The Toxicity of Everyday Survival in Iraq (Parts 1 and 2)

The Toxicity of Everyday Survival in Iraq (Part 1/2)

5 SEPTEMBER 2013
OMAR DEWACHI

http://www.fairobserver.com/article/toxicity-everyday-survival-iraq-part-1

An American war experiment in Iraq has exported toxicity and disability across the world. This the first of a two partseries.

For more than two decades, Iraq has been the subject of a large-scale toxic warfare experiment. Operation Desert Storm, fought in 1991, was the first time in military history that depleted uranium (DU) — a nuclear waste by-product — was systematically employed against both military and civilian targets. US forces used DU on a much larger scale during the war and occupation that started in 2003.

The effects of this toxic and biological experiment go beyond body counts and the epidemiological evidence of illnesses. They also go beyond the environmental contamination caused by DU-laden weapons. Toxicity has penetrated the quotidian realities of life in Iraq. It is what Iraqis have to endure and negotiate every day in the face of physical, political, social, and environmental degradation — what I call here, the “toxicity of everyday survival.”

From Cold to Hot Wars

The original research on the use of DU in warfare, dates back to the Cold War era. In the 1970s, US military laboratories began experimenting with alternative heavy metals and alloys to use against the Soviet’s newly developed line of military armor and tanks that were resistant to conventional lead- and steel-based anti-tank ballistics.

Depleted uranium is 2.5 times heavier than steel and 1.5 times heavier than lead. It is also relatively cheap because it is produced from processed uranium nuclear industrial waste. It has many of the “penetrating qualities” that were sought at the time. Thus, projectiles were given the sexually charged name of “DU penetrators.” Moreover, DU was superior to other heavy metals and alloys for its incendiary effects.

While uranium exists in nature in various forms and is used in a number of building products, its use in warfare in high concentrations unleashes a spectrum of toxicity. The bio-toxic life of the DU projectile is released on high-speed impact with the surface of its target. The collision produces colossal kinetic heat, which causes metal to disband and flesh to burn and disintegrate. When the DU projectile pierces a target, such as a vehicle with passengers, its explosive heat carbonizes all forms of life and machinery.

As DU disintegrates under the high heat of the explosion, it turns into its particle form — uranium oxide — which lingers in the vicinity. These particles are water insoluble and their size can be about one-hundred times smaller than a white blood cell. They contaminate water and soil and enter into the food chain. The particles are so small that they can be blown by wind for tens of kilometers. The uranium aerosol enters the body through ingestion or inhalation, or through coming in contact with an open wound.

The toxicity of DU does not come only from its capacity to kill life, but also its ability to create an array of pathologies and afflictions. In the lungs, the radioactive uranium dust has a bio-toxic lifespan of close to one year. It can cause many acute symptoms due to its immediate chemical toxicity, which irritates and destroys lung tissue. As it makes its way to the blood stream, the uranium oxides bind with organic compounds to form chemical and organic complexes that deposit in the bones, lymphatic system, liver, and kidneys. DU’s radioactive toxicity, more than its chemical toxicity, affects the development of different kinds of malignancies and genetic mutations. Still, the chemical and irradiation toxicity occur simultaneously to produce a series of acute, chronic, and deadly ailments.

Empire’s Toxic Laboratories

One tragic irony in the DU toxicity that afflicts Iraq is that while the US developed this weapon for Cold War purposes, it was used for the first time after that war ended. Operation Desert Storm was the first post-Cold War conflict, and the first occasion for the US to experiment with its DU arsenal. Since then, it has been a weapon of choice for imperial adventurism and military operations elsewhere as well.

The US military deployed hundreds of tons of DU during the 40-day military campaign, Operation Desert Storm. Much of its use was concentrated in the south of Iraq, as well as in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, where the main combat between Iraqi military and American-led coalition forces took place. Doug Rokke, the former head of the Pentagon’s Depleted Uranium Project, described Operation Desert Storm as “the most toxic war known to man.”

