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Long-Term
Damage From a Short-Term War
by Solana Pyne
April 16 - 22, 2003
Raw sewage courses through
canals and riverbeds. Toxic clouds from burning oil and
smoldering buildings billow into the air, raining
particles on the countryside. Heavy metals and a stew of
chemicals from bombed industrial plants spill into the
soil and pollute drinking-water supplies. Iraq's air,
land, and water have been battered, and some experts say
more Iraqi civilians will die from post-war environmental
problems than have been killed during the fighting.
The Department of Defense has
done no environmental assessment in Iraq of damage,
cleanup requirements, or costs, acknowledged Glen Flood,
a Pentagon spokesman. Peter Zahler, a conservation
biologist who supervised environmental assessment of
Afghanistan as part of the Post-Conflict Assessment Unit
of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP),
characterized the U.S. and its allies as "very
unprepared" to deal with environmental damage.
With scarce knowledge of what
pollution remains from the 1991 war, and little data on
what has been hit this time around..... Among the
possible dangers are carcinogenic PCBs leaking from the
transformers or ammonia seeping out of damaged fertilizer
plants.Also threatening, Zahler and other experts said,
is depleted uranium, a toxic and radioactive heavy metal
used by U.S. and British forces.
The U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID) has requested proposals
from U.S. companies for eight contracts on projects
ranging from repairing ports and airports to running
schools. None address remediation of pollution from
ordnance and bombed facilities.
In Iraq, humans aren't the only
immediate victims. The desert itself may take a century
or more to recover from the damage caused by the rapid
push of thousands of tons of military hardware.
In 1991, UNEP recommended
creation of an international plan to rehabilitate the
environment, a sort of Marshall Plan to deal with the
environmental disaster in the Middle East caused by the
first Gulf War. The plan never materialized, and much of
the damage remains. When asked why, Nick Nuttall, UNEP's
head of communications, said there was no particular
reason. "After a war. there's lots of goodwill and
good ideas," he said. "And then the world moves
on."
Aftermath By Conn Hallinan
While the shooting may be winding down,
the consequences of using controversial weapons will be
around for a long time to come, with clusters taking a
steady toll on the unwary and the young, and DU poisoning
the air and water.
Cluster munitions-bombs, shells and rockets that release
highly explosive canisters that shred everything from
people to tanks-have been an environmental nightmare
since the war in Southeast Asia. Of the 90 million
cluster munitions dropped on tiny Laos from 1964 to 1973,
30 percent failed to explode.The result is a national
minefield that has killed and maimed more than 12,000
people and which continues to exact a yearly toll of 100
to 200. In one 20 square kilometer area, the British
Mines Advisory Group, the world's leading bomb clearing
organization, recently found 376,000 unexploded weapons,
the vast majority of them cluster munitions.
More than 50 million clusters were used in the 1991 Gulf
War. In the two years following the war, they killed
1,400 Kuwaiti civilians and, as late as last year, 200
cluster weapons were found there each month.According to
Colin King, the author of Jane's Explosive Ordinance
Disposal Guide and a disposal expert in Gulf War I,
clusters caused "massive problems" in Kosovo,
the Gulf and Afghanistan, and they are "going to
cause massive problems in the Gulf again."The most
notorious cluster is the Vietnam era "Rockeye,"
the CBU-99, armed with MK-118 bomblets, which have a
failure rate as high as 30 percent. A U.S. company hired
to clear cluster weapons from Kuwait found 95,700
unexploded MK-118 submunitions in one small area.
More recent cluster weapons, like the CBU-103, 104, 105,
and AGM-154 A and B, have better track records, but even
these can fail anywhere from 5 to 23 percent of the
time.Children are particularly in danger because some of
the canisters are yellow, like the American emergency
food packs.
Depleted Uranium is ubiquitous on any recent American
battlefield. The U.S. used 320 tons of it during
the first Gulf War, and 10 tons of it in Kosovo. Its
resistance to enemy projectiles and its ability to turn
hardened armor into margarine gives the U.S. an enormous
advantage over any opponent who lacks it. It
is, however, illegal. In August of last year, a United
Nations subcommittee found that the use of DU violated
seven international agreements, including the UN Charter
and the Geneva Conventions.
