“Boots on the Ground” leave footprints: the Anthropogenic Legacy of the US Military in the Middle East

On 2 July 2021, Afghan security forces awoke to find that the US military had, overnight, pulled out of Bagram Airbase north of Kabul, the largest airfield in the country—and a virtual city with hospitals, classrooms, bunkers and shops—leaving behind piles of ammunition, bicycles, hospital waste, hundreds of trucks and vans, mine resistant ambush-protected vehicles (MRAPs), furniture, piles of plastic water bottles, broken military equipment, and a $96m 2-mile long concrete runway. Before turning over the Camp Leatherneck—Camp Bastion town complex near Lashkar Gah, US troops lifted out the tanks, and transported back home 13,000 pieces of soldiers’ federal excess personal property’ and much of the 25,000 tons of food that the base had stored. The US Airforce has already “retrograded” (i.e., heavy-lifted) over 1,000 C-17 air freighter loads of equipment out of Afghanistan, and the 17,000 private contractors who had been in-country as of March have left. By 11 September, the US plans to be fully out of Afghanistan. At its height in 2011, the US had almost 200,000 troops and private contractors in-country.

On 26 July 2021, President Joe Biden and the Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi held a joint news conference, announcing the full withdrawal of US “combat troops” from Iraq, but a continuing “strategic alliance” with US support personnel remaining in-country to provide training and to facilitate intelligence-sharing. At the height of the “Surge” in 2007, there were over 300,000 US troops and private contractor personnel in Iraq, spread across more than 70 different types of bases and facilities.

In the Gulf, the US military has been reducing its “footprint” during 2021 by moving Patriot air-defence hardware out of its bases, redeploying fighter aircraft from the Prince Sultan Airbase, and transferring responsibility for Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) hardware provision and control to allies.

Mountains of waste of all kinds

Since 1958, when 15,000 troops came ashore in Lebanon, millions of US “boots” have passed through the Middle East; today’s approximately 60,000 spread across the region are well reduced from the numbers in 2003 and 2007, with most having gone home or been redeployed “beyond the MENA horizon”. In the wake of their passing, however, the environment does not forget them, the land remembers, and its peoples are haunted by the toxic flotsam and jetsam the US military and its contractors have left behind. Mountains of discarded tennis shoes and football jerseys, forgotten plastic bags, depleted uranium littering the ground, polluted groundwater, thousands of “burn pits”, the toxic concrete rubble of destroyed buildings, abandoned weapons, heightened levels of air pollution, ammunition residue, and oil spills/toxic waste washing around in the seas of the region have not been “retrograded”.

No matter how far the US military moves back “over the horizon”, or components are redeployed to the Arctic or Africa, the anthropogenic legacy of its presence across the Middle East—as with Agent Orange in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia—has a criminal “half-life” which may stretch hundreds of years into the future, risking the environment, health, and livelihoods of generations of those who dwell in the region. The US military has been “fly-tipping” conflict pollution across the Middle East for 80 years, abandoning its waste and failing to take responsibility for contributing to the production of thousands of environmental toxic sites or “local anthropocenes”.

The largest producer of greenhouse gases

There are several primary anthropogenic hazards which did not “go home” with the troops, a legacy of footprints left behind by those US “boots on the ground”. One is greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). This is an umbrella term for a cocktail of CO2, methane, nitrous oxide or fluorinated gases emitted by the wide range of operations (the “tooth”) and installations (the “tail”) that composed the US Central Command (CENTCOM) military presence in the region. Given that the US Department of Defense is the largest institutional producer of greenhouse gases in the world, its direct GHG in the Middle East arise from the combination of: the use of vehicles, vessels, aircraft and other equipment used in combat support (Humvees achieve about 4 miles to the diesel gallon “in the city”); combat service support; tactical or relief operations; training for such operations via wargames or exercises; law enforcement and prisons; emergency response; passenger movement for deployment or redeployment; the generation of electric or steam power produced directly or purchased from external contractors to run bases; landfills or solid waste disposal facilities; contractor air and ground travel; or wastewater treatment. The “black carbon” emissions of naval ships, with its combination of air and climate pollutant particulate matter, present considerable human and environmental risks, especially by degrading local coastal air quality, since ships, for example, often run their diesel engines while in port, producing significant NOX emissions. In the spring of 2020, the US Central Command was operating two carrier strike groups in the Arabian Sea on long deployment at the same time. Each carrier force includes the carrier, three cruisers, four destroyers, and nine air squadrons. There was also an amphibious ready group present in the area at the same time.

The recently expanded Duqum Naval Dockyard on the Arabian Sea has now become a major port of call for carrier strike groups; with its oil refinery, repair facilities and new construction, there are increased fears of a range of environmental harms being generated.

There are significant additional (indirect) GHG’s emergent from the military supply chain: the supply of meat, food, fuel (fossil fuel was the greatest import of the US into Afghanistan), clothing, etc. to keep the troops fed and clothed, but also the emissions of the military industrial complex or war-industry producing tanks, guns, ships, planes and ammunition—Lockheed Martin reported total GHG CO2e for 2020 of 33 m metric tons. Finally, there are the emissions produced by the targeting of petroleum supplies and oil wells during conflict, and from the extensive use of burn pits on US bases (see below).

