The portal “Russian spring” published an article by Darya Aslamova: “It was in Baghdad in 2003, a few days before the start of the war. Iraqi translator brought me to the hospital, where they had children from Basra. Women in hijabs with petrified faces sat at the cots of their dying from leukemia and cancer of lymph infants and two – and three-year-olds. Many of them could barely turned his neck, they prevented the swollen lymph nodes. It was a very serious, quiet children. They didn’t cry.
“Why did you bring me here?” — I stammered, stunned by what he saw. “The victims of the war in the Persian Gulf”, — explained to me. “Victims?! But the Americans bombed Basra in 1991! Then these children were born!” “It was a mini-nuclear war,” said the doctor. — During the operation “desert Storm” Americans used ammunition with depleted uranium. Just been dumped 320 tons of uranium.
The mother of these children received a serious dose of radiation, and their children were doomed even in the womb. It’s not the worst thing that you see. In Basra, children are born without eyes and nose, no arms and legs, no brain, with two heads. Congenital deformities found in more than half of newborns. Just about anyone up”.
Some days later I watched from the balcony of the hotel “Palestine”, once again bombed the city of Baghdad. Then the worst I thought instant death under the bombs. Because I was still young and naive.
Belgrade, spring of 2014. The nurse helps me put on a medical gown and a cap. Everything must be sterile. After Dr. Radana Codicem, Director of the Institute of Oncology and the best surgeon in Serbia, I go to the operating room. “The boy is only 15 years old,” explains Dr. Godic. — Thyroid cancer in the heavy form. 15. So he was born in the year of NATO bombing, mentally I count.
Two hours later, Dr. Godich holding a piece of human flesh and explains that half of the thyroid where the tumor. “Now we’ll find out whether there is metastasis.” A few agonizing minutes, and it becomes clear: a fragile boyish body scorching metastases”.
What we can remove. Then we’ll close, — with the duty optimism says Dr. Godic. He will have another surgery and possibly chemotherapy. You must be tired, go. And we need to finish the job.”
I walk down the hospital corridor, wet with cold sweat and pressed down in human misery. Before my eyes is the room where Dr. Godich examines young women. Some of them weep bitterly. Most thyroid cancer in the hopeless form.
“The thyroid gland is the first to react to the radiation, I explained Dr. Godic. Over the last ten years, thyroid cancer in Serbia has increased by 300%. Rapidly growing sarcoma and leukemia. The truth is that NATO used our region as a dumping ground for nuclear waste. We still don’t know how many bombs with depleted uranium fell upon our land. Over the past ten years we have not seen any serious government study of the effects of the bombing. We are only doctors. It’s our job to treat. I work in a Oncology surgeon 40 years. And I speak as a doctor: cancer is becoming younger, aggressive and inoperable”.
What is depleted uranium? It’s just nuclear waste, whose disposal is always worth inconceivably expensive. It was hard to find a country where you can quietly, without fuss in the press, to bury nuclear waste. Depleted uranium-238 — a byproduct of the production of enriched uranium-235. Uranium ore passes through hundreds of centrifuges, and the output is 11% enriched uranium and 89% depleted, with whom we have to do something.
In 1970 the Americans came up with a brilliantly cynical idea how to use nuclear waste. Uranium-238 is a radioactive heavy metal with a very high density (two times higher than lead, and slightly lower than that of tungsten, a very expensive metal). So, it successfully and cheaply can be used to make armor-piercing shells with uranium cores and slugs and to strengthen tank armor (so-called “organoceramic — uranium layer sandwiched between steel plates).
Who cares about Iraqi children? Or Albanian? Or Serbian? Yes, scientists have warned, with all the responsibility that uranium is not simply radioactive, but chemically toxic. There are three ways of poisoning with uranium. Direct contact with skin (uranium shrapnel during the explosion of a shell or tank). Inhalation of uranium dust, which is formed by burning shells. And the third way: the infected water and earth, the giver of the poisoned fruit. To realize the full horror of these facts, it is sufficient to say that the half-life of uranium is 4.5 billion years.
