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Environment Under Enemy Fire |
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By Diego Cevallos*
Burning oil wells, contaminated
water supplies, horrendous epidemics and destruction by nuclear,
chemical or biological weapons are some of the possible environmental
impacts of a war in Iraq, say experts consulted by Tierramérica.
MEXICO CITY - When scientist Matthew Naud,
of the United States, visited Iraq in 1998 it was easy for him to
find evidence of the environmental impact of the Gulf War, which
took place seven years earlier. He reached his hand into the desert
sand a few centimeters and found still-fresh remnants of oil spills.
Today, Naud fears that such proof of environmental
destruction pales in comparison to what could be unleashed if the
United States pursues its plan for war against Iraq, a conflict
in which the use of nuclear weapons cannot be ruled out.
Naud, a professor at the University of Michigan,
told Tierramérica that he is not as concerned about a repeat
of the oil well catastrophe in Kuwait -- something disaster teams
already know how to handle -- as he is about the less foreseeable
"war scenarios".
He was referring to the 1991 environmental
disaster caused by Iraqi troops who, after invading Kuwait in 1990,
set oil wells on fire as they were pushed out of Kuwaiti territory
by the U.S.-led military coalition of 34 countries.
Hundreds of oil wells in flames, air contaminated
by radioactivity, chemical and biological toxins, water sources
poisoned and thousands of people dead, ill or displaced, are potential
outcomes of a new war in the Persian Gulf region.
Zia Mian, a scientist with Princeton University
in the United States, believes that Washington does not care about
the environmental impact of its military operations. Nor would Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein be overly concerned, as he could order
oil wells to be set on fire and the launch of chemical and biological
weapons.
"If an ecosystem is destroyed, they say
it's collateral damage… Nobody deliberately says that the
environment is a military target," Mian commented in a conversation
with Tierramérica.
According to Naud, a war in Iraq would have
much worse consequences than what Kuwait suffered as a result of
the Gulf War. Iraq has a much larger population and relies on the
two historic rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, the contamination
of which would compromise the supply of freshwater for the entire
zone.
Naud, who in 1991 conducted an investigation
for Washington of the war's environmental effects in Kuwait, and
in 1998 carried out a similar project for the Green Cross International,
says environmental costs must be taken into consideration in any
war plan.
But the United States shows no sign of concern
as it amasses hundreds of thousands of its troops in and around
the Gulf region.
According to Washington's plans, within the
first 48 hours of attack, the U.S. armed forces would shower more
than 3,000 bombs over Iraq, including electronic bombs that would
paralyze electrical equipment on the ground, and bombs that contain
depleted uranium, which experts say is a carcinogen.
If Saddam were to set the wells ablaze, "there
will be a very large amount of oil that will be burnt and sent into
the atmosphere, and it will fall back to the ground and enter the
ground water supply," warns Mian, professor at Princeton's
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
"The whole area will be enormously polluted
for a quite a long time. These kind of oil-based fires are very,
very hazardous for the people of the region because they have to
breathe air that is contaminated with particles of oil," he
adds.
But Mian, a British expert of Pakistani origin,
says this would not be the worst that could happen in a war on Iraq.
"Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. Secretary of
Defense, has publicly refused to rule out American use of nuclear
weapons against Iraq. We should take it seriously," he said,
because the United States is in a position to use the latest nuclear
weaponry, which would have serious environmental repercussions.
These bombs would explode under ground, "able
to destroy things that are deeply buried like command bunkers or
stocks of chemical or biological weapons."
Although the creators of these weapons claim
they are "clean nuclear bombs", the truth is that even
underground explosions would release enormous quantities of radioactive
material into the atmosphere, says Mian.
In the 1991 Gulf War, more than 500 oil wells
were burned, sending three million tons of particles into the air,
creating a thick, dark cloud that affected four countries in the
area in particular, causing respiratory problems among the population.
Meanwhile, the depleted uranium scattered by
the U.S. bombs spread radioactivity throughout extensive areas.
At one point, there were 300 lakes of petroleum,
covering 500 square km of desert with 10 million cubic meters of
crude. Some of the oil reached the waters of the Persian Gulf, leading
to coastal contamination in eight countries.
As a result, some 25,000 birds were killed
and the Gulf's fishing industry was ruined. Millions of people were
displaced from their homes because of the air and water contamination.
Toxic residues from the Gulf War will continue
to affect the region's fishing industry for more than a hundred
years, said Jonathan Lash, director of the U.S.-based World Resources
Institute.
The Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research
reports that more than 900 square km of that tiny country's desert
were damaged by the passage of military vehicles and earth moving
operations by the military during the Gulf War, making sand storms
more frequent and altering the country's entire environment.
Such damages would be multiplied many times
in the case of Iraq, say activists and scientists.
The United States would intensely bomb Iraq's
major cities, destroying water and sanitation infrastructure and
causing enormous fires, activist Bill Hackwell, member of the U.S.-based
non-governmental group Act Now to Stop War & End Racism (ANSWER).
A United Nations study, released earlier this
year, estimates that a war on Iraq would cause some 500,000 Iraqis
to flee to neighboring countries in the first few weeks and could
leave nine or ten million refugees.
"It would be genocide," said Hackwell,
as well as "a natural and social catastrophe."
The non-governmental British group Medact calculates
that 48,000 to 260,000 people could die in a war on Iraq, and that
another 200,000 deaths would occur as a result of its long-term
health effects on the Iraqis.
"A public health crisis in Iraq is approaching.
Thousands will suffer infections, cancer and malnutrition. Children
will have low birth weights, many will be subject to continuous
stress, mental illness and behavioral disorders," Francesco
Martone, an Italian lawmaker with the Green Party and chairman of
the parliamentary human rights commission, said in comments to Tierramérica.
"The new strategies of war seek to tear
apart Iraq's social and productive fabric," says Martone, who
also believes there is an even more perverse interest involved.
"The reconstruction of Iraq will turn
into an enormous business deal. Italian companies alone stand to
earn 14 billion dollars for that effort," he said.
U.S. expert Naud, who has seen the environmental
impacts of war in the Gulf region firsthand, says the looming military
action against Iraq should -- because of its likely terrible consequences
-- be the last option.
* Diego Cevallos is an IPS correspondent.
Haider Rizvi/New York, Cristina Hernández/San Francisco and Carla
Maldonado/Italia contributed to this report.
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