Lieutenant-General Igor Kirillov, Chief of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense Forces of the Russian Armed Forces, held a briefing on the consequences of the supply of depleted uranium ammunition to Ukraine. He claims that the use of such munitions during the war in Iraq has already led to disaster:
“According to the Iraqi government, in 2005 the incidence of cancer in the country as a result of the use of depleted uranium munitions increased from 40 to 1,600 cases per 100,000 population. In this regard, Baghdad filed a formal claim with the International Court of Arbitration in Stockholm on December 26, 2020 against Washington, demanding compensation for the damage caused.”
This statement is illustrated by infographics, where, however, the source of information is not indicated.
Little is known about Iraq's lawsuit against the United States, there was only information about the intention to file it. In January 2021, Argumenty Nedeli, citing the Iraqi news agency Al Maallomah, reported that the lawsuit was filed by Hatif Al-Rikabi, adviser to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Iraqi Parliament. The Al Maallomah website is unavailable because its domain was confiscated in June 2021 by the US government, which recognized it as a disinformation resource associated with Iran.
But you can find a source of information about the increase in the incidence of cancer in Iraq. This is a posting by Lebanese-American journalist Dahr Jamail on the Al Jazeera website:
“Contamination from depleted uranium munitions and other war-related contamination is believed to be causing a sharp increase in birth defects, cancers and other illnesses across much of Iraq. <…>
Iraqi government official statistics show that prior to the outbreak of the First Gulf War in 1991, the cancer rate in Iraq was 40 per 100,000 people. By 1995 it had increased to 800 people per 100,000 people, and by 2005 it had doubled to at least 1,600 people per 100,000 people. Current estimates show that the upward trend continues.”
Jamail, a Middle East correspondent for the American left-wing publication Truthout , worked in Iraq during the war and is known for being highly critical of US actions. In particular, in December 2016, he called the head of the Central Command during the war, James Mattis (at the time of publication – a candidate for the post of Secretary of Defense in the future Donald Trump administration) a war criminal. There is no link to the source of statistical data in Jamail's publication.
But Iraqi scientists give somewhat different data. In March 2022, in the collection "Cancer in the Arab World" (published by the Burjeel Cancer Institute from the UAE), an article by Professor Nada Al-Alwan from the National Center for Cancer Research at the University of Baghdad "General Cancer Care in Iraq" was published. It contains information about the incidence of cancer in the country, and if Jamail's data for 1998 are close to the truth, then the further increase in the incidence is much less sharp.
The number of cancer cases has increased not by 40 times, according to Jamail, and after him by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, but by about half, and, according to the Middle East international publication Al Monitor , in June 2021, the head of the Department of the Environment of Southern Iraq, Walid Hamid, explained this as follows:
“MoH statistics show that there are 2,000 cases of cancer every year due to oil flaring in Basra, which releases toxic gases into the air.”
However, as the same Al Monitor writes, the Iraqi Oil Ministry claims that the connection between environmental pollution as a result of oil production and the spread of malignant neoplasms has not been proven. But Iraqi MP Ali al-Budairi said his fieldwork "confirms an increase in cancer rates in the oil provinces, primarily in Basra province," although he "has no evidence that oil flares are the cause."
Another graph, shown by Kirillov, shows a sharp increase in the number of birth defects in Iraq since 1998. It is illustrated with photographs of infants with birth defects so frightening that we hesitate to include them here.
But a paper published in 2012 by a group of Iraqi scientists, Birth Defects in Iraq and the Potential for Environmental Exposure: An Overview, states :
“In the post-Gulf War period in 1991, an increase in the prevalence of birth defects is said to have been recorded in Iraq, which was largely due to exposure to the depleted uranium used during the war. This stimulated further research on this particular topic. <…>
The reviewed studies and available research data do not indicate a clear increase in birth defects and a clear indication of possible environmental impacts, including depleted uranium, although the country has experienced a number of environmental problems since 1980."
The authors of the study point out that although there is some increase in the number of birth defects in Iraq, they are nonetheless less common than in other countries in the region, and significantly less than in Western countries.
In addition, Kirillov states:
“In 2003-2004, the United States widely used such munitions [with depleted uranium] in attacks on targets in Iraqi cities: Amara, Baghdad, Basra, Karbala, Fallujah. In total, according to the United Nations, the United States used at least 300 tons of depleted uranium in Iraq.
As a result, the current radiation situation in the city of Fallujah was much worse than in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the nuclear bombings by the United States. This city is still called the second Chernobyl.”
In Fallujah, as a result of hostilities, a difficult ecological situation has indeed developed. But this has nothing to do with depleted uranium. The fact is that during the storming of the city in 2004, American troops used incendiary shells with toxic white phosphorus. In 2010, Scottish MP Bill Wilson introduced a proposal to widely publicize the consequences of the use of weapons of mass destruction by the US and the UK during the storming of Fallujah. Speaking in Parliament, he stated :
“The effects are still being felt today: studies have shown a fourfold increase in the incidence of various types of cancer, a twelvefold increase in the incidence of cancer in children under 14 years of age and a 38-fold increase in the incidence of leukemia. For comparison: in the survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima, the incidence of leukemia increased by 17 times.
It seems that the comparison of Fallujah with Hiroshima was drawn by specialists from the Ministry of Defense precisely from this speech. But, no matter how accurate Wilson's information is, it should be noted that he did not talk about radioactivity, much less about depleted uranium.
