civil war affected Afghanistan further, and then U.S. and Coalition forces used cluster and unitary munitions against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Building on the U.S.’s longstanding demining program in Afghanistan dating back to 1988, the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement initiated a major clean up of all known sites with unexploded allied cluster munitions. This dedicated clean up was successfully concluded in 2002. In 2006, the UN reported 16 known casualties from unexploded cluster munitions out of a total of 796 casualties of all ERW. For that same year, the International Committee of the Red Cross reported 22 cluster munitions casualties out of a total of 784 casualties from all ERW. No matter which set of figures one accepts, the findings by these organizations prove that other forms of ERW constitute a far greater threat than cluster munitions in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the United States continues to help Afghanistan clear all of its explosive remnants of war.

ALBANIA: During the Kosovo conflict, border regions in Albania were hit by cluster and unitary munitions fired by Serbian forces of the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Extensive post-conflict landmine and ERW clearance supported by the United States and other donors has been successful. In 2006, there were no new casualties from any form of ERW, although in 2007, regrettably, four children were injured after playing with a hand grenade, according to the Albanian Mine Action Executive.

BOSNIA and HERZEGOVINA: This former Yugoslav republic, badly affected by ERW and landmines generated by all combatants, has received significant humanitarian mine action assistance from the United States and other donor nations and groups. In 2006, there were 35 ERW casualties; 1 of those casualties was caused by a cluster munition, according to the Bosnia and Herzegovina Mine Action Center.

CAMBODIA: Cluster munitions accounted for 20 of the 450 casualties that Cambodia suffered from ERW and landmines in 2006, as reported by the Cambodian Mine Victim Information Service. Overall casualty rates in Cambodia have dropped dramatically in the past two years due to the Cambodian Government’s efforts to restrict dangerous scrap metal collection from recycling of ERW, and to the success of large scale demining programs, supported in part by the United States.

IRAQ: According to the Landmine Monitor, the Iraqi government estimated that from 2003 to 2006 there were 75 casualties from cluster munitions used by U.S. forces. The Landmine Monitor also estimated that between 2003 and 2005, there were 2,810 casualties from ERW and landmines. Immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the U.S. Department of State initiated a major humanitarian mine action program in Iraq, which included a deployment by its Quick Reaction Demining Force in the summer and fall of 2003 to clean up unexploded cluster munitions and other ERW. In 2006, Iraq suffered 99 casualties from ERW and mines that were reported: 1 of those casualties was caused by a cluster munition, according to the Landmine Monitor. The United States continues to provide Iraq with significant ERW/mine action assistance.

KOSOVO: By the time former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia forces were driven from Kosovo by U.S. and NATO forces, this province was heavily affected by landmines and ERW, including unexploded cluster munitions. The United States contributed to a UN- led clearance effort that declared Kosovo free from the humanitarian impacts of landmines and ERW in 2001. Nonetheless residual ERW do remain in Kosovo and produced 11 casualties in 2006, not one of which was reported as being caused by cluster munitions, according to the Office of the Kosovo Protection Corps Coordinator.

LAOS: Laos was heavily bombed by the United States during the Vietnam conflict in an attempt to block the flow of North Vietnamese arms and troops through Laotian territory. Cluster munitions comprised a significant portion of the U.S. bomb attacks over a seven- year period and, due to the technology in use at the time, very large amounts of unexploded cluster munitions were generated, making Laos the only country in the world where cluster munitions constitute the principal and most dangerous ERW hazard. The United States has since provided significant ERW clearance assistance to Laos, which has helped to reduce casualty rates, with annual casualties dropping dramatically by 65 % according to the Landmine Monitor. In 2006 there were a total of 59 known casualties from all ERW (it is likely that additional casualties took place but were not reported to authorities). The Landmine Monitor calculates that given the sufficient information known about 49 of those cases, the majority of the casualties were caused by handling, tampering, and playing with unexploded cluster munitions. U.S. cluster munitions technology has evolved to ever more accurate and reliable systems since the Vietnam conflict.

