The Dreadful Environmental Legacy
of Modern Warfare
by Sean McDonagh SSC
The Dreadful Environmental Legacy of Modern Warfare
Sean McDonagh, SSC
War is hell. I know this from my own experience as a missionary in the southern Philippines during the conflict in Mindanao in the 1970s and 1980s. One incident is seared in my memory. I was anointing a man who had been riddled, at close range, with an M 16 rifle. When I reached for his hand I found, to my horror, that the whole arm was severed from the body just below the shoulder. I also learned in Mindanao that war kills and maims many innocent people. War leaves orphans and widows in its wake. War destroys homes, hospitals, farms, industries and the vital infrastructure of a country. War causes hunger, famine and spreads diseases.
No one should be allowed to present war in either a glorious or sanitized way. Yet with only a few days or, at the most, weeks before the United States and Britain unleash a massive bombing blitz on Iraq, selective leaks from the Pentagon and Whitehall would like us to us believe that modern technology makes war much less destructive, deadly, painful and traumatic. We are told that precision bombing of strategic targets like air defenses, communications networks and the military infrastructure will keep civilian causalities to a minimum. The overwhelming force we are told will guaranteed that the war will last only for a few weeks unlike the unending carnage of the two World Wars, the Korean War and the Vietnam War in the last century. We are encouraged to forget that while only a few hundred allied troops were killed in the Gulf War, 200,000 Iraqi individuals were killed and tens of thousands more maimed.
War and the Environment
In the current discussion the impact of war on the environment is often
forgotten. In the 45 days of the Gulf War 56,133 tonnes of ordinances
was dropped on Iraq. This exceeds the 47,777 tonnes that was dropped in
the first 45 months of World War 11. Furthermore, the bombs dropped in
the Gulf War were much more lethal than those used in World War 11. Much
of the Gulf War ordinance was coated with depleted uranium (DU) a byproduct
of the nuclear industry. This has replaced titanium as armour piercing
coating on shells. Because of its density uranium tipped projectiles have
a very high penetrating capacity. DU shells can pierce several inches
of armour-plated steel on tanks. When a DU tipped shell strikes its target,
it burns and produces a very fine dust that is both toxic and radioactive.
When inhaled by combatants or civilians it can cause cancer, weaken the
immune system and lead to genetic defects. Because the shells are roughly
60 percent as radioactive as naturally occurring uranium they will continue
wreaking havoc for thousands of years. It is hard to come up with accurate
figures but some experts believe that during the Gulf War close to 300
tonnes of DU dust was spread throughout Iraq contaminating air, soil and
water. Also thousands of tonnes of DU ordinance debris is scattered throughout
the country.
The military establishment in both the United States and Britain claim that DU is only 'mildly' radioactive. However, when Professor Siegwart-Horst Gunther, the founder of the Austrian Yellow Cross in Austria, brought a DU bullet to Germany for testing he was arrested at Berlin airport because the bullet set-off all the radiation sensors. This happened despite the fact that the bullet was encased in an appropriate lead-lined box.
From 1993 onwards doctors in Iraq began to see a dramatic increase in the number of birth deformities and cancers, especially among children. Tens of thousands of shells or fragments are strewn around Iraq. Iraqi children like children everywhere in the world are curious about their environment and have collected many fragments of shells. Unfortunately even thought the war ended in 45 days these fragments continue emit radiation and thus harm and kill. Professor Gunther believes that the so-called Gulf War Syndrome among U.S. and British service personnel may be a direct result of DU contamination.
Chemical Pollution
There is also a danger that the forthcoming war will lead to widespread
oil spills and the release of chemicals into the environment. This will
pollute Iraqi lakes, rivers, ground water and soil. During the NATO military
action against Serbia in 1999 the city of Pancevo was bombed hitting a
petrochemical and fertilizer factory. This produced a dense toxic cloud.
By morning a fine powder of vinyl chloride with concentrations over 10,000
times above the human-safety levels covered the city. Doctors advised
women who were in the city that night to avoid pregnancy for at least
two years. They also recommended that women who were less than 9 weeks
pregnant to obtain an abortion. Many women complied. The legacy of the
war in Pancevo is a city saturated with mercury, acids, dioxins and ammonia
that leaked out of the bombed factories that night.
The British authorities played down this aspect of the war. On April 21, 1999 the British Ministry of Defence told the Guardian columnist, Georege Monbiot, that the pilots were "keeping the risks of pollution to a minimum".
The following day Monbiot wrote "This, in environmental term, at least, is perhaps the dirtiest war the West has ever fought. NATO's scorched earth policy, which seeks to destroy Milosevic's armed capacity by destroying everything else, places the Alliance firmly on the wrong side of the Geneva Convention. For war which targets chemical factories and oil installations, which deploy radioactive weapons in towns and cities, is a war against everyone: civilians as well as combatants, the unborn as well as the living. As such it can never be a just one".
The people and land of Iraq are facing an even more ferocious and long lasting toxic bombardment.