SOCCER BOMBS
essays on contradiction in cultural phenomena
The Beautiful Game? Race and Class in Brazilian Soccer Peace Education For Laos
The Effects of Americas Secret War
contents ApageB Grassroots Approach to AIDS Education
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by Jonathan Schultz
Soccer as Treatment
The Homeless World Cup
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by Keren Tuch
A Tournament to End Homelessness
The Beautiful Game Race and Class in Soccer
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by Rogério Daflon & Teo Ballvé
feature
An Expensive Beginning to Brazils Most Popular Sport
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Bombs by Titus Peachey
by Stephen Bush
by Michiko Kakutani
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Peace Education For Laos The Effects of Americas Secret War The Most Peaceful Country on Earth
The Atomic Bomb Was Not Needed A Letter Discussing Historical Context
Dr. Strangelove’s America A Book of It’s Times
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section one
Soccer ngo
homeless world cup the beautiful game page 5
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Grassroots approach to AIDS Education Soccer as Treatment in Lethoso by Jonathan Schultz
In Africa, hiv/aids education, to be effective, must surmount a number of debilitating social hypocrisies. Take Kenya, where a government census of the country’s gay male population is planned for 2010. Officials there hope that, armed with new knowledge, they will more effectively debunk a widely held belief among gay men that unprotected sex is actually safer than sex with a condom. Data collectors face but one obstacle: Homosexuality in Kenya is a crime punishable with jail time. Recognizing the difficulty of top-down hiv/aids education in Africa, one ngo is taking a grassroots approach to teaching young people about the importance of regular testing. Its grass just happens to be rooted on a soccer pitch. Since 2005, Kick4Life has used soccer as a medium for encouraging testing and education among young adults in the tiny Southern African nation of Lesotho, where one in four people lives with hiv—the third-highest prevalence in the world. The organization has deftly entwined its solemn mission with its sporting one. Prevention lessons occur during dribble-skills workshops. Youth teams entered in soccer tournaments earn points not just for goals, but also for completing hiv testing sessions. Kick4Life’s efforts have encouraged soccer heroes such as England head coach Fabio Capello and Lesotho’s crack native son, Seema, to visit its base outside the capital of Maseru. To date, that base has been a cluster of decrepit, decades-old police living and athletic quarters, with rudimentary shelters erected for hiv testing. Earlier this year, however, footy fans at award-winning Norwegian architecture firm Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter learned about Kick4Life and traveled to Lesotho to brainstorm ideas for an enhanced sports complex.
The studio’s managing director, Reiulf Ramstad, is responsible for Norway’s Barents Secretariat Tower—which, when completed, will be the world’s tallest wooden structure—as well as dramatic museums informed by rugged Nordic landscapes. His interest in a Southern African development site might seem surprising to everyone except Ramstad. “We always make very site-specific architecture; it’s never about applying a style or a logo,” he says. “Before going down to Lesotho, we had this approach of using very vernacular architectural solutions. But we’re not trying to make some elevated architectural statements. We want things to be very purposeful.” The spec calls for a rehabbed soccer pitch, plus facilities like team rooms and showers as well as hiv testing spaces. In the complex’s second phase, the org hopes to create a clinic for community members living with hiv. Ramstad sees potential for the site that goes far beyond Kick4Life’s core mission. “There’s a deep knowledge in the surrounding communities of growing vegetables, so we considered how we could get the young people to learn from these local experts and have dedicated garden lots. The end users are already thinking of the space as a community gathering space, even a commercial space, so the potential is already there.” Kick4Life and Ramstad hope to break ground early next year, but significant fundraising must be done before crews set to work. For Ramstad, there is no doubt about Kick4Life’s worthiness. “They’re not coming down and leaving; they’re staying put. Now, though, there are expectations of this project, and we need to meet them. This is becoming a formidable part of people’s lives.”
