Posted: Tue Jan 26, 2010 3:33 pm Post subject: Iraq littered with high levels of nuclear and dioxin contami
Iraq littered with high levels of nuclear and dioxin contamination, study finds • Greater rates of cancer and birth defects near sites
• Depleted uranium among poisons revealed in report
More than 40 sites across Iraq are contaminated with high levels or radiation and dioxins, with three decades of war and neglect having left environmental ruin in large parts of the country, an official Iraqi study has found.
Areas in and near Iraq's largest towns and cities, including Najaf, Basra and Falluja, account for around 25% of the contaminated sites, which appear to coincide with communities that have seen increased rates of cancer and birth defects over the past five years. The joint study by the environment, health and science ministries found that scrap metal yards in and around Baghdad and Basra contain high levels of ionising radiation, which is thought to be a legacy of depleted uranium used in munitions during the first Gulf war and since the 2003 invasion.
The environment minister, Narmin Othman, said high levels of dioxins on agricultural lands in southern Iraq, in particular, were increasingly thought to be a key factor in a general decline in the health of people living in the poorest parts of the country.
"If we look at Basra, there are some heavily polluted areas there and there are many factors contributing to it," she told the Guardian. "First, it has been a battlefield for two wars, the Gulf war and the Iran-Iraq war, where many kinds of bombs were used. Also, oil pipelines were bombed and most of the contamination settled in and around Basra.
"The soil has ended up in people's lungs and has been on food that people have eaten. Dioxins have been very high in those areas. All of this has caused systemic problems on a very large scale for both ecology and overall health."
Government study groups have recently focused on the war-ravaged city of Falluja, west of Baghdad, where the unstable security situation had kept scientists away ever since fierce fighting between militants and US forces in 2004.
"We have only found one area so far in Falluja," Othman said. "But there are other areas that we will try to explore soon with international help."
The Guardian reported in November claims by local doctors of a massive rise in birth defects in the city, particularly neural tube defects, which afflict the spinal cords and brains of newborns. "We are aware of the reports, but we must be cautious in reaching conclusions about causes," Othman said. "The general health of the city is not good. There is no sewerage system there and there is a lot of stagnant household waste, creating sickness that is directly affecting genetics. We do know, however, that a lot of depleted uranium was used there.
"We have been regulating and monitoring this and we have been urgently trying to assemble a database. We have had co-operation from the United Nations environment programme and have given our reports in Geneva. We have studied 500 sites for chemicals and depleted uranium. Until now we have found 42 places that have been declared as [high risk] both from uranium and toxins."
Ten of those areas have been classified by Iraq's nuclear decommissioning body as having high levels of radiation. They include the sites of three former nuclear reactors at the Tuwaitha facility – once the pride of Saddam Hussein's regime on the south-eastern outskirts of Baghdad – as well as former research centres around the capital that were either bombed or dismantled between the two Gulf wars.
The head of the decommissioning body, Adnan Jarjies, said that when inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived to "visit these sites, I tell them that even if we have all the best science in the world to help us, none of them could be considered to be clean before 2020."
Bushra Ali Ahmed, director of the Radiation Protection Centre in Baghdad, said only 80% of Iraq had so far been surveyed. "We have focused so far on the sites that have been contaminated by the wars," he said. "We have further plans to swab sites that have been destroyed by war.
"A big problem for us is when say a tank has been destroyed and then moved, we are finding a clear radiation trail. It takes a while to decontaminate these sites."
Scrap sites remain a prime concern. Wastelands of rusting cars and war damage dot Baghdad and other cities between the capital and Basra, offering unchecked access to both children and scavengers.
Othman said Iraq's environmental degradation is being intensified by an acute drought and water shortage across the country that has seen a 70% decrease in the volume of water flowing through the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.
"We can no longer in good conscience call ourselves the land between the rivers," she said. "A lot of the water we are getting has first been used by Turkey and Syria for power generation. When it reaches us it is poor quality. That water which is used for agriculture is often contaminated. We are in the midst of an unmatched environmental disaster."
America leaves Iraq a toxic legacy of dumped hazardous materials
American troops going home from Iraq after seven painful years are leaving behind a legacy that is literally toxic.
An investigation by The Times in five Iraqi provinces has found that hazardous material from US bases is being dumped locally rather than sent back to America, in clear breach of Pentagon rules.
North and west of Baghdad, engine oil is leaking from 55-gallon drums into dusty ground, open acid canisters sit within easy reach of children, and discarded batteries lie close to irrigated farmland. A 2009 Pentagon document shown to The Times by a private contractor working with US soldiers mentions “an estimated 11 million pounds [5,000 tonnes] of hazardous waste” produced by American troops.
But even this figure appears to be only a partial estimate. BrigadierGeneral Kendall Cox, who is responsible for engineering and infrastructure in Iraq, told The Times yesterday that he was in the process of disposing of 14,500 tonnes of oil and soil contaminated with oil. “This has accumulated over seven years,” he said.
Iraqis who have come into contact with some of the material suffer from rashes and blistering on their hands and feet. They also complain of gagging and coughing. Rats near sites where waste was dumped have died and lie next to soiled containers.
Abu Saif, a Fallujah scrap dealer who handles US military surplus, lifted up his trouser legs and raised his hands to show blistered skin. “I got this when I worked on what was supposed to be American scrap metal,” he said. “I checked with a doctor and he said these are the effects of dangerous chemicals.”
Private recycling companies located within American bases have allegedly mixed hazardous material with ordinary scrap and passed it on to local dealers. “By the time we see this stuff it is too late,” said Abu Saif.
Several workers at his and other yards have been injured while handling supposed scrap metal. “When they poured out what’s in these jerry cans they started coughing,” another yard owner said. “Some got rashes and many quit work. So when I get this kind of material now I bury it somewhere far away.”
Some of the dumped materials have labels identifying them as US military property or come with paperwork from the Department of Defence. The Times discovered a 2008 e-mail from Allied Chemical of Morristown, New Jersey, to Pentagon officials warning of hazardous effects.
