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In Iraq, Few Doubts About the Horror of Depleted UraniumJune 20, 2002 A warm haze is draped over Baghdad - perhaps more desert sand encroaching on the city, or the abundance of locally produced smog simply sinking lower and refusing to budge. On some days, high dust clouds screen the sunlight, infusing the city with an orange glow. It is like gazing at the world through the ridiculous tint of gaudy children's sunglasses. Some weeks ago, I resolutely set out on an evening walk despite a similar haze. I was able to complete most of my usual tour of suburb streets and a section of the inner Karada before a fierce wind began hurling sand around, mercilessly stinging any exposed skin. It was necessary to find shelter on occasion to allow swirling dust-devils to pass with their snapping tails of discarded plastic bags. At a shop up the street I bought an ice cream cone; inside my hotel the receptionist gazed at me peculiarly and commented on my choice of snack: "Hmm - dust and ice cream." Later in my room I saw my reflection - hair and eyebrows lightened, every uncovered inch of skin encrusted with dust. On the highway from Baghdad west to the Jordan border, a smooth straight ride across flat desert, such encounters with blowing dust are the norm. The storms gather in the distance and then suddenly the speeding Chevy Suburban has slowed to a crawl, visibility down to a few meters. These brushes with an unforgiving desert can be slotted neatly into the ‘Adventures in the Middle East’ category. I draw comparisons with tales heard in Sudan of frightful haboobs covering camel convoys or sturdy four-wheel-drive Land Rovers in minutes. But with dust storms in Iraq one eventually thinks of only one thing: contaminated soil. In the brief and devastating military thrashing known to the west as the Gulf War, and to Iraq as the Mother of All Battles, the allies used more than 300 tons of depleted uranium (DU) in Iraq’s southern desert to destroy tanks and pierce through reinforced bunkers and storage depots. A byproduct of the nuclear energy industry, DU is a heavy metal provided free-of-charge to US weapons manufacturers. But it is anything but depleted - experts describe it as 60% more radioactive than natural uranium, with a half-life of 4.5 billion years. Missiles and shells tipped with DU can burrow through the hardest protective shields. DU is pyrophoric, say the experts, meaning it burns on impact, scorching the target and releasing microscopic particles of radioactive material into the environment to then be conveniently dispersed by wind and water. According to one British researcher, such inhaled particles would theoretically take 24,000 years to exit the body. Analysts are connecting DU use in southern Iraq with the mysterious Gulf War Syndrome affecting veterans of that war. Though only 148 US soldiers were killed in actual fighting, thousands have died over the past decade, having suffered from debilitating joint pain, organ failure and various cancers. About 500 UK veterans have died since the war, recording similar health complaints. It can hardly be a coincidence that Iraqis living in areas that saw heavy DU use are experiencing soaring cancer rates and strange birth defects. According to one report, the incidence of childhood leukemia in Iraq is the highest in the world. The overall incidence rate of malignancies, say local statisticians, was 10.1 per 100,000 in 1999 compared with 3.98 in 1990. In Baghdad’s Mansoor Pediatric Hospital, the unwilling young victims of the war lie in the stark leukemia ward, awaiting the hereafter - or a miracle cure. UN/US sanctions that prohibit or delay certain medical equipment and drugs mean that needed treatments are incomplete or nonexistent. The reality is that any cure here would be something of a miracle. Farouq Karim Hamzeh is one of these children - seven years old, and suffering from Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. His yellow body is grossly bloated from oedema, the result of heart and liver failure. According to his doctor, Farouq will soon die. All the children I saw in the ward either had, like Farouq, a Gulf War soldier in the family, or lived in areas where DU was used. One wonders how much more evidence is needed to connect DU with human illness. With a cold insistence on a lack of concrete data, the American and British governments have consistently refused to acknowledge, publicly at least, that DU is dangerous. But already in 1990, a company under military contract, Science Applications International Corporation, reported that DU use is "linked to cancer" and that it has potential radiological and toxicological effects. As Bush ‘n’ Blair try to convince the world that Saddam must go, the UK is considering a full refurbishment of its fleet of tanks, previously deemed unsuitable for desert conditions. Adapting all 386 of Britain’s Challenger 2 tanks would cost 50 million pounds. A leaked Ministry of Defense document acquired by the Guardian in April 2002 revealed clear plans for these tanks to continue using DU shells: "The use of DU… remains an important option in military operations… if the safety of British troops in a future operation were to require such a capability against armor, DU ammunition would be used." In a chilling expose published in Le Monde newspaper this past March, Robert James Parsons explored the way America used DU weapons in the Gulf War, in Kosovo and most recently in Afghanistan. US military and even UNEP and World Health Organization reports have forwarded the claim that DU is innocuous. Clearly those who use the weapons know it is not, argued Parsons. In December 2001, when friendly fire hit anti-Taliban forces, journalists were swiftly removed from the scene. DU use in Afghanistan, in which bombs weighing 1.5 tons penetrate caves and underground bunkers, is only one of America’s many hush-hush affairs, as the following excerpt reveals. Meanwhile, if the rhetoric from the US and UK is to be taken seriously, Iraq is set to re-live the horrors of the past decade in the west’s second round of DU testing here. And its future generations are destined to reap an even greater toxic harvest. "In Jefferson County, Indiana, the Pentagon has closed the 200-acre (80-hectare) proving ground where it used to test-fire DU rounds. The lowest estimate for cleaning up the site comes to $7.8 billion, not including permanent storage of the earth to a depth of six meters and of all the vegetation. Considering the cost too high, the military finally decided to give the tract to the National Park Service for a nature reserve – an offer that was promptly refused. Now there is talk of turning it into a National Sacrifice Zone and closing it forever. This gives an idea of the fate awaiting those regions of the planet where the US has used and will use depleted uranium." (Le Monde Diplomatique, March 2002) (back) |
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© 2002 Mennonite Central Committee
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