Boys play in front of burning oilfields in Qayyara, south of Mosul, Iraq, 2016.

© Goran Tomasevic/Reuters
Boys play in front of burning oilfields in Qayyara, s of Mosul, Iraq, 2016.

In Republic of iraq, nativity defects are a visible apotheosis of the indelible toxic legacy of war for future generations and the environs. The Falluja Infirmary's nativity defects Facebook page, where medical staff catalogue cases, reveals the hitting multifariousness and quantity of built anomalies.[i] Babies in Falluja are born with hydrocephaly, cleft palates, tumors, elongated heads, overgrown limbs, short limbs and malformed ears, noses and spines.

The accompanying example reports are cursory and often incorporate prognoses like "incompatible with life" or "stillborn." The reproductive history of the mother is sometimes included as well. While most of these children practice non survive, some live for weeks, months or years, ofttimes in hurting and with grave disabilities.

Samira Alaani, a pediatrician at the Falluja General Infirmary, is among several doctors who started noticing a wide range of uncommon nascency defects among the infants delivered after the start of the US occupation in 2003. Not just were birth defects high in number, they were also new and unusual in kind. Alaani and her colleagues were amid the first to sound international alarm by publishing reports documenting the high rate of birth defects observed in hospitals in Falluja and Basra. In 2013, Alaani stated in an interview with the BBC:

We began logging these cases in October 2009 and we have determined that 144 babies are built-in with a deformity for every 1000 live births. Nosotros believe it has to exist related to contamination acquired past the fighting in our metropolis, fifty-fifty at present, nearly 10 years afterwards. It is non unique to Falluja; hospitals throughout the Anbar Governorate and many other regions of Iraq are recording spiraling increases.[2]

The Falluja Hospital's birth defects Facebook page, initiated in 2011, posts these cases for a reason. As an annal, the bodies of children become evidence of a much broader story about the toxic legacy of state of war in Iraq. The country has suffered sequent decades of state of war, bombing campaigns, fire pits, sanctions and other military interventions that not just shatter the public infrastructures necessary for wellness and well being, but also trigger cascades of ecology deposition.

War Ecologies

Environments that comport the scars of political violence, and whose preservation in some form serves as testimony to that violation, are called evidentiary ecologies.[3] Nascency defects in Iraq are part of an evidentiary environmental of war brought to political and moral attention through the practices of archiving and documenting.

When Iraqi scholars and doctors catalogue incidences of nascence defects and note that their rates exceed that of Hiroshima, or when epidemiologists conduct studies to mark where, when and how a population experiences birth defects, they highlight the connections between militarism and public health, global inequalities and environmental racism.[iv] Majid, a dr. who treats children with heart defects in Falluja, said in an interview, "When people see nativity defects, there is no avoiding the issue. Nativity defects say, 'Something is wrong here,' in a way that other medical problems do not."[5]

Applied to the Centre East, the term ecologies of state of war often refers to environments transformed by decades of intensive militarism. In Lebanon, Republic of iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Syria, such ecologies are not always adventitious side effects of military machine operations merely are instead cardinal components of military strategy.[6] For example, Iraqi president Saddam Hussein drained the marshes of southern Iraq as a straight counterinsurgency tactic to suppress the Marsh Arabs, whom he defendant of disloyalty during the Iran-Iraq state of war (1980 -1988).[seven] When the Iraqi marshes were reflooded in the name of ecological restoration after 2003, it was part of a broader restructuring of Iraq'due south surround and economy, alongside other mechanisms of spatial control like the use of T-walls (portable physical walls).[8]

Across deliberate spatial and social transformations, chemical pollution also shapes Iraq'southward war ecologies. While living and working with internally displaced farming families from Anbar province in 2022 and 2022 I witnessed plant crops and livestock with malformed parts or tumorous growth. Many farmers kept photographs and told stories of destroyed irrigation systems, contaminated water and hypersalinized soil. Infertility, cancers and birth defects prevented them from having and raising good for you children. They described nascence defects equally just i consequence of the environmental damage they witnessed in all aspects of their lives.

Many Iraqis I spoke to described these indelible environmental maladies every bit intentional. Ahmed, the male parent of a child who died within a few hours of her birth from multiple birth defects, said:

"The Americans wanted this. If they didn't, they would accept cleaned up from their wars. They starved usa during the sanctions; at present they are poisoning us."

[9] When Ahmed speaks of being poisoned, he refers to both the enduring life of toxic state of war materials embedded and abandoned in Iraq'southward landscape and the destruction of the human resources needed to cope with public health crises.

