Stop This Now:DarkWarlord10k

Finally got around to writing some comments.
This was home. It's Beirut, Lebanon.

One year ago (August 2006) Lebanon was attacked and bombed by Israel. They deployed cluster bombs and the consequences of this are still being felt throughout the Lebanese population. I was living there when it happened. This isn't some magical mystical place, it was home for me, and home for a lot of people. Please don't assume that because you can't feel it and can't see it, it isn't happening. I snipped this article from *Doublecrash's Not In My Name deviation. Check it out, please.

<< Israel dropped at least 15 thousand cluster bombs, each carrying anywhere from 80 to 600 small bomblets, [of softball size] on hundreds of villages in southern Lebanon during its recent war against Hizballah. These cluster bombs have a dud rate [not exploding on contact] of about 30% to 40%. The bomblets that failed to explode are now a deadly trap for civilians.

UN officials estimate that southern Lebanon is littered with more than a million cluster-bomb bomblets dropped by Israel in the waning days of the war. The deadly bombs are stuck in the branches of olive trees and the broad leaves of banana trees. They are on rooftops, mixed in with rubble, littered across fields, farms, driveways, roads and outside schools.

At least eighteen people were recently, killed and 109 others wounded from these unexploded bomblets. The removal of cluster bombs will take over a year to complete. In addition to this new danger it is estimated that there are still some 2,500 minefields containing 800,000 landmines.

According to UNIFIL officials, at the current rate of clearance, it will take approximately 37 years to clear Lebanese land of mines. The cleanup cost of this hazard has been estimated at a billion US dollars.

Israél has refused to hand over maps of landmines planted in southern Lebanon during and after the occupation as a ploy to prevent the movement of Hizballah – essentially, creating a buffer zone inside Lebanon. It’s a particularly, cruel form of strategy for those who aren’t guerillas and who also happen to be its major victims.

The vast majority of the mines were laid by Israéli forces in the last two decades. The Israéli Defense Force (IDF), breached U.N. peace-keeping lines to plant booby-traps close to the Litani River, an area consisting in part of arable land and farmland.

Around every artillery position or military outpost previously, occupied by the IDF, or their SLA collaborators, lie acres of dormant ordinance waiting to explode at the slightest misstep. This problem is not confined to the south. In the Bekaa Valley, the Lebanese Army (LA), estimates approximately eleven tons of mines and unexploded ordinance (UXO), are scattered in a forty four square mile area inhabited by 40,000 people. That area, much of which is farmland, is highly contaminated with cluster bombs and UXO.

The social impact of this threat is devastating. Farmland can not be used safely, and convincing villagers of the danger and keeping them off farmland is a tremendous challenge. In a country as small as Lebanon, the civilian dependence on farmland for subsistence is critical. The vast amount of UXO in effect creates no-go zones, which depolutates vast areas.>> Source: [link]

Do you know what your government is doing in your name?

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