The Committee for National Solidarity
Tolstojeva 34, Belgrade, YU
URL for this article is http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/choss/dep.htm
www.tenc.net [Emperor's Clothes]
LOW
INTENSITY NUCLEAR WAR, Part 1
By Michel Chossudovsky
[1-16-2001]
Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa, author of "The
Globalization of
Poverty", second enlarged edition, Common Courage Press,
2001.
INTRODUCTION
The United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP) and the World Health
Organization (WHO) are attempting to convey
the illusion, contrary to
scientific evidence, that the health risks of
depleted uranium in Kosovo can
easily be dealt with by cordoning off and
"cleaning up" the "targeted areas".
What they fail to mention is that
the radioactive dust has already spread
beyond the 72 "identified target
sites" in Kosovo. Most villages and cities,
including Pristina, Prizren
and Pec, lie within less than 20 km. of these
sites, confirming that the
whole province is contaminated, putting not only
"peacekeepers" but the
entire civilian population at risk.
The nature and dangers of Depleted
Uranium were well known to NATO leaders
prior to the 1999 bombing of
Yugoslavia. Therefore this bombing is best
described as a "low intensity
nuclear war" using toxic radioactive shells and
missiles. Amply
documented, the radioactive fall-out potentially puts
millions of people
at risk throughout the Balkans.
UN/NATO Statement: "The effects of DU
are mainly localized in the places DU
has been used and the affected areas
are likely to be small". 15 (From
preliminary UN study on effects of DU
contamination in Kosovo. Staff carrying
out study is linked to
NATO).
Independent Expert's Statement: "When used in war, the depleted
uranium (DU)
bursts into flame [and] releasing a deadly radioactive
aerosol of uranium,
unlike anything seen before. It can kill everyone in a
tank. This ceramic
aerosol is much lighter than uranium dust. It can
travel in air tens of
kilometres from the point of release, or be stirred
up in dust and
re-suspended in air with wind or human movement. It is very
small and can be
breathed in by anyone: a baby, pregnant woman, the
elderly, the sick. This
radioactive ceramic can stay deep in the lungs for
years, irradiating the
tissue with powerful alpha particles within about a
30 micron sphere, causing
emphysema and/or fibrosis. The ceramic can also
be swallowed and do damage to
the gastrointestinal tract. In time, it
penetrates the lung tissue and enters
into the blood stream. …It can also
initiate cancer or promote cancers which
have been initiated by other
carcinogens". 25 (World renowned radiologist Dr.
Rosalie Bertell)
-
MC, January 16, 2001
LOW INTENSITY NUCLEAR WAR - by Michel
Chossudovsky
The death from leukemia of eight Italian peacekeepers
stationed in Bosnia and
Kosovo sparked an uproar in the Italian
Parliament, following the leaking of
a secret military document to the
Italian newspaper La Republicca. In
Portugal, the Defense Ministry was
also involved in what amounted to a
deliberate camouflage of the cause of
death of Portuguese peacekeeper
Corporal Hugo Paulino. "Citing 'herpes of
the brain', the army refused to
allow his family to commission a
postmortem examination."1 Amidst mounting
political pressure, Defense
Minister Julio Castro Caldas advised NATO
Headquarters in November that he
was withdrawing Portuguese troops from
Kosovo: "They were not, he said,
going to become uranium meat". 2
As the number of cancer cases among
Balkans "peacekeepers" rises, NATO's
cover-up has started to fracture.
Several European governments have been
obliged to publicly acknowledge the
"alleged health risks" of depleted
uranium (DU) shells used by the US Air
Force in NATO's 78-day war against
Yugoslavia.
The Western media
points to an apparent split within the military alliance.
In fact there
was no division or disagreement between Washington and its
European allies
until the scandal broke through the gilded surface.
Italy, Portugal,
France and Belgium were fully aware that DU weapons were
being used. The
health impacts -- including mountains of scientific reports
-- were known
and available to European governments. Italy participated in
the
scheduling the flights of A-10 anti-tank attack planes, also known as
Warthogs, carrying DU shells, out of its Aviano and Gioia del Colle air
force
bases. The Italian Defense Ministry knew what was happening at
military bases
under its jurisdiction.
Washington's European
partners in NATO including Britain, France, Turkey,
Greece have DU weapons
in their arsenals. Canada is one of the main suppliers
of depleted
uranium. NATO countries share full responsibility for the use of
weapons
banned by the Geneva and Hague conventions and the 1945 Nuremberg
Charter
on war crimes. 3
Since the Gulf War, Washington launched a cover-up of
the health impacts of
DU toxic radiation known as the "Gulf War Syndrome",
with the tacit
endorsement of its NATO partners.