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The Beautifu Game? Race and Class in Brazilian Soccer by Rogério Daflon & Teo Ballvé illustration by Matthew Riley Huston
ul occer has become so rooted in Brazil that it’s hard to private sports clubs founded at the turn of the century where soccer believe that when the ball first rolled upon the fields of sprouted its first roots. Although admission to these clubs was the country only a small elite played the game. By the based largely on socio-economic standing rather than race, de start of the 20th century, as the English mingled with facto segregation was conveniently imposed—as it was, and is, in the upper rungs of Brazilian “high society” in the much of Brazilian society—by socio-economic states of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, they began “Most Brazilians believe status. But it was not unheard of for a mulatto teaching the basics of the sport to the most aristothe game was born from a prominent family to be accepted as a player cratic of Brazilians. Soccer’s position near the top from the masses.” for a club. It is these pervasive nuances of Brazilof the social pyramid was also a simple reality: the ian racism that continue to this day. What later equipment for the sport—specifically the ball and the proper became of soccer leads most Brazilians to believe the game was footwear—was imported, making them exorbitantly expensive born from the masses. And why shouldn’t they? To say that a items for average Brazilians. Soccer in Brazil was thus born arrogant stadium is overflowing with fans on the day of a big game would be and haughty, a symbol of extreme exclusion. The evolution of a drastic understatement. Throughout the history of soccer in institutional Brazilian soccer can be traced back to the exclusive Brazil, societal tensions of race and class were reflected and played
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out in nearly every aspect of soccer. And today, social divisions— both imagined and real—continue to define Brazilians’ intense relationship with the sport and their teams. The transformation of soccer from an opulent diversion for society’s upper crust to eventually becoming a nationwide passion of mammoth proportions was a process fraught with the complex and charged components of race and class in Brazilian society. Industrialization brought the first marked increase in the number of people who participated in the sport. The domestic production of soccer equipment received a major boost during World War I when Brazil had to limit imports. During the war years, industrial production increased by 8.5%, and in the 1920s and 1930s—despite the 1929 world economic crisis—national industry in Brazil became firmly established. As a consequence of this process, factories producing sports equipment began popping up throughout the country. As celebrated sports journalist João Saldanha notes in his book The Soccer Subterraneans, “Industrial development changed the game’s character.” Saldanha describes how it was not until soccer balls began to be mass-produced that the sport really enticed popular tastes. But more importantly, as in other Latin American countries, industrialization in Brazil spurred the creation “Industrialization in Brazil of teams affiliated with factories or a particular industry, spurred the creation of teams allowing worker teams and clubs to be founded in and affiliated with factories or a around urban industrial centers. The Bangu Athletic particular industry.” Club founded in 1904 by the British directors of a textile company was the first club to admit working-class players, not coincidentally many of its players were black. Many other clubs followed the Bangu model and teams with working-class associations began to spread. It is important to remember that slavery in Brazil was only abolished in 1888, so with increasing industrialization came the convergence of former slaves and their direct descendants with workers in urban areas—no doubt seen as a volatile combination by elites. Plant managers saw in soccer an easy and relatively inexpensive way to keep their workers content. So in a sense, the “Managers saw in soccer an easy typical argument of sports as an opiate for proletarian and relatively inexpensive way complacency, panem et circenses, or bread and circus, is to keep their workers content.” partly true. Indeed, one cannot ignore that plant managers were trying to cozy up to their workers with the creation of soccer teams to gain worker loyalty and to undermine their solidarity. But soccer also provided a chance for workers to come together casually and share experiences, a rare opportunity for building consciousness. Although it was in this context that soccer became “popularized,” its elitist origins were not so easily extinguished and were all too often reflected in the sport. If in the early days of the game, Brazil’s upper-class whites abhorred the presence of blacks on the few soccer fields that existed, then that attitude multiplied concomitantly with the spread of the game. The most prominent soccer clubs in the state of Rio de Janeiro—with the sole exception of Vasco da Gama—resisted the entry of blacks to their soccer teams. Vasco was a club founded by Rio’s Portuguese community; the soccer team used the employees of the Portuguese factory owners, making it the first major squad to use black and working-class players. The larger clubs of Fluminense, Botafogo and Flamengo only permitted white players on their teams. Racist attitudes and policies were not limited to carioca clubs. In the state of São Paulo, the large Italian community’s Palmeiras sports club adopted a more
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the beautiful game