A printout was attached to a discarded canister of sulphuric acid, a highly corrosive liquid used in wastewater treatment. It said of the substance: “Causes severe burns to skin and lungs ... Get immediate medical attention ... Use gas mask.”
As the majority of US troops depart from Iraq this year, hundreds of bases are being closed and all hazardous material is supposed to be either returned to the US by ship via the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr or recycled in specially built facilities in northern and western Iraq.
Brigadier-General Stephen Lanza, the US military spokesman in Baghdad, said: “We take this issue very seriously and want to solve the problem. There is a variety of ways in which this [dumping] could have happened. We are now putting a system into place. There is a lot of catching up to do.”
The spokesman will hold a press conference today to explain how the military intends to clean up after itself. He said: “There may have been things that were collected improperly. We will send teams through our dumps to see if there is anything in the wrong place.”
But for now the military is mostly guessing. Brigadier-General Gus Purna, director of the military arm responsible for logistics in Iraq, said: “Maybe a motor pool was closed and, rather than going to the turn-in site, the oil went to the dump.”
Having been shown photographs taken by The Times at dump sites, the general said: “Seeing these pictures is very helpful. We want to make sure we get it right.”
Most of the dump sites are close to the main roads from Baghdad to Fallujah and Mosul, where America fought hardest and had the greatest concentration of bases over the past seven years. In numerous places the ground is littered with the detritus of military life. Oil filters from heavy vehicles lie next to aerosol cans and other compressed-gas cylinders. Drums of aviation fuel mingle with jerry cans containing unknown liquids.
Most canisters no longer hold their original contents or are only partly filled. Yet, according to US military rules shown by a contractor to The Times, even “empty containers that previously held hazardous waste” may not be dumped.
The labels on the range of canisters say “hazardous waste — federal laws prohibit improper disposal”; “corrosive”, “keep out of reach of children”; “no smoking within 50ft”; “caution — hazardous waste”; “flammable liquid”.
Red danger signs are covered with black spray paint. One barrel features a hand-written notice saying: “Hazardous waste 1/10/09.” Another has a Department of Defence label with a “hazard ID” number. Parts of weapons can also be found, including canisters for explosive propellants for American 155mm guns, confiscated AK-47 rifles, rusty landmines and the shells of shoulder-fired missiles.
Nirmeen Othman, the Iraqi Environment Minister, told The Times that she was starting an official investigation into the disposal of hazardous American material. “I will send a team of experts immediately to check on this,” she said.
Responsibility for the removal of US military waste lies with the Defence Reutilisation and Marketing Office, which subcontracts some of the work to local companies. It has a legal responsibility for American waste even after it has been passed on to private contractors.
Qahtan Khalaf, the Tikrit-based owner of al-Shefar Group, which has been disposing of US military waste since 2003, said: “The Americans properly separate the hazardous material from the plastic and scrap metal, and then pass it on to Kuwaiti and Lebanese companies. Some of the companies then mix it back together and pass it on to Iraqi companies. That’s how they get rid of things.”
Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq
Introduction
There have been several media reports of apparent excess rates of cancers and birth defects in the town of Fallujah in Iraq, some 50 miles west of Baghdad [1-3]. In 2004, one year after the end of the second Persian Gulf War in March 2003 there was heavy fighting between US led occupation troops and Iraqi elements in this town. Little is known about the types of weapons deployed, but reports began to emerge after 2005 of a sudden increase in cancer and leukaemia rates.
Concerns have been expressed for some time about increases in cancer, leukemia and congenital birth anomalies in Iraq. These have been blamed [4] on mutagenic and carcinogenic agents (like depleted uranium) employed in the wars of 1991 and 2003. Increases in childhood leukaemia in Basrah have recently been investigated [5] and the findings confirm that there has indeed been a significant increase since 1991. Unfortunately, since many reports from Iraq and Fallujah have been anecdotal, and have rarely been backed up by any population-based epidemiological evidence, it is difficult in these cases to assess the validity of the various assertions. Questionnaire survey studies have a long history of use in areas where there are difficulties obtaining accurate population numbers or illness rates [6]. Epidemiology in post-conflict areas where official population, cancer and birth data are not available can use questionnaire survey methods developed and used earlier in a number of areas of the UK and Ireland. The method is described fully with a sample questionnaire in Busby 2006 [7] where breast cancer rates in the town of Burnham on Sea, Somerset were reported. The study was later investigated by the official South West Cancer Intelligence Service and was shown to have given an accurate result for the breast cancer incidence rates.
For these reasons we decided to conduct such a survey study in Fallujah.
Conclusions
This study was intended to investigate the accuracy of the various reports which have been emerging from Fallujah regarding perceived increases in birth defects, infant deaths and cancer in the population and to examine samples from the area for the presence of mutagenic substances that may explain any results. We conclude that the results confirm the reported increases in cancer and infant mortality which are alarmingly high. The remarkable reduction in the sex ratio in the cohort born one year after the fighting in 2004 identifies that year as the time of the environmental contamination. In our opinion, the magnitude of these effects make it difficult to question them on the basis of any of the hypothetical shortcomings of the study type which we have considered although these must be borne in mind. However, owing to the various constraints placed by circumstance on the methods employed, we must emphasise that the results of this study should be interpreted with those aspects in mind. Finally, the results reported here do not throw any light upon the identity of the agent(s) causing the increased levels of illness and although we have drawn attention to the use of depleted uranium as one potential relevant exposure, there may be other possibilities and we see the current study as investigating the anecdotal evidence of increases in cancer and infant mortality in Fallujah.
Toxic legacy of US assault on Fallujah 'worse than Hiroshima' The shocking rates of infant mortality and cancer in Iraqi city raise new questions about battle
Children in Fallujah who suffer from birth defects which are thought to be linked to weapons used in attacks on the city by US Marines
Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.
Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents.
Their claims have been supported by a survey showing a four-fold increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more than four times higher than in neighbouring Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait.
Dr Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster and one of the authors of the survey of 4,800 individuals in Fallujah, said it is difficult to pin down the exact cause of the cancers and birth defects. He added that "to produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened".
