War crimes of the West

Depleted uranium weapons used in the West-sponsored wars in the Gulf and the Balkans have posed serious health hazards to soldiers and civilians, but the Western powers involved show no remorse.

THE West has finally been forced to react to the trail of devastation left by the depleted uranium (D.U.) weapons it deployed in the wars in the Gulf and the Balkans. But it is not the suffering of poor Iraqi civilians who forced the North Atlantic Trea ty Organisation (NATO) to react; it was the complaints of many European governments that made the United States and NATO to set up a crisis centre to exchange information on health risks that result from D.U. munitions. Last year, Italy started an inquir y into the mysterious illness of 30 of its Balkan war veterans. Seven Italian soldiers have already died of cancer, five of them from leukaemia. French and Portuguese peacekeepers in the Balkans have also been diagnosed with cancer. Italy has now formall y asked for a ban on D.U. munitions.

Backing the Italian position, German Chancellor Gerard Schroeder said that it was not "right" to use such munitions. All the "facts must be laid on the table", he said. Norwegian soldiers are refusing to sign contracts to go to the Balkans for peacekeepi ng duties; they demand clarifications about the risks posed by D.U. weapons. A group of Belgian soldiers have sued their government for the health problems caused to them by service in the Balkans. Five Belgian soldiers who served in Bosnia and Croatia d ied of cancer.

The President of the European Union (E.U.), Romano Prodi, recently admitted that the NATO-ignited war in the Balkans had "created a horrible environmental problem that is for us to take care of". Prodi called for a ban on such weapons "even if there is m inimal risk". The European Parliament voted on January 17 for a temporary ban on D.U. weaponry. Last year, Finland's Environment Minister Sattu Hassi had appealed to his E.U. counterparts for a ban on D.U. weaponry, which "contaminates by its dust the lo calities where it is used and threatens both soldiers and civilians". Less than a month after the war in Yugoslavia ended in 1999, the British National Radiological Protection Board warned British citizens about the dangers from staying in Kosovo because of the contamination of its territories by D.U. weapons.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have already fallen victim to the deadly effects of D.U. weapons employed in the Gulf war. Many American and British veterans of the Gulf war also developed symptoms that were euphemistically called the "Gulf war syndrome" . It manifested itself in many ways, ranging from memory loss to various forms of cancers. Children of many Gulf war veterans were born without limbs and with other birth defects.

Thousands of people in Iraq have the same symptoms too. The incidence of cancer has increased rapidly and at abnormal rates. Leukaemia in children is especially rampant: it has shown a four-fold rise after the Gulf war. The incidence of breast cancer amo ng women below 30 is around four times higher than it was before 1990. Abnormal births have drastically increased since the war.

The Pentagon, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, continues to insist that D.U. is only "very, very mildly radioactive" and that the shells are not radioactive enough to be classified as a "radiological weapon". It has argued that tank crews firin g rounds of depleted uranium shells received little radiation, the equivalent of one chest X-ray a day. It is common knowledge that even mild radiation is dangerous and increases the risk of cancer. The health risk becomes greater after the shells are fi red because broken shells emit uranium particles. The particles can enter the body easily and deposit themselves on bones, organs and cells.

The shell, developed by the Pentagon in the late 1970s, is a radioactive byproduct of the enrichment process used to make atomic bombs and nuclear fuel rods. The material is provided free of cost to weapons manufacturers by the nuclear arms industry. A c onfidential report by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, prepared in 1991, described the presence of D.U. in Iraq and Kuwait as a "significant problem". The report concluded that there was enough uranium there to cause "tens of thousands of pote ntial deaths".

It was during the Gulf war that tank armour and armour-piercing rounds made of depleted uranium were used in a big way. The weapons proved to be very effective against Iraqi targets. The Tomahawk missiles, which were launched from the very first day of O peration Desert Storm, were tipped with D.U. The U.S. Army reports that a total of 14,000 D.U. tank rounds were used during the course of the Gulf war, while 7,000 rounds were fired during training in the sands of Saudi Arabia.