The force of this toxic storm was emblematic in images of incinerated bodies and the miles of destroyed military vehicles on Highway 80 (the “Highway of Death”) between Kuwait and Basra. The US military used DU-laden weapons to target alleged storage sites and depots of chemical and biological weapons that released more toxicity in the air. The DU arsenal was also used to hit many civilian targets, such as power supply and water purification plants across the country. The US military used DU-laden weaponry even more systematically and expansively during the 2003 invasion and throughout the occupation. In urban warfare, it was fired at vehicles and buildings in highly populated civilian areas. It was employed in “counter-insurgency operations,” such as the two battles of Fallujah in 2004.

For two decades, the use of DU and its effects have been a subject of political and scientific controversy. In the US, this controversy played out in scientific evidence of the links — and official denial of those links — between DU and the variety of inexplicable conditions that afflicted US veterans. These conditions, loosely termed the “Gulf War Syndrome,” affected up to one in four Gulf War veterans. The Pentagon criticized scientific research-based evidence as inadequate, and continued to deny veterans’ healthcare claims based on exposure to DU. The Pentagon asserted the “safety” of DU-weaponry on the basis of a number of questionable reports by the RAND Corporation and the Institute of Medicine, a non-profit organization.

In 2004, the results of a five-year Pentagon-sponsored study insisted that DU was neither sufficiently toxic nor radioactive to cause health threats to soldiers. One official involved in the study reported that DU is “a lethal, but safe weapons system.” The study has been criticized as a cover-up, including by the US National Academy of Science. The Pentagon maintains that the destructive capacity of DU is militarily advantageous, and therefore, a legitimate and necessary element of the US arsenal. Since 1991, American and British DU weaponry has been deployed in a number of military operations. It was used during the 1999 NATO bombing of Kosovo and in the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Concerns over increasing cancer rates and other DU-related afflictions have also been on the rise in these countries. Israel also allegedly used DU weaponry in Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in 2008-2009, and its recent airstrike on targets in the Syrian capital, Damascus.

At present, there are no international laws or treaties banning the use of depleted uranium. Therefore, it is up to individual states whether to acquire and use DU-laden weapons. Countries, including Germany, Canada, Czech Republic, Norway, and the Netherlands, have pledged not to use depleted uranium. Only the US and Britain have admitted to using DU in their military operations.

The Breakdown of Health Care in War-Torn Iraq

In the aftermath of the 1991 war, Iraq witnessed a surge of unexplained cases of physical deformities in both human and nonhuman lives in areas that were subjected to heavy bombardment and shelling by the US military. Farmers complained about genetically mutated livestock and crops. There was a rise in unexplained miscarriages, birth defects, and cancer among infants and children. In the words of one Iraqi pediatrician working in Basra: “Something happened to our environment during that war.”

Most research and observations by Iraqi doctors and scientists were dismissed by the US as regime propaganda. Still, the transformations in Iraq’s environment transcended the breakdown of physical life; it generated shifts in structures of health care in the country. The UN-imposed sanctions compounded the impact and effects of environmental toxicity plaguing the country. Across Iraq, cancer wards became emblematic of this breakdown of the depleted capacity of medicine and science to save and revitalize life. In the capital’s main pediatric hospital, families from all over the country rushed their infants and children to seek treatment for different kinds of complex conditions. Doctors nicknamed the cancer ward, “The People’s Republic of China,” in reference to its overcrowded and congested conditions. Often, more than one child shared the same bed in the six-bed-occupancy rooms. Mothers and relatives slept on the hospital’s floor next to their sick children.

In this mélange of care and toxicity, doctors struggled to save lives in the face of lack of basic supplies, shortages of cancer medications, and the deterioration of care facilities and economic conditions brought on by the sanctions. Over the course of a decade and in the face what I call “ungovernable life” — life that is reduced to its mere vital survival and stripped of its potential for revitalization — many doctors fled the country in search of better careers, and to escape the precariousness of Iraq.

This breakdown of structures of care still lingers more than ten years after the US invasion. Every year, tens of thousands of Iraqis have to travel abroad to seek medical care. Their therapeutic itineraries take them to various regional private medical hubs such as India, Iran, Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon. Unlike the caricature of the medical tourist who travels for cosmetic surgery or other elective procedures, many Iraqis sell belongings or depend on assistance from family, friends, tribes, and political parties to fund treatment for critical health problems.