LEBANON: The 2006 conflict between Hezbollah militias and Israeli forces that took place predominantly in southern Lebanon is one of the exceptions to the case in which unexploded cluster munitions normally constitute a small portion of ERW. Unexploded cluster munitions created a significant humanitarian impact in southern Lebanon. In response, the United States quickly and significantly increased the funding for its long-standing humanitarian mine action program there, contributing at least 25% of the $53 million in international donations to aid clearance operations. A summary of the U.S. surge in assistance to deal with ERW clearance as of October 2006 is available. U.S. assistance continues. The combined efforts of U.S. and other donors and the Lebanese people have made great strides in the clearance of ERW, and restoration of impacted land to safe use. As clearance operations and ERW risk awareness programs have expanded, casualty rates have fallen. For example, in December 2007, there were 2 casualties from unexploded cluster munitions, down from 57 in August 2007. Further details are available in the UN Mine Action Center (UNMACC) for South Lebanon Quarterly Report for October–December 2007 .

But even in southern Lebanon, the projects failure rates of cluster munitions were ultimately incorrect. As of December 2007, UNMACC reported that 68% of the impacted land (25% with sub-surface clearance to 20 centimeters; 43% surface cleared of all threats) there had been cleared, producing 138,750 unexploded cluster munitions. Based on the rate of clearance, this indicates that the initial estimates of over 1,000,000 unexploded cluster munitions were high. Similarly, this would make the actual failure rate of cluster munitions there closer to 5% rather than the oft-quoted 20% - 40% estimates. (U.S. policy for its own cluster munitions is that new types must have a 99% functioning rate in testing.)

SERBIA: During hostilities to prevent ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia targets in Serbia were struck by NATO forces using unitary and cluster bombs. Between 2001 and 2005, there were 52 casualties caused by ERW, according to the Landmine Monitor. The Associated Press reported that 1 of those ERW incidents involved a deminer who was injured by a cluster munition that had failed to detonate in 1999. There were no ERW or landmine casualties in 2006, according to the Landmine Monitor.

VIETNAM: In 2006, according to Clear Path International there were 96 reported casualties from ERW and landmines, a legacy of conflicts dating back to World War II, the French period, American period, and the Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979. Handicap International-Belgium calculated that at least 20 of these casualties were reported to come from cluster munitions. The United States has spent millions of dollars to help clear landmines and ERW from Vietnam, as well as teach ERW/mine risk education in affected areas, and render assistance to ERW/mine survivors. Its long-standing efforts along with those of other donor nations and non-governmental organizations have made a difference.

Survivors Must be Helped Regardless of What Type of Munition Injured Them

The debate about cluster munitions should not distract the international community from the fact that tens of thousands of survivors from landmines and the full range of ERW have been physically, emotionally, and economically harmed over the years. Thanks in part to the U.S. Humanitarian Mine Action Program, the world’s largest such program which includes a robust survivors assistance component, the casualty rate from landmines and ERW has plummeted from the estimated range of 10,000 - 20,000 four years ago to 5,751 as of 2006 for which the most comprehensive data exists at the time of this White Paper, a clear positive trend even taking into account the incomplete collection of data for accident and health statistics in many conflict-affected countries. (Statistics for ERW and landmine casualties in 2007 have not been fully compiled yet.) Today more civilians come to harm through tampering with abandoned or unexploded ordnance than are injured or killed by landmines. Nonetheless, current survivors and survivors of new accidents from explosive hazards left from past or on-going conflict continue to deserve help that will restore their dignity, mobility, and ability to reintegrate in their communities.

Since 1989 when the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Leahy War Victims Fund was founded, the United States has assisted tens of thousands of survivors of mines and other war-related causes. It should be noted that the United States has reached out to help war victims around the world, even though the vast majority have been injured by mines and other devices that were manufactured and used by foreign combatants, and not injured by United States mines or munitions.

Furthermore, assistance to victims should be provided purely on a humanitarian basis and not be made conditional upon a state’s agreement to any politically motivated international agreement, whether that agreement concerns landmines, cluster munitions or any other conventional weapons. The best example of this principle can be found in Protocol V of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons which the United States has signed and which calls on its States Parties to:

“… provide assistance for the care and rehabilitation and social and economic reintegration of victims of explosive remnants of war. Such assistance may be provided inter alia through the United Nations system, relevant international, regional or national organizations or institutions, the International Committee of the Red Cross, national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies and their International Federation, non-governmental organizations, or on a bilateral basis.”

