Mother Jones
On April 29, three adults and a child came across some fist-sized canisters on the ground outside of Baqim, a Yemeni town controlled by Houthi rebels. To the 10-year-old boy among them, they “looked like toys.” Out of curiosity, they picked up the cannisters, which then exploded. All four were injured; a nurse told Human Rights Watch that the child was wounded in the stomach, and one of the adults received injuries to his face, torso, thigh, and crotch. Considering the kind of damage that cluster-bomb submunitions can cause, they’re lucky to still be alive.
Fighter jets from the Saudi Arabia-led coalition have been carrying out strikes against Houthi rebels since late March, when Yemeni President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi fled the country. Now, according to two recent Human Rights Watch investigations, they are also using cluster munitions, some supplied by the United States. The first HRW report was published on the heels of mounting concern over the growing toll of civilian casualties from the air campaign—more than 1,800 people have been killed as of late May; at least 135 of them were children. The second report found evidence that US-supplied cluster munitions deployed near populated areas are harming civilians.
Here’s a look at why American cluster bombs, which have been banned by more than 100 countries, are being used in Yemen.
How cluster bombs work: Cluster bombs can be dropped from aircraft or fired from rockets, mortars, and artillery. When they open in mid-air, as many as several hundred submunitions, or bomblets, spread out over a wide area and explode. While the weapons are designed to target military installations and convoys, anyone nearby can be struck. Bomblets that fail to detonate or self-destruct can become de facto land mines. Bombs like those found in Baquim, explains Megan Burke, director of the Cluster Munition Coalition “remain on the ground until someone or something comes along and triggers that explosion.”
Why they’ve been banned: Cluster munitions were first deployed in 1943, when Soviet forces dropped them on German tanks. Due to the danger they pose to noncombatants, they were banned by the Convention on Cluster Munitions, a 2008 treaty signed by 116 nations. Tens of thousands of civilians—a third of them children—have been maimed or killed after encountering the unexploded ordnances in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Kosovo, Iraq, and beyond.
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How US Cluster Bombs Banned by Most Countries Ended Up in Yemen