Acceleration of global warming

The Global Warming Potential (GWP)¹. Civilian doctors are often unaware of burn pits and the long-term health hazards of toxic exposure, or of the way exposure to burn pit emissions might heighten complications from contracting COVID-19.

“Forever chemicals” pollute the water

Groundwater pollution is now occurring near almost every US base and airfield around the world, arising from the use of highly concentrated toxic fluorinated chemicals in firefighting foam (Per and Poly Fluoroalkyl Substances or PFASs). Since the 1970s, the US military has used this fire fighting foam in its bases and naval ports to put out aircraft or vehicle flammable liquid fires, to fight fires on the base, and to train fire teams, allowing the residue to dissipate directly into the ground, the harbour or into drainage systems. US aircraft carriers and ships also use this foam, and then wash it off the decks into the sea while underway, where accumulated concentrations of PFASs have been found to be toxic to fish, shellfish, and those who eat them.

The leaching of these “forever chemicals”—which never degrade and are bioaccumulative”—over hectares of ground creates underground pools of PFASs, contaminates the drinking water and wells “down gradient” from the bases in communities kilometers away. PFASs also migrate, being highly environmentally mobile, through soil, dust, groundwater and the air into nearby agricultural production, and into rivers and the sea. Ingested or inhaled PFASs—designated a “hazardous substance” by the US EPA—builds up in the blood and organs causing cancer, liver or kidney damage, thyroid disease, birth defects and reproductive problems.

A major public health challenge

Studies have identified 641 military sites across the US which are probable source points for off-site pollution; one study of over 100 US bases in the US reported 87 bases evidenced over 100 times safe levels of PFAS concentration. Naval bases have for 50 years dumped thousands of gallons of PFAS contaminants into the harbours where they are located. Under increasing political and legal pressure from municipalities and veterans’ groups, US health experts have now labeled the concentration of PFASs in drinking water “one of the most seminal public health challenges for the next decade” and are conducting studies around all US bases in the United States—and beginning mitigation strategies. The US government expects to spend close to $3b inside the United States across the next 30 years to clean up bases, airports and naval bases; support veterans experiencing health effects; dramatically tighten PFAS regulations; and to address legacy off-site groundwater contamination in nearby municipalities.

This is, however, a global environmental harm with site-specific consequences that the US military has yet to acknowledge. Communities around the Futenma and Kadenma Air Bases in Okinawa were found to have extremely high levels of PFAS pollution in groundwater and the air. Eleven kilometers away from Ramstein Air Base in Germany, the concentration of PFASs in the river is 538 times the level the EU says is safe; German communities living around US bases across the country are seeking remedies to hold the US military accountable for these anthropogenic crimes. In the Middle East, however, there are few if any studies of the off-site groundwater contamination from US bases or ports as source points, or on the effects of PFASs on the health of local communities; authorities across the region have yet to discuss, study or seek to hold accountable the US military for this anthropogenic legacy. Certainly, the US military has yet to acknowledge any responsibility for off-site pollution of PFASs from its bases like Incirlik, Al Dhafra, Naval Support Activity Bahrain, Al Udeid or Camp Lemonier, or to admit to their contribution to the health harms of PFASs on local communities.

Environmental consequences of the massacre of the cities

Anthropogenic harms for communities across the Middle East also arise from “conflict pollution”. This is the toxic afterlife of urbicide, defined as the violent intentional destruction of large swathes of city infrastructure, buildings, industrial sites and energy sources in pursuit of military victory and urban control: city killing resulting from what US Marines call “military operations on urbanized terrain” (MOUT). Buildings explode from the inside by munitions producing huge force and high temperatures dropped in populated areas. The pulverized building materials (PBMs) spread as huge clouds of dust which—like the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 Twin Towers attack—is then inhaled by emergency responders and families continuing to live in the neighbourhood, leaving a legacy of lung diseases such as asbestosis and silicosis, cardiovascular complications, and premature mortality. The rubble, often left for years where it fell, contaminates the children who play among the ruins, and leaches toxic waste into the groundwater and river systems. In addition, the clearing out and management post-conflict of city-blocks of solid and hazardous rubble—concrete, cement with all its impurities, asbestos, metals, chemical products—to enable rebuilding creates additional human health vulnerability at site, and off-site landfill toxicity through environmental contamination and scavenging where it is subsequently deposited.