US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security company Blackwater were killed and their bodies burned. After an eight-month stand-off, the Marines stormed the city in November using artillery and aerial bombing against rebel positions. US forces later admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munitions.
In the assault US commanders largely treated Fallujah as a free-fire zone to try to reduce casualties among their own troops. British officers were appalled by the lack of concern for civilian casualties. "During preparatory operations in the November 2004 Fallujah clearance operation, on one night over 40 155mm artillery rounds were fired into a small sector of the city," recalled Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, a British commander serving with the American forces in Baghdad.
He added that the US commander who ordered this devastating use of firepower did not consider it significant enough to mention it in his daily report to the US general in command. Dr Busby says that while he cannot identify the type of armaments used by the Marines, the extent of genetic damage suffered by inhabitants suggests the use of uranium in some form. He said: "My guess is that they used a new weapon against buildings to break through walls and kill those inside."
The survey was carried out by a team of 11 researchers in January and February this year who visited 711 houses in Fallujah. A questionnaire was filled in by householders giving details of cancers, birth outcomes and infant mortality. Hitherto the Iraqi government has been loath to respond to complaints from civilians about damage to their health during military operations.
Researchers were initially regarded with some suspicion by locals, particularly after a Baghdad television station broadcast a report saying a survey was being carried out by terrorists and anybody conducting it or answering questions would be arrested. Those organising the survey subsequently arranged to be accompanied by a person of standing in the community to allay suspicions.
The study, entitled "Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009", is by Dr Busby, Malak Hamdan and Entesar Ariabi, and concludes that anecdotal evidence of a sharp rise in cancer and congenital birth defects is correct. Infant mortality was found to be 80 per 1,000 births compared to 19 in Egypt, 17 in Jordan and 9.7 in Kuwait. The report says that the types of cancer are "similar to that in the Hiroshima survivors who were exposed to ionising radiation from the bomb and uranium in the fallout".
Researchers found a 38-fold increase in leukaemia, a ten-fold increase in female breast cancer and significant increases in lymphoma and brain tumours in adults. At Hiroshima survivors showed a 17-fold increase in leukaemia, but in Fallujah Dr Busby says what is striking is not only the greater prevalence of cancer but the speed with which it was affecting people.
Of particular significance was the finding that the sex ratio between newborn boys and girls had changed. In a normal population this is 1,050 boys born to 1,000 girls, but for those born from 2005 there was an 18 per cent drop in male births, so the ratio was 850 males to 1,000 females. The sex-ratio is an indicator of genetic damage that affects boys more than girls. A similar change in the sex-ratio was discovered after Hiroshima.
The US cut back on its use of firepower in Iraq from 2007 because of the anger it provoked among civilians. But at the same time there has been a decline in healthcare and sanitary conditions in Iraq since 2003. The impact of war on civilians was more severe in Fallujah than anywhere else in Iraq because the city continued to be blockaded and cut off from the rest of the country long after 2004. War damage was only slowly repaired and people from the city were frightened to go to hospitals in Baghdad because of military checkpoints on the road into the capital.
and just in case you thought it was just the americans ...
Reports emerge the UK used depleted uranium weapons in Iraq
Reports have emerged that the UK used depleted uranium weapons during the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. A UK defense official has reportedly admitted using highly controversial ammunition.
"UK forces used about 1.9 metric tons of depleted uranium ammunition in the Iraq war in 2003," UK Defense Secretary Liam Fox said in a written reply to the House of Commons Thursday, Iranian Press TV reported, citing the Kuwait News Agency.
It is alleged that a joint inquiry by Iraq’s environment, health and science ministries uncovered more than 40 sites across the war-torn country contaminated with high levels of radiation.
The use of uranium ammunition is widely controversial because of potential long-term health effects. The US and UK have allegedly used up to 2,000 tons of such ammunition during the war.
British Labor Party MP Paul Flynn says the depleted uranium still causes serious health problems.
“We know that in the first Iraq war depleted uranium was used in shells. It’s very likely it was used again,” Flynn said. “It’s used as ballast because of its density in shells. It’s not as radioactive as it might be, it’s uranium 238 where the gamma-radiation has been reduced and it’s not the weapon of mass destruction, but sadly it’s a weapon of eternal destruction because it turns into dust and gets into the water supply, into the air and it can of course give children cancer, it can cause birth defects.”
Iraq's Ministry for Human Rights is expected to file a lawsuit against Britain and the US over their use of depleted uranium bombs in Iraq and will seek compensation for the victims of these weapons.
If anyone was held to account for this, would they be able to use the defence that they didn't know that dumping a couple of tons of depleted uranium would cause problems like this?
I'm pretty sure that the whole chain of command could be found guilty of poisoning civilians, as that's what they've done. From the ratbag scum at the bottom, to the ratbag scum at the top.
MEDIA ALERT: BEYOND HIROSHIMA - THE NON-REPORTING OF FALLUJAH'S CANCER CATASTROPHE
Compassion is sometimes a central theme of media reporting. On August 25, journalists across the UK described how a British woman, Mary Bale, had been filmed dropping a cat into a wheelie bin. The cat was later released unharmed. The Guardian reported and commented on the story on August 24 and 25. Matt Seaton wrote:
“OK, there are lots of acts of random cruelty involving humans on humans every day, but this was somebody's pet, for Pete's sake. Who would do such a thing?” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/24/coventry-cat-wheelie-bin)
On August 26, the Guardian followed up with a report describing how animal protection charities were considering whether to prosecute Bale. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/26/rspca-woman-cat-wheelie-bin)
On August 27, Alexander Chancellor devoted a section of his Guardian column to the story. On August 28, Michele Hansen also wrote an article focusing on the cat and on cruelty to animals more generally. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/28/cat-litter-pets-protected-and-persecuted)
On August 29, almost a week after the Guardian had first reported the incident, Euan Ferguson commented:
“The same Facebook, the same Britain, that ‘named and shamed’ Mary Bale is the one that had over 30,000 followers for Raoul Moat RIP, who was a killer. Do we love animals more than people?” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/29/mary-bale-cat-fluffy-animal)
Good question. According to our LexisNexis search (September 7), two articles appeared on the cat story in the Independent and two in the Independent on Sunday. The Daily Telegraph mentioned it in three articles; the Times in seven. The Observer had one article, the Mirror and Sunday Mirror had a total of ten articles. More than 170 articles have so far mentioned Mary Bale in the UK press.