pragmatic solution to the race issue: it simply shut down its soccer program. More shockingly, the club Bahiano de Tenis based in Salvador in the state of Bahia—both places have a substantial black majority and are widely considered the cultural home of Brazilian Africanity—adopted the same solution. In reference to those days, singer and current Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil wrote the song “Tradição,” in which he describes the club’s position towards blacks: “In the times when blacks couldn’t enter the Bahiano, not even through the kitchen door.” Nonetheless soccer was spreading and by the 1930s was increasingly being played across class and race lines. One reason for this shift was apparently quite pragmatic: the desire to win more championships. At the first World Cup, hosted by Uruguay in 1930, the Brazilian national team was made up exclusively of whites. The first time a black man was “The inclusion of Leônidas asked to represent his country in the world tournament on the 1934 national team was at the second World Cup hosted by fascist Italy in 1934. reflected changes in the way He was a Brazilian, the late Leônidas da Silva, nicknamed Brazilians perceived the ethnic hybridity of their country.” “Black Diamond.” He was one of the first prominent black Brazilian soccer players and deservedly retains his place in the pantheon of Brazilian soccer stars to this day. In an interview, Leônidas’ wife once remarked, “Being black, Leônidas believed he always had to do more to have his worth recognized. Back when he was playing, a large part of the athletes were still sons of high-class Sociologist Leonardo Alfonso de Miranda Pereira families.” observed in his book Soccermania: A Social History of Soccer in Rio de Janeiro that the inclusion of Leônidas on the 1934 national team was an event that reflected apparent changes in the way Brazilians perceived the ethnic hybridity of their country; before seen as a problem, it was beginning to be understood as an advantage. At the time, this new perception was encouraged by the publishing of Gilberto Freyre’s The Masters and the Slaves, a landmark, albeit now controversial 1933 book on Brazilian race relations that celebrated the miscegenation of colonial times as a root catalyst for racial harmony. Although Miranda Periera notes that by the end of the 1930s a majority of Brazilians could accept a racially integrated team and even be proud of it, former manual laborers like Leônidas still found themselves going from club to club in search of a better life. Soccer was steadily moving towards professionalization, but most clubs were adamantly opposed to the sport moving in that direction. The majority of teams feared that professionalization would challenge the upper-class, white hegemony in the sport, because working-class and black players would be able to focus on playing the game instead of trying to find or hold down a traditional job. However, the majority of clubs that tolerated working-class players already provided them with some “benefits”—transportation, monetary bonuses and even fake jobs to keep them on their team roster. Such arrangements were often targeted by other teams as unfair and illegal under the amateur spirit of Brazilian soccer up to that point. In Rio de Janeiro’s 1923 Amateur State Championship, for example, Rio’s more aristocratic clubs pressured Vasco da Gama to drop out of the tournament, claiming that its players were paid professionals and not amateurs. A more probable reason for the other clubs’ protest was the fact that Vasco was the only team racially integrated from top to bottom—from the players themselves to the coaching staff— and was made up almost entirely of workers. In the end, as the only
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fully integrated team of the tournament, Vasco did not drop out respective environs. Grêmio, for example, was started by Porto and went on to win the championship with a series of heart- Alegre’s dominant German immigrant population and refused stopping comebacks. The year after Vasco won the title, the elite entry to non-Germans, leading two Brazilians to establish Interteams broke away to form their own amateur league, leaving soccer nacional. In the beginning of institutional soccer, the namesake in Rio split. In one league were Vasco and other small clubs with São Paulo team dropped out of the city league in protest against the more working-class associations, and in professionalization of the sport, which was “One of soccer’s greatest the other league were larger teams like endorsed by teams like Corinthians—a club contributions is that it helped Flamengo, Fluminense, Botafogo and founded by manual laborers. To this day, instill in the country a respect América. When the battle for the profesCorinthians—whose fan base or torcida, for ethnic hybridity.” sionalization of soccer was finally won in according to the sports daily Lance!, is 1933, working-class players who previestimated at 24 million—is associated with ously had to hold down a “real job” to sustain themselves could rely the working-class, and São Paulo with 17 million fans is identified on their earnings as professional athletes. One reason for the with the elite. But no rivalry in Brazilian soccer approaches the acquiescence by teams opposed to professionalization was that epic status of the century-old carioca rivalry between Flamengo European teams were beginning to recruit South American talent. and Fluminense, modestly referred to as Fla-Flu. Nor does any Although this had a more dramatic effect on Uruguayan and Argen- other rivalry divide quite as rigidly along class lines. Besides tine clubs whose players were mostly descended from the countries playing on socio-economic disparities, the rivalry is also marked actively recruiting players—namely, Italy and Spain—it provided by racial overtones. Flamengo is considered the team of the impetus for professionalization amid the opposition of larger masses—not surprising with a torcida of 26 million—and Fluminclubs. Professionalization