Used in 120 mm tank shells and 30 mm cannon ammunition,
DU has an ignition threshhold of only 1132 degrees,
one-third that of tungsten. It can punch through four
inches of steel, roasting the inside of tanks and armored
vehicles with a 10,000-degree fireball.Anywhere from 30
percent to 70 percent of DU turns into tiny dust
particles, which may travel as far as 40 kilometers. DU
is not very radioactive-about the same as naturally
occurring uranium-but if ingested, according to the U.S.
Environmental Policy Institute, it "has the
potential to generate significant medical
consequences."
DU has long been a suspect in Gulf War Syndrome, the
melange of physical woes afflicting up to 30 percent of
the veterans from the 1991 conflict. The Department of
Defense doesn't consider low level radiation a threat,
but a recent study by the Armed Forces Radiobiology
Research Institute may force a reevaluation of that
conclusion."People have always assumed low doses are
not much of a problem," Alexandra Miller of the
Institute told The Guardian (British), "but they can
cause more damage than people think." The study
indicates that DU damages bone marrow chromosomes.The
effects of low level radiation are hard to track, because
many "solid" cancers don't show up for 16 to 24
years. However, Iraqi medical authorities claim the
cancer rate in the Basra area has jumped ten-fold. The
area was saturated with DU during the 1991 war. Besides
being radioactive, DU is also a toxic metal that can
damage the kidney and the liver.
Another worry are DU "misses," where the
enormous weight and speed of DUs drive them as deep as 24
inches into the ground. "A major concern of the
potential environmental effects by intact [DU]
penetrators or large penetrator fragments," notes
the World Health Organization, 'is the potential
contamination of ground water after weathering."
REPARATIONS - WHO WILL PAY?
At most, Iraqi oil could bring in $18 billion a year,
barely enough to feed the 60 percent of the population
dependent on food handouts. Nor does this even address
rebuilding the country's infrastructure, ravaged by 12
years of sanctions and the recent war, a price tag that,
according to PFC Energy, a Washington consulting
firm, will probably run in excess of $300
billion.Iraq also has a debt burden that may be as high
as $383 billion, and no one seems to be stepping forward
to write it off. Indeed, the Financial Times called
Deputy of Defense Paul Wolfowitz's call for debt
cancellation,"mischievous." As Russian Foreign
Alexei Kudrin pointed out, no one forgave his country's
enormous debts.Unlike in Gulf War I, where the allies
picked up most the tab, the Bush Administration's
"Coalition of the Willing" is flat broke, and
the White House has only allotted $2.4 billion to the
Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. On
top of that, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and
the World Bank have been hesitant to step in without
United Nations authority.
In part, the IMF is nervous about getting into the
business of cleaning up after the American military.
"I don't see that for the long term future you can
keep together a world of peace and prosperity just based
on military might," IMF Managing Director Horst
Kohler told the Financial Times.
- The Other Saddam -
A View From India
By Mani Shankar Aiyar
From The UPI International Desk
4-7-3.... Rense.com
- BANGALORE, India (UPI) --
Why should the Iraqi people feel any gratitude or
loyalty to President Saddam Hussein. You would
not know it from anything that has been written
in the U.S. or British media, but there are very
good reasons.
- I was commercial counselor and
deputy chief of mission at the Indian Embassy in
Baghdad from 1976 to 1978. During the interregnum
between two ambassadors, I was also for a while
the Indian charge d'affaires. This explains why I
had more than one occasion to stare into Saddam's
expressionless grey-green eyes -- straight out of
"The Day of the Jackal" -- while
shaking his hand at various official banquets and
other ceremonial occasions.
- Saddam ran a brutal dictatorship.
That, however, caused no concern to the hordes of
Western businessmen who descended in droves on
Iraq to siphon what they could of Iraq's newfound
oil wealth through lucrative contracts for
everything. Everything -- from eggs to nuclear
plants.