Conclusion

The campaign to ban cluster munitions has endeavored to elevate a single type of munition to infamy rather than addressing the continuing need to clean up all explosive remnants of war, the vast majority of which are not cluster munitions. To truly save lives, responsible governments and civil society should urge all states to take a comprehensive, humanitarian, impact-based approach to reduce the effect of landmines and all ERW and by providing more support to existing clearance and survivors’ assistance efforts, and not dissipate resources in a variety of competing and redundant mechanisms.

States that are party to the CCW should support Protocol V. States that are not party to the CCW but claim to be genuinely concerned about the humanitarian impacts of conventional weapons should accede to this Convention. They should support Protocol V and support any future instrument in the CCW that addresses cluster munitions.

Additional Information:

To learn more about the United States position on cluster munitions and all ERW, and on the inter-agency U.S. Humanitarian Mine Action Program, the world’s largest such program that clears landmines and ERW, teaches ERW/mine risk education, renders assistance to ERW/mine survivors, conducts research and development on faster and safer ways to detect and clear ERW and mines, and provides humanitarian mine action training to foreign deminers, consult the following materials and websites:

• “U.S. Statement on Humanitarians Aspects of Cluster Munitions,” delivered by Katherine Baker, Member of the U.S. Delegation to the CCW-GGE, January 16, 2008;

• “U.S. Landmine Policy and the Ottawa Convention Ban on Anti-Personnel Landmines: Similar Path,” by Richard Kidd, Director, Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement, November 21, 2007;

• “U.S. Intervention on Humanitarian Impacts of Cluster Munitions,” delivered by Richard Kidd, Director, Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement, June 20, 2007;

• “United States Clearance of Unexploded Cluster Munitions,” February 23, 2007 U.S. Department of State Fact Sheet.

• Website of the Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs;

• Website of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Leahy War Victims Fund;

• Website of the U.S. Department of Defense’s Humanitarian Demining Research & Development Program;

• Website of the U.S. Department of Defense’s Humanitarian Demining Training Center.

For further comprehensive information about the clearance of landmines and ERW around the world, visit the website of the Mine Action Information Center at James Madison University and consult their “Journal of Mine Action”.

A registry for predictions

As part of our research, UNIDIR’s Disarmament as Humanitarian Action project has been exploring why it’s difficult to accurately predict future events in the political field (see John Borrie’s recent post “Putting Predictions to the Test”). On the same topic, I recently saw David Brin, a physics professor, NASA consultant and science fiction novelist, talk about the idea of a “prediction registry”.

Although making predictions about the future is an extremely difficult task—especially in the political field—this is something that humans have always done. (Brin noted that our prefrontal lobes, which appeared perhaps a few hundred thousand years ago and which are specific to the human brain, play a significant role in exploring potential outcomes and making predictions.)

Today, we’ve developed tools and techniques to help us make forecasts. Computer simulations, and agent-based modelling in particular, are used to analyze complex phenomena. Although very sophisticated, these new techniques can only provide a limited amount of information about the future behaviour of a complex system. This is because, as complexity theory shows, complex systems are “inherently” unpredictable.

However, as Brin noticed, this doesn’t prevent us from making predictions, nor does it prevent us from spending a lot of money and time in trying to make accurate guesses. Starting from this insight, and realizing that there is no record of who was right, how often and when, Brin proposed a prediction registry be set up: “anyone who claims any form of special foresight might be judged by the same standards that applies to any other field of endeavour—success or failure.”

In addition, each forecast would receive a “specificity multiplier”, taking a high value if the prediction is very precise (providing dates, names, places, etc.) and a low value it if the forecast is obscure.

This could be valuable. First, predictors and forecast specialists would “be held accountable for all of their predictions, not just those they later choose to remember.” This is important as it would significantly improve transparency. The introduction of an “accuracy score”, in particular, could reveal the most accurate predictors, giving them credibility and recognition, and increasing their role in policy making.

There might be some surprises. As Philip Tetlock showed in his book “Expert Political Judgment: How Good is It? How Can We Know?”, experts aren’t necessarily more competent than the rest of us.
Finding out who is right a lot in prediction and problem solving, while denying legitimacy to those who are consistently wrong, would probably be in society’s best interest.

