An Indiscriminate Killer

[Ivo Skoric]

Depleted Uranium Kills Friend on Foe Alike

Forget about the idiotic debate about Constitutional amendement on
gay marriages - we need amendement fobidding use of radioactive waste
as conventional ammo!!! However, we might not hear about it from
Attorney General that wrote that Geneva Convention is obsolete.

What's the difference between DU ammunitions and a dirty bomb? If it
is radioactive, it is WMD. Families of dead should sue US DoD (the
Big Defense) in US court system asking for billions of dollars, just
as families of peple who died from lung cancers had sued big tobacco.

DoD should be forced to switch from DU to tungsten (Vanadium) - it
has the same pyrophormic properties minus the alpha radiation, but it
comes at a much higher price tag = which is also good, because it
will make Pentagon less eager to use it wantonly.

UK also uses DU. But UK agreed to comply with Iraqi request to UN to
clean up places where they used DU. US did not yet agree with that
request - although they cleaned up their test sites in the US, they
cleaned up Kuwait, and they have to deal with hundreds of thousands
of their own people suffereing from so-called Gulf War Syndrome...
1/3 of all participants in the first Gulf War have it!

ivo

------- Forwarded message follows -------
WELCOME TO IWPR'S BALKAN CRISIS REPORT, No. 526, November 15, 2004

INVESTIGATION:

BOSNIANS SAY NATO BOMBS BROUGHT “ANGEL OF DEATH”
Many Bosnians blame high cancer rates on NATO’s use of depleted
uranium munitions in 1995, but scientists remain divided over the
alleged link. By Ekrem Tinjak, Faruk Boric and Hugh Griffiths in Han
Pijesak and Sarajevo

****************** VISIT IWPR ON-LINE: www.iwpr.net ***************

INVESTIGATION:

BOSNIANS SAY NATO BOMBS BROUGHT “ANGEL OF DEATH”

Many Bosnians blame high cancer rates on NATO’s use of depleted
uranium munitions in 1995, but scientists remain divided over the
alleged link.

By Ekrem Tinjak, Faruk Boric and Hugh Griffiths in Han Pijesak and
Sarajevo

In the Sarajevo suburb of Hadzici, the local imam, Hazim Effendi
Emso, looks out over an overflowing cemetery. The field in the middle
of this grimy industrial suburb of Sarajevo is dotted with new
graves.

”It is only recently that the number of funerals has increased.
Almost every day, a funeral,” he said sadly.

The birth and death dates etched onto recent gravestones show a
number of those buried here died in middle age. Many are from the
Hadzici district of Grivici.

“A large number of the people from Grivici died of cancer but it was
only this year that we started keeping records on deceased people,”
the Imam continued.

In the remote Romanija mountains, 64 kilometres north of Grivici,
some 1,000 metres above sea level, a different local religious leader
faces the same problem.

Branko, a Serb Orthodox cleric in Han Pijesak, in Republika Srpska,
RS, points to a map on the wall of the head teacher’s office.

"This is the village of Japaga. Around 100 people live here but in
1996 many people died from cancer,” he told IWPR.

“The first was the army base cook, Mrs Ljeposava, who died aged 45,
as did Mrs Todic. Then it was Budimir Bojat, who died aged 60, and
Goran Basteh who died at 45, all from cancer.”

The priest turned from the map to papers on the table. “Every year in
Japaga at least one young man dies of cancer,” he continued. “This is
not normal in such a small village.”

At first glance, the communities of Hadzici and Han Pijesak appear
very different. One is a mainly Muslim settlement in an industrial
zone while the other is a series of Serb mountain villages in one of
Europe’s last unspoilt wildernesses.

But residents of both communities say they suffer from an abnormally
high cancer rate and they believe it is the result of Depleted
Uranium, DU, munitions, which were used during NATO’s September 1995
airstrikes on Bosnia.

DEPLETED URANIUM – A LEGACY OF BOSNIAN WAR

The United Nations describes DU as a by-product of the process used
to enrich natural uranium ore for use in nuclear reactors and
weapons. It is an “unstable, radioactive heavy metal” that emits
ionizing radiation of three types - alpha, beta and gamma.

The United States, together with other NATO member states, uses DU in
armour-piercing shells for both tanks and planes.

NATO aircraft used DU against the Bosnian Serb army in August and
September 1995 to bring a quick end to the vicious three-year
conflict in the former Yugoslav republic.

“The aim was to disrupt the Bosnian Serb forces’ command and control
structure and degrade their fighting capabilities,” a NATO source in
Sarajevo said. ”We were not trying to destroy the army.”

