[Toxic waste from America’s war is destroying Iraqi communities.
The US owes them legally and morally.]
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THE US MUST COMPENSATE BURN PIT VICTIMS IN IRAQ TOO  
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Carly A. Krakow
August 17, 2022
Al Jazeera
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_ Toxic waste from America’s war is destroying Iraqi communities.
The US owes them legally and morally. _

Veterans and supporters attend a news conference on toxic-exposure
legislation in Washington on July 28, (Michael
Reynolds/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

 

On August 10, United States President Joe Biden signed
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Act, aiding approximately 3.5 million American veterans with severe
medical conditions linked to toxic exposure to burn pits during
service, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. Open air pits of
military waste, sometimes as large as football fields, are burned to
destroy munitions, chemicals, plastics, and medical and human waste,
typically using jet fuel. Used widely until at least 2010, burn pits
were still permitted at least as of last year, when waste management
facilities were not available.

Their impact, however, extends beyond the harm to those who were
deployed and exposed to toxins in the short term. Fatal cancers. Birth
defects that can cause infant death or lifelong disabilities.
Malformations including a missing hand, cleft lip and paralysed club
foot. Anencephaly—an underdeveloped brain and incomplete skull.
These are just some of the devastating conditions plaguing Iraqi
civilians following toxic exposure from the 2003 US invasion and
occupation and 1991 Gulf War.

How is this a fair price for civilians to pay for simply residing in
their homes while the US "war on terror" forcibly exposed them to burn
pits and depleted uranium? When will the US fulfill international law
obligations to compensate them for the toxic war zones that its
military has left behind?

Biden's signing last week was filled with fanfare and applause, and a
moving appearance by the wife and young child of the late Ohio veteran
in whose honour the act is named (full title: the Sergeant First Class
Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics
(PACT) Act). Indeed, the legislation is welcome: It covers numerous
cancers and lung conditions, and marks progress toward addressing dire
suffering similar to that of Vietnam veterans who were unjustly
neglected (PDF [[link removed]]) following
Agent Orange exposure. In fact, the PACT Act addresses Agent
Orange—47 years after that war's end.

Biden said this is "the least we can do" for veterans. Where is
equivalent acknowledgment—and compensation—for Iraqi civilians,
who have no escape from the kind of toxic surroundings the act aims to
address for injured US veterans?

Benefit of doubt

Many of those paying the highest price are Iraqi infants born two
decades after the start of the "war on terror". According to Dutch
peace organisation PAX, more than 780,000 rounds of depleted uranium
were fired in 1991, and more than 300,000 rounds in 2003.

Diseases linked to genetic damage in Fallujah, which was contaminated
with depleted uranium munitions, have been documented at higher rates
than in Hiroshima
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The PACT Act provides "presumptive conditions" benefits that remove
the burden of proof. Instead, veterans will be presumed
eligible according to dates and locations of service. Previously,
nearly four in five burn pits-connected Veterans Affairs (VA) claims
were rejected.

This same benefit of the doubt must be extended to Iraqis through a
presumptive benefits-style programme. The US must not delay clean-up
and compensation for decades, as with Vietnam. There is more than
enough data to justify reparations. Petty, minutiae-rooted arguments
can be used to fixate on documentation of the precise dates and nature
of civilians' toxic exposure. Yet, there is ample evidence of what I
call "toxic saturation"—the long-term, undeniable, accumulative
encounters of Iraqi civilians with a variety of deadly toxins. As
Iraqi novelist and poet Sinan Antoon asks
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"Do we breathe to live? Or do we breathe to die?"

The law is clear. Article 91 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva
Conventions says that violators of international humanitarian law are
"liable to pay compensation." The Environmental Modification
Convention (ENMOD) forbids military "environmental modification
techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects as the
means of destruction, damage or injury."

There are abundant international regulations that are in conflict with
US actions regarding toxins. Article 55 of Additional Protocol I to
the Geneva Conventions prohibits means of warfare that damage the
environment and "prejudice the health or survival of the population".
The Rio Declaration calls for states to "develop national law
regarding liability and compensation" for victims of environmental
damage.

Members of the US Congress were not concerned with international law,
however, when finally compensating veterans. They acted once they
could not resist pressure any longer. US leaders likely fear that
compensation would admit US culpability for Iraqi civilians' injuries.
The harm caused, however, is obvious and must be remedied.

History repeats

Sadly, Washington's track record doesn't inspire optimism.

The US left Vietnam veterans in the cold, before finally
providing presumptive benefits
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benefits for Agent Orange-linked birth defects
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veterans' children. The US Court of Appeals ruled against
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people who sought to hold Dow Chemical, Monsanto and other companies
accountable. The court justified this partly on the basis that dioxin
was a defoliant to clear foliage, not intended to harm humans.

The US has spent roughly $400m
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address Agent Orange's environmental and health effects. USAID and
Vietnam's government have a 10-year plan
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up to $500m to clean Bien Hoa Air Base. A smaller amount, $14.5m
annually, was allocated for health and disability programmes.

If this numbers game seems a bit obscure, this is because there have
been many parcelled-out allocations of funding, none of which have
fully ameliorated harm to Vietnam's people. This becomes clearer when
considered in relation to the US military budget of $753bn
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These precedents prove that US-funded clean-ups are possible, even as
they underscore the grossly inadequate nature of projects to address
the horrific, multigenerational effects of dioxin. Cancer and other
crushing illnesses plague Vietnam's survivors and their children.

The bad news? History is not simply repeating. Conditions are
worsening as new benchmarks are continually set for how bad things can
get.

As Vietnamese-American writer and professor Viet Thanh Nguyen writes
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forgive the atrocities of the past but "the present is not yet
finished. The present, perhaps, is always unforgivable."

Way forward

When the Senate finally passed the PACT Act, it was in spite of
Republicans who refused to support it—which was seen as retaliation
for Democratic legislation on climate and healthcare. This dysfunction
regarding compensating veterans provides a glimpse into how
antagonistic many US lawmakers would be towards an Iraqi reparations
proposal.

The US must take responsibility for toxins used by the military,
and by for-profit contractors. Yet abandoning civilians abroad is
horrifically consistent with the US approach to environmental racism
domestically. Environmental injustice disproportionately impacts US
minority communities who often live in sacrifice zones.

These realities make for an uphill struggle, though not an impossible
one. The US's recognition of veterans, while ignoring Iraqis, reveals
a segregated outlook on justice. The public needs to stand in
solidarity with victims of the "war on terror". The US government must
expeditiously provide reparations to Iraqis and fulfill international
law obligations.

Anything less is environmental racism, and a dangerously hierarchical
approach to justice.

_Carly A. Krakow is a writer, Scholar in Residence at NYU School of
Law’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, and faculty member
at the NYU Gallatin School._

* Iraq War
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* Toxic burn pits
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* Agent Orange
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