It was a sunny day in Lebanon in 1999 when Raed Mokaled and his wife took their two sons to the park to celebrate 5-year-old Ahmad’s birthday. While Ahmad was playing, an explosion tore through the air. Ahmad died hours later in the hospital. He is one of thousands of people, many of them children, killed or maimed by leftover cluster munitions.
Now Ahmad’s father is joining with cluster bomb survivor Soraj Ghulam Habib and Lynn Bradach, the mother of a U.S. Marine who was killed by a cluster bomb in Iraq, on a tour that will be making a stop at MSU today.
The Cluster Bomb Survivors Tour is sponsored nationally by the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines and Cluster Bombs and locally by the Students for Peace and Justice and the Red Cedar Friends Meeting, among others, said Ann Francis of the Red Cedar Friends Meeting.
The event, which will feature a photo exhibit and speeches by Mokaled, Habib and Bradach, will be held at 7 p.m. today in 105 South Kedzie Hall.
The U.S. campaign is coordinated by the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a public interest Quaker lobbying group.
Cluster bombs consist of one large bomb or rocket full of dozens to hundreds of typically softball-sized bomblets. The large bomb opens in mid-air, causing these smaller bombs to be distributed over areas the size of one to two football fields, said Lora Lumpe, coordinator for the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines and Cluster Bombs.
“Anything in the way is subject to great harm,” Lumpe said. “A significant number of the small bombs fail to go off, and when the civilian population returns, they’ll come back and basically find landmines in their farm, in their garden, around kids’ schools.”
The tour is traveling throughout the Midwest to garner support for a bill introduced by U.S. Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., which will halt the use and export of all cluster bombs except for those that leave behind less than 1 percent of bomblets.
Michigan is important to visit because U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., is the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, making him a key person to the campaign, Francis said.
The U.S. has not signed a treaty that includes 115 nations and 20 out of 26 NATO members to ban cluster munitions, Lumpe said.
“I don’t think many people our age know a lot about the issue or how serious it is,” said social work senior and public relations officer of Students for Peace and Justice Maureen Nagy. “Our age group can have a lot of impact.”
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