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The impact of explosive weapons on urban services: Direct and reverberating effects across space and time

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2017

Mark Zeitoun  and
Michael Talhami
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Abstract

This article reviews the factors that determine the impact of explosive weapons on urban services in space and time, with a focus on drinking water services. The evidence comes from published and unpublished research and records, as well as experience restoring or maintaining such services. Urban services are seen as interconnected, and each composed of interdependent components of people, consumables and hardware. Elements that make up the components are labelled “upstream”, “midstream” and “downstream”, to reflect their location and hierarchy in the production and delivery of any urban service. The impact of explosive weapons is broken into the direct effects on any of the components of a service, and the reverberating effects on up- and or downstream components of the same service, or on other services. The effects are most commonly observed in service infrastructure, and determined chiefly by the extent of the damage to the functionality of any component. The spatial extent of the impact is found to be determined primarily by the hierarchy of the component suffering the direct impact, with attacks on upstream components being the furthest-reaching. The duration of the impact is determined primarily by the pre-explosion “baseline resilience” of the service, itself a function of system redundancies and emergency preparedness and response. The analysis suggests that the impact is more reasonably foreseeable than may commonly be thought, in the sense that the direct effects of explosives are well known and that the most important infrastructure is generally identifiable. It follows that proportionality assessments which involve urban services would benefit from (i) the direct and consistent engagement of specialized engineers within the targeting cell, and (ii) greater familiarity of the weapons controller with services, infrastructure and systems in urban areas.

Keywords

urban servicesreverberating effectsexplosive weaponsreasonably foreseeablewater and conflictwater and warcritical infrastructureservice system
Type
The problem
Information
International Review of the Red Cross , Volume 98 , Issue 901: War in cities , April 2016 , pp. 53 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © icrc 2017 

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References

1 See Maya Brehm and John Borrie, Explosive Weapons: Framing the Problem, Background Paper No. 1, Discourse on Explosive Weapons project, UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), April 2010; Laurent Gisel, “The Use of Explosive Weapons in Densely Populated Areas and the Prohibition of Indiscriminate Attacks”, in Edoardo Greppi with Gian Luca Beruto (eds), Conduct of Hostilities: The Practice, the Law and the Future, 37th Round Table on Current Issues of International Humanitarian Law, San Remo, 4–6 September 2014, International Institute of Humanitarian Law, 2015. See also Isabel Robinson and Ellen Nohle, “Proportionality and Precautions in Attack: The Reverberating Effects of Using Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas”, in this issue of the Review.

2 See Human Rights Watch (HRW), Precisely Wrong: Gaza Civilians Killed by Israeli Drone-Launched Missiles, New York, 2009 Google Scholar; HRW, Off Target: The Conduct of the War and Civilian Casualties in Iraq, New York, 2003 Google Scholar; Weizman, Eyal, The Least of All Possible Evils, Verso, London, 2011 Google Scholar; Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), Explosive Events: Monitoring Explosive Violence in 2013, London, 2013 Google Scholar. For deeper discussion, refer to the interview with Eyal Weizman in this issue of the Review.

3 E.g. Guha-Sapir, Deberati et al. , “Civilian Deaths from Weapons Used in the Syrian Conflict”, BMJ, Vol. 315, 2015 Google Scholar; Guha-Sapir, Deberati and Panhuis, Willem G. van, Armed Conflict and Public Health: A Report on Knowledge and Knowledge Gaps, WHO Collaborating Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, Catholic University of Louvain, Brussels, 2002 Google Scholar; Rappert, Brian, Moyes, Richard and Lang, Iain, “The Case for Addressing Explosive Weapons: Conflict, Violence and Health”, Social Science & Medicine, Vol. 75, No. 11, 2012 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

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6 See I. Robinson and E. Nohle, above note 1; see also L. Gisel, above note 1.

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8 See ICRC, Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas: Humanitarian, Legal, Technical, and Military Aspects, Report of the ICRC Expert Meeting in Chavannes-de-Bogis, Switzerland, 24–25 February 2015 Google Scholar, Geneva, 2015.

9 See ICRC, Urban Warfare: Proceedings of the Bruges Colloquium, 16th Bruges Colloquium, 15–16 October 2015, Geneva, 2016.

10 ICRC, “The Use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas and the Need to Better Protect Civilians”, side event held in Geneva, 9 December 2015.

11 The list of other “basic services”, such as radio and television, ports, banking, education, roads and telecommunications, is potentially non-exhaustive. It is likely to change with each context.

12 “Service resilience” is used here in a way that is analogous to “operational resilience”, which is defined as “that essential ability of an operation to respond to and absorb the effects of shocks and stresses and to recover as rapidly as possible normal capacity and efficiency”. Hay, A. H., After the Flood: Exploring Operational Resilience, FriesenPress, Victoria, 2016 Google Scholar.

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14 Ibid .

15 Borrowing from Brehm, Maya and Borrie, John, Explosive Weapons: Framing the Problem, Background Paper No. 1, Discourse on Explosive Weapons project, UNIDIR, Geneva, 2010 Google Scholar; and AOAV, above note 2.

