Iraq's Children of the Bomblet: remembering the deadliest weapon [View All]

[G_j]

A year later, remembering the deadliest weapon
Iraq's Children of the Bomblet
by Kareem Fahim
March 23rd, 2004 12:45 PM


http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0412/fahim.php

In the months after the Iraq war, the unexploded bomblets sat idly in parks, sandlots, school yards, and fields, waiting for kids.

Nihad Jewad, like thousands of Baghdad's children, wandered out to play soccer in late April, after the fighting had stopped. His older brother wasn't sure whether Nihad picked up the device or fell on it. By the time he reached the Saudi-run field hospital, his left hand blown off along with the thumb on his right one, most of his life had flowed out of the blasted femoral artery in his leg.

As the doctors attempted to revive him, an American soldier guarding the clinic approached a photographer. "It's terrible about those land mines," he said, just like that. The comment struck the photographer as sarcastic. Or disingenuous, at least, since the boy clearly hadn't stepped on a mine. The clinic couldn't issue death certificates, nor did it supply coffins, so the Jewads would have to go to another hospital. Later that afternoon, Nihad's family buried him at the cemetery in Abu Ghreib.

The bomblets look like fun to kids. Shiny, tossable pieces of metal, they resemble a large D battery or a small hand grenade. Attached to the bottom are long, white ribbons, rather like streamers a child might fasten to the handlebars of a bike. Human Rights Watch (HRW) estimates that coalition forces left 2 million of these little bombs all over Iraq, killing or injuring perhaps a thousand civilians. Cluster munitions, the group reports, caused more harm to noncombatants than any other weapon during the war.

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