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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