allowed soccer to become a means of ense is widely regarded as Brazil’s most aristocratic team. A survey social and financial ascension for players who before had no chance of 1,280 people by tgi Brasil found that 45% considered themselves of upward mobility, but those who achieved significant financial Flamengo fans while only 11% said they were Fluminense supportsuccess were a minority and still are. Data from the Brazilian Soccer ers. The survey also found that under the three official Brazilian Confederation (cbf) in 1997 shows that very few players actually socio-economic categories, the Flamengo fans were predomiimprove their living standards; those who do, become elites within nantly from the lowest socio-economic tier and Fluminense’s their own class. The majority of Brazilian players receive a from the top one. Although social divisions like race and class minimum salary, and with little or no education they are left with among the torcidas of a particular team are certainly more blurred few options when their soccer careers end. From the 7,103 athletes today than they were in the early days of professional soccer, fans registered with the cbf in 1997, 54% received less than $40 a continue to rally around these real life distinctions and taunt month; today it’s not much different. Another result of profes- opposing torcidas with the appropriate epithets. When Flamengo sionalization was that Brazilian soccer shed some of its exclusion- is scored on by Fluminense or any other team for that matter, the ist beginnings. Teams became more integrated, as did their fans. Fluminense torcida chants, “Hey, hey, hey! Silence in the favela!” However, just because black and white, rich and poor attended the in reference to the supposed slum-dwelling fans of Flamengo who same games, it did not mean they sat together or that they could are also referred to as “Flavelados” by opposing fans. Conversely, afford the same seats. Nonetheless, according to Miranda Pereira, Fluminense fans are referred to as “pó-de-arroz,” or rice powder. “The interesting thing about soccer is the idea of communication One story accounting for the nickname is that a mulatto player between classes and between diverse people while absorbing tried to disguise his skin tone with rice powder to avoid persecutensions. Before, only Carnaval had the ability of making everyone tion by the team’s fans in the early days of the game, while others the same.” The inversion of the social order that Carnaval repre- claim the name alludes to the white powder once used to whiten the sents may be a bit of a stretch for soccer games, but there are clearly faces of the aristocracy. Divisions of race and class in Rio are some interesting parallels between the two events: on some level arguably the most pronounced of any large Brazilian city, so it’s not they both represent a fleeting egalitarian moment, they have been surprising that Fla-Flu takes on overtly classist and racist dimenconsidered societal safety valves, each have become increasingly sions. When the national team plays, however, local team commercialized and violent, and both inspire intra-city rivalries. allegiances and their prejudices are for the most part temporarily Of course, the competition between the different Samba schools put aside as Brazilians present a united front for international of Carnaval does not even come close to the passionately profound competitions. It is at those games that soccer takes on more of a and historic soccer rivalries within Brazil’s cities and states. The carnavalesque atmosphere, especially if Brazil wins. And it was local rivalries partly stem from the fact that institutional soccer under these circumstances that the skill, ability and talent of Edson was first organized on city and state levels, because of Brazil’s Arantes do Nascimento, a black man, earned him the nickname immense size, which posed logistical limitations for inter-state, “The King,” or “King Pelé,” and status as a national hero. In such much less national tournaments. To this day, some of the most circumstances, prejudices about race and class become harder to heated rivalries are between local teams. Cruzeiro do Sul battles rationalize in the public consciousness. To date, one of soccer’s Atlético Mineiro in Belo Horizonte, Grêmio rivals Internacional in greatest contributions is that it helped instill in the country a Porto Alegre and São Paulo is contested by four teams: Corinthi- respect for ethnic hybridity, where the mixing of races is seen as an ans, Palmeiras, Santos and São Paulo. Many of these rivalries also advantage. This is not to say that racism in soccer does not exist— arose from, and are still reinforced by, the social dynamics of their far from it as shown above. But unlike the large Brazilian corpora-
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tions and the university system, which are overwhelmingly white, soccer teams and their organizations are symbols of genuine diversity and hybrid identities. In its entirety, soccer more than any other Brazilian institution reflects in microcosm the complexities of race and class in Brazil and how these distinctions are often at the forefront of social interaction, making it impossible to discuss the two social categories separately. Soccer demonstrates that racism and socio-economic injustice in Brazil are far too historically entrenched and intertwined to be parsed neatly as independent social phenomenons. Does race or class instantly determine which team a Brazilian supports? Not always. But one’s team affiliation is usually inherited from a parent. For many youngsters, going to one’s first game is a familial right of passage. A typical banner in the stands at games describes the team as “My best inheritance.” And as the common saying goes, “In life, you can change your wife, but you can’t change your mother or your soccer team.”