According to NATO, from September 5-11, 1995, their planes fired
5,800 DU shells in the vicinity of Han Pijesak and Hadzici. More than
90 per cent of all such ammunition fired in Bosnia during the
airstrikes fell in just these two locations.

NATO states a total of 2,400 DU rounds were directed against at the
Han Pijesak army base, next to the village of Japaga. A further 1,500
were fired at the Hadzici tank repair facility, close to Grivici.

Scientists of the UN Environmental Programme, UNEP, discovered DU
contamination in air, water and ground samples taken from Hadzici and
Han Pijesak in October 2002.

“We found DU ammunition on the ground and we found DU dust in
buildings that were being turned into shops in Hadzici,” Pekko
Haavisto, chief of the UNEP mission, told IWPR.

“In Hadzici we also found two wells that had small amounts of DU in
the water, eight years after the conflict.

“At Han Pijesak army base, we found DU dust in buildings, tanks and
other equipment and we were concerned that conscripts using this
equipment might be affected.”

However, UNEP did not agree that its findings had confirmed Bosnian
fears that local high rates of ill health were linked to the NATO
bombing campaign.

”The extremely low exposure identified in the mission indicates it is
highly unlikely that DU could be associated with any of the reported
health effects,” said a report by the UN body in 2003.

But locals in Han Pijesak and Hadzici do not agree with this
conclusion. They insist that DU contamination must be responsible for
what they say are abnormally high rates of cancer.

NO ONE TAKES UP DECONTAMINATION MONEY

Although the UNEP recommended in its report that buildings and ground
affected by DU should be decontaminated, an initial investigation by
IWPR showed that little or nothing was happening.

When IWPR visited the RS Han Pijesak army base, targeted years before
by NATO, we found a destroyed T62 tank still rusting close to the
perimeter fence. The sentries who stopped us from going any further
said as far as they knew, the sites affected by DU munitions had not
been decontaminated.

"We walk across that ground often and nobody has ever warned us of
the dangers," one sentry added worriedly.

In the Federation, the complaints are similar. ”We moved back in
1997, two years after the bombing,” Suljo Drina, of Grivici, said.
”But the ground was never decontaminated. Now my father has throat
cancer.”

In 2002, the Federation government allocated 138,000 Bosnian
convertible marks to decontaminate the Hadzici sites, and the
Sarajevo canton authorities   were asked to contribute an additional
123,000 marks, but nothing has yet been done.

The money, it appears, never reached its intended beneficiaries. “We
just don’t have the money,” Mustafa Kovac, head of civil defence
headquarters of Sarajevo canton, added.

“We need equipment to measure radiation, equipment to protect our
staff and we need to provide training for them - but there are no
funds.”

Pekko Haavisto, of UNEP, told IWPR the European Union had offered to
fund the clean-up process but the money had not been taken up
locally.

"The UNEP also told authorities in the Republika Srpska and the
Federation at a training seminar that we could offer on-site training
during any decontamination process,” he said, ”but nobody came
forward with a request.”

INFORMATION BLACK HOLE FUELS PUBLIC FEARS

Bosnian doctors say a lack of publicised research into the health
effects of DU has created a climate of distrust.

“What confuses me is that the UNEP report said radiation levels in
the contaminated areas in Bosnia were harmless,” Dr Zehra Dizdarevic,
Sarajevo’s health minister, told IWPR.

“But on the other hand there were 24 recommendations in the same
report about how the area could be protected from contamination and
cleaned up.

”It is difficult to establish whether somebody is suffering from
cancer because they live near a still-contaminated area. With no
research, nobody can deny this claim, either.

"The UNEP report said that more scientific work was needed and that
all health claims should be investigated. Yet this has not happened.”

Dr Lejla Saracevic, director of the Sarajevo radiology institute,
agrees that lack of reliable information is a serious problem. ”There
has not been any serious research on this issue,” she said.

“Although the Federation government has set up an expert working
group, of which I am a member, there is a lack of funding and general
interest, which means nothing has been done.”

RS doctors largely share these concerns about a lack of information.
“While there has been considerable increase into cancer-related
disease in Han Pijesak since the war, without research as a part of a
serious investigation, I cannot say that this is due to DU,” said Dr
Ljuboje Sapic, a lung disease specialist at the health centre in Han
Pijesak.

“The little research that has been done on DU is still based on
assumption and conjecture,” Sapic added. “We need statistics and hard
facts.”

