September 11, 2003 Reportage Mapped: The lethal legacy of cluster bombs BY ANN TRENEMAN In her final report from Iraq, our correspondent visits the many sites in Basra which are littered with unexpected cluster bombs and talks to victims FIVE MILES is a neighbourhood on the north side of Basra, a slum where you can hardly breathe for the stench of rot and ruin. Rubbish has reached apocalyptic levels here and the streets are edged in sewage. The railway line runs along one edge of the houses and beyond that there is a field and football pitch. It was in this field last March that the Iraqi Army amassed its tanks and armour. And, on the other side of the tracks, in the warren of simple houses where families live too close for comfort, the militias tried to move in. It was one of the earliest battles of the war, taking place on the first Saturday, March 22. The people in Five Miles say that there were rockets and blasts and general mayhem from early in the morning. There was the sound of aeroplanes and helicopters and homes came under attack. Al-Tahreer hospital, the closest to Five Miles, treated 139 people that day and recorded 63 deaths. What did the bombs sound like? I ask this of at least 20 people in Five Miles and they make the sounds of cluster bombs. Bmm, Bmm, Bmmm, Bmm, they say, flat hands frantically hitting at the air around them. A few use the Arabic word for cluster bomb but most just hit the air. The people display almost no emotion as they tell their stories and show me their scars. In Basra, you do not have to go looking for cluster bomb victims. They find you. At least Rihab did. She is a dignified woman of 28 who is wearing the extra band of black across her forehead that denotes mourning. She comes up to me and says that her brother and sister were hurt — the exact word, as translated, was “mutilated” — by cluster bombs, as was her mother, who died three weeks later. We ask if we can visit her home and the next day she takes us to Five Miles, down a crumbling alleyway to a ruined courtyard. Their living room is the size of a single garage, and almost empty. There are no seats, so we all sit on the floor, sweating in the 50 degree heat. We meet Rihab’s sister, Faten, who is 20, and her brother Ali, aged 15. They show us a picture of their mother, Hasna Radhew Akzar, who was 53. Their father died more than ten years ago. The war has made them orphans and, in Iraq, this means they are now their uncle’s responsibility. He is Hamza Abbas, a signwriter, and it is he who tells their story. The battle sounds like chaos, with attack from land and air. Hamza makes the sound of a cluster bomb, as do the other family members. They point to a jagged crack in the side of the room and say that they were afraid that the house would fall down and that they decided to flee. The first group of three got as far as the street, which leads directly over the railway tracks. They were hit by shrapnel. The mother was injured in her abdomen, kidney and liver, the boy in his abdomen and bowel, and the girl on her arms and chest. The mother died on April 16. Ali has been in many hospitals and has had eight operations. He removes his dishdasha (an ankle-length tunic worn by Arab men) to reveal a welter of scars across his badly distended stomach. Faten, who has had two operations, pulls up the sleeve of her black abaya (a similar garment worn by women). Her arm is missing a big chunk over the elbow. They do, indeed, look mutilated. There is not an ounce of self-pity in this room, though, only stoicism. I ask why. “You know,” says the uncle, “we have spent three decades in a war. We are used to seeing these things”. We visit another family, several streets over. Twenty-two people live in this simple compound. During the attack that Saturday some gathered in the small open-air cubicle that is used for washing clothes. Raja Mizhir, 40, the mother of seven children, tried to shelter them when two small bombs blasted through the wall. It was about 11am. The holes in the wall show how one came in high, above their heads, and the other low, at shin level. Raja’s legs were hit and later, in hospital, both were amputated. She died on March 30 from, her death certificate states, “aggressive shelling”. Her sister, Najat Mizhir, lost one leg below the knee and a finger. She makes the sound of a cluster bomb as she tells her story. Najat seems sad and quiet as she sits, her new shiny metal crutches by her side, on the single bed which is the only piece of furniture in the small room. Is she angry? She says that she thanks God that she is still alive. But does she feel angry? She just looks sadder and says that she blames all parties. After a few more questions it becomes clear that this woman, disabled for life, does not want to criticise the British or coalition forces. It is here, in stifling rooms like this, that you can see the secret struggles and difficulties for a people who, in general, believe themselves to have been both invaded and liberated. For families whose members were also killed or injured, the conflicting feelings are even greater. No one from the West has ever talked to Najat about her leg before. The story of what happened in Basra, from the point of view of Iraqi civilians, is mostly unknown. We do not even know how many died. The British Army and the Coalition Provisional Authority in Basra both say that they have no idea of the civilian death or injury tolls. The hospitals recorded 413 deaths but the figures are unreliable as up to half of the deaths were not recorded during the war and some soldiers dressed in civilian clothes. But, if the war has been erased to some degree, its legacy is very much part of everyday life. Basra is littered with