Photograph of Rio De Janeiro, Brazil in the 1970s
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section two
Bombs letter
book review bomblets in laos page 12
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peace education for laos
The Atomic Bomb Was Not Needed A Letter Discussing Historical Context
Many politicians and writers touch upon the traditional defenses of our use of atomic weapons against the Japanese–saving lives and preventing a bloody invasion–while ignoring compelling evidence arguing against its necessity. The revisionist historians have much to teach us by drawing upon the abundant historical record. The peace feelers he refers to came about not because of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, but as early as the summer of 1944. In September 1944, the British ambassador to the United States relayed to our State Department diplomatic overtures passed by the Japanese government through Sweden’s embassy in Tokyo. The Japanese code had been broken and American intelligence had ready access to intercepted cables in which Japanese diplomats and military leaders openly discussed the futility of continuing hostilities and the increasingly desperate military situation.
The inevitable invasion people speak of is another fiction long maintained to justify the bombings. The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey (created by the War Department) concluded just after the war that no such invasion would have been necessary: “It is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1943 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped... and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.” We must respect the opinions of Adm. William D. Leahy and Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, both of whom publicly condemned the use of the bomb. “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan,” Leahy wrote in his memoirs. “The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.” Stephen Bush Richmond
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A massive U.S. bombing campaign flew more than 580,000 missions over Laos between 1964 and 1973.
Peace Education for Laos The Effects of America’s Secret War by Titus Peachey
I
t was 8:00 one morning in march of 1998, when Phou Vieng, a villager in the northern Lao province of Xieng Khouang, was preparing his work for the day. Having recently built a simple house for his family, his first task for the morning was to dig several shallow holes in the earthen floor to anchor his bed. After measuring and marking the places where his bedposts would lodge, he prepared his digging tool and squatted beside the first mark. In one short stroke, his life was forever changed. All Phou Vieng can remember is the sound of the explosion. Hundreds of shards of steel tore into his body from a cluster bomb buried just beneath the soil. One of the pieces of shrapnel punctured a nearby can of gasoline, and it burst into flames. Fortunately, neighbors gathered quickly and carried Phou Vieng to safety, but his house and all the family’s belongings were burned. The bomblet in Phou Vieng’s house was dropped as part of a massive U.S. bombing campaign that flew more than 580,000 missions over Laos between 1964 and 1973. This equals roughly one mission for every five inhabitants of the country and an average of one bombing mission every eight minutes around the clock during the entire nine years. Researchers estimate that approximately 90 million submunitions were dropped during the bombing campaign. With a dud rate of 10-30 percent, well over 9 million pieces of uxo were left behind. This ordnance, much of it cluster munitions, has now lain in the ground for over 25 years and becomes less stable and more dangerous with each passing year. When the war ended, hundreds of thousands of Lao
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villagers who had fled the bombing returned to their homes. In most cases, everything had been destroyed. They had to rebuild their homes, repair the paddy dikes in their rice fields, and open up the soil with shovels and hoes. They carried on this intensive work in the midst of a staggering array of still-lethal uxo littering the soil. Unknown to them, their villages and surrounding fields had become one vast, unmarked minefield. With no one to help them, these villagers were trapped. In 1994, I asked one villager why he continued to grow vegetables in a location with bomblets, or “bombies” as they are often called. He responded, “I can’t move my garden. There wouldn’t be any point to it anyway. If I moved it to a new location, I’d just find more bombies there. So I might as well keep it where it is.” Thongsavanh, a teacher in Xieng Khouang province during the war years, remembers instructing his students to pick up the strange round pieces of ordnance that appeared in the forests and hillsides near his school. “I didn’t know it was dangerous,” he recalled. “I thought since the bombies hadn’t blown up on impact they weren’t dangerous anymore.” Typically, when villagers found ordnance in their fields and gardens, they simply removed it with their bare hands. They found within themselves a courage borne out of necessity. Farming was their livelihood and the only land available to them was filled with bombs. Indeed, with the passage of time, villagers became almost casual in their approach to the everpresent bomblets. An encounter I had with Thong Dee, who was plowing his field in Lek Village, illustrates this attitude. When I
