Iraqis still paying for the invasion with their health
US President Obama announced recently that the last American troops in Iraq will be out before the end of 2011. Yet several thousand private military contractors will remain and Iraq will be a regional hub for the US for years to come.
The overall costs of the war have been calculated by the Nobel prize-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, at a staggering $3 trillion. But the human cost of the war is far more difficult to calculate.
On every level, the Occupation of Iraq was a catastrophe for the Iraqi people. A million dead. A million left disabled. Around 16% of the Iraqi population uprooted. Unemployment at 50%. Access to safe water and electricity far below what it was ten years ago.
In 2004, US forces flattened the city of Falluja. Around 5,000 civilians were killed. There were reports of US soldiers shooting civilians who were waving white flags while they tried to escape the city, women and children included. Witnesses saw American tanks rolling over the bodies of the wounded lying in the streets.
The aerial bombardment was ferocious. It was only later that the US admitted using white phosphorous as a battlefield weapon in the assault.
Last year, the BBC reported that doctors in Falluja were reporting high levels of birth defects. Some were blaming weapons used by the US. The level of heart defects among newborn babies was reported to be 13 times higher than in Europe. City officials warned women that they should not have children.
Now a new study by the research group Conflict and Health has unearthed fresh evidence about the high levels of cancers and birth defects. These symptoms are linked to the use of uranium in battlefield weapons used by US forces.
Falluja is not the only city to produce such findings. Research published in the American Journal of Public Health documents a tripling of leukaemia in children in the Basra region. War-related nerve agents and the widespread use of depleted uranium munitions by the US, are believed to be largely responsible.
The US may have formally withdrawn from Iraq. But Iraqis will be living with the consequences of the invasion for generations to come.
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