unexploded ordnance and some of these remnants, especially cluster bomblets, continue to wound and kill. Unicef shows me a report from Basra hospitals that reveals that, over six weeks starting in June, 124 people were injured by unexploded ordnance. Thirty five of those hurt were children under five. The Ministry of Defence has admitted that cluster munitions were used in Iraq. It has given few details other than to say that they used 2,100 cluster munition artillery projectiles. These would be a type called L20A1 (or, for short, L20s). There are many more details available in Basra, as the coalition has provided strike information to humanitarian de-mining teams in the area. A map, titled “Basra Governorate Dangerous Areas, August 2003” and acquired from the UN, shows at least 17 cluster munition strikes in the immediate area of Basra. Two are in the vicinity of Five Miles, with one seeming to overlap with the slum where Najat and young Ali and Faten live. Specific details show that, in some cases, there is more than one strike per highlighted site. There are three separate reports for the one nearest the slum. One says that L20s were used. These would have been artillery fired by the British, with each shell containing 49 bomblets. The other reports say that a dual-purpose cluster munition with 88 bomblets per shell was used. Ordnance experts in Basra say that these are probably M42 bomblets. Dual purpose means anti-armour and anti-personnel. It is possible that the M42s were fired by the Americans, who also fought near Basra, though the UK also has the system that fires them. Confusingly, M42s look remarkably like L20s and experts say that clearance teams can confuse them. Both are small enough to fit in the palm of a hand and resemble a battery, with a white loop of tape at the top. The L20s are newer and are made to self-destruct with a manufacturer’s failure rate of 1 to 2 per cent. The M42 failure rate is as high as 14 per cent. International press reports from the first weekend of the war give some idea of the battles around Basra, and several sources say that cluster bombs were used that Saturday. It cannot be proved whether cluster munitions took Najat’s leg or injured Ali’s abdomen though, circumstantially, the evidence is strong. What can be proved is that, long after the battle was over, the bomblets continue to kill. Only one site in Five Miles has been cleared of unexploded ordnance. This is the football field just north of the railway track. The clearing team reports that four unexploded bomblets, identified as M42s but which also could have been L20s, were found. The report adds: “There is a probability of more ordnance existing outside the immediate cleared area. This is a soccer play field and play area and one child has died with two more being injured here in UXO (unexploded ordinance) accidents prior to survey and clearance.” The International Committee for the Red Cross, which is beginning a survey of cluster bomb deaths and injuries in Basra, also has a confirmed case from Five Miles. There is an epic amount of unexploded ordnance in Basra. One reason is the number of wars fought here — two Gulf Wars, the Iran-Iraq war, plus the Second World War. In addition, the Iraqi Army abandoned huge amounts of materiel there, much of it stacked in storage buildings. These would be relatively safe except that looters keep breaking in to strip copper bands and other materials. Iraqis even risk their lives to steal packaging from boxes of ammunition. Progress in clearing sites is slow. One reason is simply the nature of the task, which is extremely time-consuming. Munitions may be buried and the ground must be probed. “A sub-surface clearance of a typical (cluster) sub-munition strike would probably take 30 people two weeks to clear,” says Bill van Ree, of the UN Mine Action Co-ordination Team in Basra. Because of this, teams may carry out only a visual search, for now. In addition, there are too few people involved. The British Army has 25 soldiers in the field clearing ordnance on a daily basis. The UN co-ordinates 150 other people from a variety of international charities and groups. “But we just don’t have enough resources on the ground to make a huge impact, particularly when we are dealing with the amount of contamination we’ve got in and around Basra,” says van Ree. The current timescale for clearing Basra is at least ten years. I ask van Ree how many people would be needed to do the job in a year. “We’d need 20 times what we’ve got now. And that is just a guess. The problem is just, well, huge. I’ve worked in Afghanistan and Cambodia and Bosnia and I’ve never seen anything as bad as this, from an explosive ordnance point of view.” Security concerns are delaying progress further: the UN team has now gone to Kuwait to reassess its protection in Basra. The Royal Engineers’ demining operation is co-ordinated from Shaibah base near Basra. I spend a day with the soldiers, who also see the problem of unexploded ordnance here as huge and almost never-ending. Cluster munitions are seen as a priority. “The biggest threat here is from bomblets,” says Lieut Tom May in the Royal Engineers’ operations room at Shaibah. I go with an Army demining team to a village just north of Basra. It is a Marsh Arab village called Gah Asab. The low brown houses are separated from the river by a wide muddy bank and a raised road. There are shallow pools of water, green with reeds. A large water buffalo, partly immersed, views our arrival. Our vehicles are immediately surrounded a crowd of 50 villagers but, as there is no interpreter, communication is impossible. There are reported to be three unexploded M42 bomblets here but the villagers show us only