Environmental Effects of War: Health

This is more directly relating to the enviornmental effects of the war. Apparently the war has led to decreased health services and a lack of available clean water for those within Iraq... I can't find the full report that is mentioned, but from other sources that have summarized it, it sounds like it's pretty lengthy....


http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/OCHA-64CV6S?OpenDocument


"The new report estimates that more than 20,000 Iraqis have died between the start of hostilities and when the report was finalised late last month. The number of people affected by the aftermath of the war is still rising as the Iraqi people continue to pay the price in death, injury and mental and physical ill health.

'Limited access to clean water and sanitation, as well as poverty, malnutrition, and disruption of public services including health services continue to have a negative impact on the health of the Iraqi people,' says the report's author Dr Sabya Farooq."

American Company Profiteering off (American Caused) Destruction in Iraq

So I know that everyone is really busy, but I REALLY encourage you to check out this link:

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/search?q=haliburton

It's taken from the blog of an Iraqi women who uses the name "riverbend" - she fears the repercussions of revealing her true identity. She is 24 years old and before the war in Iraq she was a successful business woman. After the Saddam Hussein was taken out of power, she talks about how virtually non-existent differences between religious and ethnic groups flared and multiplied as the American forces divided power between them. As a result, conservative Islamic groups now have much power and she is no longer allowed to work.

This post from her blog focuses on the restructuring of Iraq. She talks in particular about a bridge being rebuilt by Halliburton. She reminds us that there is significant unemployment in Iraq as a result of the war, and that there are skilled engineers who are more than capable of rebuilding the bridges destroyed by American bombing. One of these engineers is her cousin, a bridge engineer for over 17 years who helped rebuild 20 of the bridges destroyed during the first Gulf War. His company appraised the rebuilding of the bridge at 30,000. Halliburton, however, got the contract and charged the Iraqi people 50,000,000 to rebuild the bridge.

She discusses how American companies are profiting off the destruction of Iraqi cities caused by American bombs. The American companies are driving Iraq into debt, which is especially atrocious once one is aware that Iraqi companies could do the same job for considerably less. In addition, the American companies are taking much needed jobs from the Iraqi's to giving them to American workers and contractors!

I realize this isn't directly related to the environmental effects of war, but I really wanted to share this because it does have to do with the destruction cased by war.

I REALLY recommend reading more of her blog, it provides a very unique perspective to the conflict in Iraq from someone who is actually experiencing it. Her blogs have also been published into two books entitled "Baghdad Burning." Also - a little endorsement here - if you find this interesting I strongly recommend that you take the class "Images of Women in the Middle East" taught by Kousha this fall (Sociology, Mondays from 1:10 - 4:10). She is from Iran herself and teaches the class incredibly well. It connects very well to this class and the readings are very interesting. I learned a lot from the class, and if you are interested in the Middle East, chances are you will love it too.

Desert Storm Syndrome

Article

I found this article the referenced a few of the environmental impacts of the Gulf War on Saudi Arabia. This is the section that I found most interesting:

"Also in Iraq, for the first time, the United States used depleted uranium shells designed to pierce armor and destroy bunkers. These weapons were made from a dense radioactive metal. British and American tanks fired thousands of these shells in Desert Storm and both American aircraft and snipers fired hundreds of thousands of depleted uranium bullets, which oxidize upon impact. This created a fine dust which coated destroyed tanks, bunkers and the landscape where they were used. The extensive use of depleted uranium left behind 640,000 pounds of contaminated equipment and soil in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and southern Iraq. There is a strong suspicion among some that depleted uranium is related to what has popularly become known as "Desert Storm Syndrome," which manifested itself by neurological problems, rashes and lung damage. Depleted uranium was a fairly new technology and, like Agent Orange, considered perfectly safe. Admiral Zumwalt is a member of the Special Oversight Board for the Gulf War. This panel is currently researching the different types of exposures that may have led to the health problems Desert Storm veterans are experiencing."

I would imagine that over 600,000 lbs of contaminated equipment could cause numerous problems (many of which would most likely be impossible to detect). I don't like the idea of the U.S. using "fairly new" technology that is not well understood. I could see how such a tool could be very useful in destroying hostel targets, but I wonder if such rounds became standard and were used indiscriminately. Maybe toxic munitions such as this should not be used unless it is truly needed.

UN compensation for environmental damage

Article

This article is brief, but I think that it is interesting. It shows action by the UN to try to determine what the environmental impacts of of the Gulf war were by awarding several countries, including Saudi Arabia, $243 million. It looks as though during the 90-91' occupation of Kuwait incurred $46 billion in environmental claims. That is a staggering number that raises some interesting questions. How do you assign a dollar amount to environmental damage caused by war? $46 billion is no small figure. How was this number calculated? I think that it is not only important to look at these impacts of war in resources such as number of birds and trees dying, but also in economic terms.

