Ten-Year Review: State Party Afghanistan ratified the convention on 8 September 2011 and enacted implementation legislation to enforce its provisions in September 2018. Afghanistan has participated in most of the convention’s meetings. It has voted in favor of annual United Nations (UN) resolutions promoting the convention and has condemned new use of cluster munitions.

In its initial transparency report for the convention, Afghanistan stated that it has not used, produced, or transferred cluster munitions. The national armed forces do not stockpile cluster munitions, but cluster munitions are among abandoned weapons that are discovered, reported and destroyed.

Policy

The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 3 December 2008, ratified on 8 September 2011, and became a State Party on 1 March 2012.

Afghanistan enacted implementation legislation for the Convention on Cluster Munitions in September 2018. According to the amended Law on Firearms, Ammunition and Explosive Materials, “production, importation, transportation, use, preservation, purchase, sale and storage of anti-personnel mines and cluster munitions or their key components are punishable by the perpetrator in accordance with the law.”[1] The law was prepared following a 2012 review that recommended existing legislation be amended and it is reviewed further under Interpretive issues.[2]

Afghanistan submitted its initial Article 7 transparency report for the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 30 August 2012 and has provided updated annual reports since, most recently in June 2020.[3]

Afghanistan participated in most meetings of the Oslo Process that created the Convention on Cluster Munitions, but despite actively supporting the ban objective it did not endorse the Wellington Declaration that would have committed it to participating fully in the formal negotiations of the convention. It also did not attend the negotiations in Dublin in May 2008, not even as an observer.[4] Afghanistan attended the convention’s Oslo Signing Conference in December 2008 as an observer, but unexpectedly signed the convention near the end of the conference after the representative announced that he had received instructions and authorization to do so.[5]

Afghanistan plays a positive and active role in the work of the Convention on Cluster Munitions. It has attended most of the convention’s Meetings of States Parties, including the Ninth Meeting of States Parties in Geneva in September 2019. It participated in the First Review Conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia in September 2015 as well as intersessional meetings in Geneva in 2011–2015.[6] Afghanistan is serving as coordinator of the convention’s working group on clearance and risk reduction from 2019–2021.

In December 2019, Afghanistan voted in favor of a UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution on the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which urges states outside the convention to “join as soon as possible.”[7] Afghanistan has voted in favor of the annual UNGA resolution promoting the convention since it was first introduced in 2015.

Afghanistan has condemned the use of cluster munitions and it has voted in favor of UNGA resolutions condemning the use of cluster munitions in Syria.[8] At the First Review Conference, Afghanistan condemned any cluster munition use by any actor and commented that “States Parties should join hands to end all suffering caused by these indiscriminate and inhumane weapons.”[9]

Afghanistan is a State Party to the Mine Ban Treaty. It is also party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

Interpretive issues

Afghanistan’s implementing legislation outlines prohibited activities including use, production, stockpiling and transfer, but it does not include assistance with banned activities. It does not prohibit assistance in the form of direct or indirect investment of public and private funds in companies that manufacture cluster munitions.

Use, production, and transfer

In its initial Article 7 report, Afghanistan declared that it has no “production industry” for manufacturing cluster munitions.[10] Previously, in 2011, Afghanistan stated that it “does not use, produce, or transfer Cluster Munitions in the country.”[11]

The Monitor is not aware of any use of cluster munitions in Afghanistan since 2001–2002, when United States (US) forces used 1,228 cluster bombs containing 248,056 submunitions in 232 strikes on locations across the country.[12]Soviet forces used air-dropped and rocket-delivered cluster munitions during their invasion and occupation of Afghanistan from 1979–1989, while a non-state armed group used rocket-delivered cluster munitions during the civil war in the 1990s.[13]

Stockpiling and destruction

In September 2013, Afghanistan informed States Parties that it “destroyed all its cluster munitions stocks before” the convention entered into force and therefore complies with its obligations under Article 3 of the Convention on Cluster Munitions.[14] In October 2013, it stated that concerning cluster munitions, “Afghanistan is pleased to have destroyed all weaponry of this kind within its military stockpile.”[15]

In 2013, the Ministry of Defence said the Afghan National Forces does not possess cluster munition stocks.[16] Additional stocks abandoned in the past by the government may continue to be discovered.

Foreign stockpiling and transit

The amended Law on Firearms, Ammunition and Explosive Materials does not address transit and foreign stockpiling of cluster munitions by non-State Parties in its territory or airspace.

The US State Department outlined US concerns 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 in a cable made public by Wikileaks in 2011.[17] The December 2008 cable also revealed that, “The United States currently has a very small stockpile of cluster munitions in Afghanistan.”