But most importantly, the analysis of scores, Brin suggested, could also help us understand our own patterns of success, failure and predictions. Tetlock’s work has already underlined the influence of various psychological biases on so-called experts. Yet policy analysts and decision makers aren’t soothsayers. If we’re at all realistic, we need to recognise that predictors can never be always right. But if a prediction registry made more of them rigorous in their thinking and less instinctively cocksure in their predictions, that would be a big step forward for 21st century society.


Aurélia Merçay


References

David Brin, Accountability for Everyday Prophets: A Call for a Predictions Registry, 2005, available online at http://www.davidbrin.com/predictionsregistry.html.

A list of David Brin’s predictions is available online at http://earthbydavidbrin.pbwiki.com/Predictions.

Video of David Brin, interviewed at the 6th International Conference on Complex Systems (ICCS) in Boston in June 2006: http://complexity.vub.ac.be/~comdig/06iccs/Brin.MOV.

Photo by 'SeraphimC retrieved from Flickr.

Putting Predictions to the Test

As part of it's work, UNIDIR's Disarmament as Humanitarian Action project is currently working on a publication looking at some constraints on multilateral negotiations, and how some of these might be overcome or at least potentially mitigated.

One conundrum for policy makers in general is that it's very difficult to accurately predict outcomes of complex political and economic processes, and this has implications for their work. Multilateral practitioners are no exception.

Meanwhile, it's often very difficult to get a handle on how good "expert" political judgment is. But not impossible. A recent book by Philip E. Tetlock, an American psychologist, has revealed through a careful decade-long study that people who make prediction their business - people who appear as experts on television, for instance, or who are quoted in newspaper articles, advise governments and businesses - are, on average, no better than the rest of us.

Tetlock's research team asked various specialists to judge the likelihood of a number of political, economic and military events occurring within a specific timeframe (about five years ahead). Close to 300 specialists offered outcomes representing a total number of around 27,000 predictions. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb observed in his book, The Black Swan:

"His study revealed an expert problem: there was no difference in results whether one had a PhD or undergraduate degree. Well-published professors had no advantage over journalists. The only regularity Tetlock found was the negative effect of reputation on prediction: those who had a big reputation were worse predictors than those who had none."

Ouch. But Tetlock's study didn't end there. His focus wasn't so much to show the real level of competence of experts, but to investigate how they spun their stories. Tetlock discovered various cognitive mechanisms of generating ex post explanation - mostly in the form of belief defence, or self-esteem protection.

Prominent were phenomena that psychologists call motivational biases, something Ashley Thornton has explored in previous posts on this blog. These include the self-serving attributional bias (the human tendency to blame unfavourable outcomes on external causes but take credit for favourable outcomes) and the confirmation bias (we tend to seek out and process information that confirms our pre-existing beliefs).

The New Yorker put it succinctly: "The experts' trouble in Tetlock's study is exactly the trouble that all human beings have: we fall in love with our hunches, and we really, really hate to be wrong."

Food for thought. More about Tetlock's work in future posts.


John Borrie


References

Philip E. Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment: How Good is it? How Can We Know? (Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 2005).

Nicholas Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (New York, Random House, 2007).

To read a neat introduction to Tetlock's work in a review of his book in the 5 December 2005 edition of The New Yorker click here.

Picture by F33 retrieved from Flickr.

Worldmapper

Professor Danny Dorling of the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom reckons, “you can say it, you can prove it, you can tabulate it, but it is only when you show it that it hits home.”

Dorling and his colleagues are backing up this claim. Their research group on Social and Spatial Inequalities (SASI) has established the Worldmapper project in collaboration with Mark Newman at the Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan in the United States.

Worldmapper is a collection of some 366 world maps, in which territories are re-sized according to a chosen variable of interest. Indicators they’ve mapped range from wealth, education and health to population movements, goods production and natural disaster casualties.

The Worldmapper database also includes cartograms depicting military spending as well as violence and war statistics. I was particularly interested in a map representing territory size as the proportion of worldwide landmine casualties from 2003 to 2005.

The first image below is a classic world map. The second is the Worldmapper version, which visually depicts where casualties are occurring by appearing to swell or shrink areas according to their proportion of landmine casualties (click on the pictures to enlarge).



