Bombed back to the stone age

Afghanistan covers an area of about 647,500 sq km. The country does not have any coastline. The terrain is a rugged one, comprising largely mountainous regions, with plains being found in the north and southwest of the country. Tremendous extremes mark its climate — arid to semi-arid conditions with cold winters and hot summers.

US forces have deployed different kinds of munitions. The Northern Alliance ground forces, supporting aerial bombing, used conventional weapons. In this war, F-18 strike aircraft had used Tomahawk cruise missiles as well as 500-pound laser-guided bombs. B-52 and F-15 aircraft used munitions like GUB 16 and GUB 28, or laser-guided munitions weighing 1,000 and 4,700 pounds.

All these munitions are capable of causing deaths due to blasts, fragmentation and heat. It is likely that some of the bombs and Cruise missile warheads could have contained depleted uranium (DU), a dense and heavy metal used to pierce armour. DU is both poisonous and radioactive.

On impact, such weapons burn up to leave solid uranium shrapnel and a fine dust called uranium oxide. It has been already proved by the WHO that this dust can be dispersed over a wide area affecting the population either through inhalation or by contaminating food and water supplies. This radiation exposure may lead to leukemia in the long term.

All this firepower put together would have had a major impact on Afghanistan’s terrestrial ecosystem. According to experts, an explosion of a 240-kg bomb creates a crater 4 m deep and up to 50 sq m in area.

While cities like Kabul, Kandhar, Mazar-e-Sharif have borne the brunt of much of this bombing, the hilly areas have suffered the most, since they were suspected of harbouring the Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. This destruction of the fertile layers of soil would mean the destruction of associated flora and fauna.

The process of restoring soil fertility and the natural biochemical circles may now take several thousands of years.

Landmines constitute a highly toxic form of pollution and represent a significant risk to human health. In order to stop the advance of US marines, the Taliban had laid mines at several places before fleeing. These mines have rendered some tracts of agriculture land unusable.

Then there is the human dimension. The presence of a large number of Afghan refugees has had a significant impact on the demographics of neighboring countries like Pakistan. This influx of refugees will have profound social consequences in the years to come. In any case, increases in the population of desert areas has always had an impact on the environment.

The US campaign against terrorism has eventually ended up in destroying the environmental balance of Central Asia in general and Afghanistan in particular. Ironically, this too could be considered a form of terrorism, caused by those who seek to mount a ‘war against terror’.

History has proved, time and again, that any form of war proves catastrophic from the ecological standpoint and the Afghanistan conflict was no different.

There can be no denying that the ecological landscape of Afghanistan has been irrevocably damaged because of the destruction unleashed by the US bombing. The most tragic aspect of it is that it may take generations for the pre-war social balance to get restored and thousands of years for the terrain to overcome the damage inflicted upon it.

The writer is a defence analyst. The views expressed here are his own