Environment a casualty of NATO bombing Wednesday, April 21, 1999
By Stephen Schowengerdt
NATO aerial photograph captures destruction at Pristina fuel depot.It will take Mother Earth a long time to heal herself in the Balkans, in some cases thousands of years after the NATO bombs stop falling, according to reports filtering out of the war-torn area.
The environment has always been a casualty of war and this NATO action in Kosovo and Yugoslavia may be one of the most devastating. Many reports coming out of the battlefields are obviously tainted by the propaganda and rhetoric of the side doing the reporting, but the results of the month-long, day-in-day-out bombing cannot be denied.
A 240-kilogram heavy bomb makes a crater that is 8 meters in diameter and 4 meters deep, according to Vaskrsija Janjic, a member of the Serbian Academy. A single bombing run creates a crater field that is several tens of hectares in size, he said, and the destruction caused by the NATO bombing to date is enormous.
There are no official figures, but according to a CNN report, estimates by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments are that in the first 15 days of bombing there were 3,400 air sorties and 6,000 sorties by guided munitions. When a heavy bomb goes off it creates temperatures of around 3,000 degrees Celsius, destroys all flora and fauna and turns the lower layers of soil into a useless area that can take anywhere from 1,500 to 7,400 years to regenerate itself, writes Janjic in a report on the ecological destruction in the Balkans.
Tomahawk cruise missile is launched from the USS Phillipine Seae early in the Balkans conflict.The fact that A-10 "Warthog" jets are being used against targets in Kosovo indicates that depleted-uranium weapons are also being used, according to the International Action Center, a group that opposes the use of such weapons.
"DU is used in alloy form in shells to make them penetrate targets better," said John Catalinotto, a spokesperson from the Depleted Uranium Education Project of the International Action Center. It is extremely dense, 1.7 times as dense as lead. "As the shell hits its target, it burns and releases uranium oxide into the air. The poisonous and radioactive uranium is most dangerous when inhaled into the body, where it will release radiation during the life of the person who inhaled it."
The use of Warthogs with DU shells threatens to make a nuclear wasteland of Kosovo," said Sara Flounders, co-director of the International Action Center. The fear of immediate, life-threatening pollution surfaced April 15 after the bombing of a petro-chemical complex 10 miles northeast of Belgrade in Pancevo. The complex contained a plastics factory and an ammonia production unit. The burning complex released toxics into the atmosphere such as chlorine, ethylene dichloride and vinyl chloride monomer. Earlier attacks on the Galenika pharmaceuticals plant northeast of Belgrade and a chemical depot near Sremicica also released toxic clouds that spurred local authorities to warn residents to stay inside and place wet towels over their faces.
Another important target of the NATO bombers has been Yugoslavia's fuel storage and production plants.
"When naphtha and its derivatives burn, more than a hundred toxic chemical compounds that pollute water, air and soil are released," according to Luka Radoja, a doctor of agronomy and a member of the Programme Council of the New Green Party of Yugoslavia.
"Just one liter of spilt naphtha and its derivatives can pollute 1 million liters of water," he said. "The main wells of our rivers are in Kosovo where toxic and radioactive bombs were used and fuel storages were blown up."