http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2003/031223-iraq-iron-mountain.htm
Hartford Courant (Connecticut) December 23, 2003
U.S. Attacks Iraq's 'Iron Mountain'
In-Depth Coverage
By Bernard T. Davidow
The scope of the problem struck Marc E. Garlasco soon after he set foot in
Iraq.
He had just arrived in Basra on a fact-finding mission for the nonprofit Human
Rights Watch to investigate the war's impact on civilians. Around dusk,
mine-removal experts took him and his team to a weapons stockpile near al-Maqal
Airfield, where the landscape was punctuated by 12-foot-high mounds of dirt --
13 in all.
Many of the mounds were dug into, exposing side-by-side shipping containers
that had been forced open and their contents spilled: millions of rounds of
anti-aircraft ammunition, thousands of anti-ship rounds, hundreds of air-to-air
helicopter rockets, hundreds of rocket-propelled grenades. The site was awash
in pellets of flammable explosive charges called propellant.
Looters had stripped explosive ship shells of everything brass -- a risky
procedure -- for sale on the Iraq black market.
The derelict stockpile had become a lethal salvage heap, and it was open for
business.
Stockpiles large and small litter Iraq with arms and ammunition, much of it
outdated and dangerously unstable. By one estimate there's as much as 2 billion
pounds of such material, and experts say it will take years to clean up. Scores
of civilians, especially children, have been injured by ordnance left
unattended, according to Human Rights Watch.
Garlasco said he realized on May 2 that the problem of unused and unexploded
ordnance would dwarf any expectations he might have had.
"I was in Kosovo in '99, and this is like nothing I've ever seen," he said last
week from his office in Manhattan. "Sure, there were some ammo depots, but they
were all very well contained ... and guys could get to them and clear them.
This is on a scale that is beyond my wildest nightmares."
Peril To Civilians, Soldiers
Saddam Hussein's capture reignited the search for weapons of mass destruction,
but there are hundreds of thousands of tons of abandoned conventional weapons
and ammunition in Iraq.
A half-year after major combat ended, more ordnance is being found all the
time: mortars, missiles, bullets, bombs, propellant, mines -- some by the
roomful, some by the square mile.
There are major sites, supply points for what was once the world's fourth
largest army. Unsupervised and left to deteriorate, unused and discarded
ordnance can become unstable and explode. Unsecured, weapons can get in the
wrong hands.
But there are many thousands of smaller sites, too.
"The way that Saddam's regime hid the stockpiles of munitions will continue to
be a threat for the local population for many years," Roger Hess, a mine-action
expert who spent part of the year in Iraq, said in a recent e-mail.
"Both the properly constructed ammo supply points and the ones that were
stashed in housing areas and schools have been pilfered for semi-precious
metals. As a result of the pilfering, the munitions and propellant are left in
a very unstable condition and have already contributed to many deaths," Hess
said.
Just how many is anyone's guess. A Human Rights Watch report released earlier
this month blames abandoned munitions for "scores" of civilian casualties and
documents individual cases of civilians maimed, burned or killed.
Many of the injured have been children. They have been burned lighting
propellant and scarred by acid from decomposing missiles left out in the open.
One boy brought a piece of ordnance home to use for cooking fuel, Human Rights
Watch reported. It exploded, killing four family members.
The weapons caches are a continuing threat to soldiers as well.
Hess said the caches supply the resistance with explosives to make homemade
bombs -- improvised explosive devices, in military parlance -- that have been
blamed for dozens of GI deaths, including two U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi
interpreter on Monday.
"Along with that would be the stashes of shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles
and rocket-propelled grenades that are being fired at aircraft," Hess said.
Jack Holt, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said soldiers find
weapons everywhere, "in old hangers, old buildings, new buildings, buildings in
municipal areas, private homes."
"There's very little quality control in the storage of this stuff. It's just
stacked all over the place."
No one knows just how many tons are out there, though estimates range from
650,000 to 1 million.
"That's a heck of a lot of ammo. And the problem is, that to demilitarize it
will be a major undertaking. Years," said John Pike, a military analyst and
founder of GlobalSecurity.org, a website focusing on defense issues. "This is
not landmine removal in Afghanistan or cleaning up unexploded ordnance in
Kosovo," he said. The challenge in Iraq, he said, is much more extensive. A
major decision facing the United States, "is mainly figuring out what you're
going to do with this iron mountain."
Gathering It In
The Army is beginning to move the mountain, but it's a dangerous,
time-consuming operation, and the troops are just starting to make a dent.
Five contractors for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have been in Iraq since
September, said Jack Holt, a corps spokesman.
Parsons Corp. is handling overall logistics of disposal; Tetra Tech FW Inc.,
USA Environmental Inc. and EOD Technology Inc. are doing the actual demolition,
and ZapataEngineering is providing engineering and project management support.
Holt said the Army planned to reach a maximum disposal rate of 600 tons a day
-- 100 tons at each of six disposal sites throughout the country -- but aren't
there yet.
On Dec. 3, for example, the Army took in 660 tons but destroyed only 165.
"They have the capability, but there's always something hanging it up for one
reason or another," Holt said.
Weather is a major factor, but so is gathering the ordnance and moving it to
the collection sites. The Army has to be wary of attacks from insurgents.
"They try to vary their schedule so the transport of this stuff is not easily
detected," Holt said.
If the security situation improves, he said, so will the speed of disposal.
Meanwhile, the Army is setting priorities.
"They are destroying the stuff that is the most dangerous, both to the people
of Iraq and to our soldiers," including smaller munitions that are easy to walk
off with, Holt said.
"The rest of it is being organized and possibly stored and inventoried for a
future determination," Holt said.
Pike, of GlobalSecurity.org, said it was still unclear what the United States
was going to do with it all.
"I don't think they have a clue what they want the Iraqi military to look like
a year from now," he said, or how they're going to equip it. "That has
everything to do with how much they're going to keep around for safe keeping as
opposed to how much they're going to demilitarize on the spot."
For instance, Pike said, if the new military is equipped with U.S. weapons,
even potentially usable Soviet ammunition will be incompatible and essentially
useless.
Garlasco, from Human Rights Watch, said destroying it made the most sense:
"You're talking hundreds of millions of pieces of ammunition that you would
have to go in and determine whether or not it was still viable."
A lot of it is so old, he said, even the Iraqis no longer had the weapons to
use it.
Still, disposal is no easy task and carries dangers all its own. The stockpiles
and caches are full of unstable and obsolete ordnance.
Colin King of Sussex, England, an expert in ordnance disposal, said the
explosives can be dangerous to move around. Then, once you bring them to the
disposal sites, there's the matter of exploding them safely and completely.
"You can't simply doze it into a heap and set it off at the top and expect it
all to go," King said. "You have to make sure it's completely demolished. If
you get it wrong, then a small explosion may kick live munitions out in many
directions."
Then there's size of the undertaking and the wide variety of foreign munitions
that demolition teams may never have faced before.
"The word 'unprecedented' is the one that comes to mind," King said.
.
|
