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Toxic Saturation and Health Devastation in Iraq: The Indelible Damage of War
Abstract by Carly Krakow On Session XI-08  (Climate, Water, and Ecology)

On Sunday, December 4 at 8:30 am

2022 Annual Meeting

Abstract
Nineteen years since the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, and thirty-two years since the beginning of the 1990–91 Gulf War, legislation has been introduced in US Congress that would remove the “burden of proof” to “establish a direct connection” between certain health conditions and exposure to toxins in numerous overseas conflicts for US military veterans seeking benefits from the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Veterans who were deployed to Iraq as part of either the “Global War on Terror” or Gulf War would become eligible for VA benefits for listed diseases. An obvious—though neglected—question lingers: If the dangers of wartime toxic exposure for US veterans who were deployed to Iraq are finally being acknowledged, what about Iraqi civilians, for whom toxic exposure was not part of temporary deployment overseas, but rather an ongoing and tormenting daily reality? Toxic contaminants that were introduced to Iraq by the US military include burn pits and depleted uranium (DU) weapons. The severity of toxic living in Iraq renders an existing framework of toxic exposure insufficient. Exposure suggests forced contact with toxic substances. In Iraq, people are not merely exposed but are rather drenched or saturated for years in inescapable conditions of confinement in which their health is constantly under siege. Using a concept I identify as “toxic saturation,” in this paper I demonstrate the urgent need for the US government to address ongoing environmental injustice in Iraq. Now that reform is underway for the compensation of US veterans, what about cleanup and reparations for Iraqi civilians? What about justice for Iraqis, who have been subjected to ceaseless toxic saturation with no escape? My research draws from interviews with experts including Sinan Antoon, Iraqi novelist and scholar; Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, environmental toxicologist and co-author of a groundbreaking study about birth defects in Iraqi children; and others. Works by authors including Omar Dewachi, Kali Rubaii, Hannah Arendt, Antony Anghie, Aimé Césaire, Rachel Carson, and Helen Caldicott are analyzed. I also address recent developments in international law, including the Nuclear Weapons Treaty, entered into force in 2021, in the context of the argument that the Gulf War was “the second nuclear war” in history after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Caldicott 1999). I look at toxic saturation’s historical impacts on civilians in Vietnam and Japan, analyzing the pattern of the US government’s lack of adequate reparations for victims of war toxicity.
Discipline
Law
Geographic Area
Iraq
Sub Area
None