one. It is marked with a crooked stick but, even with this, I never would have seen it. The bomblet is buried in the mud, with only the white tape showing. The soldiers, led by Sgt Paul Withers, undertake their painstaking routine, despite the intense heat. The bomblet is blown up by a remote control device, dissolving into white smoke that drifts into the perennially light blue Iraqi sky. The next day we return to Gah Asab on our own with an interpreter. The villagers say the area was attacked, again on the first Saturday of the war, at about 11am. There is a road that borders the south of the village and a modern concrete bridge over the al-Basra river. On that Saturday the Iraqi Army was retreating along that road. The villagers make the sound of cluster bombs. (The Dangerous Area map confirms that there was a cluster strike here.) They say that 16 people were injured and seven killed. Eleven houses were ruined. The villagers bring us cups of strong hot tea and a plate full of shrapnel. Sajad Falh is a little boy and no one seems sure if he is five or six years old. His family, like most Marsh Arabs, are farmers and it was his job to take care of the cows. Every morning he herded them to the river. One day, about two months ago, he did this as usual. On his way back, through the marshy scrubland where the water buffalo roam, he picked up a piece of metal and threw it. He is only little and so could not throw far. The bomblet exploded, throwing him to the ground. He broke his foot and spent seven days in hospital. The foot has not healed properly and Sajad cannot walk. He is carried to meet me and, even though his faded T-shirt says “I am so happy”, he is clearly not and is on the verge of tears. The foot is misshapen. There is to be no more treatment though he needs it. The villagers say that the Army did not blow up all the cluster bombs here, and offer to show us more. We decline but, while leaving, see children playing on the bank where we know that cluster bombs hide, like hibernating toads, in the mud. This story has been difficult to do in many ways. It is the first in-depth look at the legacy of cluster bombs in Basra. Some may see it as a criticism of the war itself but you do not hear such talk in Basra and it has been my aim to report on what is going on there. There are questions, as noted by the Armed Forces Minister, Adam Ingram, this year, about whether the use of cluster bombs near populated areas can be justified under international law. But today in Basra unexploded cluster bomblets are a fact of everyday life. (An M42 was even removed from the roof of one of the palaces in the city centre.) The urgent concern is to make life safer, particularly for children. I ask Petrit Bicaj, of the Red Cross in Basra, what people can do to help, and he says simply: “To do as much as they can to support the clearance.” More money and more teams are needed, he says, or else it will take 10, 20, 30 years. And, if progress is to be made, current security concerns must be resolved too. Richard Lloyd, of Landmine Action, thinks that the MoD should budget for clearing up its remnants of war in the same way that it budgets for war itself. “This is an entirely predictable consequence of war,” he says. “What I find shocking is that this seems to have taken the British and the US by surprise.” The cost of the war, according to the UK Treasury, was £3.3bn and the occupation is costing a further £5m per day. The total UN budget for the clearance of unexploded ordnance is £7m (and humanitarian groups fund themselves). The UK government has contributed £4m to the UN effort, through the Department for International Development. We meet Ahmed Saleh at Al-Tahreer hospital in a dilapidated room which, because there is a power cut, looks even more dingy. He is 13 and the eldest of seven children. He is too weak to speak. His father says they come from a town north of Basra. It is not uncommon in Iraq for people to gather up unexploded ordnance and put the shells and bomblets under water, in a canal or river. They think that this makes it safe. This is what had happened in this town. On June 22, Ahmed picked up something from the river that was small enough to fit into his hand — no one knows exactly what, though it sounds like a bomblet — and started to play catch with it. It exploded. He was wounded by shrapnel in his abdomen, intestines and bowel. At Al-Tahreer he had several operations but has developed complications. He is shockingly thin: he had been 42kg and is now 28kg (4st 6lb). Ahmed is lying under a cover in the stifling room, his bones gathered in the foetal position. He is, obviously, in terrible pain. Peter Nicholls, the photographer for The Times, takes his picture. Everyone in the room — the boy, his relatives and the doctors — is close to despair. Sometimes in Basra, where gunfire can be heard throughout the day, life can seem cheap but here, in this room, it is not: it is something this boy, and his family, has fought and prayed for. A week later, we are cheered to learn that Ahmed had been transferred to the Czech field hospital. When we arrive, he is in intensive care. Dr Petr Chmatal, the chief surgeon, says that everything had been done to help him. “But the boy is lost,” he says. “It may be hours. It may be days. Only a miracle can save him.” We see Ahmed’s father in the waiting room. He tries to talk to us but gives up. He holds up his hands and looks to the sky and, when he looks back, he is crying silently for his son who, after all, had only wanted a game of catch on a summer’s day. There are no miracles for Ahmed. He died two weeks after we first saw him, one more child claimed by a war that is over but keeps on killing just the same.