“After the bombing of the former Yugoslavia, we demanded that NATO maps showing the locations where the fallen uranium shells, — said the famous Serbian toxicologist Radovan Kovacevic. NATO — submitted cards, but has tried to downplay the damage. For example, they identified 112 locations. I personally found 113 location, when the volunteers went up the mountain near the town of Vranje, where stood the tower. Radiation detectors almost got stuck.
The guys asked me: “Boss, what do we do? We even have protective suits.“ I said, “Take samples of soil and run”. Now this place was surrounded by barbed wire. If only I had found another infected place not mentioned in the cards, how many of them actually?! How much were the shells? NATO claims that 31 thousand Serbs — 50 thousand, and Russian experts claim that at least 90 thousand.”
In 1997, Radovan Kovacevic was the head of the Center for protection from radiation. Even then, based on the experience of the Gulf war and the NATO bombing in Bosnia 1995, Yugoslavia warned the international community that NATO uses missiles with uranium cores.
The world community is silent, although the Appendix II of the Convention on the physical protection of nuclear material of 1980 klassificeret depleted uranium as nuclear materials of the second category.
After the aggression of the West against Yugoslavia toxicologist Kovacevic worked as a doctor in the team, which was engaged in the decontamination in Montenegro, Lustica Peninsula (then part of Yugoslavia). In practice it looks like this: cut a layer of soil a few meters. That part of the shells penetrates deeper, and uranium can get into the ground water, the authorities chose to remain silent.
“I worked with officers who were involved in cleaning of territories in Montenegro,” says Dr. Kovacevic. — When you sweep all of them had badges and were dressed in special protective suits. At the same time, when we had a diagnosis of their genetic material, 75% of them had typical anomalies of people exposed to radiation. In that moment, the officers broke a flu epidemic, and we found that even the flu virus has mutated.
We also partially tested civil. The man who brought food to the officers, died from lymph cancer. The first sounded the alarm Italian peacekeepers who served in Kosovo (and Kosovo dropped to 3 times more uranium shells than in the South of Serbia). A few thousand of them got cancer, young, strong guys, and about 300 of them during the mission died.”
In America, military doctors worried only when hundreds of broad-shouldered, cheerful American young men with white-toothed smiles after the war in Iraq have become regular patients of oncological clinics.
“My personal opinion as a doctor: the use of depleted uranium in the bombing entails serious health consequences,” says former Minister of defense and public health of Yugoslavia, a well-known pathologist Dr. Zoran Stankovic. — In the explosion of the 80% turns into dust, and the wind carries uranium oxide at 40 kilometers. If inhaled uranium enters the lungs and kidneys. This heavy metal accumulates in the body, in the bones. The Americans have done studies of soldiers after the war in the Persian Gulf. 70% of the soldiers had children with genetic defects, with anomalies.
We had an officer who was involved in the clean-up after the bombing. After his wife became pregnant, and the child was born without one leg, without eyes, with deformed hand with heart problems. And imagine: the officer was fully equipped against intrusion. But it did not save his child. What happens with people who are just living, not thinking about the danger?!”
Invisible death
Under the silk green grass of Serbian and Bosnian lands are poisoning the soil and supporting the slow death of the water. The pastoral innocence of the countryside landscape seems a bitter irony against the background of the invisible danger posed to local residents.
“The worst thing is that the uranium in the ground and groundwater gets into the food chain,” says toxicologist Radovan Kovacevic. Our colleagues from Croatia found wild animals contaminated with uranium. The animals and birds know no boundaries and move freely in the region. And here in Serbia we have found traces of uranium at the deer and pheasants. Our vets from the city of Lies mark strong growth of leukemia in goats, sheep and cows. Sometimes uranium shells fell in the river, one even landed in the well in the South of Serbia.