Andra's post via KC

The following is a link to a report that I found released by the U.S. Department of Energy on the environmental impacts of oil production in Saudi Arabia:
http://www.earthscape.org/r1/ES15071/doe_saudi.html
As is evident in “Blood and Oil” readings for this week, the production of oil in Saudi Arabia is strongly linked to not only fuel use for the military, but also, to U.S. relations that help fund the Saudi Arabian military. As a result, the effects that oil processing has on the nation’s environment can be constructed as an issue of the environmental degradation of war.
The report describes, for example, how as demand for oil exports increases, shipping traffic from Saudi Arabia has become more congested, and as a result the amount of accidents and oil spills have gone up as well. Furthermore, Saudi Arabia’s practices of offshore drilling have several negative environmental implications. For instance, coral reefs located on the Saudi coast as well as the Mangrove populations have been depleted from oil contamination. Another problem is that the waste-water left over from the oil production is very high in salt content, upsetting the balance of salt in these waters.
These are only a few of the effects seen in Saudi Arabia from the production of oil. The air has also been degraded from pollution as well as the expected hazards of increased carbon emissions. The report concludes by saying the Saudi government is intensifying efforts to increase awareness about environmental issues.
I think it is important to not only recognize the environmental effects cause by oil production and military expansion, but also examine the forces that are encouraging or enabling this degradation. The United States is a major source of the demand for oil as well as a financer of their military in return. We must question who has the responsibility to address these environmental issues? Is it only the Saudi government that must tend to the state of the environment in their nation or do other powers need to assist in the development? More importantly, perhaps, who is most capable and would most realistically offer constructive reform?

Gulf War oil spill

I found it relatively difficult to find anything concrete on this topic, so I decided to look at the Persian Gulf for inspiration. I decided to look at the Persian Gulf, since Saudi Arabia has a share in the coast and waters of the Gulf, but has not itself experienced a war in some time now and the topic is war related due to Kuwait, Iraq and Iran.

I found this article on an Iranian news and culture journal, at http://www.iranian.ws/cgi-bin/iran_news/exec/view.cgi/2/2181, which talked about the pollution in the Persian Gulf. It said that there was “The world largest oil spill, estimated 8 million barrels” (approx 336 million gallons), which made the want to look into that. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War_oil_spill) the spill was estimated to be somewhere between 42 to 462 million gallons, which is a lot of oil. Then again, it’s not that much, if one takes into consideration hat, according to the CIA factbook, in 2007 the world produced 85,5 million barrels of oil PER DAY. That makes it around 310 billion barrels per year, if I am not wrong in my calculations!

Anyway, such a major spillage has had never happened in the world – the closest one to this one was in 1979/80 in the Gulf of Mexico and it had somewhere between 454,000 to 480,000 tons of crude oil, while the “Gulf War oil spill” had 780,000-1,500,000 tons of crude oil.

Coming back to the original article, this is what it said about the oil spill:

“Saudi Arabia had the worst damage. Because the animals and plants of the seafloor are the basis of the food chain, damage to the shoreline consequences for the whole shallow- water ecosystem.

The impact of the damage affected the multimillion-dollar Saudi fisheries industry and surrounding area including Medina al Jubayl. The spill threatened industrial facilities in Al Jubayl . The greatest pollution was experienced in Abu Ali Island. The large number of marine birds, such as grebes, cormorants, and auks were killed.

Beaches along the entire Al Jubayl coastline were covered with tar balls and oil. The exploding and burning of 700 miles oil wells in Kuwait created staggering levels of atmospheric pollution.”

Obviously, the oil spill had rather direct impact on Saudi Arabia’s environment (and all of the nations of the Persian Gulf) and was definitely related to the war in Iraq and Kuwait at that point.

Coral Reefs

Sorry this posting is late. My computer crashed and burned and IT needed time to try and heal the wounds. I am doing homework at work

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=9&section=0&article=121163&d=4&m=4&y=2009

The article above discusses a new study being launched into the Saudi Arabian coral reef system in the Red sea. The study is a collaboration between organizations in the United States, Saudi Arabia and the international community. While the coral reefs being studied have not suffered from the impacts of war, in the sense that they have not be subjected to oil spills, but only the stresses put on them by fishermen. So it isn't really the environmental impacts of war, more the environmental impacts of daily, normal, life.

What I found so interesting though, is that collaboration on scientific research like this. So often I tend to think of the Middle East as a region so riddled by war, conflict and political divides that they never encounter or productively deal with other issues. Articles like this show that Arab nations are concerned with domestic issues as well, and are actively working to find solutions to environmental problems within their own borders.