In Beirut, the American University Medical Center (AUBMC) buzzes with Iraqi patients seeking critical medical and surgical care. They come from all ages, social backgrounds, and governorates. Close to one-third of the approximately 5,000 Iraqi patients who have frequented this one hospital since 2003, come for cancer surgeries, radiation, or chemotherapy. Although cancer care is free in Iraq, patients opt to pursue costly survival options abroad because of the unwieldy bureaucracy and the shortages of cancer medication and technology at home.


The Toxicity of Everyday Survival in Iraq (Part 2/2)

12 SEPTEMBER 2013
OMAR DEWACHI


An American war experiment in Iraq has exported toxicity and disability across the world. This is the last of a two part series. Read part one here.

Over the past ten years, the Iraqi leadership and corrupt government institutions have been unable or unwilling to provide basic healthcare to citizens, especially for the rising numbers of cancer cases. In the south of Iraq, even poor families from the impoverished rural areas are left with no option but to seek care in neighboring Iran.

The collapse of medical care has also been mirrored in the breakdown of trust between doctors and patients; this is another essential reason that patients seek care abroad. Iraq’s health system is plagued by mis-diagnosis, mistreatment, and neglect. Patients accuse doctors in Iraq of being incompetent, greedy, and indifferent. One patient, commenting on the lack of trust in medical doctors, summed it up: “All the good doctors have left, and the ones who remain have lost their humanity.” While Iraq was once celebrated as one of the leading countries in the region for its medical capacities and infrastructure, the degeneration of Iraqi health care began under the effects of the 1991 war and 12 years of sanctions.

Thousands of Iraqi doctors and specialists have escaped the country to seek security and careers elsewhere. Since 2003, this exodus has increased due to ongoing violence that targets doctors directly. Hundreds, if not thousands, of doctors have been threatened, kidnapped for ransom, and/or assassinated. Some doctors have refused to perform surgical operations on patients for fear of retribution or demands for “blood money” from angry family members who might not accept unfavorable outcomes. The Iraqi Parliament recently passed a law allowing doctors to carry arms for their own protection.

Injury and Survival

The political and social malaise continues to be shaped by the failure of the political leadership to rebuild the country’s infrastructure. In Iraqi cities, people are forced to deal with paralyzing traffic congestion, security checkpoints, concrete walls, and the noisy hum and fumes of diesel generators that are used to compensate for war-caused electricity shortages. Poverty, disability, and unemployment are rampant. Sectarian violence in the form of car bombs, suicide bombers, and militia attacks hit streets, neighborhoods, markets, and religious sites, turning the urban space into a slaughter spectacle. Killers are elected to parliament, and religious and political leaders incite violence as they secure wealth, property and power. Corruption festers in this everyday toxic environment.

The injury and survival journey of Abu Ahmed, a 35-year-old man from Fallujah, illustrates this everyday toxicity. In July 2006, during the height of the sectarian violence, Abu Ahmed was shot in the face by an American paramilitary sniper who, he presumes, was a Blackwater contractor because of their presence in Fallujah at that time. The bullet pierced his windshield and ripped through his face. He was rushed by passers-by to the nearest hospital in Fallujah. There, doctors replaced lost blood and cleaned his wound. The bullet, which was extracted from his face, destroyed large parts of his left cheekbone, leaving a two-inch crater which makes it impossible for him to close his mouth fully. Abu Ahmed had to readapt slowly to the most basic daily functions of drinking and chewing food.

The hospital in Fallujah could do only so much. Abu Ahmed was told that he needed a more specialized hospital and surgeons capable of providing facial reconstructive surgery. At the time, he would not dare to venture to the capital because of the violence. Patients were being kidnapped from hospital beds and killed by a Sadrist militia group that had infiltrated the management of the Ministry of Health. His only alternative was to seek care outside the country.

Abu Ahmed’s extended family managed to raise some money by selling a small piece of land. With that and his own savings, Abu Ahmed decided to head to Amman to seek the opinion of a specialist. During that period, waves of Iraqis displaced by the sectarian violence were leaving the country for Jordan and Syria. Jordanian officials systematically denied entry to Iraqi Shi’a forcing them to settle temporarily in the more hospitable Syria.