“Landmine casualty” here is drawn from the Landmine Monitor definition to refer to any “individual killed or injured as a result of an incident involving antipersonnel mines, anti-vehicle mines, improvised explosive devices, dud cluster munitions, and other unexploded ordnance”.

During the time period from 2003 to 2005, Landmine Monitor reported around 7,000 casualties from landmines and explosive remnants of war (ERW) worldwide per year. However, this figure “represents only the reported casualties and does not take into account the many casualties that are believed to go unreported.” The real number of new casualties from landmines/ERW each year is estimated by Landmine Monitor to be between 15,000 and 20,000.

As we can see on the map, the most affected countries in the time period 2003-2005 included Iraq, Afghanistan, Cambodia and Colombia. Together, these countries accounted for almost 4000—or 57%—of the reported number of casualties.


Aurélia Merçay


References

Worldmapper’s website: http://www.worldmapper.org .

Social and Spatial Inequalities (SASI) research group’s homepage.

D. Dorling, Worldmapper: The Human Anatomy of a Small Planet, PLOS Medicine, January 2007, volume 4, issue 1, edition 1, freely available online.

Gapminder or “Making sense of the world by having fun with statistics"

“Fun” and “statistics” aren’t words that normally fit together. Endless unreadable charts, incomprehensible graphs (what does x stand for, again?...), average, mean, median, standard deviation…Yes, statistics can certainly be boring. However, as illustrated by Gapminder, a non-profit dedicated to communicating and disseminating global-development statistics, this isn’t necessarily the case.

Hans Rosling, one of Gapminder’s cofounders, is a Swedish medical doctor and public health researcher. While teaching international health at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Rosling realized that the traditional way of presenting statistics was an obstacle to his students’ understanding of the health and economic trends shaping the world. So, helped by his son Ola, he developed a short animated movie illustrating the progress of states – moving bubbles, whose size represents population – along both health and economic indicators. As described in a BusinessWeek article:

"When the bubble started to move, people got very excited!" Rosling gleefully recalls. His students sat bolt upright as he began calling global development as if it were a horse race: And there goes China down the stretch, while sub-Saharan Africa continues to fall farther and father behind.... "It was a tremendous breakthrough in my lecturing," reflects Rosling.

Rosling’s presentation, “Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen”, was considered the high point of the 2006 Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) Conference, which is an American alternative to the stuffier Swiss-based World Economic Forum. (The TED Conference, held annually in Monterey, California, is modestly described by its organizers as “The ultimate brain spa,” “Davos for optimists” and “A four-day journey into the future, in the company of those creating it.”) Here’s the video of Rosling’s talk:



Rosling’s work, however, isn’t just about eye-candy like nice animations. Behind the Gapminder initiative is the idea that data about the world should be free, accessible and understandable. Adopting an “open-source philosophy” may highlight possible errors and omissions and therefore has the potential to improve data quality and transparency.

As in global development, it’s time to promote a “fact-based worldview” in the field of armed violence. In June I attended a workshop organized by the Small Arms Survey in Geneva on measuring and costing armed violence. It occurred to me there that principles and tools, like the ones developed by the Gapminder initiative, could greatly increase understanding of armed violence and of its cost, not least among multilateral policy makers.

We know this because in January, as part of the Disarmament Insight initiative, we held a workshop with nearly 30 Geneva based multilateral practitioners from diplomatic Missions, international organisations, Non-Governmental Organisations and think tanks. Our warm up for the day was to show them Rosling’s 20-minute TED talk above. It had every one of them transfixed.

In a subsequent Disarmament Insight workshop in May, the economist Paul Seabright (author of ‘The Company of Strangers’) showed participants that some dimensions of global armed violence are deeply counter-intuitive, something we’ll return to in coming posts on this blog. Obviously, if policy makers are unaware of these dimensions they’re less likely to be effective in tackling problems of armed violence.

A “statistics about armed violence for the rest of us”, please?


Aurélia Merçay


References

Gapminder: http://www.gapminder.org/

Information about the TED conferences is available at http://www.ted.com/. You'll find Rosling’s presentation here (it can also be downloaded for free as a video podcast from the iTunes Music Store).

Andrew Blum, “Graphing the Development Gap”, BusinessWeek, 22 February 2006, available online here.

Photo of Hans Rosling retrieved from his personal blog.