London ~ To reflect on seven years of visits to Iraq since the Gulf War is to reflect on decline from the impossible to the apocalyptic.
When Martti Ahtisaari, then special rapporteur to the United Nations visited the country just after the Gulf War, he wrote: "Nothing we had seen or read could have prepared us for this particular devastation, a country reduced to a pre-industrial age for a considerable time to come."
In the forty-five days of the Gulf War 56,133.32 tons of ordinance were dropped on Iraq -- exceeding the 47,777,78 tons dropped in the forty-five months of the Second World War. Unknown to the public or the allied troops at the time, much of the ordinance was coated with depleted uranium (DU) comprising a new and deadly generation of weapons whose effects linger long after the bombs and the guns are silent. [Those used against tanks are solid DU about the size of a large cigar. When such a missile penetrates the armor of the tank, it generates extreme heat and acts like an aerosol, spewing forth DU, according to Erik Gustafson, Gulf War veteran from Wisconsin. DU is also used in the armor of tanks to increase the toughness of exteriors.]
DU, waste from the nuclear industry, has replaced titanium as armor piercing coating. When a bullet or missile makes contact with a target, it burns and produces a fine dust. It is both toxic and radioactive. Inhaled, according to experts, it can cause cancers and can settle in the kidneys and lead to nephritis (kidney death).
In 1990, the U.K. [United Kingdom] Atomic Energy Authority sent a report to the government estimating that if 50 tons of residual dust were left in the area as a result of hostilities, there could be half a million extra cancer deaths by the end of the century. Some experts now estimate that up to 700 tons remain. DU stays radioactive for four thousand five hundred million years.
Whilst the Pentagon and Whitehall [British counterpart] state that it is "only very very mildly radioactive", when Professor Siegwart-Horst Guenther, founder of the Austrian Yellow Cross, took a DU bullet -- correctly encased in a lead-lined box -- back to Germany from Iraq for analysis in 1993, he was arrested at Berlin airport. The bullet had activated all the radiation sensors.
When I went to Iraq in early 1992, doctors were already remarking in bewilderment on the increase in birth deformities -- some so grotesque and unusual that they expected to see them only in text books, or perhaps once or twice in a lifetime.
These physicians were comparing them to the birth defects seen in Bikini and the Pacific islands after nuclear testing. Yet it was not until the following year that it was realized that radioactive weapons had been used [in the Gulf War]. They were also noting a dramatic rise in cancers, especially in children. Not with a bang, but a whimper.
Ironically, treatments for cancers are vetoed by the Sanctions Committee, since they contain minute traces of radioactive material. So Iraqis, in their irradiated land, cannot avail themselves of the therapeutic value of radiation, only suffer its most deadly consequences.
A US Army Environment Policy Institute report of June, 1995 describes some effects of DU. "If DU enters the body, it has the potential to generate significant medical consequences. The risks associated with DU in the body are both chemical and radiological (emphasis added)."
Almost any household one enters in Iraq has a sort of "black souvenir" of the Gulf War -- sitting on a shelf somewhere is a piece of a missile or a spent bullet, silently emitting radiation. On a visit to a center set up to council severely psychologically damaged children -- in what psychologists refer to as one of the "most traumatized child populations on earth " (as a result of the Gulf War) -- I saw a chilling sight.
The center was a far cry from the schools, devoid of the most basic of items -- even pencils and exercise books have been vetoed by the Sanctions Committee. Light, bright and airy, it was normality in a land reduced to absolute abnormality.
Toy and book companies in Scandinavia had donated colorful building blocks, mobiles which hung gaily from the ceiling; and doves of peace which decorated pastel walls. Fluffy toys sat on rows of shelves -- and between them, small pieces of cold, hard metal -- pieces of radioactive missiles.
"Children pick them up and bring them in," a psychotherapist remarked. "It is their way of coming to terms with their fear, their way of healing themselves. . ."
Asked on the U.S. television program "60 Minutes" on 12 May 1996 whether the cost of the lives of over half a million children "was worth it" . . . Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (then U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.) replied that "it is a hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it."
Perhaps Iraq has become and will remain for many years, the "black souvenir" of both the U.S. and the U.N.
Felicity Arbuthnot, a journalist from the UK, has travelled to Iraq on many occasions with the U.S. group Voices in the Wilderness: 1460 West Carmen Ave., Chicago, IL 60640, tel: 773-784-8065, fax: 773-784-8837.