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Created on Friday, 25 May 2012 16:39
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Written by Kabul Press
NATO’s Gift to Afghanistan - Buried Toxic Waste: Billions needed for environmental cleanup
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The
plan is for NATO to wash its collective hands of their toxic handiwork.
There are estimated to be more than a thousand NATO dumpsites located in
Afghanistan, holding thousands of tons of buried hazardous waste. If
these NATO officials did the same in Germany or the United States they
would be serving long prison terms for their environmental crimes, but
Western officials are conveniently ignoring both national and
international law in Afghanistan.
Buried liquids and other wastes are a
slow-moving and expanding time bomb, and therefore NATO officials are
seeking to scurry home before the full extent of the problem can be
assessed and the costs of cleanup calculated. United Nations officials,
to their discredit, have opted to remain silent, revealing once again
the Western bias of the UN against developing countries.
This author previously served
in the U.S. Air Force and was involved in the Pentagon’s base
environmental cleanup program, now called DERP (the Defense
Environmental Restoration Program). He also later worked for Bechtel
Environmental as a contracts manager.
It is a certainty that thousands
of hazardous chemicals and materials were shipped to Afghanistan in NATO
vehicles, electronics, weapons, explosives, machines and other
equipment, along with millions of gallons of fuel, oil, hydraulic
fluids, solvents, degreasers, de-icing fluids, pesticides, poisons and
herbicides, etc. Carcinogenic used oil would have been dumped into the
soil, as would most other waste. Solid wastes would have been placed
into a landfill or set afire in burn pits. The reports are that anything
that broke and could not be repaired was buried or burned, creating a
stunning soup of highly toxic contaminants at each military location.
That is NATO’s toxic legacy.
In order to address this scandal, we begin with the assumption that there are seven dump site location types:
1. Ten large air bases such as Bagram Air Base, KAF (Kandahar Air Field) etc.
2. Five training bases
3. Thirty FOBs (Forward Operations Bases)
4. 200 large COPs (Combat Outposts)
5. 200 small COPs (Combat Outposts)
6. 200 temporary bases and staging areas that were used at one time or another, and
7. 400 off-base Afghan landfills used by NATO forces or their contractors.
The process begins by creating a
history of each one of these locations. That history must detail every
hazardous or toxic material that was ever transported to the location.
Unless NATO officials could confirm that the same quantity of material
was later removed from the location, it must be assumed that the waste
was released into the soil or otherwise buried at the site.
Next, all
photos, including aerial photos are assembled of the location to help
pinpoint where hazardous materials were used and disposed. Then sampling
needs to take place at all the disposal sites identified and at various
depths, with laboratory analysis for a broad range of pollutants.
Eventually, a three-dimensional map can be created which tracks the
contamination. That map will permit the generation of cleanup plan and a
site restoration plan.
On most NATO bases the entire
internal perimeter area will likely have to be scraped down to at least
one meter, with all the contaminated soil being shipped back to the NATO
country involved. Shipping costs may be in the range of $1,000 - $2,000
per ton.
It is not simply the confines of
the base or outpost that have to be sampled and remediated, but the
perimeter will usually have to be expanded out 2,000 meters on all sides
from the base or outpost. Contractors will need to recover all of the
unexploded ordinance that was fired from the base over the years. That
will require excavation and the use of shaker tables to sift out the
spent bullets and shells.
The unknown is the cleanup of the
burn pits used at each site. The toxic soup contained in each might
extend down hundreds of feet and might require an enormous excavation. A
large combat outpost that operated for several years might require as
much as $100 million to remediate. That would include the costs to
restore the site back to its original condition. Up to 50% of these
costs would pay for the security detail needed to protect the
contractors and the waste haulers. Large bases such as Bagram might
require more than a billion dollars to remediate.
These costs do not include the
ecological price tag. That would involve assessing the long-term damage
to roads, trails, forests, bridges, rivers, streams and historical
areas. It would require that NATO officials identify every location that
suffered an air strike and to send out teams to evaluate the need for
site restoration and for the recovery of unexploded ordinance,
especially cluster bomblets and depleted uranium.
What country in the future would
ever welcome NATO assistance, because NATO will eventually retreat,
leaving behind a polluted landscape as its calling card? The next
country that needs NATO’s help must insist that NATO officials first
deposit $50 billion in a Swiss trust account to pay for the
environmental damage that NATO is sure to cause.
Regarding Afghanistan, its
Government should bar NATO officials from removing any of their
equipment, unless and until each base, outpost, staging area and
landfill is remediated or has adequate funds set aside to clean up 100%
of all pollutants for each location, and restore each site to its
natural condition.
Final Notes:
NATO will never announce the costs of this week’s lavish Chicago summit,
but it is likely that the money spent planning, transporting,
protecting, feeding and pampering 50 heads of states and their
entourages could have fed and housed every Afghan refugee, internally
displaced person and orphan, of which there are millions. These annual
NATO conferences are a stunning waste of money and a reminder of the
West’s shameful colonial past. The pictures beamed to the world were of
wealthy Western overlords, feasting and toasting each other as they
decided the fate of a poor developing country 10,000 miles away.
The conferences, if they have to
be held at all, should always be held in Afghanistan, but that would
never do. While it is acceptable for Western leaders to declare the war
over and the Taliban defeated (as they sit comfortably in Chicago), such
deceit would be exposed under the unforgiving glare of the Afghan sun.