There are indications that the U.S. military establishment had some clues about the lethal nature of D.U. A U.S. Navy instruction manual notes that teams involved in recovering Tomahawk cruise missiles during test rounds must have radiological protection clothing, gloves, respirators and dosimeters. Some 300 tonnes of uranium from spent rounds lies scattered across the battlefields of Iraq and Kuwait.

When a D.U. projectile strikes a hard surface, around 70 per cent of the tip is oxidised and gets scattered as small particles. The U.S. Army Armaments, Munitions and Chemical Command (AMCCOM) states: "When a D.U. penetrator impacts a target surface, a l arge portion of the kinetic energy is dissipated as heat. The heat of the impact causes the D.U. to oxidise or burn momentararily. This results in smoke which contains a high concentration of D.U. particles. These uranium particles can be ingested or inh aled and are toxic." A leading American military contractor, Science Application International Corporation, had warned AMMCOM before the Gulf war that "combat conditions will lead to the uncontrolled release of D.U.-aerosol. D.U. exposures to soldiers on the battlefield could be significant with potential radiological and toxicological effects."

There were reports in the mid-1990s that the toxic effects of D.U. had become evident in the Balkans. In 1996, there were newspaper reports that around a thousand children in Bosnia were suffering from an unknown disease which caused headaches, muscle pa in, abdominal pain, dizziness, respiratory pains and other problems. Similar symptoms were reported in the so-called Gulf war syndrome. In the mid-1990s U.S. combat aircraft used limited amounts of D.U. ammunition against former Yugoslavia. In the war ov er Kosovo in 1999, NATO resorted to saturation bombing of Yugoslavia using D.U. weapons, despite documented evidence of the extremely harmful effects of D.U. piling up in the Gulf region. NATO soldiers were not given any warning about the deadly nature o f the munitions they were using.

Bernard Kouchener, the U.N. Administrator of Kosovo and a former head of the humanitarian agency Medecins sans Frontieres, also brought up the issue of the dangers that D.U. posed to the regions. More than 100 places in Kosovo itself have been affected. But NATO, which has now been forced to address the issue, seems worried only about the health of its soldiers stationed in the region and not about the local people. It has issued circulars warning about the lingering "heavy metal toxicity" in armour str uck by D.U. bombs in Kosovo.

Only in the second week of January, were signs put up by the U.N. and NATO warning civilians to exercise caution while approaching areas in Kosovo where D.U. was dropped. NATO troops stationed in the Balkans have now been advised to use heavy protection gear while approaching armour struck by D.U.-tipped weapons. Two years since the war against Yugoslavia, the World-Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has found dangerous levels of toxins at the ground level in Kosovo and Serbia. The former government in Yugoslav ia had characterised the NATO war as "ecocide" against the people of the region. NATO has admitted to dropping 12 tonnes of D.U. in Kosovo alone. In all, an estimated 31,000 D.U. shells with a total weight of over 10 tonnes were dropped over Yugoslavia.

The newly elected President of Yugoslavia, Vojislav Kostunica, has characterised the use of D.U. weapons as a crime against humanity. He wants the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague to look expeditiously into the matter and apportion blame. T o show his displeasure with the War Crimes Tribunal, he refused recently to meet its chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, whose only agenda seems to be to get former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic extradited to The Hague to stand trial for "war crim es". Kostunica has called the War Crimes Tribunal a tool of U.S. foreign policy. The Pentagon, the E.U. and the U.N. have all set up commissions to investigate the risk posed by D.U. but efforts are on to whitewash the investigations.

Scientists close to the Pentagon have rushed to judgment saying that it is biologically impossible for D.U. to cause leukaemia. Physicist Frank von Hippel, professor at Stanford University is one prominent academic who has joined the campaign to give D.U . a clean chit. The outgoing U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, even advised the Europeans to not become "excessively nervous and hysterical" about D.U.

After what happened during the Gulf war, countries like Russia had repeatedly warned NATO about the dangers of using D.U. Boris Alexeyev, head of Russia's environmental department in the Defence Ministry, said that following the Desert Storm, the inciden ce of cancer among the people of Iraq had increased almost five-fold. He said that it was a well-known fact but the West did not care. The West woke up only after its own soldiers started dying. By using D.U. ammunition, NATO has wilfully violated the ag reements on radiation security, he said.