ECOWARS

ECOCIDE IN THE GULF?BY ZOLTAN GROSSMAN

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THE WORLDhas been horrifiedby the ecological devastationresulting from the Gulf War.On the weekend of January 24-

27, Iraq's release of oil from a Kuwaitifacility caused a massive flaming oilslick along the Gulf coast, andthreatened the Saudi water supply. Sad-dam Hussein's alleged "scorched waterstrategy" was called "kinda sick" byPresident Bush and the U.S. Air Forceproclaimed itself the guardian of theenvironment by bombing the facility'svalves.

But wait a minute. U.S. condemna-tion of Iraq's oil spill somehow impliesthat U.S. forces have not been delib-erately targeting the environment. Infact, both sides have seen the des-truction of the environment-and thusof the health of the civilian popula-tion-as a mission objective in the GulfWar.

Bush's claim that U.S. surgicalstrikes are not targeting civilians isdirectly contradicted by his choice ofsites to destroy. Civilians don't have tobe directly hit by air strikes in order formany civilians to die. The targets haveincluded water purification plants,water desalinization plants, oil rigs andrefineries, nuclear reactors and labor-atories, chemical plants, and biologicalfacilities. It is virtually impossible forcivilians to have not been contaminatedwith germs, chemicals, or radiation inthe air or water as a result of thesebombings.

Why don't we know more about theeffect of the bombing campaign? Theinterests of the U.S. and Iraqi leader-ship coincide in covering up the num-ber of civilian casualties. For the U.S.military, a high civilian death tollwould be bad for public relations; forthe Iraqi military, it would be bad forpublic morale. Like in World War II,we may not know the true extent of thecarnage until after the war is over.

To see the disastrous impact ofbombing of the civilian population, oneonly has to look at a U.S. Air ForceTactical Pilotage Chart of central Iraq.Thin strips of green follow the valleysof the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, con-verging in a larger green patch in Iraq'sheartland around Baghdad. This dense-

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ly populated fertile region is sur-rounded by wetlands, corresponding tothe ancien.t extent of the Persian Gulf.The wetlands, in turn, are surroundedon all sides by desert. The region's bio-sphere is reliant on a very thin lifeline,and it is along that lifeline that the mostcontaminants have been released by thebombings.

While much attention has been paidto Iraq's destruction of Kuwaiti oilfacilities, less has been paid to the U.S.bombing of Iraqi oil refineries, rigs,tankers, and other targets, resulting inwidespread spills. At the same time,bombers have knocked out the civilianwater supply to major cities like Bagh-dad (with a population of three million)and Basra, and bombed water purifica-tion plants. Civilians are reliant ontreated water from the two major water-ways. Foreign worker refugees havereported that Baghdad civilians are nowdrawing water directly from the Tigris,and that signs of water-borne diseases(such as acute diarrhea) are appearingin children.

Weapons of Mass Destruction

IT IS NOTknow what kind of con-taminants might have leaked into thewater supply from the destruction ofchemical and biological facilities. Iraqhas used chemical weapons on twofronts-mustard gas against Iraniantroops, and nerve gas against Kurdishcivilians. At least II Iraqi sites havebeen bombed because of the pos!Oibilitythey may be producing bio-chemicalwarfare agents. But is the cure worsethan the disease? When a small sectionof Union Carbide's Bhopal fertilizerplant leaked in 1984, more than 2,000Indians died from inhaling methylisocyanate gas. What is happening tothe surrounding civilian populationwhere Iraqi bio-chemical plants arebeing deliberately set ablaze by U.S.bombs?

Among the targeted facilities havebeen a fertilizer plant in Basra (Iraq'ssecond largest city, with a population of371,000) and the Quaim phosphatemine near Syria (organophosphates area key ingredient in both fertilizers andnerve gas). Also on the bombing list

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have been an ethylene plant inMusayyab (pop. 16,(00), and a facilityion Fallujah (pop. 36,000), both alongthe Euphrates River. Along the TigrisRiver, bombers hit a plant that mayhave made nerve gas precursors inSammarra (pop. 25,000), the SalmanPaK facility which allegedly madebiological warfare agents, and a facilityin Bayji (pop. 7,000). One CNNreporter described one of the burningchemical plants as sending off "greenflames." All told, at least 600,000 Iraqislive in towns (not including Baghdad)that may have been covered by toxicgases or germ clouds from the bomb-ings, where no foreign reporters arepresent.

A similar threat faces civilians livingnear Iraqi nuclear facilities destroyedby B-52 strikes-the first successfulstrikes against "hot" nuclear facilitiesever in warfare. Before the war, Iraqwas allegedly engaged in building anuclear device with success anywherefrom one to ten years away, dependingon who you talked to. When the IsraeliAir Force bombed the Osirak atomicreactor within the Tuwaitha nuclearcomplex near Baghdad a decade ago,radioactive materials were not presentwithin the facility. Yet before the U.S.destruction of two Tuwaitha reactors,the facility used enriched uranium,which had been recently inspected bythe UN's International Atomic EnergyAgency (IAEA). The U.S. refused toaccept the IAEA's finding that nonuclear material had been diverted formilitary use.) The SAAD-16 centrifugaluranium enrichment plant was alsobombed near Mosul. Iraq's third largestcity, whose population of 293,000 in-cludes many Kurdish Muslims andArab Christians, and a nuclear facilitywas bombed in nearby Erbil (pop.107,000).

