South Lebanon`s farmers face a grim choice: lose their livelihoods or lose their lives to cluster bombs

Source: Compiled by Moqawama.org, 02-12-2006
BEIRUT: Cluster bombs deny farmers their land and they will risk life and limb. It`s the same in Southern Lebanon today as it was in South Vietnam in the early 1970s. In Vietnam, where I was a journalist and social worker in the early 1970s, I saw farmers forced off their land by American and South Vietnamese bombing and corralled into refugee camps to keep them from returning. Cluster bombs were a weapon of choice in cleansing the countryside of its rural communities, in an effort to better target the Communist soldiers who moved among them.
But many of these rural Vietnamese, denied income or work in the refugee camps, were desperate to return to their land and to farming, the only livelihood they had ever known. They broke out of the barbed-wire encampments and rushed for home, only to be maimed and killed by the cluster bomblets that littered their land.
History is now repeating itself in the cruelest of ways in Southern Lebanon.
It`s the farmers, once again, who are bearing the greatest physical and economic toll from unexploded cluster-bomb submunitions.
An estimated 1 million such bomblets now remain in Lebanon and contaminate the farmland and residential areas of the South - a deadly calling card left by "Israeli" forces as they departed Lebanon at the end of this year`s 34-day war.
The unexploded ordnance now kills or wounds an average of three people a day. Most are farmers. In a region where tobacco, citrus, banana and olive production are mainstays of the economy, many of Southern Lebanon`s farmers are risking death to harvest the current crop and plant the new one.
Ordnance-disposal teams from the United Nations and other agencies have already made a good start at clearing the cluster-bombs and other deadly explosives from key roads, residential areas and schools. But they acknowledge that significant progress won`t be made in ridding Southern Lebanon`s farmland of unexploded cluster submunitions until well into next year.
This leaves Southern Lebanon`s farmers increasingly frustrated and angry.
Tobacco producers lost their crop back in July and August. It dried up when irrigation systems were destroyed by the bombing and farmers feared to enter their fields to water.
With agricultural lands still contaminated, denying most farmers access to their land, other harvests are spoiling as well, including much of the lucrative olive crop, and next year`s crops go unplanted. The main thing growing in South Lebanon now, apart from the death toll, appears to be an economic crisis.
The ordnance-disposal teams can`t be blamed for the farmers` plight. They are stretched to capacity and need all the international support they can get, particularly as their workload continues to grow. Soon after the conflict ended, UN authorities estimated 300 cluster-bomb strike locations existed, contaminating South Lebanon with as many as 100,000 unexploded bomblets. But those numbers keep on rising. Now, close to 800 locations littered with about a million unexploded cluster bombs have been identified.
Given these numbers, and the limited capacities of ordnance-disposal teams, it`s clear most of South Lebanon`s farmers won`t be getting back into their fields safely anytime soon. They are a community at increasing risk - physically, if they attempt to defuse and remove deadly ordnance on their own, and economically, as they lose harvest income, are denied credit and are unable to plant new crops.
More effort is needed at educating farmers on the dangers of unexploded ordnance. But this is really a stopgap measure.
When farmers face economic peril, they will risk life and limb to return to the land - a lesson proved by those South Vietnamese farmers back in the 1970s.
What the farmers need most of all is financial compensation for their crop losses this year and until the unexploded ordnance is cleared and they can safely farm their land and resume production. It should be buffered by targeted livelihood schemes that enable farmers to contribute fruitfully to the reconstruction process in their own communities until their land is cleared and is safe.
Governments and the international community are stepping up impressively to help the Lebanese people rebuild their homes and communities. But largely missing from that agenda is a package of direct support for Southern Lebanon`s farmers. It`s a worthy expenditure, not just to keep them from deadly peril, but also to keep farm communities economically viable.
With the political situation so volatile, the last thing Southern Lebanon needs is thousands of farmers increasingly incensed as their livelihoods wither away.
UN team: Cluster bomb use a `war crime`
In Geneva three international law experts assigned by the UN human rights watchdog to investigate the aftermath of this summer`s war in Lebanon said Friday that one of their main conclusions is that "Israel`s" use of cluster bombs proves the weapons should be banned.
The indiscriminate use of cluster bombs and deliberate attacks on civilians could qualify as war crimes that "Israel" should prosecute, according to a 153-page report the commission of inquiry presented to the UN Human Rights Council.