Fallujah - Genetic Stress Beginning 2004
One month earlier, the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, a leading medical journal, published a study, ‘Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009,’ by Chris Busby, Malak Hamdan and Entesar Ariabi. As Noam Chomsky has commented, the study’s findings are “vastly more significant” than the Wikileaks Afghan ‘War Diary’ leaks (http://www.zcommunications.org/wikileaks-and-coverage-in-press-by-noam-chomsky). After all, the cancer crisis reported in the study is impacting thousands of people in one of Iraq's largest cities and is so severe that local doctors are advising women not to have children.
In the Independent, Patrick Cockburn wrote:
“Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.” (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/toxic-legacy-of-us-assault-on-fallujah-worse-than-hiroshima-2034065.html)
The survey of 4,800 individuals in Fallujah showed a four-fold increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. It found a 10-fold increase in female breast cancer and significant increases in lymphoma and brain tumours in adults. Researchers found a 38-fold increase in leukaemia. By contrast, Hiroshima survivors showed a 17-fold increase in leukaemia. According to the study, the types of cancer are “similar to that in the Hiroshima survivors who were exposed to ionising radiation from the bomb and uranium in the fallout”. (Ibid.)
Infant mortality was found to be 80 per 1,000 births compared to 19 in Egypt, 17 in Jordan and 9.7 in Kuwait.
The study’s authors commented:
“These results support the many reports of congenital illness and birth defects in Fallujah and suggest that there is evidence of genetic stress which appeared around 2004, one year before the effects began to show.” (http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/7/7/2828/pdf)
Dr Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster and one of the authors of the survey, said it was difficult to identify the exact cause of the cancers and birth defects. But, he said, “to produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the [US] attacks happened”. (Cockburn, op.cit.)
US troops launched a major attack on Fallujah in March 2004 and then joined with British forces to storm the city in a much bigger offensive, Operation Phantom Fury, in November of the same year. On November 30, 2004, the UN's Integrated Regional Information Network reported the aftermath:
“Approximately 70 percent of the houses and shops were destroyed in the city and those still standing are riddled with bullets.” (‘Fallujah still needs more supplies despite aid arrival,’ www.irinnews.org, November 30, 2004)
In January 2005, an Iraqi doctor, Ali Fadhil, reported of the city:
“It was completely devastated, destruction everywhere. It looked like a city of ghosts. Falluja used to be a modern city; now there was nothing. We spent the day going through the rubble that had been the centre of the city; I didn’t see a single building that was functioning.” (Fadhil, ‘City of ghosts,’ The Guardian, January 11, 2005)
On March 3, 2005, Aljazeera reported:
“Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhli, an official at Iraq’s health ministry, said that the U.S. military used internationally banned weapons during its deadly offensive in the city of Fallujah.” The official reported evidence that US forces had “used... substances, including mustard gas, nerve gas, and other burning chemicals in their attacks in the war-torn city.” (‘US used banned weapons in Fallujah - Health ministry,' March 3, 2005, http://www.aljazeera.com)
American documentary film-maker Mark Manning told of “American forces deploying - in violation of international treaties - napalm, chemical weapons, phosphorous bombs, and ‘bunker-busting’ shells laced with depleted uranium. Use of any of these against civilians is a violation of international law.” (Nick Welsh, ‘Diving into Fallujah,’ Santa Barbara Independent, March 17, 2005, http://www.independent.com/cover/Cover956.htm)
Despite this and copious other evidence, the BBC’s director of news, Helen Boaden, told Media Lens in March 2005 that her reporter in Fallujah, Paul Wood, had seen “no evidence of the use of such weapons”. Wood added, with considerable naivety:
“The character of the fighting that I saw was bloody, old-fashioned clearing of houses and buildings street by street, block by block, the kind of fighting which is done with little more than an M16 and a handful of grenades. It doesn't make sense to use mustard gas, nerve agents, other chemical agents or nuclear devices -- to quote the Al Jazeera story -- in such a small space also occupied by your own forces.” (Boaden, email to Media Lens, March 7, 2005)
While the recent survey was unable to identify the weapons used by US forces, the extent of genetic damage suffered by residents in Fallujah suggests the use of uranium in some form. Dr Busby said: “My guess is that they used a new weapon against buildings to break through walls and kill those inside.” (Cockburn, op. cit.)
The authors concluded:
“This study was intended to investigate the accuracy of the various reports which have been emerging from Fallujah regarding perceived increases in birth defects, infant deaths and cancer in the population and to examine samples from the area for the presence of mutagenic substances that may explain any results. We conclude that the results confirm the reported increases in cancer and infant mortality which are alarmingly high. The remarkable reduction in the sex ratio in the cohort born one year after the fighting in 2004 identifies that year as the time of the environmental contamination.” (http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/7/7/2828/pdf)
Media Performance
Whereas the story of the maltreated cat received heavy coverage for almost one week across the UK media, we (and activist friends in the United States) can find exactly one mention of the Fallujah cancer and infant mortality study in the entire UK and US national press - Patrick Cockburn’s article in the Independent. The story has simply been ignored by every other US-UK national newspaper.
The study +has+ been reported elsewhere. Cockburn’s piece was reprinted in The Hamilton Spectator in Ontario, Canada on July 24 and in the July 25 Sunday Tribune in Ireland. The July 27 Frontier Post in Pakistan ran an excellent piece on the US military’s use of depleted uranium in several theatres of war, including Fallujah. So did the July 30 Irish News. The August 3 edition of New Nation in Bangladesh also covered the issue. It is much more difficult for us to assess TV and radio performance. To its credit, the BBC did give the story some attention: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-10721562
The destruction of Fallujah is only one small item on an almost unbelievable list of horrors heaped by the United States and Britain on Iraq - crimes that are rarely considered individually and almost never as a whole. Readers might like to consider how often they can recall the mainstream media summing up the recent history of Iraq in the way that US dissident writer Bill Blum did last week:
"... no American should be allowed to forget that the nation of Iraq, the society of Iraq, have been destroyed, ruined, a failed state. The Americans, beginning 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, killed wantonly, tortured ... the people of that unhappy land have lost everything — their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women's rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives ...