United states military intervention heavily damaged Iraqi infrastructure and ecologies that sustain human survival, especially during the initial invasion in 2003 but as well afterwards during the occupation (2004-2011). Adhering to a "stupor and awe" strategy, the United States launched 800 prowl missiles within the first 48 hours of the invasion in March 2003 — more than double the number of missiles launched in the unabridged Gulf State of war.[x] Betwixt 2002 and 2005 alone, the The states armed forces expended six billion bullets — roughly 200,000-300,000 bullets per individual killed in Republic of iraq.[11] This number of shells, total of pb and mercury, does not include larger ordinances or other metallic remnants from subsequently 2005, or from previous wars: the Islamic republic of iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), the First Gulf War (1990-1991), the sanctions era (1991-2003) and the 2003 occupation's instigation of a further decade of militia warfare. The virtually recent armed forces intervention in Iraq was accompanied past unprecedented waste product abandonment and waste material burning: discarded vehicles, backlog weapons, discarded article of clothing and much more than were all left in Iraq'southward country, water or air.

Given the onslaught of armed services toxic dumping in Iraq, from spent bombs and bullets to base-making, fire pits and junkyards, it is no surprise that widespread cancers and congenital anomalies, along with other major wellness problems in the civilian population, grow. The medical resources to cope with cancers and birth defects, however, are also impacted by the enduring furnishings of total state of war — the targeting of an entire population and their environment, rather than military installations alone. Hospitals in Falluja, for instance, have been targeted repeatedly by multiple entities, including past the United States in 2008 and by the Iraqi regime in 2022 and 2015.[12] Additionally, medical doctors remain in short supply, since many were assassinated by militias or displaced past militia threats to their families: Past 2008, only 9,000 doctors were living in Iraq.[thirteen]

Toxic Legacies

Despite specific epidemiological attempts to pin down the causes of birth defects in Iraq, there is non only ane. Studies based in Falluja, which sustained extensive impairment during US assaults betwixt 2004 and 2008, show a loftier rate of congenital malformations (15 pct of all births), higher than expected rates of cancer and infant death and an anomalous ratio of males to females in children under age five. In 2010, Chris Busby, a British scientist studying the health effects of radiation, released a study that showed a 12-fold increment in babyhood cancer in Falluja since the 2004 attacks.[xiv]

Another study found that newborns with birth defects carried a level of lead three times higher, and a level of mercury six times college, than average children in Islamic republic of iran, who have traces of lead and mercury merely slightly college than in European countries.[15] In the Iraqi village of Hawija, levels of magnesium and titanium in children with birth defects were nearly double the average of their counterparts in Iran, while alarmingly loftier levels of cadmium and arsenic were found in samples taken from children with symptoms resembling cognitive palsy. These metals tin account for a large number of neurological problems and underdevelopment in fetuses by causing folate depletion and subsequent underdevelopment of vital tissues.[16]

Depleted uranium is 1 of the nigh widely discussed contaminants in relation to birth defects. The World Health System released a written report in 2003 entitled "Potential Bear upon of Disharmonize on Health in Iraq," which suggested that depleted uranium might be related to reports of increased cancers, birth defects, reproductive wellness problems and renal diseases in the Iraqi population since 2003.

International activists accused the Usa Section of Defense of negligence for using a weapon in Iraq that distributes toxic waste to where civilians alive, grow food, and draw water. Studies of American veterans hit by friendly fire with depleted uranium shrapnel have too demonstrated links betwixt uranium and perturbations in reproductive hormones, including infertility.[17]

Additionally, US bases in Iraq used fire pits to incinerate everything from computers to tires in large open-air pits that burned 24-hour interval and night for years. They released high levels of dioxin and innumerable other toxins that are known to cause health problems, from nativity defects to neurological issues.

Burning used uniforms into a burn pit at Balad Air Base

© Department of Defense photo by Senior Airman Julianne Showalter/US Air Force
A US Air Strength equipment manager tosses used uniform items into a burn pit at Balad Air Base, Iraq, 2008.

Burn pits are also linked to US veteran illnesses and sit at the root of campaigns for veteran healthcare.[18] For Iraqis living most burn pits, serious consequences for their long-term and intergenerational health continue to emerge. For instance, some Iraqi babies born most Tallil Air Base of operations were found to have neurological problems, congenital heart disease, paralyzed or missing limbs and elevated thorium in their bodies. The closer to the base, the higher their levels.[xix]

Ecologies of war are not all the same, nor are their implications. Specific environmental conditions shape exposure to state of war toxins. For instance, dust storms in Republic of iraq are mutual, as is extreme high heat, which increases the distribution of toxins. A history of sanctions and long-term war shapes the way Iraq's medical community is equipped to document and respond to a public health crisis.[20] Iraq'south environment has been transformed past many decades of Western military intervention, from British colonialism to US bombing; from sanctions to counterinsurgency and militia warfare.

The Body Count

Over time, bodily harm becomes more difficult to accredit directly to war, even equally the actual harm may increase. Birth defects are potent, visible indicators of what so many Iraqi people face among broader toxic atmospheric condition of daily survival. About anybody I met in Republic of iraq identified the high prevalence of birth defects as a post-2003 phenomenon directly related to war. Many women described having salubrious children earlier 2003, and either many miscarriages or children with severe nascence defects later. It was not uncommon for a family unit to line up their children by age and so I could witness the visible line of before-and-after the The states invasion.