Abu Ahmed, a Sunni from the province of Anbar, had been working as a driver between Amman and Fallujah for years. Indeed, he had been driving back from Jordan when he was shot. When he went to seek medical treatment, however, Jordanian customs officers denied him entry. Trying to explain the reason for his trip, he removed the yeshmagh (kuffiyah) wrapped around his face to show them his injury. After listening to his story, the customs officers were even more insistent on rejecting him. Surveying his wound, they expressed their suspicion about Abu Ahmed’s involvement with a “terrorist group.” From their point of view, what else could explain why US paramilitaries shot him in the first place!

When Abu Ahmed returned to Fallujah, he was advised to try Syria, where medical and surgical treatment was much cheaper than Jordan. After receiving his first reconstructive surgery in Syria, his family pressed him to make repeat trips for cancer tests because his injury is, both literally and figuratively, an open wound, and therefore, all the more vulnerable to toxicity. Abu Ahmed’s family, like many Fallujah residents, was concerned about the rising cancer rates following injuries from American ammunition.

According to Abu Ahmed, this kind of risk management practice has become common knowledge as people experience and deal with rising cancer rates, genetic mutations, birth defects, and disabilities. In 2003, his tribe was targeted in a full-scale US air strike that killed eleven people and injured dozens, including women and children. A number of those who were injured fell sick shortly thereafter and died from rapidly developing cancers or other unexplained conditions. The tribe was attacked by US forces on a number of other occasions as well.

In 2012, Abu Ahmed underwent surgery at AUBMC to reconstruct his facial injury with bone and skin grafts. While the surgery restored his functionality and some of the cosmetic aspects of his wound, he lives with the fear and prospect of developing cancer. For him and his extended family, war injuries and cancer are tightly knit phenomena in these webs of toxicity. His wound is not a mere metaphor of the precariousness of the social body; it is the interstitial materialization of war in his everyday survival.

Conclusion

Since 1991, Iraq has been one of the main sites for a US war experiment that has exported toxicity and disability across the world. Hundreds of known sites are contaminated with depleted uranium (DU) in Iraq. According to one report, the cleanup costs are estimated at $30 million. Recent medical and environmental research in Iraq have just begun to officially document links between the high rates of cancer and congenital birth defects in a number of Iraqi cities to exposure to DU and other toxic weapons. Still, with the ongoing US denial of the lethal and lingering toxicity of DU, and the current political disarray in Iraq, there is little hope that this issue will be addressed anytime soon.

Iraq’s toxicity and the resultant social scars run as deep as the molecular and genetic makeup of society and will afflict generations to come. Despite the end of the occupation in 2011, toxicity still shapes everyday survival in Iraq. The body of Abu Ahmed and millions of Iraqis continue to endure America’s poisonous gift of liberation. Their lives and wounds might be vulnerable to toxicity, but they are open, and shared. They seek everyday survival under conditions that stand as a testament to the horrors of empire’s toxic experiment.



*[This article was originally published by Jadaliyya.]

A Witness to Iraq’s Health Crisis: Nahoko Takato Speaks about her experiences as an Activist and Air Worker in Iraq

Source: http://www.ncciraq.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=108&lang=en#

Please click on the link above for photos


Nahoko Takato, a Japanese aid worker, quickly developed strong connections in Ramadi and Falluja, Iraq, following the US-led invasion in 2003. In an exclusive interview with NCCI, she chronicles how she has since delivered emergency aid to health clinics while confronting trauma, intimidation, and international indifference. Takato also discusses the rising rates of cancer, congenital birth defects, and other illnesses in many areas throughout Iraq.

NCCI: Can you tell us what first compelled you to focus on Falluja and Ramadi, the two largest cities in the western governorate of Anbar, Iraq, as an aid worker?

Nahoko: On May 1st 2003, I first went to Baghdad, Iraq. Two Iraqis who were from Ramadi and Falluja...came to Baghdad to knock on the doors of the media who were staying at the Palestine Hotel. These two Iraqis wanted the media to come and witness what was happening in Falluja. Just three days before, there was a peaceful demonstration at a Fallujan school where American soldiers shot 17 Iraqi civilians… Many of the media officials were telling them things like, “Oh, you are exaggerating,” and so on.