“More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile ... The air, soil, water, blood and genes drenched with depleted uranium ... the most awful birth defects ... unexploded cluster bombs lie in wait for children to pick them up ... an army of young Islamic men went to Iraq to fight the American invaders; they left the country more militant, hardened by war, to spread across the Middle East, Europe and Central Asia ... a river of blood runs alongside the Euphrates and Tigris ... through a country that may never be put back together again." (http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer85.html)
Mainstream journalists see things differently. The BBC’s correspondent Paul Wood reported from Iraq in June 2005:
“After everything that’s happened in Fallujah, the Americans aren’t going to find an +unambiguous+ welcome. But Fallujah +is+ more peaceful than it’s been in a long time. Its people like that.” (Wood, BBC 1, 18:00 News, June 22, 2005)
US uranium to blame for deformed babies in Fallujah? A London court is set to hear a case involving the alleged use of uranium-enhanced weapons by US-led forces in the deadly 2004 battle for Fallujah. Some say it is the cause of horrific birth defects and congenital diseases in the Iraqi city.
Please note that the video contains disturbing images
A number of reports have been published claiming that the use of uranium in Iraq was much more widespread than originally believed. Christopher Busby, a visiting biomedical studies professor at the University of Ulster, is the coauthor of two such reports. Busby sat down with RT to discuss the findings in his reports.
RT:Professor Busby, you have now made two studies of Fallujah. Before we move to the latest one, can you remind us what you found in the first study?
Christopher Busby: A lot of cancer, birth defects, sex ratio change after 2004, showing big genetic damage to the population starting after the battles there. But that was just a health study, we didn’t investigate any cause.
RT:What did you do next?
C.B.: We needed to examine the environment and look inside the people. We obtained 25 parents of children with congenital anomalies and measured the concentration of 52 elements in the hair of the mothers and fathers. We also looked at the surface soil, river water and drinking water. We used a very powerful scientific technique called ICPMS.
RT: What did you find?
C.B.: We found high levels of a number of common elements – calcium, aluminum, strontium, bismuth mercury – but the only substance we found that could explain the high levels of genetic damage was the radioactive element uranium.
RT: So the cause, as everyone thought, was depleted uranium, DU?
C.B.: No. Astonishingly, it was not depleted uranium. It was slightly enriched uranium, the kind that is used in nuclear reactors or atomic bombs. We found it in the hair and also in the soil. We concentrated the soil chemically so there could be no mistake. Results showed slightly enriched uranium – manmade.
RT: Could you explain the difference between enriched and depleted uranium?
C.B.: When uranium is mined, it is refined in such a way that one of the isotopes, U235, which is used in nuclear power stations and in atom bombs, is separated. And the rest of the uranium which does not contain so much U235 is called depleted uranium, and it’s a sort of waste product. The other sort, which is, as I said, used in atom bombs and nuclear power stations… we found in the environment of Fallujah – that is, in the soil, in the water and also in the hair of the parents whose children had anomalies. [That] is what we believe is the cause of the cancer increase, anomalies and other genetic effects that we found in earlier studies.
RT: Could you connect this with the battles in 2004?
C.B.: Yes. We did something clever. Uranium is excreted into hair and hair grows at a known rate: 1 centimeter per month. We obtained very long hair samples from some women and measured the uranium along the lengths of the hair, which gave us historic levels back as far as 2005. In one woman, whose hair was 80 centimeters, the uranium concentration went up toward the tip of the hair, showing very high exposures in the past.
RT: Very high relative to what? Could this have been from a local uranium deposit or from drinking water?
C.B.: The levels were compared with measurements made in many countries, but specifically with Israel and Sweden. They were significantly higher now and massively higher in the past. The measurements in soil and water could not explain these levels in the hair, and in any case, the uranium was manmade, it was enriched uranium. Not natural.
RT: So where is the enriched uranium from? Why use it?
C.B.: We are not sure. We believe these results prove the existence of a new secret uranium weapon. We have found some US patents for thermobaric and directed charge warheads which employ uranium powder to increase their effect. It seems clear these uranium weapons have moved on from the simple anti-tank penetrators used in the first Gulf War, which were basically lumps of metal. Since 2003, it seems the military has been using something else entirely. Something quite scary.
RT:But why enriched uranium? Isn’t that expensive?
C.B.: Well, war is expensive. A cruise missile is expensive. The cost of using slightly enriched uranium would make very little difference, a marginal cost, and there will be a lot of it about from the decommissioning of nuclear weapons, which would cost a lot of money to dispose of. We don’t really know the answer. One suggestion is that it could cover their tracks, so they could truthfully say they didn’t use depleted uranium, and save themselves from any war crimes litigation that might emerge when the civilians began to die. And they almost got away with that one. It is only the development of these modern sophisticated measuring systems that enabled us to find it. Another suggestion is that there is an entirely new weapon, a neutron bomb, which employs enriched uranium with heavy hydrogen to produce cold fusion and a neutron blast which would kill people only.
RT: Do you have any supporting evidence?
C.B.: We investigated bomb craters in Lebanon in 2006 after the Israeli attacks and found one which was radioactive and which contained enriched uranium. We found enriched uranium in car air filters from Lebanon and also from Gaza. Others have found evidence of its use in Afghanistan and possibly also in the Balkans.
RT: So what is the overall importance of these findings? What comes next?
C.B.: This is an astonishing discovery with many global implications.
We have to reexamine the health of the Gulf War veterans, especially those from the second Gulf War. They are having children with congenital anomalies and are themselves suffering ill health. They were found to have high levels of uranium in urine tests, but because the uranium was not depleted, the findings were dismissed. This has to be revisited, since we now know why this is.
It is clear that the military has a secret uranium weapon of some sort. It causes widespread and terrifying genetic defects, causing cancer and birth anomalies and poisoning the gene pool of whole populations. This is a war crime and must be properly investigated.
