As NATO continues its bombing of Serbia and Kosova, more and more evidence of the social and human catastrophe it is creating is filtering out to the rest of the world. However, one aspect of the devastation is barely being reported by the Western media: the environmental carnage being inflicted on not only Serbia but the whole region.
In their appeals to stop the bombing, the New Green Party in Belgrade and the Ecological Party from Tirana have described the massive humanitarian and ecological costs to the people of the region. The following is abridged from a report compiled by MITCHEL COHEN from the Red Balloon Collective and the Brooklyn Greens.
Early in April, a leader of the Yugoslavian Green Party warned that NATO missiles were beginning to contaminate the water supply for much of eastern Europe. "I warn you that Serbia is one of the greatest sources of underground waters in Europe and that the contamination will be felt in the whole surrounding area, all the way to the Black Sea", Branka Jovanovic reported from Belgrade. Her worst fears have apparently come true.
On the first day of the NATO air strikes, March 24, the municipality of Grocka was hit where the Vinca nuclear reactor is situated. The site contains a great stockpile of nuclear waste. No US media reported this.
The municipality of Pancevo was hit, in which the petrochemical factory and a factory for the production of artificial fertilisers are situated. They were bombed again two weeks later.
The municipality of Baric was also hit. Baric houses a large complex for the production of chloride, using Bhopal technology.
"It is not necessary for me to explain what the blowing up of one of such factories would represent", Jovanovic said. "Not only Belgrade, which is situated at a distance of 10 kilometres, but the rest of Europe would be endangered."
On the second day of bombing, a chemical factory in the Belgrade suburb of Sremcica was bombed. Also hit was a rocket fuel storage area, causing releases into the surrounding area and water.
Jovanovic also reports that four national parks were bombed, and that the depleted uranium weaponry first used against Iraq, responsible for thousands of cases of leukaemia and other cancers in children, is now being used against Yugoslavia.
Poisonous cloud
In the US the news is well-scrubbed so that no blood leaks: NATO bombers, we're told, continue to hit and cripple Yugoslavia's oil refineries. Compare that to the detailed story filed by Tom Walker, reporting from Belgrade for the London Times on April 19: "A towering cloud of toxic gases looms over Belgrade after warplanes, on the 25th night of the NATO onslaught, hit a petrochemicals plant in the northern outskirts of the city.
"An ecological disaster was unfolding yesterday after NATO bombed a combined petrochemicals, fertiliser and refinery complex on the banks of the Danube in the northern outskirts of Belgrade.
"A series of detonations that shook the whole city early yesterday sent a toxic cloud of smoke and gas hundreds of feet into the night sky. In the dawn the choking cloud could be seen spreading over the entire northern skyline.
"Among the cocktail of chemicals billowing over hundreds of thousands of homes were the toxic gas phosgene, chlorine and hydrochloric acid. Workers at the industrial complex in Pancevo panicked and released tons of ethylene dichloride, a carcinogen, into the Danube, rather than risk seeing it blown up.
"At least three missile strikes left large areas of the plant crippled, and oil and petrol from the damaged refinery area flowed into the river, forming slicks up to 12 miles long. Temperatures in the collapsing plant were said to have risen to more than 1000 degrees centigrade. Asked about the hazard from chemical smoke, NATO said there was 'a lot more smoke coming from burning villages in Kosovo'."
Meanwhile, in Pancevo, dozens of people reported suffering from poisoning due to the bombings of refineries, fertiliser facilities and a vinyl chloride and ethylene plant. Huge quantities of toxic matter such as chlorine, ethylene dichloride and vinyl chloride monomer were released.
Transformer stations were also heavily damaged, and very toxic transformer oil flowed out. The health ministry could not find enough gas masks to distribute; residents were told to breathe through scarves soaked in sodium bicarbonate as a precaution against showers of nitric acid.
Creating hunger
"By burning down enormous quantities of naphtha and its derivatives, more than 100 highly toxic chemical compounds that pollute water, air and soil are released", endangering the entire Balkan ecosystem, said New Green Party scientist Luka Radoja. Radoja points out that the NATO bombing is happening just as many crops vital for survival are supposed to be planted: corn, sunflower, soy, sugar beets and vegetables. As a result, the planting of 2.5 million hectares of land has been halted.
"The lack of fuel for agricultural machines will have catastrophic results, because it leads to hunger of the entire population. When you add to this the poisoning of the water, air and soil, the catastrophe becomes a cataclysm.
"As an expert who has spent his entire work-age on the fields of this up-until-now ecologically pure part of Europe, I am a witness to the disappearing of the most beautiful garden of Europe", Radoja said sadly.
In fact, the ecological crisis only grows worse. With the bombing of petrochemical facilities, NATO's air strikes have come perilously close to hitting tanks containing tens of thousands of tons of explosive chemicals.
According to Miralem Dzindo, one such tank, containing 20,000 tons of liquid ammonia, was recently grazed by NATO missiles. "If that had gone up in flames, much of Belgrade would have been poisoned. The pollution in the Danube and in the atmosphere over Belgrade 'knows no frontiers'." Dzindo warned neighbouring countries that "the poison clouds could soon be with them"(London Times, April 19).
Indeed, the chief inspector of the Macedonian Ministry of Environment, Miroslav Balaburski, said that furans and dioxins released by bomb explosions are being carried long distances. The pollution is entering Macedonia by air and by the river Lepenec, which crosses the border between Macedonia and Yugoslavia, according to Zoran Bozinovski, a speaker for the Centre for Radioisotopes, a Macedonian government institution based in Skopje.
Ivan Grozdanov, a chemist at the centre, made the further point that burning aircraft fuel is the primary source of stratospheric nitrogen oxides, which are severely damaging to the ozone layer.
As Robert Fisk, reporting from Serbia for the London Independent in mid-April, commented: "Shame on the leader of the French Greens, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, and on Joschka Fischer, the Green Party leader and foreign minister of Germany, who are making this war possible and without whose support the NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia would fall apart.
"Bombing a civilian population, destroying their water supply, poisoning their crops — this is the 'Green alternative'? No. It is the very essence of modern warfare, of advanced technologies specifically designed and utilised to inflict terror and ravage human beings and nature alike for their refusal to accede to the demands of international capital."