But some journalists [from Japan] went with the two Iraqi men to Falluja, and I joined them… I went to the Falluja General Hospital. It was crowded, and I found many victims. Some of them were shot in the leg. There were many people with amputations. Some had been shot in the abdomen... In the media, we were hearing things like, “The combat is finished in Iraq…” But it was not finished. While former President Bush was saying, “Mission accomplished,” the Iraqi people were saying, “The real war has started.” I realized how complex the situation was, and I recognized that I had to do something in terms of emergency relief for them.


I visited the pharmacy in the hospital. There was almost nothing… So immediately, I contacted some Japanese NGOs. They purchased some medicines and basic materials, like cotton and bandages, antibiotics. Several days later, I chartered a big bus to carry the boxes with medicines and materials to the hospital. I went to Falluja and Ramadi very often…


NCCI: When you were taken as a hostage in April 2004 and subsequently released, Japanese and international media outlets gave your case considerable attention. How has this incident impacted your ability to continue working for humanitarian relief in Iraq?

Nahoko: It was horrible for me coming back to Japan after I was released… When I was captured, one politician announced at a press conference, “Nahoko Takoto had relations and ties to the Falluja resistance. She made this kidnapping by herself…” I wrote a book in which I tried to explain what was happening in Ramadi and Falluja at that time. But the media didn’t care about that. They were only interested in my kidnapping…


Every time I went to talk about the Iraqi situation after I returned to Japan, I was scared. Some people would shout at me, “You are a terrorist! Go back to Iraq!” My family protected me but my mother strongly recommended to me, “After you finish writing your book, just go back to Jordan to start again. Help the Iraqi people. Don’t stop.” So I finished it and I came to Jordan, where I met my friends who visited me from Ramadi and Falluja. We started again.


NCCI: After major combat between armed Iraqi militias and Multi-National Coalition Forces in Iraq (MNF-I) escalated, some medical professionals in Anbar announced that they were witnessing rising rates of congenital birth defects, cancer, and other rare, chronic illnesses. Are there any detailed records in the hospitals of Ramadi and Falluja that illustrate these trends?



Nahoko: That’s the problem. No, there really aren’t. I am in contact with Doctor Samira, who is often in the media, speaking about concerns like this. She faces birth defects, deformities, and cancer daily at the hospital where she works in Falluja. But she doesn’t have any records… In Iraq, the patients keep the documentation. The patients may go to many different hospitals. It is often difficult to collect accurate, sufficient information from patients…the facilities don’t seem to have the capacity to create and maintain this documentation. This is one of the reasons why I respect the work of Chris Busby[1], and the whole group that published one of the most recent studies on these illness patterns in Anbar. The team visited around 700 families. They had to go to the patients’ homes to get this information, because it is not located in the hospitals.



NCCI: The Iraqi Ministry of Health rates Anbar as “high risk” for health issues. Access to and utilization of Anbar’s health facilities also rate among the worst of all eighteen Iraqi governorates. Can you describe the conditions of healthcare facilities that you have visited in Ramadi and Falluja?



Nahoko: Between Ramadi and Falluja, there are different situations... The Ramadi Maternity Hospital is big, with about 270 beds. In 2003, the hospital was very crowded with many doctors and nurses. But last year, there were few doctors and nurses. I could see that much of the equipment was gone… The director explained that in 2006, Ramadi city was occupied by the American army. The Ramadi Hospital and Ramadi University became American military bases. The American soldiers threw all of the equipment—blood pressure monitors, desks, medical tools, refrigerators…away. You can find the remains as garbage around the hospital…you can find wheelchairs, beds, and medical equipment. It’s all completely damaged.



Anbar University in Ramadi was severely damaged after the American forces militarily occupied it in for months in 2006.


They completely changed the buildings... They changed classrooms into bedrooms. They changed a hospital room into an internet communication station for the soldiers. Even the schools were occupied. When the Sahwa soldiers took control in 2007, the Americans left the occupied buildings, but there was already so much damage. The situation did get better—dramatically—after the Sahwa movement started. At that time, many doctors came back.


NCCI: But when you went to the Ramadi Hospital last year, in 2009, you saw less doctors than you had seen in 2003?