The focus of activists and parliaments on depleted uranium is misplaced. All uranium weapons must be banned as weapons of indiscriminate effect, like poison gas.
This material from the Gulf Wars is slowly contaminating the whole planet. It is poisoning the human gene pool, leading to increases in cancer, congenital anomalies, miscarriages and infertility. We must stop the military from using it. It has probably been employed in Libya, so we must wait and see what levels of cancer and congenital disease appears there.
Robert Fisk: The Children of Fallujah - Sayef's story Special Report day one: The phosphorus shells that devastated this city were fired in 2004. But are the victims of America's dirty war still being born?
For little Sayef, there will be no Arab Spring. He lies, just 14 months old, on a small red blanket cushioned by a cheap mattress on the floor, occasionally crying, his head twice the size it should be, blind and paralysed. Sayeffedin Abdulaziz Mohamed – his full name – has a kind face in his outsized head and they say he smiles when other children visit and when Iraqi families and neighbours come into the room.
But he will never know the history of the world around him, never enjoy the freedoms of a new Middle East. He can move only his hands and take only bottled milk because he cannot swallow. He is already almost too heavy for his father to carry. He lives in a prison whose doors will remain forever closed.
It's as difficult to write this kind of report as it is to understand the courage of his family. Many of the Fallujah families whose children have been born with what doctors call "congenital birth anomalies" prefer to keep their doors closed to strangers, regarding their children as a mark of personal shame rather than possible proof that something terrible took place here after the two great American battles against insurgents in the city in 2004, and another conflict in 2007.
After at first denying the use of phosphorous shells during the second battle of Fallujah, US forces later admitted that they had fired the munitions against buildings in the city. Independent reports have spoken of a birth-defect rate in Fallujah far higher than other areas of Iraq, let alone other Arab countries. No one, of course, can produce cast-iron evidence that American munitions have caused the tragedy of Fallujah's children.
Sayef lives – the word is used advisedly, perhaps – in the al-Shahada district of Fallujah, in one of the more dangerous streets in the city. The cops – like the citizens of Fallujah, they are all Sunni Muslims – stand with their automatic weapons at the door of Sayef's home when we visit, but two of these armed, blue-unformed men come inside with us and are visibly moved by the helpless baby on the floor, shaking their heads in disbelief and with a hopelessness which his father, Mohamed, refuses to betray.
"I think all this is because of the use by the Americans of phosphorous in the two big battles," he says. "I have heard of so many cases of congenital birth defects in children. There has to be a reason. When my child first went to the hospital, I saw families there with exactly the same problems."
Studies since the 2004 Fallujah battles have recorded profound increases in infant mortality and cancer in Fallujah; the latest report, whose authors include a doctor at Fallujah General Hospital, says that congenital malformations account for 15 per cent of all births in Fallujah.
"My son cannot support himself," Mohamed says, fondling his son's enlarged head. "He can move only his hands. We have to bottle-feed him. He can't swallow. Sometimes he can't take even the milk, so we have to take him to hospital to be given fluids. He was blind when he was born. In addition, my poor little man's kidney has shut down. He got paralysed. His legs don't move. His blindness is due to hydrocephalus."
Mohamed holds Sayef's useless legs and moves them gently up and down. "After he was born, I got Sayef to Baghdad and I had the most important neurosurgeons check him. They said they could do nothing. He had a hole in his back that was closed and then a hole in his head. The first operation did not succeed. He had meningitis."
Both Mohamed and his wife are in their mid-thirties. Unlike many tribal families in the area, neither are related and their two daughters, born before the battles of Fallujah, are in perfect health. Sayef was born on 27 January, 2011. "My two daughters like their brother very much," Mohamed adds, "and even the doctors like him. They all take part in the care of the child. Dr Abdul-Wahab Saleh has done some amazing work on him – Sayef would not be alive without him."
Mohamed works for an irrigation mechanics company but admits that, with a salary of only $100 a month, he receives financial help from relatives. He was outside Fallujah during the conflict but returned two months after the second battle only to find his house mined; he received funding to rebuild his home in 2006. He watches Sayef for a long time during our conversation and then lifts him in his arms.
"Every time I watch my son, I'm dying inside," he says, tears running down his face. "I think about his destiny. He is getting heavier all the time. It's more difficult to carry him." So I ask whom he blames for Sayef's little calvary. I expect a tirade of abuse against the Americans, the Iraqi government, the Health Ministry. The people of Fallujah have long been portrayed as "pro-terrorist" and "anti-Western" in the world's press, ever since the murder and cremation of the four American mercenaries in the city in 2004 – the event which started the battles for Fallujah in which up to 2,000 Iraqis, civilians and insurgents, died, along with almost 100 US troops.
But Mohamed is silent for a few moments. He is not the only father to show his deformed child to us. "I am only asking for help from God," he says. "I don't expect help from any other human being." Which proves, I guess, that Fallujah – far from being a city of terror – includes some very brave men.
Fallujah: A history
The first battle of Fallujah, in April 2004, was a month-long siege, during which US forces failed to take the city, said to be an insurgent stronghold. The second battle, in November, flattened the city. Controversy raged over claims US troops had deployed white phosphorus shells. A 2010 study said increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in Fallujah exceeded those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Robert Fisk: The Children of Fallujah - the hospital of horrors Special Report day two: Stillbirths, disabilities, deformities too distressing to describe - what lies behind the torments in Fallujah General Hospital?
The pictures flash up on a screen on an upper floor of the Fallujah General Hospital. And all at once, Nadhem Shokr al-Hadidi's administration office becomes a little chamber of horrors. A baby with a hugely deformed mouth. A child with a defect of the spinal cord, material from the spine outside the body. A baby with a terrible, vast Cyclopean eye. Another baby with only half a head, stillborn like the rest, date of birth 17 June, 2009. Yet another picture flicks onto the screen: date of birth 6 July 2009, it shows a tiny child with half a right arm, no left leg, no genitalia.