We examined a farmer who was trying to clean the well. 3759 nanograms of uranium-238 in a liter of urine! (The peacekeepers who served in Kosovo and cases of cancer, in one liter of urine was found to 231 ng, and in the urine of American soldiers after Iraq — 150 ng). Of course, the farmer died.
In Serbia, now every day are diagnosed with cancer have at least one child. NATO was killing us not only during the bombing. NATO continues to kill us as a nation for fifteen years, and the number of victims keeps growing. One NATO American General once said: “ten such wars as in Iraq, and we fully get rid of nuclear waste”.
“The issue of depleted uranium has long become a political issue, says ex-health Minister Zoran Stankovic. — Serbia tried to apply to Hague Tribunal claim against countries that bombed the former Yugoslavia. But the Prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, denied us on the grounds that changes in the chromosomes of people exposed to radiation, can be seen under the electron microscope throughout the year. Like, you’re late. And now it is necessary to carry out the exhumation of the corpses. But it is neither the money nor the political will.
When the Italian soldiers returned from Kosovo and began to die from cancer of the lymph, the Italian government did not want to pay compensation to the families and the sick and discontinued the study. If the uranium bombing consequences for human health are proved, it is difficult to imagine how much compensation the NATO, and especially Americans will have to pay to victims, their relatives and the infected countries. So no one is interested in the truth.”
They prefer to forget
The little town of Vranje in southern Serbia — the heart of the region most affected by uranium bombing. Local tradition is to stick on the trees at the announcement of the funeral. I’m standing in the cold rain, mourning the dead, and look on their young faces. The main cause of cancer. Like the one that just died five girls. But the town would like to scrape from the memory 1999. Nobody wants to remember the bombing. All the tormented fear again to be expelled from European herds. The Serbs drank to the bottom the poison of humiliation and established a silence filled with bitterness of defeat.
“Why do you torture people memories? tells me an elderly doctor Vladimir: They is no help. They will think that every SIP of water and every piece of bread waiting for their death. Yes, cancer has indeed doubled over the last ten years. But if we doctors, on their own will begin to gather facts for criminal prosecution of these thugs from NATO, we will kill all one by one. You can’t imagine what this money can be involved! I, as a witness, I don’t want to end my life in some “accidental” car crash”.
“Institute of public health in a Lie prepared a plan to study in detail the effects of the use of uranium in our region,” says a local journalist Nikola Lazic. — Survey of 250 thousand Euro, but nobody wants to pay. There is a law of silence, as part of state policy. Serbia wants to join the EU and NATO, and the price for it — the concealment of facts about the bombing. The doctor in a Lie don’t like to talk about the growth of the cancer. Even we journalists can’t get information about sick people.”
The NATO operation against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the second in a series of so-called “humanitarian intervention”. The first was the operation “Deliberate force” against the Bosnian Serbs in 1995. Both operations were conducted without a UN mandate and fall under the definition of “illegal military aggression”.
Although the main reason for the intervention was considered ethnic cleansing of Albanians in the region of Kosovo and Metohija (from the point of view of Belgrade, separatists and terrorists), the secret cause “immediate war” is called sex scandal, which involved U.S. President bill Clinton, caught in frivolous relations with Intern Monica Lewinsky. The situation was tragicomic predicted in the famous film “Wag the dog” “wag the dog”), published in 1997, two years before the war against Yugoslavia. The film is downright prophetic: US President implicated in sex scandal, is starting a virtual war with Albania to divert the public’s attention. But unlike the movie, the war against Yugoslavia was not the television picture, and the bloody reality.”
Mikhail Delyagin noted: “the United States not only massively and constantly violate international law, unleashing of aggression around the world at their pleasure. They are long and systematic use of depleted uranium, which is a waste product of nuclear weapons, which increases penetration of ammunition, is essentially waging an undeclared nuclear war with horrible consequences for the civilian population at least Serbia, Albania and Iraq, and NATO military. Only the slavish passivity of our propaganda and diplomacy to explain what it is to get away with”.
