Bombs Under Lebanon

“It’s basically like going out into your backyard and taking garden shears to grass that hasn’t been mowed in months,” says Wiebe, an associate professor of law at the University of St. Thomas School of Law. He recently took part in a bomb-clearing mission in southern Lebanon. “Now, imagine cutting that grass with your garden shears and all the while looking for bomblets.”

In July and August 2006, an estimated 4 million bombs were dropped over South Lebanon during the conflict with Israel. Anywhere between 5 and 25 percent of those bombs never exploded, which means they’re now effectively land mines. After the war, bomb clearers began the exhaustive task of detonating munitions and clearing duds from farm fields, orange groves, olive orchards and even residential back yards. In fact, during Wiebe’s trip last April, he met a man who’d just discovered an unexploded bomblet right next to his home.

He is a board member of Mines Advisory Group (MAG) America, an organization he joined in the mid-’90s after, as a student at New York University School of Law, he started attending services at a Mennonite church that was active in the cause.

The peace-loving Mennonites have long been on the front lines of the bomb-clearing cause. Following the Vietnam War, the Mennonites, along with the Quakers, were among the first to push for bomb clearing in Laos, where an estimated 25 million unexploded bombs were left on the ground after the war.

Although he wasn’t among those combing the underbrush for unexploded ordnance in Lebanon, Wiebe was glad to get a firsthand look at the danger and tediousness of the job. He was also able to scrutinize—to see and to hold—the munitions being discovered. “The shocking thing,” Wiebe says, “was finding exactly the same kind of ordnance that had been used in Laos 30 years ago—literally seeing the casings of bomb containers that had one-year warranties stamped 1973.”