"We see this all the time now," Al-Hadidi says, and a female doctor walks into the room and glances at the screen. She has delivered some of these still-born children. "I've never seen anything as bad as this in all my service," she says quietly. Al-Hadidi takes phone calls, greets visitors to his office, offers tea and biscuits to us while this ghastly picture show unfolds on the screen. I asked to see these photographs, to ensure that the stillborn children, the deformities, were real. There's always a reader or a viewer who will mutter the word "propaganda" under their breath.
But the photographs are a damning, ghastly reward for such doubts. January 7, 2010: a baby with faded, yellow skin and misshapen arms. April 26, 2010: a grey mass on the side of the baby's head. A doctor beside me speaks of "Tetralogy of Fallot", a transposition of the great blood vessels. May 3, 2010: a frog-like creature in which – the Fallujah doctor who came into the room says this – "all the abdominal organs are trying to get outside the body."
This is too much. These photographs are too awful, the pain and emotion of them – for the poor parents, at least – impossible to contemplate. They simply cannot be published.
There is a no-nonsense attitude from the doctors in Fallujah. They know that we know about this tragedy. Indeed, there is nothing undiscovered about the child deformities of Fallujah. Other correspondents – including my colleague Patrick Cockburn – have visited Fallujah to report on them. What is so shameful is that these deformities continue unmonitored. One Fallujah doctor, an obstetrician trained in Britain – she left only five months ago – who has purchased from her own sources for her private clinic a £79,000 scanning machine for prenatal detection of congenital abnormalities, gives me her name and asks why the Ministry of Health in Baghdad will not hold a full official investigation into the deformed babies of Fallujah.
"I have been to see the ministry," she says. "They said they would have a committee. I went to the committee. And they have done nothing. I just can't get them to respond." Then, 24 hours later, the same woman sends a message to a friend of mine, another Iraqi doctor, asking me not to use her name.
If the number of stillborn children of Fallujah is a disgrace, the medical staff at the Fallujah General Hospital prove their honesty by repeatedly warning of the danger of reaching conclusions too soon.
"I delivered that baby," the obstetrician says as one more picture flashes on the screen. "I don't think this has anything to do with American weapons. The parents were close relatives. Tribal marriages here involve a lot of families who are close by blood. But you have to remember, too, that if women have stillborn children with abnormalities at home, they will not report this to us, and the baby will be buried without any record reaching us."
The photographs continue on the screen. January 19, 2010: a baby with tiny limbs, stillborn. A baby born on 30 October, 2010, with a cleft lip and cleft palette, still alive, a hole in the heart, a defect in its face, in need of echocardiography treatment. "A cleft lip and palate are common congenital anomalies," Dr Samira Allani says quietly. "But it's the increased frequency that is alarming." Dr Allani has documented a research paper into "the increased prevalence of birth defects" in Fallujah, a study of four fathers "with two lineages of progeny". Congenital heart defects, the paper says, reached "unprecedented numbers" in 2010.
The numbers continue to rise. Even while we are speaking, a nurse brings a message to Dr Allani. We go at once to an incubator next to the hospital delivery room. In the incubator is a little baby just 24 days old. Zeid Mohamed is almost too young to smile but he lies sleeping, his mother watching through the glass. She has given her permission for me to see her baby. His father is a security guard, the couple married three years ago. There is no family record of birth defects. But Zeid has only four fingers on each of his little hands.
Dr Allani's computer files contain a hundred Zeids. She asks another doctor to call some parents. Will they talk to a journalist? "They want to know what happened to their children," she says. "They deserve an answer." She is right. But neither the Iraqi authorities, nor the Americans, nor the British – who were peripherally involved in the second battle of Fallujah and lost four men – nor any major NGO, appears willing or able to help.
When doctors can obtain funding for an investigation, they sometimes turn to organisations which clearly have their own political predetermination. Dr Allani's paper, for example, acknowledges funding from the "Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War" – hardly a group seeking to exonerate the use of US weaponry in Fallujah. This, too, I fear, is part of the tragedy of Fallujah.
The obstetrician who asked to be anonymous talks bleakly of the lack of equipment and training. "Chromosome defects – like Down's Syndrome – cannot be corrected prenatally. But a foetal infection we can deal with, and we can sort out this problem by drawing a sample of blood from the baby and mother. But no laboratory here has this equipment. One blood transfer is all it needs to prevent such a condition. Of course, it will not answer our questions: why the increased miscarriages here, why the increased stillbirths, why the increased premature births?"
Dr Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster who has surveyed almost 5,000 people in Fallujah, agrees it is impossible to be specific about the cause of birth defects as well as cancers. "Some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened," he wrote two years ago. Dr Busby's report, compiled with Malak Hamdan and Entesar Ariabi, says that infant mortality in Fallujah was found in 80 out of every 1,000 births, compared to 19 in Egypt, 17 in Jordan and only 9.7 in Kuwait.
Another of the Fallujah doctors tells me that the only UK assistance they have received comes from Dr Kypros Nicolaides, the head of Foetal Medicine at King's College Hospital. He runs a charity, the Foetal Medicine Foundation, which has already trained one doctor from Fallujah. I call him up. He is bursting with anger.
"To me, the criminal aspect of all this – during the war – was that the British and the American governments could not go to Woolworths and buy some computers to even document the deaths in Iraq. So we have a Lancet publication that estimates 600,000 deaths in the war. Yet the occupying power did not have the decency to have a computer worth only £500 that would enable them to say "this body was brought in today and this was its name".
Now you have an Arab country which has a higher number of deformities or cancers than Europe and you need a proper epidemiological study. I'm sure the Americans used weapons that caused these deformities. But now you have a goodness-knows-what government in Iraq and no study. It's very easy to avoid to doing anything – except for some sympathetic crazy professor like me in London to try and achieve something."
In al-Hadidi's office, there are now photographs which defy words. How can you even begin to describe a dead baby with just one leg and a head four times the size of its body?
You've never seen a face as sad as a mother watching her baby die
I’ve never seen a face as sad as a mother watching her new baby die.
I saw it several times in the week I spent in Iraq’s Fallujah Hospital recently, but the most heart-breaking was the round, brown face of the woman in the pink dress.