Technologically, from the end of the Turkish
Empire over Iraq in 1919 through the British
mandate, which lasted till 1932, and the effete
monarchy masterminded by Anthony Eden's buddy,
Nuri es-Said, right up to the Baath Party coup of
1968, there was virtually no progress at all.
Iraqi latifundia -- the vast
country house estates of the tiny privileged
elite -- gave large parties for visiting Western
guests, including Agatha Christie's archaeologist
husband who did most of his digging in Nineveh,
now known worldwide to TV viewers as Mosul, while
the puppet ruling establishment gave away Iraq's
most precious asset, oil, for a song. Iraq's
major export was -- hold your Patriot missile --
dates, the fruit of the Arab desert eaten by
pious Muslims to break their daylight fast during
the Muslim Lent -- Ramadan. India was Iraq's
largest buyer.
- It was Saddam's revolution that
ended Iraqi backwardness. Education, including
higher and technological education, became the
top priority. More important, centuries of
vicious discrimination against girls and women
was ended by one stroke of the modernizing
dictator's pen.
- I used to drive past the
Mustansariya University on my way home from
downtown Baghdad. It was miraculous -- I use the
word advisedly -- it was nothing short of
miraculous to see hundreds of girl-students
thronging the campus, none in "burkhas"
or "chador" -- the head-to-toe black
cape that was, and is, essential dress for women
in most of the Islamic world -- and almost all in
skirts and blouses that would grace a Western
university. The liberation
of women -- that is half the population of Iraq,
as for any other country -- has been the most
dramatic achievement of Saddam's regime. To
understand how dramatic just look across the
Iraqi border at America's once-favorite Arab
satrap, Saudi Arabia.
- Has U.S. Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld factored the feelings of women into his
war plans for the taking of Baghdad?
- I think of the chief engineer at
the State Organization for Industrial Housing,
the driving force behind the massive housing
program, which turned Baghdad in the first decade
of Baath rule from a dirty shantytown into a
pulsating modern metropolis that provided a roof
over the head of every family in the city.
- The chief engineer was a woman.
Such was the position of women in Iraq under
Saddam a quarter century ago. One had to keep
reminding oneself that this was the Middle East.....
- My second daughter, Yamini, was
born in Medical City, Baghdad, symbol of the
astonishing revolution wrought by the Baath Party
in health care. My child's cradle is now a
coffin, a purgatory that holds the mangled
remains of Iraqi babies killed by a rain of
terror to end a reign of terror. If I, who lived
in Baghdad but two years, and that too as a
foreigner and so many decades ago, feel violated
in my deepest sensitivities at what is being done
to my memories of the ordinary Iraqi men, women
and children I knew, consider the feelings of
those who have lived all their lives in Iraq, all
those below 40 years of age who have known no
Iraq other than the Iraq of Saddam, and now find
everything they have seen grow around them going
up in smoke - for their "liberation!"
- Iraq is home to some of the
holiest Muslim shrines, fertile ground for
religious fundamentalism. Saddam would have none
of it. Clerics were put firmly in their place --
that is, the mosque and the madrasa -- and the
Iraqi believer liberated from the thralldom of
the priesthood. The ethos was completely secular:
we interacted every day with Iraqis of numerous
religious persuasions in every position of
responsibility.
- Few know even now that one of
Iraq's longest lasting Baath leaders,
companion-in-arms to Saddam for the last four
decades, is Tariq Aziz, a practicing Christian
notwithstanding his name. For Indians, there is a
special place in our regard for Saddam who has
treated with reverence a sacred spot in Baghdad
where, legend has it, Guru Nanak, the founder of
the Sikh faith in the 16th century, meditated on
his way back to India from Mecca on the
imperative of synthesizing Hindu and Muslim
beliefs.
