Commitment to the Convention on Cluster Munitions

Policy

The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 3 December 2008 and ratified on 8 September 2011. Afghanistan became a State Party on 12 March 2012.

In July 2012, a committee was established to help develop the legal framework necessary to ensure Afghanistan’s implementation of both the Convention on Cluster Munitions and Mine Ban Treaty.[1]

Afghanistan’s initial Article 7 transparency measures report for the Convention on Cluster Munitions is due by 28 August 2012.

Afghanistan’s lower house of the parliament (Wolesi Jirga) approved Resolution 3 to ratify the convention on 30 April 2011 and the upper house of parliament (Meshrano Jirga) approved the resolution on 24 May 2011. President Hamid Karzai signed Decree 25 approving ratification on 6 June 2011 and Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr. Zalmai Rasoul signed the instrument of ratification on 8 June 2011.[2] Afghanistan deposited its instrument of ratification with the UN in New York on 8 September 2011, becoming the 62^nd State Party.

Afghanistan participated in most meetings of the Oslo Process that created the convention, but despite its active support for the ban objective, it did not endorse the Wellington Declaration, which would have committed it to participate fully in the formal negotiations of the convention, and did not attend the negotiations in Dublin in May 2008, even as an observer.[3] Afghanistan came to the Convention on Cluster Munitions Signing Conference in Oslo in December 2008 as an observer, but unexpectedly signed the convention near the end of the conference after the Afghan representative announced that he had received instructions and authorization to do so.[4]

Since 2008, Afghanistan has played a positive and active role in the work of the convention. Afghanistan attended the Second Meeting of States Parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Beirut, Lebanon in September 2011, where it made several statements on topics such as victim assistance and clearance. At the meeting, the Afghanistan representative said, “My country is committed to implement fully all of the obligations” of the convention, especially victim assistance and clearance.[5]

Afghanistan participated in intersessional meetings of the convention in Geneva in June 2011, but did not attend intersessional meetings in April 2012.

Afghanistan is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty.

Interpretive issues

Afghanistan has not yet stated its views on several important issues related to interpretation and implementation of the Convention on Cluster Munitions. US Department of State cables made public by Wikileaks in 2011 outlined the US interpretation of the convention, but the Afghanistan government has not yet stated its views (see Foreign stockpiling section). In a December 2008 State Department cable, the US outlined its concern over how Afghanistan would interpret the convention’s prohibition on transit and foreign stockpiling, as well as Article 21 on “interoperability” or joint military operations with states not party to the convention. According to the cable, the US has interpreted the convention as allowing “U.S. forces to store, transfer, and use U.S. cluster munitions in the territory of a State Party.”[6]

Convention on Conventional Weapons

Afghanistan signed the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) in April 1981, but has not ratified it, so the country is not a party to the CCW.

At the CCW Fourth Review Conference in November 2011, Afghanistan did not make any national statements to express its views on the chair’s draft text of a proposed CCW protocol on cluster munitions, but on the final day of the conference it was one of 50 countries that endorsed a joint statement declaring that there was no consensus on the draft protocol and that it was unacceptable from a humanitarian standpoint.[7]

The Review Conference concluded with no agreement on a protocol or proposals to continue negotiations in 2012, thus ending the CCW’s work on cluster munitions.

Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling

At the convention’s Second Meeting of States Parties in September 2011, Afghanistan stated that it “does not use, produce or transfer Cluster Munitions in the country.”[8]

Previously, in 2010, Afghanistan stated that it has no stockpiled cluster munitions.[9] In August 2010, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Defense informed the Monitor that it has no cluster munitions in its depots and said that “about 113,196 items containing 29,559 kilograms” of old Soviet stocks had been destroyed.[10]

There is no clear accounting of former stockpiles in Afghanistan. Jane’s Information Group has listed Afghanistan as possessing KMGU dispensers and RBK-250/275 cluster bombs.[11] Standard international reference sources also list it as possessing Grad 122mm and Uragan 220mm surface-to-surface rockets, but it is not known if these included versions with submunition payloads.[12] In 2002, Australian photographer John Rodsted documented an estimated 60,000 tons (60 million kg) of abandoned Soviet-type submunitions, bulk storage containers (cassettes), and other paraphernalia abandoned at an area in Bagram airbase, outside Kabul.[13]

Foreign stockpiling

Some International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops operating in Afghanistan have been equipped with cluster munitions, but the current status of any possible stockpiles is not known. According to the December 2008 State Department cable released by Wikileaks, “The United States currently has a very small stockpile of cluster munitions in Afghanistan.”[14] In February 2011, an Afghan human rights group called on the US government and NATO to reveal if it has stockpiled or has used cluster munitions in Afghanistan since the 2002 conflict.[15] An ISAF spokesperson told media, “ISAF conducts operations in accordance with the law of armed conflict. All weapons, weapons systems, and munitions are reviewed for legality under international law.”[16] A spokesperson for the Mine Action Coordination Center of Afghanistan (MACCA) said, “We have no evidence of NATO/US using cluster munitions [in Afghanistan] since 2002.”[17] For several years, ISAF has had a policy against using cluster munitions.[18]

Soviet forces used air-dropped and rocket-delivered cluster munitions during their invasion and occupation of Afghanistan from 1979–1989.[19] A non-state armed group used rocket-delivered cluster munitions during the civil war in the 1990s.[20] Between October 2001 and early 2002, United States aircraft dropped 1,228 cluster bombs containing 248,056 bomblets in 232 strikes on locations throughout the country.[21] The Monitor is not aware of additional cluster strikes since that time.