The day the bombing started, nu-clear expert Leonard Specktor warnedin the New York Times that althoughbombs could not trigger a Chemobyl-style catastrophe, they could result inradiological releases from the reactors,labs, and waste storage sites. Radioac-tivity would migrate down the Tigris,or be carried in smoke as fallout.Ominously, Specktor wrote that Sad-

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dam HUlisein could use contaminationas a justification for unleashing hisremaining arSenalof "dirty weapons."

-- It's not only that bombed Iraqifacilities could release chemical gasesand radioactivity, or cause epidemicsamong civilians and troops. Conven-tional bombing also may have alreadydetonated some Iraqi chemical weap-ons, and Iraqi counterstrikes couldlikewise damage Western chemical ornuclear weapons. Whatever the scen-ario, it is hard to imagine the outcrythat would erupt throughout the world---especially in Islamic nations-oncethe facts are known. Instead of beinghailed as humanity's protector againstweapons of mass destruction. PresideptBush would be vilified as carrying outthe same forms of mass exterminationhe condemns. If that's his idea of "sur-gical strikes," I don't want the U.S. AirForce to repair my hernia.

Double Standard

ACERTAIN HYPOCRISY permeates thecurrent debate around weapons ofmass destruction. The United States isthe only country to have used nuclearweapons in warfare, and has threatenedtheir use over a dozen times since (in-cluding President Eisenhower's 1958threat against Iraq if it carried out plansto invade Kuwait). The U.S. also usedchemical weapons by spreading AgentOrange over Indochinese forests andcroplands, in the process poisoning un-told numbers of civilians and U.S. sol-diers. Yet President Bush is appointinghimself as the guardian against Iraqichemical arms and potential nucleararms.

Bush does not apply the samecriteria to Israel, which the CIA con-firms as possessing an arsenal ofatomic bombs, and whose officialsrecently admitted possessing chemicalarms. Iraq has said that its weapons ofmass destruction were being built inresponse to the Israeli program, and asa deterrent against a repeat of the 1981Tuwaitha raid. (Who doubts that one ofIraq's retaliatory targets is Israel'sDimona nuclear complex?) ThoughIraq's capability has been destroyed, itis only a matter of time before anotherIslamic nation tries to counter Israeliweapons.

Instead of destroying the weaponryof one side in the Arab-Israeli dispute,

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causing untold destruction, doesn't itmake sense to initiate regional disarma-ment? All facilities in the Middle Eastmaking weapons of mass destructioncould be dismantled under UN super-vision, and the region enshrined intreaties as a zone free of nuclear,radioactive, and biological arms of anycountry. By proposing such an agree-ment, the U.S. could have disarmed:;addam Hussein without resorting to anair assault, but it chose not to in orderto preserve Israel's strategic advantage.Such treaties could provide a precedentfor other world regions where borderdisputes could all to easily slip intotechnological genocide, and perhapseven provide an example for themilitary superpowers themselves.

Whose Bodybags?

THE IDEAOF an intensive bombingcampaign, Bush has said, is toshorten the war so it won't be "likeVietnam." Maybe I've missed some-thing over the years, but for somereason I thought that the Vietnam Warwasn't wrong because it was long. Ithought it was wrong because manyhundreds of thousands of civilians andover 50,000 U.S. troops died in a warthat made no sense at all. When Presi-dent Bush says that the Gulf War won'tbe like Vietnam, I fear what he meansis that as many people could be killedin a seven-month war in the Gulf as

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were killed in seven years in Vietnam.A war's short length can be made up byits high intensity. The technology ofwar today included such conventionalweapons as air-fuel explosives, whichignite flammable gases with a shock ef-fect approaching that of a tacticalatomic explosion. Such weapons don'teven include the possible use of chemi-cal weapons, germ warfare, or tacticalbattlefield nuclear weapons such as theNeutron Bomb.

Bush's rational is that initial relianceon air power is weakening Iraq militari-ly without a high U.S. casualty rate.The strategy echoes the Nixon admin-istration's switch from a ground war toan air war in Vietnam, to placate thepeace movement's outcry againstAmerican troops coming home in body-bags. The result was that more bombswere dropped on Vietnam than weredropped in all of World War II, andVietnamese civilian deaths increased atthe same time U.S. combat deathsdecreased. We generally didn't see theVietnamese, Laotian. or Cambodianbodybags, nor have we seen the slainLebanese, Libyans, Grenadians, orPanamanians killed in more recent in-terventions. Bush, like Nixon, takes itfor granted that Americans have beenconditioned not to accept "enemy"civilians as human beings, and wouldaccept their high death toll as "col-lateral damage." A military dictionarydefined "military target" as "any per-son, place, or thing which gives or tensto give comfort to the enemy."

PEACEAcnVISTS who focus on theprospect of American deaths canunknowingly lend credence to thebombing strategy, resulting in a largercivilian death toll. In the Vietnam Warand World War II, U.S. bombing har-dened the "enemy" civilian support fortheir governments. The 1990s antiwarmovement has to be more mature andless easily fooled than its 1960s coun-terparts. Either we accept Iraqi civiliansas human beings, or we don't. Eitherwe defend them as we would our ownfamilies;' or we acquiesce in theirslaughter. Z

Zolton Grossman is a Wisconsin-based re-searcher of military interventions and is theoutreach director of the National CommitteeAgainst Registration and the Draft.

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