- Iraq under Saddam had everything
going for it -- except democracy. And it was, of
course, the absence of democracy that accounted
for Saddam brushing aside all vested interests:
his instant liberation of women, his instant
dismantling of feudalism, his instant caging of
the priesthood, and, therefore, his instant --
and, yes, brutal -- exclusion from Iraq of all
forms of religious fundamentalism and
religion-based terrorism. Which is, one thing at
least that Osama bin Laden and Bush III share:
they hate Saddam equally. But
other things not wonderful either will take its
place. There will be a takeover of civil society
by the elements sidelined over four decades of
Baath rule.
- Mani Shankar Aiyar is a
member of the Indian parliament representing the
Congress Party. His column is published weekly.
- Copyright © 2001-2003
United Press International
WHAT PRICE MUSLIM LIVES?
Jahangir
Mohammed for Ummahnews c-m-a@fsmail.net
4th April 2003.
It is often said that Muslim Blood is
cheap. The slaughter of Muslims around the globe is
so comprehensive and far-reaching, that it is nothing
short of a holocaust. Most Muslims killed simply
end up as a statistic called “collateral
damage”(thus denied even as human beings). Even
worse, many don’t even make the list of
statistics. Nobody knows, and nobody cares how many
Muslims are martyred, how many are injured, widowed,
orphaned, or lost their homes and had lives destroyed by
oppressors and warmongers. Sadly not even Muslims seem to
care.
But to say Muslim blood is cheap is more than an
expression, it is factually correct. When the US
bombed a wedding party in Afghanistan and killed around
40 civilians, the American Government of Hamid Karzai
offered just $100 each in compensation. Now a $100
dollars won’t even buy you a cow at the cattle
market!
In the eyes of the
“civilised” West, we are worth less than their
animals, that is if we are valued at all. The
majority of families whose loved ones have been
eliminated and whose Nations and their economies have
been destroyed are not even considered worthy of
compensation from the aggressors. To add insult to
injury, the blood of Iraqi victims of the US and British
“wolves”, has not yet dried, and they are
immorally talking about awarding contracts. The British
and Australian governments have openly complaining that
they are not getting a fair share of contracts for
reconstructing Iraq. These scavengers talk about
how and who will run Iraq, without mentioning the Iraqi
people, and in the same breath hypocritically tell the
world they are liberating Iraq.
- We witness the murder of Muslims
year after year, in country after country, and
carry on as normal. Take one example; I
hear that Muslims today won’t even consider
resigning from British political parties (that we
should now consider as terrorist organisations
and their leaders as responsible for crimes
against humanity). I am even more appalled
to learn that Muslims are even allowing
politicians of these parties to hold meetings in
their communities at Mosques and community
centres. Many non-Muslims have even taken such
simple actions as resigning from the Party.
Compare this behaviour with how Muslims treat
each other. If we so much as have a
disagreement with a Muslim friend or family
member, we break all relations for months and
even years. But the message we send to our
killers is that, “you can kill our brethren
and there will be no change in our behaviour
towards you”. We will still be members
of your parties, we will still vote for you, we
will still canvass for you, you can freely come
into our homes, communities and lands. We
will sit and dine with you, and even continue to
trade and co-operate with you. So is it any
wonder they come back to kill more in future
knowing that after a few angry outbursts, Muslims
will not modify their behaviour.
Having destroyed Iraq and other parts
of the Muslim world, it is humiliating for the Muslim
world to then let them benefit from Muslim trade or
reconstruct our lands. Why should they get
contracts and jobs in Muslim lands? After all, they
discriminate openly against Muslims in their lands.
What we need right now is a sense of priority. If the
price of Muslim Blood is cheap, it is so because we are
an Ummah with little dignity or sense of shame, or
responsibility for our brethren. We act not out of
our duty and responsibility to Allah (swt) and his Ummah,
but because we ultimately become humiliated. Like Turkey
who refused the US use of their land to attack Iraq, not
because of the popular feelings of Muslims, but because
of one cartoon in an American newspaper, which portrayed
them as a naked prostitute selling herself for $26
billion dollars. The cartoon was right of course they
were bargaining dollars in exchange for Muslim blood!
Jahangir Mohammed is Director of Centre for
Muslim Affairs, Manchester, UK.
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