The Mess NATO Left Behind - the environmental damages of the NATO-Yugoslavia Conflict, 1999 - Column

Progressive, The, August, 1999 by Bill Mesler

Unexploded cluster bombs and depleted uranium shells litter Yugoslavia's landscape

They are about the size of a paper-towel holder, bright yellow with orange lettering. A little white plastic umbrella is attached to one end, giving it a harmless, toy-like appearance. But these little items are far from innocuous. They are bomblets from cluster bombs--NATO's deadliest anti-personnel weapon--left behind by the U.S. Air Force. During a war that generated so much rhetoric about precision-guided smart bombs, the cluster bomb is the ultimate "dumb bomb." Many don't explode on impact. Like land mines, the unexploded bomblets that break off a cluster bomb can continue to kill for years, posing a particular danger to curious children. NATO planes dropped thousands of them over Kosovo, where they now dot the landscape.

Unexploded bomblets from cluster bombs are just one of the many hazards left behind by NATO's two-month air war against Yugoslavia. Signing a peace agreement may have ended the fighting, but cleaning up the dangerous debris could take years. The landscape is littered with remnants of anti-tank shells made of radioactive depleted uranium and other unexploded ordnance. Italian fisherman have even been pulling larger NATO bombs out of their nets in the Adriatic Sea, where NATO planes returning to bases in Aviano, Italy, dropped unused payloads.

NATO's decision to target chemical plants, oil refineries, and energy transformer stations could have long-term consequences for civilians in the region. Dangerous chemical and oil spills may already have contaminated the Danube, which flows through Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and Moldova. And a recent environmental study of the largely rural region of northern Greece that borders Yugoslavia has found dioxin levels as high as one would find in a heavily industrialized city.

Environmental groups are trying to assess the hazards and come up with a plan of action. On June 16, the United Nations Environment Program and the United Nations Committee on Human Settlement convened a special meeting of international environmental groups, including Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, and the Green Cross. A special Balkans Task Force was established under the leadership of former Finnish environment minister Pekka Haavisto to address the region's environmental problems. "There were concerns expressed at the meeting about Serbia and Kosovo as well as the transboundary environmental impact," says Greenpeace spokesperson Stephanie Mills. "We want to take a look at some of the war's toxic effects, such as the bombing of chemical factories and transformer stations and the use of depleted uranium weapons." The problem, says Mills, is that there is little real information on the extent of the impact at this point. Exaggerated propaganda by Yugoslav authorities and total denial by NATO have made it difficult to accurately assess the dangers posed by bombed chemical and oil facilities. Western military planners failed to take the most basic steps to mitigate hazards to civilians.

NATO secrecy could have fatal consequences. Especially when it comes to the immediate environmental danger in postwar Kosovo: cluster bombs. The most common cluster bomb used by the United States, the CBU-87, disperses its 202 submunitions over an area larger than a football field. While the manufacturer claims that these bomblets have a dud rate of between 2 and 5 percent, a report by Human Rights Watch stated that up to 23 percent of the weapons have failed to explode on impact in testing. A conservative estimate is that about ten unexploded submunitions are left behind by every CBU-87 used. The duds then become, in essence, above-ground land mines, able to detonate at the slightest touch, even after extended periods of time. On June 22, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon revealed that U.S. forces alone dropped 1,100 cluster bombs on Yugoslavia. That means roughly 11,000 live bomblets remain, in addition to an unknown number dropped by British aircraft.

On June 23, the Associated Press reported that the first allied fatalities in Kosovo--two soldiers killed by an explosion at a schoolhouse in Negrovce, a village twenty miles from Pristina--were victims of a NATO cluster bomb, not a Serb booby trap, as originally thought.

According to a report by the Congressional General Accounting Office, at least twenty-five U.S. soldiers were killed after the Gulf War by unexploded cluster bomb submunitions. "When you're walking through the desert and you encounter one of these things, even at a distance of fifty or sixty yards away, well, it's a horrific feeling," says Kevin Kavanaugh, a research fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, who served as an Army officer during the Gulf War. "You know that thing can go off at any time, that it is more likely to detonate than other types of ammunition. And, just like that, you could be dead." The risks are far greater for civilians, especially children. "Kids look at this," says Kavanaugh, "and they just can't see the danger." Although there is no full accounting of civilian deaths due to the use of cluster bombs in the Gulf region, Human Rights Watch has estimated 1.2 to 1.5 million unexploded submunitions were left behind. There is little doubt that the weapons used in the Gulf War continue to take innocent lives and will for the foreseeable future.