In fact, all Bosnian health officials interviewed by IWPR said the
lack of statistical data was a major obstacle in establishing cancer
mortality rates in the areas affected by NATO bombing. The dearth of
such statistics means it is difficult to track the rate of the
alleged increase in cancer during the post-war period.

“I can tell you we have had an increase in the number of cancer
patients but we cannot confirm or deny a link to depleted uranium,”
said Dr Bozidar Djokic, director of the health centre in Han Pijesak.
“We have no statistics with which to make a comparison.”

Colleagues in the Federation echo this. “When we say that there is an
increase of sick people, it does not mean anything,” said Dr
Saracevic. “How can we quantify an increase, when we do not know
exactly how many sick people there are now, compared to last year, or
the preceding years?

“We also know the people who lived in Hadzici during the bombardment
are now living in the Serb entity. They should be medically examined
too, if we are to get to the bottom of this.”

After the 1995 Dayton peace agreement awarded Hadzici to the
Federation, most Serbs from there were obliged to resettle in RS.
Many now live in the small town of Bratunac, in eastern Bosnia.

IWPR travelled to Bratunac. Although we could find no official
statistical data to confirm an increase in cancer rates there, local
doctors produced much anecdotal evidence.

According to Dr Svetlana Jovanovic, of Bratunac’s health centre,
since 1996 approximately 650 of the 7,000-odd people who left Hadzici
have died and been buried in the town’s fast-filling cemetery.

Dr Jovanovic claims that after examining the bodies, she believed 40
of these 650 had died from cancer or leukaemia.

“If approximately 7,000 people from Hadzici moved here, we can
estimate that the malignancy rate is unusually high compared to the
overall estimated mortality rate in the country,” Dr Jovanovic said.

“But we don’t have any statistics from elsewhere to make official
comparisons and conclusions.”

What is beyond doubt is that the overall mortality rate in Bratunac
is much higher than it is in Bosnia as a whole. In 2002, the death
rate in the country was 7.9 per thousand. In Bratunac, for the period
1996 to 2003, it was 11.2. More people die in Bratunac than in the
rest of Bosnia. The question is why.

SCEPTICISM OVER DU RISK

The 2003 UNEP report, as we said earlier, would not be drawn on the
issue of DU and cancer. Citing insufficient information, it concluded
that “due to the lack of a proper cancer registry and reporting
systems in Bosnia, claims of an increase in the rates of adverse
health effects stemming from DU could not be substantiated”.

Scientists from the World Health Organisation, WHO, also are
sceptical regarding claims that DU may be a health hazard to Bosnia’s
population.

"From the information we have at the moment we don’t believe
civilians are at risk," said Dr Mike Repacholi, WHO’s Geneva-based
radiation programme coordinator.

He admitted, however, that the research deficit made final
conclusions hard to draw. “We have gaps in knowledge where we need
focused research in order to make a better assessment of health
risk,” he said.

The International Atomic Energy Authority, IAEA, takes much the same
line. Tiberio Cabianca, of the IAEA’s nuclear safety department, was
part of the ten-day UNEP mission to investigate DU in Bosnia in 2002.

”From a radiological point of view, the IAEA does not view DU as a
health threat to the civilian population in Bosnia and Herzegovina,”
he said.

”From our samples, we found that DU munitions had contaminated local
water supplies and we also found DU dust particles suspended in the
air. However, contamination levels were very low and did not
represent an immediate radioactive risk.”

However, UNEP’s Pekko Haavisto qualifies that conclusion, recalling
the considerable time lapse between the period immediately after the
NATO bombing campaign, when contamination would be highest, and the
time of the scientific study.

“When we conducted our ten-day study, our experts could not find any
direct impact on human health. But this was 2002, so we could not say
what the health impact was in the years previously,” he said. “We did
not carry out any tests until eight years after the bombing.

"The UNEP report was based on mainstream scientific thinking on DU
which says that DU has a limited health impact outside the immediate
contamination zone. But there is a group of scientists who think that
lower levels of DU radiation have a greater effect, and they have
criticised our report.”

DISAGREEMENT OVER MEASURING CONTAMINATION

But some scientists say the problem is all in the measuring mechanism

One scientist who believes DU is far more hazardous than has
previously been acknowledged is Dr Chris Busby, of the British
ministry of defence’s oversight committee on depleted uranium.

Dr Busby conducted his own studies in Kosovo, where DU was also used.
“UNEP say small amounts of DU in the air are harmless, however this
is not the case,” he told IWPR, adding that in his view, ”they used
the wrong risk models.”

“The conventional risk model is based on a whole human body or organ
versus one DU particle,” he explained.

