Human Rights Watch found that the United States did not take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian casualties, as required by international humanitarian law, when it used cluster bombs in or near populated areas. U.S. cluster bombs also left an estimated 12,400 explosive duds—de facto antipersonnel landmines—that continue to take civilian lives to this day.

Human Rights Watch has previously documented the harm to civilians from U.S. cluster bombs in the 1991 Gulf War and 1999 Yugoslav air campaign. The new Human Rights Watch report found that the humanitarian side effects of cluster bombs were less serious in Afghanistan than in these earlier conflicts, in part due to the smaller number of bombs used.

“As war looms in Iraq, the United States should learn from the lessons of its Afghanistan air war,” said Bonnie Docherty, researcher in the Arms Division of Human Rights Watch and the author of the report. “It should not use cluster bombs at all until the dud rate has been brought way down. At the very least, it should never use cluster bombs near inhabited towns and villages.”

The new report presents the findings of a month-long mission to Afghanistan. It also compares recent use of cluster bombs to that in the Gulf War and Kosovo.

In Afghanistan, the United States restricted cluster bomb targets more than in the past and employed new technology, notably the wind corrected munitions dispenser, to improve the accuracy of these weapons. It also used fewer cluster bombs, dropping 1,228 cluster bombs, which contained 248,056 bomblets, in Afghanistan. Allied forces dropped 61,000 bombs with twenty million bomblets in the Gulf War and 1,765 bombs with 295,000 bomblets in Yugoslavia.

But the same problems were found in Afghanistan as in other instances of cluster bomb use: lack of accuracy in targeting during attacks, large numbers of explosive duds remaining after attacks, and difficulties in clearance. These problems suggest that this weapon has fundamental flaws and should be specifically regulated under international law.

“We are not arguing for a ban on cluster bombs,” said Docherty. “What we want is better targeting and technology in order to reduce the humanitarian side effects.”

States parties to the Convention on Conventional Weapons met in Geneva last week at a United Nations-sponsored conference and agreed to negotiate on general issues related to explosive remnants of war, such as clearance and warnings to civilians. They refused, however, to enter into specific negotiations on cluster bombs or other submunitions.

In Afghanistan, the United States ignored a critical lesson of past wars by using cluster bombs in or near populated areas. Use in populated areas poses dangers to civilians because of the difficulty in accurately targeting cluster bombs and their bomblets and the wide and imprecise area they cover.

The Human Rights Watch report analyzes three examples of such strikes, during which at least twenty-five civilians died and many more were injured. At least twelve civilians died and many more were injured when five cluster bombs landed on the village of Ishaq Suleiman, near Herat. The United States had used older, less accurate munitions to attack a nearby military base.

Cluster bombs continue to endanger civilians long after being dropped. Many of the bomblets did not explode on impact as designed but were still volatile and ready to explode when touched. They have caused casualties among shepherds, farmers, and other civilians and have interfered with the country's agriculture.

As of November 2002, the International Committee of the Red Cross had identified 127 civilian casualties to cluster bomb duds—a number it stressed was only a partial tally of the total killed and injured since many go unreported. An astonishing 69% of the casualties were children.

The clearance of cluster bomblets in Afghanistan has moved relatively rapidly, but explosive duds remain in several regions of the country. Human Rights Watch said that the United States could have contributed more effectively to clearance because the list of strikes it provided the United Nations was both inaccurate and inadequate.