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Peace and Conflict Monitor, The creation of Iraq’s food insecurity 1980-2008

The creation of Iraq’s food insecurity 1980-2008
Ross Ryan  Peace & Conflict Monitor October 2008 the alluvial plain was degraded during the first Gulf War, which was a response to Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, and entailed a counter-invasion into Iraq by a UN force led by the US military (Tripp 2002). It was into these fertile agricultural lands, whose harvests sustain the lives of millions of people, that the UN force, chiefly the US and British contingents, dropped thousands of tons of weaponry, including explosives cased in depleted uranium (Fisk 2000). According to one source, the US military “fired more than one million rounds of munitions tipped with radioactive depleted uranium” into the alluvial plain (Arnove 2000). In addition to the immediate environmental and agricultural costs, there is a strong possibility that the use of these weapons can be related to the fourfold increase of cancer rates which have subsequently been observed in the area (UNICEF 1999).

Peace and Conflict Monitor, The creation of Iraq’s food insecurity 1980-2008

Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium

October 11, 2008 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | weapons and war