“But when a DU particle is inhaled, what happens is that a very small
area of tissue will be exposed. It’s not the whole body we should be
measuring the effect of DU against, but the few affected cells.”

Professor Malcolm Hooper, emeritus professor of medicinal chemistry
at the University of Sunderland, agrees that this is a better way of
measuring the strength of contamination.

“Depleted uranium is a health hazard for the local population because
DU particles are first washed into the water system. Then, when the
sun comes out, light and heat stimulates the particles and they are
suspended in the air once again,” he told IWPR.

“The UNEP report was totally compromised. They went in seven years
too late and the sites they went to had been sanitised - the
destroyed vehicles and much of the visible ammunition had been
removed.”

Finally, Professor Hooper recalled the controversy surrounding former
Italian soldiers who served in both Bosnia and Kosovo.

The first suggestion of a link between DU and cancer followed the
mysterious deaths of a number of young Italian soldiers who had
served there.

Italian TV dubbed it Balkans Syndrome and the foreign press soon
picked up the story, feeding a media frenzy.

Fears over DU in Bosnia first surfaced in December 2000, with the
reported death from cancer of Salvatore Carbonaro, aged only 24.

Carbonaro was the sixth Balkan veteran to die from cancer and
differed from the other five in that he had only served in Bosnia,
not in Kosovo.

Until then, NATO had not even admitted it had used DU in Bosnia. But
in December 2000 Italy’s defence minister, Sergio Mattarella,
admitted that the alliance had, adding that Rome had only just been
informed of this.

Mattarella then ordered an inquiry, under Professor Franco Mandelli,
to investigate the potential association between cancer incidence and
DU.

A member of Mandelli’s team, Dr Martino Grandolfo, told IWPR that it
had found a statistically significant excess of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma -
a form of leukaemia.

“The percentage of cases of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma amongst Italian troops
who served in Bosnia and Kosovo is more than double the amount found
in soldiers who stayed in Italy,” he told IWPR. “But at the moment,
we don’t know why this is.”

The number of Italian Balkans veterans who have since died from
cancer rose to 27 by July 2004 – and campaigners claim that the real
figure is even higher.

“The figure is actually 32 or 33, and the number of veterans living
with cancer is in the hundreds,” Falco Accame, a former naval officer
and military researcher, who is chair of Italy’s Anavafaf veterans’
group, told IWPR.

The public outcry has forced the government to establish a DU
parliamentary commission in the Italian senate to investigate
further.

But Accame told IWPR that in the meantime, aside from the
compensation paid to the dead servicemen’s families, the state had
not formally recognised any link between DU and cancer.

“As was the case with [health concerns over] cigarettes and asbestos,
we cannot be certain that DU is responsible for the deaths of all
these soldiers,” Accame added.

“Instead, what we are dealing with here are probabilities.”

However, this official unwillingness to admit any link between DU and
cancer may be changing.

In a landmark judgment on July 10, 2004, a Rome court ordered the
Italian defence ministry to pay 500,000 euro in compensation to the
family of Stefano Melone, a Balkans veteran who died of cancer in
2001.

The court declared Melone had died “due to exposure to radioactive
and carcinogenic substances” and listed DU among those substances.

The dead soldier’s widow Paola Melone told IWPR that this was “a
historic case”, adding that a civil court had “now acknowledged that
DU is a carcinogenic agent and listed it as one of the possible
causes” of her husband’s death.

“This case has set a precedent and we are organising a conference
here in Italy for other dead serviceman’s families, to help them with
pending cases,” she added.

IN BOSNIA, INEXPLICABLE DEATHS CONTINUE

Back in Bosnia, however, there is no such talk of court cases,
parliamentary commissions, or even of decontamination.

As the debate rages over cause and effect in Italy, locals in Bosnia
say people are continuing to die inexplicably.

Ahmed Fazlic-Ivan, vice-president of the Grivici district, lives 300
metres from the bombed Hadzici tank repair plant.

“We only learned about DU in 2002, when the UN inspectors came here,"
he told IWPR.

“My father died of lung cancer in March of this year. There are 700
people living in Grivici and 56 have died in the last two years, most
of them from cancer or diabetes.

"Here we often say that Azrael, the Angel of Death, has come to
Grivici - and that he takes everyone away.”

Ekrem Tinjak and Faruk Boric are Sarajevo-based journalists. Hugh
Griffiths is an IWPR investigations coordinator.

---------------------------------------------------------
Ivo Skoric
19 Baxter Street
Rutland VT 05701
802.775.7257
ivo at balkansnet.org
balkansnet.org