Nahoko: Much less, yes. Many of them have been assassinated, detained, or have taken refuge.



NCCI: How do the conditions in the Falluja General Hospital compare with the Ramadi hospital?
Nahoko: Falluja has a new general hospital. I have not visited it yet, but I saw it in a video of Dr.Samira’s and it seems so well-equipped... When the people of Ramadi visited the old Falluja General Hospital, they were so shocked. Even the old Falluja General Hospital seems quite better than the Ramadi Maternity and Children Hospital. There are good incubators, high standards of sanitation, and even bed sheets and pillow cases. More than ten Iraqi doctors from the new Falluja General Hospital came to Japan for medical training. But the Ramadi Hospital is miserable…



In the Ramadi Maternity and Children Hospital, basic supplies like scrubs are unsanitary (left) and facilities are ill-equipped (right).
NCCI: Can people from Ramadi come to the new Falluja General Hospital?



Nahoko: It’s not easy. A Ramadi citizen can sometimes enter Falluja by foot, but he cannot enter Falluja in his own car because he needs special registration that is very difficult to get. If some people from Ramadi made it into Falluja, they would definitely celebrate, “We went to Falluja! We went to Falluja!”



NCCI: How would you describe/rate humanitarian presence and response in Anbar’s health sector?



Nahoko: Falluja is famous, and it is relatively easy to get support and funds for projects in this city. If you compare Falluja with the situation in Ramadi… Very few people recognized the very critical situation in Ramadi, especially in 2006. Sometimes I explain it like this: “The media said that the massacres in Falluja in 2004 were ‘hidden massacres.’ But in Ramadi, it’s a completely unknown massacre. Nobody knows and nobody notices.”


I went to the Ramadi cemetery that was built in 2006…in an entire park for the massacre victims. In Falluja, the main cemetery for massacre victims from 2004 was in a football stadium. In the Ramadi cemetery, there were many, many tombs for children. They wouldn’t have identification. They would just say “baby.”


This tombstone simply reads “baby,” and is located in a cemetery built for victims of the 2006 Ramadi massacres. Credit to Takashi Morizumi.
But even in Falluja, where the situation is much better because there is more international concern and interest, they still need help. They need investigations. They need medical training.



NCCI: Are these alarming health patterns limited to Falluja and Ramadi, or is the problem more widespread?



Nahoko: I know one Japanese reporter who…went to the Mosul Hospital and she found many cases of deformities and infant mortality, much higher than usual. Sometimes I am in touch with a doctor in Kirkuk. He is always asking me, “What am I going to do? We have so many babies with congenital heart disease. I’m sure that the rate is increasing, but I don’t know why.”


Since the 2003 invasion, the rates of cancer, leukemia, infant mortality, and sexual mutations in many cities, including

Falluja and Ramadi, have increased alarmingly. These babies, born in the Ramadi Maternity and Children Hospital (left) and the

new Falluja General Hospital (right), are among many newborns with severe congenital birth defects and mutations.



NCCI: Since the 2003 invasion, human rights reports have suggested that the US and other coalition forces used White Phosphorous (WP), Depleted Uranium (DU), and other highly destructive weapons in Ramadi and Falluja particularly. The use of these weapons in densely populated, civilian areas is banned under international law. Have you seen any evidence supporting various claims that the American troops indiscriminately fired these types of lethal weapons against Iraqi civilians?



Nahoko: …When I went to Iraq for the first time, I saw the Japanese journalists always carrying Geiger counter devices to test and measure uranium traces[2]. In the government buildings, like the Ministry of Information, that were bombed in Baghdad, there was high radioactivity. In Samawah[3], a site where Japanese troops were based that I visited twice, we found high radioactivity. Last year, I visited a journalist’s house in Ramadi—Ali Al-Mashhadani—who is a Reuters correspondent. He has been detained by the American army eight times and his house was attacked by Apache aircraft twice. We measured unusually high levels of radioactivity in his house.


A Geiger counter shows 2-3 times the normal radiation level in an Iraqi building (left).

Iraqi reporter Ali Al-Mashhadani stands in his home, which has been severely damaged by Apache fire.