Ramadi, site of three major fierce battles for US-coalition control of the city (2004, 2006, 2015), lost whole neighbourhoods in the successive battles and all its bridges across the Euphrates, and suffered considerable conflict PBM pollution. The city was 80% destroyed by the time of its recapture in December 2015, leaving this city of a quarter of a million virtually uninhabitable and flattened; one assessment counted 615 bomb craters in the centre of the city and over 3,000 homes destroyed after the 2015 battle. Soon after, the UN called the destruction of the city “staggering”, worse than any other city in Iraq, with an estimated seven million tons of debris, and reconstruction costs around $10b. It has taken years for substantial cleanup to occur, particularly to safely remove unexploded ordnance and booby traps; the US donated $5m to help clear explosives from Ramadi. Long-term, the challenges remain to adequately manage uncoordinated debris dumping, the rising local pollution levels in soil, air and water, and to address health risks of the city’s citizens. In addition, at Ramadi, the Euphrates evidences extremely high levels of heavy metal contamination, and marginal to poor on the Water Quality Index (WQI); the irrigation canals share a similar fate. Post-liberation of Mosul in 2017, UN experts estimated that the city had over eleven million tons of conflict debris to manage, and it would cost well over $100 million just to truck it out of the city: most of the rubble has ended up piled on the edge of the Tigris or dumped into it.

“Stuff happens! And it’s untidy”

Sometimes urbicide takes the form of “shock and awe”, where overwhelming massive force is delivered on a “scale never before seen” against key transport, water and electric infrastructures, or communication links, hoping to immediately stun and destabilize opponents in order to achieve rapid dominance. The US dropped 2,000 precision guided munitions (PGM), designed for targeted point destruction, in the first four days of its 2003 invasion of Iraq; almost 20,000 overall during the “war” phase. Sec. Rumsfeld, commenting on the urban destruction resulting from the US attacks on population centres, shrugged his shoulders and commented that “Stuff happens! And it’s untidy”.

Unexploded munitions and exploded weapon residue, including white phosphorus and unreliable submunitions from cluster bombs, litter the urban conflict landscape, also constituting long-term health risks to urban inhabitants. A few studies exist of how such remnants of war impact local communities; some link a sharp increase in congenital birth defects and premature births due to high lead and mercury poisoning of the environment. In addition, there has long been awareness of the role of depleted uranium ammunition (DU) left from both the first Gulf War and 2003 on the reproductive health of southern Iraqi communities.

It is in the most heavily bombed cities like Basrah, Ramadi and Fallujah where citizens have particularly experienced significant health complications due to the bioaccumulation of these three pollutants in air, soil and food.

All guilty, all condemned

In sum, the anthropogenic legacies of the US military’s presence across the Middle East are complicated, vary with time and location, and are difficult to disentangle from other contributions or to attribute primary causal responsibility. Anthropogenic harms are “wicked problems”, known unknowns for which accountability is hard to prove. Ramadi and Mosul’s conflict PBM contamination arises not just from US actions, but also those of Daesh and of Iraqi forces; GHG emissions from Humvees and F-35s mix with thousands of other sources across the region. There is so little data, targeted studies, analysis or political focus on the US military’s specific contributions to creating toxic hot-spots across the Middle East that it is hard to capture a full picture of the short or long-term health and environmental risks to particular communities arising from specific US military practices in specific sites at specific times.

Yet. It is clear, as one review acknowledged, that “there is an epidemic of toxic contamination at and from US military bases”; this is a known-known, becoming clear, at last, for bases located within US boundaries and for communities nestled just beyond their gates. What is also clear is that certain anthropogenic harms—such as groundwater PFAS pollution, or burn pits—have now been, grudgingly—acknowledged by the Pentagon as of significant harm to US veterans deployed in the region, accompanied by—maybe, perhaps, a little, some—acceptance of responsibility, along with the implementation of limited redress for harms. Both victories have been exceedingly difficult to unlock, taking decades. Veterans and their families are frustrated, as are US municipalities finding themselves downstream/downwind of naval bases and air stations, at the foot-dragging and obstinance of the military bureaucracy: this drama will run in the courts and Congress for decades to come.

“Crap in your mess kit”

But what about the fly-tipping the US military has carried out across the Middle East, and the collateral damage to families and communities living with the detritus? The intergenerational anthropogenic legacy of the well over two million “boots on the ground” and “sailors at sea” deployed to the region since 1958 has neither been acknowledged or calculated: it is the known-unknown of US CENTCOM’s approach to the Middle East as a “battlespace” rather than as a community of peoples. The US focus has been on the experiences and health of returning or serving veterans: their increased rates of respiratory illnesses, debilitating physical ailments, and rare forms of diseases, rather than on the people they were supposedly protecting. US analysts who have evaluated the anthropogenic harms emanating from US bases outside the US consistently observe that “you couldn’t get away with this kind of waste disposal in the US”, or that the “EPA would shut them down if it was at home”. The US has polluted someone else’s backyard, putting at risk subsequent generations and narrowed their possible futures as it trampled the flower beds. No matter how far one disappears “over the horizon”, culpability for creating thousands of local toxic source points—local anthropocenes—will long remain.

Each toxic site is particular, not peculiar, with its own evolving anthropogenic legacy being shaped by the vulnerability of the local natural environment, population practices, management tactics, resource commitments, and subsequent climate crises. The US military has helped to create, expand, complicate or hasten these local anthropocenes, and the subsequent health and environmental risks faced by millions of people and communities across the Middle East. It is time to acknowledge that, as US veterans often repeat, one should not “crap in your mess kit”, time to take responsibility, and time to contribute to redressing these environmental crimes. US boots across the region have left terrible footprints; pictures and memories may fade, but not forever chemicals.