Name: 【TED】Laura Boushnak: The deadly legacy of cluster bombs (The deadly legacy of cluster bombs | Laura Boushnak)
Uploaded: 2017-11-21T12:38:40.000Z
Duration: 11 min 37 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I'm standing in the middle of a deserted field full of land mines.

but every time I want to go on a hike, it makes me nervous.

I have this thought in the back of my mind

This underlying fear started 10 years ago,

after I met Mohammed, a cluster bomb survivor

of the summer 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War in Lebanon.

Mohammed, like so many other survivors all around the world,

had to live through the horrifying repercussions of cluster munitions

When the one-month conflict started in Lebanon,

I was still working at Agence France-Presse in Paris.

I remember how I was glued to the screens,

that the falling bombs missed my parents' home.

When I arrived in Beirut on assignment to cover that war,

I was relieved to be united with my family,

after they had finally managed to escape southern Lebanon.

of displaced people eagerly rushing south, back to their homes,

An estimated four million cluster submunitions

were spread in Lebanon during the 34-day conflict.

Mohammed lost both legs during the last week of the conflict.

The fact that he lives a five-minute drive from my parents' home

made it easier to follow him through the years.

It was now almost 10 years since we first met.

who had to endure physical and emotional trauma.

I saw the teenager who tried to offer his friends tattoos,

And I know the young, jobless man who spends hours surfing the Internet

trying to meet a girl who might become his girlfriend.

His fate and the effects of losing his legs

have to deal with so many details that never occur to us.

that so many daily tasks we do or take for granted,

such as going to the beach or even picking up something from the floor,

would become sources of stress and anxiety?

Well, that's what eventually became of Mohammed,

Ten years ago, I had no clue what a cluster bomb was,

I learned that this indiscriminate weapon was used

and continues to kill on a regular basis,

without distinguishing between a military target

Let me explain to you what a cluster bomb is.

It's a large canister filled with bomblets.

it opens up in midair to release hundreds of bomblets.

Those unexploded ones end up just like landmines --

These weapons are extremely unpredictable,

One day, a farmer can work his land without a problem.

The next day, he can make fire and burn some branches,

and the submunitions close by could be set off because of the heat.

The problem is children mistake those bomblets for toys,

because they can look like bouncy balls or soda cans.

I decided to go back to Lebanon a few months after the conflict ended

Their stories are similar to so many other kids' stories across the world

and are a testimony to the horrifying implications

That's when I met Mohammed, in January 2007.

and I met him exactly four months after his accident.

he was going through painful physiotherapy

Mohammed was struggling to get used to his new body.

He would even wake up sometimes at night wanting to scratch his lost feet.

What drew me closer to his story was my instant realization

of the difficulties Mohammed was likely to face in the future --

that what he has been suffering while adjusting to his injury

Subtitles ListPlay Video

【TED】Laura Boushnak: The deadly legacy of cluster bombs (The deadly legacy of cluster bombs | Laura Boushnak)

anxiety

physical

trauma

journey