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asked Thong if any bomblets had been turned up during the Khouang province, Laos, the newly trained clearance teams plowing thus far, he matter-of-factly replied that over 20 had been encountered a curious problem. Each morning, when they arrived plowed up the previous day. He had thrown or placed some of the at the work site they discovered, resting on top of the soil, new bomblets into a hole at the edge of the plowed field. As I walked cluster bombs that had not been there the day before. The work site over to the hole and peered over the edge, Thong hurriedly pulled was a large open area that was the future site of a teacher’s training college. A conversation with the villagers away the weeds and scrap metal he had across the road from the worksite cleared placed on top to reveal the four or five “People are injured or killed up the mystery. It seems the villagers, bomblets underneath. Noticing that I was during their everyday activities.” who were aware that cluster bombs were about to take a picture, he quickly moved each bomblet into clearer view, handling them like they were being destroyed each day, decided to carry cluster bombs from merely billiard balls. Sadly, not everyone was as lucky as Mr. their village to the clearance site each evening. In this way, the Thong Dee. Between the end of the war in 1975 and the beginning bomblets from their village could be destroyed, even though their of clearance operations in 1994, more than 10,000 Lao villagers village had not been chosen for clearance. This action by the villagsuffered injury or death from uxo. In many ways, the stories are ers, while extremely risky, also made a clear statement about the remarkably similar to the stories of accidents from landmines. presence of uxo in the vast affected areas of Laos. uxo is everyPeople are injured or killed during their everyday activities such as where, and clearance teams can only begin to create tiny islands of collecting firewood, herding cattle or hoeing in their fields and safety in a great sea of ordnance. mag and their counterparts in gardens. Because of their curious shapes and colors, and because the Lao government responded quickly to this action by the villagmany of them can be found easily accessible on top of the soil, ers. Rather than putting all their resources into the sub-surface cluster munitions are almost irresistible to children. In fact, over clearance of a piece of land, which would take months to clear, they 25 percent of uxo-related casualties happen to children, none of split the team in two. One team remained to clear the site of the who were born when the bombs fell. On Nov. 22, 1993, four Tu Va future school, while the other team traveled from village to village Chao children were walking along a street on the edge of Phonsa- to destroy bomblets on the surface posing an immediate threat to vanh, Xieng Khouang province’s capital. They were taking the life and safety. Roving teams continue to destroy bomblets on water buffalo to pasture when Kou Ya, four, and Sia Ya, six, noticed the surface but do not make the ground safe for agricultural use. a round object in the ditch. It looked like the ball boys and girls The benefit of a roving team is the immediate reduction in risk, toss to each other during Hmong New Year festivities. It was especially to children who are often attracted to the toy-like actually a cluster bomb. Sia Ya threw it to her brother. He couldn’t appearance of bomblets. Over a period of time, however, the Lao catch it and it landed behind him, exploding and killing him roving teams discovered that they could be called back to the same instantly. Sia Ya died after two agonizing days and nights in the area repeatedly. Bomblets that bury themselves on impact often provincial hospital. The story of the Chao children illustrates yet work their way to the surface as time passes. Through the natural another tragic aspect of cluster bomb explosions. Compared to expansion and contraction of the soil and erosion, new bomblets landmines, cluster bombs have higher explosive power and deadly appear where none could be seen before. In May 2000, I accomfragmentation effects. They are designed to kill. In Laos, 52 percent panied a film crew to Laos to help produce a documentary that will of all uxo accidents have resulted in death. In the period immedi- be shown on public television. I watched as a bomb clearance team ately after the war, the Soviet Union assisted with the clearance of a prepared to blow up nine bomblets that had been found on a large state farm in Xieng Khouang province. Aside from this effort, hillside used for grazing cattle. As the team worked, my colleagues the only assistance came from two North American ngos: the and I spotted four more bomblets on the hillside. The metal shells Mennonite Central Committee (mcc) and the American