While NATO had
until recently denied using DU shells in the 1999 war against
Yugoslavia,
it now admits that although it did use DU ammunition, the shells
"have
negligible radioactivity…and [a]ny resulting debris posing any
significant
risk dissipates soon after the impact." 4 While casually denying
"any
connection between illness and exposure to depleted uranium", the
Pentagon
nonetheless concedes -- in an ambiguous statement -- that "the main
danger
posed by depleted uranium occurs if it is inhaled." 5
And who inhales
the radioactive dust, which has spread across the land?
The shrouded
statements from European governments convey the uncomfortable
illusion
that only peacekeepers "might be at risk", i.e. that radioactive
particles
are only inhaled by military personnel and expatriate civilians, as
if
nobody else in the Balkans was affected. The impacts on local civilians
are not mentioned.
In docile complicity, a new media consensus has
unfolded: the mainstream
press concurs without further scrutiny that only
"peace-keepers" breathe the
air. "But what about everybody else?"6 In
Kosovo some 2 million civilian men,
women and children have been exposed
to this radioactive fallout since the
beginning of the bombing in March
1999. In the Balkans, more than 20 million
people are potentially at
risk:
"The risk in Kosovo and elsewhere in the Balkans is augmented by
the
uncertainty of where DU was dropped in whatever form and what winds
and
surface water movements spread it further. Working the fields, walking
about,
just being there, touching objects, breathing and drinking water
are all
risky. A British expert predicted that thousands of people in the
Balkans
will get sick of DU. The radioactive and toxic DU-oxides don't
disintegrate.
They are practically permanent." 7
Keep in mind that
the heavily armed "peacekeepers" together with United
Nations staff and
civilian personnel of "humanitarian" organisations entered
Kosovo in June
1999. The spread of radioactive dust from DU, however, started
on day one
of the 78 day bombing of Yugoslavia. With the exception of NATO
Special
Forces -- who were assisting the KLA on the ground -- NATO military
personnel was not present on the battlefield. In other words, there was no
radioactive exposure to NATO troops during a push-button air war, which
Alliance forces waged from the high skies. Yugoslav civilians are,
therefore,
at much greater risk because they were exposed to radioactive
fallout
throughout the bombings as well in the wake of the war. Yet the
official
communiqués suggest that only KFOR troops and expatriate
civilians "might be
at risk" implying that local civilians simply do not
matter. Only servicemen
and expatriate personnel have been screened for
radiation levels.
CHILDHOOD CANCERS
The first signs of the
effects of radiation poisoning on children, including
herpes on the mouth
and skin rashes on the back and ankles, have been
observed in Kosovo.8 In
Northern Kosovo -- the area least affected by DU
shells (see Map at http://balkans.unep.ch/du/targetmap.html
) -- 160 people
are being treated for cancer, especially cancer of the
uterus.9 The number of
leukemia cases in Northern Kosovo has increased by
200 percent since NATO's
air campaign with a similar increase in children
born with deformities.10
This information regarding civilian victims --
which the United Nations
Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) has been careful not to
reveal -- refutes NATO's
main "assumption" that radioactive dust does not
spread beyond the target
sites, most of which are in the Southwestern and
Southern regions close to
the Albanian and Macedonian borders.
These findings are consistent with those from Iraq, where the use of
depleted
uranium weapons during the 1991 Gulf War resulted in "increases
in childhood
cancers and leukemia, Hodgkin's disease, lymphomas, and
increases in
congenital diseases and deformities in fetuses, along with
limb reductional
abnormalities and increases in genetic abnormalities
throughout Iraq."11
Pedriatic examinations on Iraqi children confirm that:
"Childhood leukemia has risen 600% in the areas [of Iraq] where DU was
used.
Stillbirths, births or abortion of fetuses with monstrous
abnormalities, and
other cancers in children born since [the Gulf War in]
1991 have also been
found." 12
COVER-UP
The United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Health
Organization (WHO) have
tacitly accepted NATO-Pentagon assumptions concerning
the health impacts
of depleted uranium. When UNEP conducted its first
assessment of DU
radiation in Kosovo in 1999, NATO refused to provide the
mission with maps
indicating the locations of "affected areas" (points of
impact where DU
shells had fallen).
On the pretext that "there was insufficient data
available to comprehensively
address the issue of the impacts of depleted
uranium ordnance," UNEP produced
an inconclusive and noncommittal "desk
study" which was appended to the 1999
Balkans Task Force Report (BTF) on
the environmental impacts of the War. 13
UNEP's desk study pointed to the
"possible use of DU" thereby implying that
it was still unsure as to
whether DU shells had actually been used.
