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Iraq
Cluster Munition Ban Policy
Policy
The Republic of Iraq signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 12 November 2009. The ratification process has not been able to proceed due to the political deadlock surrounding the results of the March 2010 elections and the resulting inability to form a new parliament.[1]
Iraq did not attend any of the international or regional meetings on cluster munitions in 2009 or 2010 through July. On 18 March 2009 at a Special Event on the Convention on Cluster Munitions held at the UN in New York, Iraq stated that the Cabinet had recently approved signature of the convention and that the necessary legal procedures were underway.[2]
After limited participation in the Oslo Process diplomatic meetings to develop the convention, Iraq attended the formal negotiations in Dublin in May 2008 as an observer, and the Convention on Cluster Munitions Signing Conference in Oslo in December 2008, also as an observer.[3] In Oslo, Iraq welcomed the adoption of the convention and stated it would sign as soon as possible, after the completion of national and constitutional processes.[4]
Iraq acceded to the Mine Ban Treaty on 15 August 2007. It is not party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.
Use, production, transfer, and stockpiling
Iraq may have used cluster munitions in the past. One source reports that Iraq used air-dropped cluster bombs against Iranian troops in 1984 during their border war.[5]
Coalition forces used large numbers of cluster munitions in Iraq in 1991 and 2003. The United States, France, and the United Kingdom dropped 61,000 cluster bombs containing some 20 million submunitions on Iraq and Kuwait in 1991. The number of cluster munitions delivered by surface-launched artillery and rocket systems is not known, but an estimated 30 million or more dual purpose improved conventional munition (DPICM) submunitions were used in the conflict.[6] In the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the US and UK used nearly 13,000 cluster munitions containing an estimated 1.8 million to 2 million submunitions.[7]
The current status of production facilities is not known, but production capability was likely destroyed in 2003. Prior to 2003, Iraq produced two types of cluster bombs called the NAAMAN-250 and NAAMAN-500.[8] It was also involved in joint development of the M87 Orkan (known in Iraq as Ababil) with Yugoslavia.[9]
Iraq imported ASTROS cluster munition rockets from Brazil.[10] Jane’s Information Group has listed it as possessing KMG-U dispensers (which deploy submunitions) and CB-470, RBK-250, RBK-275, and RBK-500 cluster bombs.[11] The current status of the stockpile is not known.
Additionally, a number of SAKR rockets and CB-250 bombs modified to deliver chemical and biological agents were found by UN weapons inspectors in the arsenal of Iraq.[12]
[1] Email from Moaffak al-Khafaji, Director, Iraqi Association of the Disabled, 25 July 2010.
[2] CMC, “Report on the Special Event on the Convention on Cluster Munitions, United Nations, New York, 18 March 2009”; and CMC, “Laos Ratifies Cluster Bomb Ban Treaty – DRC becomes 96th signatory,” Press release, 18 March 2009, New York, www.stopclustermunitions.org.
[3] For details on Iraq’s cluster munition policy and practice through early 2009, see Human Rights Watch and Landmine Action, Banning Cluster Munitions: Government Policy and Practice (Ottawa: Mines Action Canada, May 2009), pp. 211–212.
[4] Statement of Iraq, Convention on Cluster Munitions Signing Conference, Oslo, 4 December 2008. Notes by Landmine Action.
[5] Anthony H. Cordesman and Abraham R. Wagner, Lessons of Modern War Volume II: The Iran-Iraq War (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1990), p. 210. The bombs were reportedly produced by Chile.
[6] Colin King, “Explosive Remnants of War: A Study on Submunitions and other Unexploded Ordnance,” commissioned by the ICRC, August 2000, p. 16, citing: Donald Kennedy and William Kincheloe, “Steel Rain: Submunitions,” U.S. Army Journal, January 1993.
[7] Human Rights Watch, Off Target: The Conduct of the War and Civilian Casualties in Iraq (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2003).
[8] Jane’s Air Launched Weapons, Issue 24, July 1996. These are copies of Chilean cluster bombs.
[9] Terry J. Gandler and Charles Q. Cutshaw, eds., Jane’s Ammunition Handbook 2001 –2002 (Surrey, UK: Jane’s Information Group Limited, 2001), p. 641.
[10] Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne, “Scandals: Not Just a Bank, You can get anything you want through B.C.C.I.—guns, planes, even nuclear-weapons technology,” Time Magazine, 2 September 1991, www.time.com.
[11] Jane’s Air Launched Weapons, Issue 24, July 1996, p. 840. The Iraq Ordnance Identification Guide produced for Coalition Forces also lists the Alpha submunition contained in the South African produced CB-470 as a threat present in Iraq. James Madison University Mine Action Information Center, “Iraq Ordnance Identification Guide, Dispenser, Cluster and Launcher,” January 2004, p. 6, maic.jmu.edu. The KMG-U and RBKs were likely produced in the Soviet Union.
[12] UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, “Sixteenth quarterly report on the activities of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission in accordance with paragraph 12 of Security Council resolution 1284 (1999)” S/2004/160, Annex 1, p. 10. Chile produced the CB-250.
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