“You haven’t seen a dismantling of a modern state’s infrastructure as quickly as that,” Skelton says. The bombing campaign during 1991 destroyed the aparatus of society, including the systems that supported the environment. Photograph: Alex Masi/Corbisīut Skelton says the most serious environmental damage caused to Iraq over the course of the past 24 years of war and pariahood has been the systematic destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure. Since the war Falluja has seen an increase of disabled children that some have suggested is linked to US bombs containing depleted uranium. Tebah, 7, a child affected by cerebral palsy, a severe brain disorder, is lying on the floor while her grandmother is feeding her breakfast, in Fallujah, Iraq, 2011.
No comprehensive study has been done to establish or disprove the link between cancer and depleted uranium weapons. The UK government says these accusations are false. Researchers have suggested the radiation from these weapons has poisoned the soil and water of Iraq, making the environment carcinogenic.
One of his articles reviews a number of studies that suggest a potential increase of cancer rates in Iraq, which has been linked to the shells used by the US and UK militaries Mac Skelton, a contributor to the Costs of War project at Brown, is writing his doctoral thesis in anthropology on Iraqis seeking cancer care in Lebanon. But in war, the environment suffers from neglect, exploitation, human desperation and deliberate abuse on a terrible scale.ĭuring the first Gulf War, the US bombed Iraq with 340 tonnes of missiles containing depleted uranium. Even in relatively peaceful countries the forces assembled to maintain security consume vast resources with relative impunity. We have this idea that human beings are separate from their environment and that you could save a human life through military means and military preparation and then worry about these secondary things later,” she says.Īccording to the Institute for Economics and Peace, only 11 countries in the world are not involved in any conflict – despite this being “the most peaceful century in human history”. “There is this notion that it is life or death for a nation so you don’t worry about niceties. One of the first of our sensibilities to be discarded is the protection of the environment, says Catherine Lutz, a professor on war and its impacts at the Watson Institute for International Studies. In the face of actual or perceived threat, acts that would normally be abhorrent become acceptable and even routine. “Let us reaffirm our commitment to protect the environment from the impacts of war, and to prevent future conflicts over natural resources.”
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