UNEP's evasiveness --
claiming lack of sufficient data -- contributed, in the
wake of the
bombings, to temporarily dissipating public concern. More
generally, the
UNEP-UNCHS Balkans Task Force report tends to downplay the
seriousness of
the environmental catastrophe triggered by NATO. Amply
documented, the
catastrophe was the deliberate result of military planning.14
NATO
maps (indicating where DU shells had been targeted) were not required
for
UNEP and the WHO to conduct an investigation on the health impacts of
depleted uranium radiation. A study of this nature -- inevitably requiring
a
team of medical specialists in pediatrics and cancer working in liaison
with
experts on toxic radiation -- was never carried out. In fact, UNEP's
stated
"scientific" assumption precluded from the outset a meaningful
assessment of
the health impacts. According to UNEP:
"The effects
of DU are mainly localized in the places DU has been used and
the affected
areas are likely to be small". 15 See the 1999 desk study, op.
cit.)
This proposition (which is presented without scientific proof) is
shared by
UNEP's sister organization, the WHO:
"You would have to
be very close to a damaged tank and be there within
seconds of it being
hit…These soldiers were very unlikely to have been
exposed.'' 16
These statements by UN bodies (quoted by NATO and the Pentagon to
justify the
use of DU weapons) are part and parcel of the camouflage. They
convey the
illusion that the health risks to peacekeepers and local
civilians can easily
be dealt with by cordoning off and "cleaning up" the
"targeted areas."
The WHO has warned, in this regard, that depleted
uranium could affect
children playing in these areas "because children…
tend to pick up pieces of
dirt or put their toys in their mouth."17 What
the WHO fails to acknowledge
is that the radioactive dust has already
spread beyond the affected areas,
suggesting that children throughout
Kosovo are at risk.
This tacit complicity of specialized agencies of
the UN is yet another
symptom of the deterioration of the United Nations
system, which now plays an
underhand role in covering up NATO war crimes.
Since the Gulf War, the WHO
has been instrumental in blocking a meaningful
investigation of the health
impacts of depleted uranium radiation on Iraqi
children, claiming "it had no
data to conduct an in-depth investigation"
18
UNEP AND NATO WORKING HAND IN GLOVE
Amidst the public
outcry and mounting evidence of cancer among Balkans
military personnel,
UNEP conducted a second assessment in November 2000 which
included field
measurements of beta and gamma particle radiations in 11
so-called
"affected areas" of Kosovo.19
Despite NATO's earlier refusal to
collaborate with UNEP, the two
organizations are currently working hand in
glove. The composition of the
mission was established in consultation with
NATO. The representative from
Greenpeace (involved in the 1999 study) had
been dumped. NATO maps were made
readily available; the investigation was
to focus narrowly on the collection
of soil, water samples, etc. in 11
selected sites ("affected areas") out of a
total of some 72 sites within
Kosovo (see NATO map at
http://balkans.unep.ch/du/targetmap.html
).
The broader health issues were not part of the mission's field of
study. The
two medical researchers dispatched by the WHO in 1999 (as part
of the desk
study mission) were now replaced with experts from the US Army
Center for
Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine (see
http://chppm-www.apgea.army.mil/default.htm
) and AC Laboratorium Spiez
(ACLS), a division of the Swiss Defense
Procurement Agency.
AC Laboratorium Spiez (ACLS) has actively
collaborated in chemical weapons
inspections in Iraq. Under the disguise
of Swiss neutrality, ACLS constitutes
an informal mouthpiece for NATO.
ACLS has been on contract with NATO's
"Partnership for Peace" (PfP)
financed by the Swiss government's contribution
to the PfP.20
Although the November mission was still under UNEP auspices, the Swiss
government funded most of the fieldwork with ACLS -- a division of the
Swiss
military -- playing a central role. The mission -- integrated by
representatives linked to the Military establishment -- was working on the
premise (amply reviewed on ACLS's web page) that DU radioactive dust does
not
(under any circumstances) travel beyond the "point of release." 21
The results of the report, to be published in March 2001, are a
foregone
conclusion. They focus on radiation levels in the immediate
vicinity of the
target sites . According to the mission's "back to office
report" (January
2001):
"… [A]lready at this stage the Team can
conclude that at some of the DU
locations, the radiation level is slightly
higher above normal at very
limited spots. It would therefore be an
unnecessary risk to the population to
be in direct contact with any
remnants of DU ammunition or with the spots
where these have been found."
22
(CONTINUED - PLEASE GO TO PART TWO)
Mrs Jela Jovanovic, art historian
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