Friends of the bomblets had just begun to appear above the soil. This area Service Committee. These groups imported good-quality shovels had been cleared before and will certainly have to be cleared again. April 2001 will mark the seventh anniversary of the beginning of for agricultural use. Shovels were thought to be somewhat safer to use than the traditional Lao hoe, which was swung from high over systematic uxo clearance in Laos. Tremendous progress has been the head to turn the soil. Shovels were gentler and perhaps less made since the first team of 20 clearance specialists was trained in likely to detonate a hidden bomblet. There were other experiments 1994. Hopefully, all the destroyed ordnance has resulted in some in these early years, such as an mcc-supplied armored tractor with reduced risk and some tragedies have been avoided. It is gratifying a chain flail device on the front. These experiments proved ineffec- to see these developments. Despite all this work, there has been tive and were eventually abandoned. However, in 1994 the mcc, little reduction in the rates of injury and death. Casualties still the Mines Advisory Group (mag) and the Lao government initiated occur at the rate of about one accident every two days. As the Lao a uxo clearance project. The project quickly drew the attention of population grows and the pressure on the land increases, new U.N. agencies and other governments. As funding became avail- areas will have to be opened up for agricultural production and able, the project grew. From 1996-1998, over 122,000 pieces of settlement. Much of this land will present a serious uxo problem. uxo were cleared; approximately 50-75 percent of uxo cleared were Ordnance clearance work will have to continue in Laos for decades. mcc’s 25 years of history in Laos and ongoing struggle with the cluster bombs. By the year 2000, eight international partners, in cooperation with the Lao government and local partners, were problem of uxo has led it into the arena of advocacy. As a people of clearing uxo in nine of the country’s 18 provinces and educating faith committed to peace and non-violence, we could not visit with local people to the dangers of uxo. As mag began working in Xieng families who had experienced painful losses from cluster munitions
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without asking the larger questions about why and how cluster munitions are used. As we researched the continued production and use of cluster munitions in numerous conflicts around the globe, we became convinced that serious problems exist related to targeting, the size of cluster bomb footprints and dud rates. Over the past 35 years, in places like Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, “Casualties still occur at Sudan, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Kuwait, Kosovo, Chechnya, the rate of one accident Eritrea, Ethiopia and Afghanistan, cluster munitions have every two days.� had a persistent and tragic record of indiscriminate killing. During Operation Desert Storm, at least 25 U.S. military personnel were killed by U.S. submunitions, and other U.S. personnel were injured. Cluster munitions are an increasingly significant obstacle in various peacekeeping operations. mcc has joined other agencies in issuing a Call for a Moratorium on the production and use of cluster munitions. As a result of our work in Laos and our exposure to the uxo problem on the civilian population in post-war Iraq and Kosovo, mcc believes it is time for the international community to ban these weapons.
FAQ ON UXO What are cluster munitions?
Cluster munitions are small bomblets or submunitions which are delivered to their targets in large containers or shells. The container opens in mid-air over the target area, often dispersing the bomblets over an area the size of several football fields. A drop of several canisters can easily create kill zones of a square kilometer or greater in size. The bomblets may be the size and shape of a lawn dart, or an elongated soda can, and are designed to explode on or shortly after impact. The AP bomblets have fragmentation features that can send hundreds of shards of steel at ballistic speeds over a wide area. Anti-armor bombs have shaped charges, which can penetrate heavy armor. The cluster munitions are delivered in a bomb by aircraft, or launched by rocket or artillery projectile.
What is the difference between a landmine and a cluster munition?
The primary difference between cluster munitions and landmines is in their design. Cluster munitions are designed to explode as a result of their impact, so that their effect is felt within a short time of their delivery. Landmines are designed to explode as a result of contact with or proximity to a person. By design, their effects may be felt many months after their placement, depending on when a person initiates contact with the landmine. Cluster munitions, which fail to explode on impact, however, are very similar in effect to landmines. Since dud rates for cluster munitions are often in the 10 percent-30 percent range, most cluster munition strikes create the actual effect of a minefield.
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