In my interview with Majid, I learned that many doctors are now advising women with a birth history of multiple nascency defects to merely stop conceiving children. In a country where terminating pregnancies remains illegal, and where resources for research, testing and treatment are limited, women can face a lifetime of perpetual physical and emotional turmoil as they repeatedly behave and conduct children who cannot survive. Some of the women I lived and worked with from Anbar province felt strongly that precluding the possibility of reproduction was bear witness of genocidal intentions past the The states. Dina, who experienced several miscarriages, expressed the desire to have her miscarried children counted among those who died from war. "Just of form," she noted, sarcastically mimicking an American man's vox, "The US does not keep a body count!"[21]

Equally Omar Dewachi writes, the toxic legacies of militarism telephone call u.s.a. to "expand our analytical perspectives to rethink what an archive of war history would include."[22] Certainly, in Republic of iraq, an annal of war includes the bodies of children whose forms and futures are irretrievably shaped by Republic of iraq'southward war ecology.

Kali Rubaii is an banana professor of anthropology at Purdue University.

References

[1] Fallujah Hospital birth defects Facebook page: https://world wide web.facebook.com/fallujahhospital2012/

[two] BBC, "Doctors in Basra Report Rising in Nascence Defects," March 21, 2013.

[3] Kristina Lyons, "Chemical Warfare in Colombia, Evidentiary Ecologies and Senti-Actuando Practices of Justice," Social Studies of Science, 48/3 (2018).

[4] Patrick Cockburn, "Toxic Legacy of US Assail on Falluja 'Worse than Hiroshima,'" The Independent, July 24, 2010.

[v] Majd is a pseudonym. Interview by the author, Republic of iraq, spring 2015.

[6] Vasiliki Touhouliotis, "Weak Seed and a Poisoned State: Slow Violence and the Toxic Infrastructures of War in South Lebanese republic," Environmental Humanities 10/1 (May 1, 2018). Drake Logan, "Toxic Violence: The Politics of Militarized Toxicity in Republic of iraq and Afghanistan," Annals of the Association of American Geographers 101/three (2011). Andre Vltchek, "The Ecology of War: Imperial Power, Permanent Conflict and Disposable Humans," Ecologist, Apr 28, 2017.

[7] Ariel Ahram, "Development, Counterinsurgency, and the Destruction of the Iraqi Marshes," International Journal of Heart Due east Studies 47/3 (August 2015).

[8] Kali Rubaii, "Tripartheid: How Sectarianism Became Internal to Being in Anbar, Iraq," Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 42/1 (April 11, 2019).

[ix] Ahmed is a pseudonym. Participant observation past the writer in Republic of iraq, spring 2015.

[10] Catherine Lutz and Andrea Mazzarino, eds. War and Health: The Medical Consequences of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (New York: NYU Press, 2019).

[11] Andrew Buncombe, "U.s.a. Forced to Import Bullets from State of israel as Troops Apply 250,000 for Every Rebel Killed," Independent, January 10, 2011.

[12] Ross Caputi, Richard Hill, Donna Mulhearn, The Sacking of Fallujah: A People's History (Amhearst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2019). Homo Rights Watch, "Iraq: Government Attacking Fallujah Infirmary," May 27, 2014.

[thirteen] Merrill Vocalizer and Derrick Hodge, The War Machine and Global Health: A Disquisitional Medical Anthropological Examination of the Human Costs of Armed Conflict and the International Violence Manufacture (Rowman and Littlefield, 2010) p. 138. Sadeer Al-Kindi, "Violence Against Doctors in Iraq," The Lancet, Sept thirteen, 2014.

[14] Chris Busby, et al. "Cancer, Baby Mortality and Nativity Sex-Ratio in Falluja, Republic of iraq 2005-2009," International Journal of Environmental Research: Public Health 7 (2010).

[15] Al-Sabbak, 1000. et al. "Metallic Contamination and the Epidemic of Congenital Birth Defects in Iraqi Cities," Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology 89 (2012).

[16] Mozghan Savabieasfahani, "Environmental Poisoning of Iraq: Why Academics Must Speak Out," Turner Auditorium, University of Washington, October 24, 2014.

[17] Patricia Doyle, et al. "Reproductive Health of Gulf War Veterans," Philosophical Transactions of the Purple Society of London, Serial B, Biological Sciences 361(1468) March 24, 2006.

[18] Kenneth LacLeish and Zoe Wool, "US War machine Burn Pits and the Politics of Health," Medical Anthropology Quarterly (Baronial 1, 2018).

[19] Mozghan Savabieasfahani, et al. "Living About an Active U.s.a. Military Base in Iraq is Associated with Significantly Higher Hair Thorium and Increased Likelihood of Congenital Anomalies in Infants and Children," Ecology Pollution 256 (Jan 2020).

[20] Joy Gordon, "The Indelible Lessons of the Iraq Sanctions," Middle East Report 294 (Leap 2020).

[21] Dina is a pseudonym. Interview past the author, Iraq, 2014.

[22] Omar Dewachi, "Iraqibacter and the Pathologies of Intervention," Middle Eastward Report 290 (Leap 2019).