I entered the room in which she sat, motionless, just staring intently at her baby in the humidicrib in front of her. She did not turn to look at me, despite my odd appearance: white girl in oversized black abaya and untidy hijab juggling a camera and notebook. I attracted stares throughout the hospital but the woman in the pink dress was too engaged with her baby to notice.
The women’s baby girl was struggling to breathe. Her little tummy heaving up and down too fast. She had complex congenital heart defects, like so many babies born here in Fallujah, a dusty, war-weary city, west of Baghdad currently experiencing a dramatic increase in birth defects and miscarriages.
The woman in the pink dress gazed with loving concentration at her baby, urging her, willing her to live, to take another breath. Her large brown eyes were not angry, more overwhelmed, full of innocence, and questions. I saw the babies eyes as she stared back at her Mother, only innocence there too.
I dropped my camera bag to the floor and just stood there sharing the sacred, painful space between life and death, between love, yearning and grief and the questions, so many questions.
Why was this happening every day in Fallujah Hospital’s nursery? What has caused a seven-fold increase in birth defects here since 2000? Why a dramatic increase in miscarriages and stillborn births?
The day before I had met a new-born with a bloodied, fleshy hole in her back – a classic case of spina bifida another common occurrence now along with brain dysfunction, spinal conditions, unformed limbs and cleft palet.
Another day I walked through Fallujah cemetery which is littered with small, unmarked ‘baby’ graves, and stood with Marwan and Bashir, a young, healthy couple, at the grave of their baby Mohamed, who lived five minutes after birth. He was their fourth baby to die. They will not try again.
The medical recommendation of the gynaecologists to the women of Fallujah is simple: “just stop”. Stop falling pregnant because it is likely you will not give birth to a healthy baby. These words carry a shocking implication: a city of about 300,000 with a generation of young women who may never be mothers; and a generation who may not live, or at least not a healthy life.
Four new studies on the health crisis in Fallujah have been released in the last three months. The studies suggest the baby of the woman in the pink dress is dying of wounds from a war she never saw. That this epidemic is the legacy of toxic weapons dispersed in this community in the ferocious attacks by US forces in 2004.
Today’s wars are wars of the city; they intrude into neighbourhoods, streets and houses. And the nature of modern weaponry means today’s wars don’t end when the guns fall silent.
The most recent study “Metal Contamination and the Epidemic of Congenital Birth Defects in Iraqi Cities,” published in Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology examines the prevalence of birth defects in Fallujah as well as Basra, another Iraqi city that experienced intense fighting. It found that in Fallujah more than half of all babies surveyed were born with a birth defect between 2007 and 2010. Before the siege, this figure was closer to one in 10.
More than 45 per cent of all pregnancies surveyed ended in miscarriages in the two years after 2004, increased from only 10 per cent before the attacks. Between 2007 and 2010, one in six of all pregnancies ended in miscarriage.
The study presents evidence of widespread exposure to heavy metals such lead and mercury- metals that would be contained in bombs, tank shells and bullets – as a possible cause.
The increase in birth defects in Fallujah and Basra is often connected to the use of another heavy metal – depleted uranium, used in conventional weapons for its armour piercing capabilities. Several studies undertaken in Iraq have found evidence of the presence of uranium local environments and in patients, and point to it as a possible cause, but more research is needed.
About 400,000 kilograms of depleted uranium has been dispersed in Iraq since 1991. Depleted uranium (DU) is radioactive and chemically toxic. The long-term impact on civilians is unknown. Militaries consider it a hazard and use extreme care in its handling. It’s been labelled the “Agent Orange” of today.
With uncertainties surrounding the use of weapons containing depleted uranium and its long-term impact, precaution is clearly needed.
Such precaution is at the heart of a resolution that came before the United Nations First Committee this month. The resolution urged nations to take a precautionary approach and requires greater transparency from users of DU weapons – simply that they declare in what areas the weapons have been used so that affected communities are aware. It’s about protecting civilians who just by very nature of urban warfare have been caught in the middle and left to deal with long-term contamination.
At a similar vote held two years ago, 148 nations voted in favour of this non-threatening proposal, four voted against and Australia abstained.
When I spoke to Australians about this they were shocked that Australia might not deliver a ‘yes’ vote.
And yet that is exactly what we did. We abstained from making our position known, yet again.
Labor MP John Murphy raised the issue in Parliament last month noting that: “It would therefore be consistent to extend this precaution to assist civilian communities caught up in conflicts where DU weapons are used.”
“… Considering this precautionary approach, it is logical that Australia would change its vote from abstaining to voting yes.”
Australia has joined with nations including the USA and United Kingdom in repeating its current line that the science is not there. And then we’ve wheeled out out-dated studies that have superseded by new research, in support of our position. However the science is there and it is compelling, but there are also questions and in the case of uncertainty then the precautionary principle should apply.
The key question is: Is it politically acceptable to disperse large quantities of a chemically toxic and radioactive heavy metal, which is widely recognised as hazardous, in conventional warfare?
It points to a broader question about what remains in neighbourhoods when armies pack up and leave. Remnants of war that explode such as landmines and cluster bombs attract attention and clearance program, but another kind exists, the toxic remnants of war whose silent legacy is still unclear.
Can Bob Carr’s sense of independence and common sense overcome the pressure he is receiving from user nations, most notably the USA?
Can he pass the first test of the Australian Agenda?
You see the woman in the pink dress is there too in this discussion and her little baby and how are they accounted for?
In Fallujah Hospital I stood for a while in sad, silent solidarity with the woman in the pink dress and her baby.
At one point she looked up at me, we held a gaze, and in a wordless gesture I said I was sorry. She nodded. I motioned if I could take her photo and she nodded.
I left feeling gutted, tears stinging my eyes my head haunted by her face.
I heard the baby died just an hour later, her name was Dumoa.
Dumoa’s was a short life, but one which brings into clear, sharp focus the large, hard, ugly issue of the legacy of the weapons our armies take to the neighbourhoods of ordinary families.
For the sake of baby Dumoa, and her mother in the pink dress, may their tragic story awaken the conscience of the world and prompt us to discuss and act on the long-term impact of modern weaponry.
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