The site now emits dangerous levels of radioactivity (right.) Credit to Takashi Morizumi (left) and Rei Shiva (right).


NCCI: Did you also measure high traces of radioactivity in Ramadi and Falluja in your visits?


Nahoko: The measurements are…higher than average, but not like Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I can’t be sure about the causes of these health problems, but I know what the Iraqi people think… They believe that the American army has used forbidden, illegal weapons in their cities. And there is real evidence from the Gulf War, in 1991, that the American forces previously used depleted uranium munitions in Iraq…



Most Iraqis don’t have the means to test the extent of radioactivity, so it’s impossible to really know what is safe. However, when the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (JSDF)—a part of the American-led coalition forces—were stationed in Iraq, they wore devices on their uniforms to constantly measure and monitor their exposure to uranium traces, especially in Samawah.



NCCI: Do you think that these entry restrictions have prevented the international community from launching an impartial investigation into the health phenomenon that emerged post-2003 US-led invasion?



Nahoko: I can’t say that directly, but it seems so and it feels so. I mean, why is Falluja under such a strong siege? Why is it under such strict control, even today? When I visited Falluja last year, it was very difficult to get permission to enter. It’s surrounded by checkpoints… Basically, only those who have IDs that are provided by the American army can enter. And only cars that get a number from the American army are allowed to enter. The Ramadi citizen can enter Falluja by foot, but he cannot enter Falluja in his own car because he needs special registration that is very difficult to get…Maybe the American army is afraid that an international will collect evidence of the pollution, uranium traces, and so on. But uranium remains almost forever. Its half-life is about 4.5 billion years.



The moment the atomic bombs were dropped [in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan], 100,000 died…In the following months, many people came to Hiroshima to search for survivors... But the radiation remained, invisible. These people were also exposed to it. So 65 years later, we there are still victims with leukemia and other types of cancer. It’s similar to Iraq, as people return months and years later. The uranium traces are still in the soil, water and air…



Since 1994, three years after the Gulf War (1990-1991), doctors from Iraq and Japan started to collect data on victims in Basra who were suffering from similar symptoms and illnesses as people in Ramadi and Falluja today. Now, there is more evidence suggesting that in combat, American troops used depleted uranium munitions in Basra and other regions of Iraq during the Gulf War. There is also more evidence indicating that this contamination coincides with the increasing rates of illness that these areas have experienced. As soon as possible, the international community needs to start investigating the causes of the more recent increases in illness rates in Ramadi, Falluja, Kirkuk, Mosul, and other places.



NCCI: Besides the factor of poor access to communities like Falluja, why do you think that the international community has not organized an impartial investigation to determine what factors are causing such an unprecedented rise in cancer and birth defect rates?



Nahoko: As someone from Japan, I think about how the activists in Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been trying to inform the world about the victims of nuclear weapons. 65 years have passed. And we have only made one step. It is difficult to make the public care about these issues… Cluster bombs and other weapons are visible. Depleted uranium is invisible. It’s not easy for us to gather the evidence… It is even hard to convince some people that these weapons should be illegal, that they are inhumane. There are some scientists who strongly deny that depleted uranium has negative health impacts…They might say this because they want to support the American army for different reasons…



But the Pentagon clearly recognizes that depleted uranium is very harmful for American soldiers. This was hidden, top-secret information…until it was recently leaked. But the American soldiers come back to their own country. The local people have to remain in Iraq.


[1] Chris Busby is one co-author of the epidemiological study titled “Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Falluja, Iraq 2005–2009,” published in July 2010. The study involved a door-to-door survey of Falluja residents. The research team interviewed Fallujans about abnormally high rates of cancer and birth defects, and reported that cancer rates have increased in Falluja 38-fold since the 2003 US-led invasion. While the researchers could not provide conclusive evidence, they hypothesized that the American forces had used depleted uranium munitions in Falluja, resulting in regional genetic damage and thereby causing the alarming health patterns that have emerged in Falluja in the past seven years.



[2] A Geiger counter, also known as a Geiger-Müller counter, is a particle detector that can be used to detect whether an objects emits nuclear radiation.



[3] The city of Samawah is approximately 280 kilometres southeast of Baghdad. It is the capital of Muthanna governorate.