16 Hunter, Paul R., Zmirou-Navier, Denis and Hartemann, Philippe, “Estimating the Impact on Health of Poor Reliability of Drinking Water Interventions in Developing Countries”, Science of the Total Environment, Vol. 407, No. 8, 2009 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Hunter, Paul R., MacDonald, Alan M. and Carter, Richard C., “Water Supply and Health”, PLOS ONE, Vol. 7, No. 11, 2010 Google ScholarPubMed.

17 ICRC, “Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas”, fact sheet, Geneva, February 2016.

18 What are referred to here as reverberating effects of explosive weapons on urban services are a subset of the “foreseeable reverberating effects of an attack” in the general sense as discussed in the article by Robinson and Nohle in this issue of the Review, which are “otherwise known as ‘knock-on effects’, ‘indirect effects’ or ‘long-term consequences’”. Reverberating effects on infrastructure are similar to what Christina Patterson calls ‘first order ripple effects’ in her discussion on the impact of urban infrastructure disruptions on military operations and non-combatants. Patterson, Christina M., Lights Out and Gridlock: The Impact of Urban Infrastructure Disruptions on Military Operations and Non-Combatants, No. IDA/HQ-D-2511, Institute for Defense Analyses, Alexandria, VA, 2000 Google Scholar.

19 By “infrastructure system”, we mean the network of elements that make up all of the infrastructure required within a system to deliver the service (bearing in mind that “infrastructure” is just one element of the “hardware” component of a service).

20 This could extend to peri-urban areas that are supplied through water tankers filling from a point on the main transmission line.

21 Nembrini, Pier Giorgio et al. , Basrah Water Supply during the War on Iraq, ICRC, Geneva, 2003 Google Scholar. See also Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Access to Water in Conflict-Affected Areas of Donetsk and Luhansk Regions, Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, 2015.

22 Grünewald, François and Levron, Eric (eds), Villes en guerre et guerres en villes, Editions Karthala, Paris, 2004 Google Scholar; Magnaldi, Stephan and Patera, Jessica, “Kaboul, de la destruction à la reconstruction”, in ibid.; Grünewald, François (ed.), Working in Syrian Cities at War: Humanitarian Aid under Constraints, Les Dossiers de Grotius International, 2013 Google Scholar.

23 ICRC, above note 8. The “domino effect” may be analogous to what Schmitt and Widmar refer to as a “knock-on” effect. Schmitt, Michael N. and Widmar, Eric W., “On Target: Precision and Balance in the Contemporary Law of Targeting”, Journal of National Security Law and Policy, Vol. 7, No. 3, 2014 Google Scholar.

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33 Notwithstanding the risk of spread of infectious disease from even one household deprived of sufficient safe water. Hunter, Paul R., Zmirou-Navier, Denis and Hartemann, Philippe, “Estimating the Impact on Health of Poor Reliability of Drinking Water Interventions in Developing Countries”, Science of the Total Environment, Vol. 407, No. 8, 2009 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Bartram, Jamie and Hunter, Paul, “Bradley Classification of Disease Transmission Routes for Water-Related Hazards”, in Bartram, Jamie et al. (eds), Routledge Handbook of Water and Health, Routledge, London, 2015 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This sort of “impact” can be very long-term, even indefinite.

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35 REACH, Eastern Aleppo Household Assessment: Water Security, ACTED and IMPACT Initiatives, UN Operational Satellite Applications Programme, Geneva, August 2015.

36 See I. Robinson and E. Nohle, above note 1.

37 Bocchini, Paolo, Frangopol, Dan M., Ummenhofer, Thomas and Zinke, Tim, “Resilience and Sustainability of Civil Infrastructure: Toward a Unified Approach”, Journal of Infrastructure Systems, Vol. 20, No. 2, 2014 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 “Downstream” reservoirs that supply small neighbourhoods have a capacity of about 500 cubic metres, for example, while those placed more “upstream” to serve 250,000 people have up to 5,000 cubic metres (as with the al Montar reservoir in Gaza). Most rapid-deployment tanks are limited to 95 cubic metres, though some can be 200 or 500 cubic metres.

39 J.-F. Pinera, above note 29.

40 CARE International, Watsan Project Report: September 1997, internal communication by CARE International classified as ICRC File No. 022, 1997.

41 FEMA, above note 5.

42 See I. Robinson and E. Nohle, above note 1.

43 Which could include, but is not limited to, a collateral damage estimation.

44 US Army, Intelligence Support to Urban Operations, Field Manual FM 2-914, Headquarters, Department of the Army, Washington, DC, 2008; C. M. Patterson, above note 18.

45 For example, the Southern Water Board in Lebanon (in 2006) and the Coastal Municipalities Water Utility in the Gaza Strip.

46 For example, the ICRC.

47 Public Safety Canada, Risk Management Guide for Critical Infrastructure Sectors, Version 1.0, Ottawa, 2010; Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), Protecting Critical Infrastructure in the EU, CEPS Task Force Report, Brussels, 2010; FEMA, above note 5.

48 Including the protection offered by international humanitarian law. Initial discussions are to be found in Tignino, Mara, Water During and After Armed Conflicts: What Protection in International Law?, Brill, Leiden, 2016 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; L. Gisel, above note 1.

49 I. Robinson and E. Nohle, above note 1.

50 ICRC Urban Services Report, above note 7, p. 40.