Mainstream
media outlets are systematically disregarding the hazardous health
impacts of widespread U.S. military burn pits on civilians in Iraq and
Afghanistan, thereby playing a direct role in "legitimating the
environmental injustices of war," a harrowing new
scholarly report concludes.
"During
the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the US Department of Defense burned the
majority of its solid waste in open-air pits or trenches, producing
large amounts of potentially hazardous emissions," noted Eric Bonds,
assistant professor of sociology at University of Mary Washington, in
his investigation, published in the journal
Environmental Politics.
"It
is well known that the uncontrolled burning of plastics, Styrofoam,
electronics, unexploded weapons, and other manufactured and highly
processed materials releases harmful toxins and particulate matter into
the air," Bonds continued.
"This echoes the
other history of Agent Orange when the U.S. government turned its back
on the people of Vietnam and walked away, cleaning up just a handful of
contaminated places but never acknowledging harm done to Vietnamese
civilians or compensating them for their suffering."
—Eric Bonds, University of Mary Washington
However,
when he surveyed major U.S. newspaper stories from 2007 to 2014, Bonds
found that discussions of the negative health impacts of these burn pits
overwhelmingly focused on the plight faced by U.S. military service
members and veterans—but the actual civilians nearby were almost
entirely missing from the picture.
"The search produced 49
distinct stories. While five of these stories made passing reference to
civilian impacts, and one story mentioned potential impacts to civilians
on par with impacts to soldiers, the vast majority of news stories made
no mention that Iraqi and Afghan civilians might also have been harmed
by the U.S. military's burning of waste," he wrote.
What's more,
Bonds noted, "When journalists describe the pollution itself, how it
billowed over military bases and covered living quarters with ash and
soot, such accounts never mention that this pollution would not have
stopped at the cement barricades and concertina wire at base boundaries,
but must have also settled over civilians' homes and the surrounding
landscapes."
From Balad air base in
Iraq to Shindad base in Afghanistan, these sites are in fact located in
close proximity to "farmsteads, townships, cities, cropland, orchards,
and rivers."
As
Common Dreams previously reported, Dr. Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, independent environmental toxicologist based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has
identified a correlation between burn pits and spikes in birth defects among Iraqi communities nearby.
According
to Bonds, by failing to tell the stories of the Iraqi and Afghan people
impacted, the media has a hand in the injustices committed against
them.
"This echoes the other history of Agent Orange when the U.S.
government turned its back on the people of Vietnam and walked away,
cleaning up just a handful of contaminated places but never
acknowledging harm done to Vietnamese civilians or compensating them for
their suffering," Bonds told
Common Dreams.
As in
Vietnam, people in Iraq and Afghanistan are demanding acknowledgment
of—and reparations for—the harm done by U.S. burn pits and toxic
munitions.
Iraqi civil society groups including the Organization
of Women's Freedom in Iraq and the Federation of Workers Councils and
Unions in Iraq
have organized
within their communities and levied international demands for the U.S.
to clean up its burn pits, depleted uranium, white phosphorous, and
other toxic waste which is creating an ongoing public health crisis in
Iraq.
