With thousands of American and British troops gathering in the Middle East and the UN appearing ineffective, war against Saddam Hussein seems increasingly likely. The arguments for and against an invasion have been widely debated - Biological and chemical weapons?

Links with al-Qaida? Human rights abuses? The evidence seems unconvincing. But one thing is certain, Saddam possesses one weapon of mass destruction, in the form of the second largest oil reserves in the world.

Many people argue that the reason for Bush’s stance on Iraq is oil itself, but the President of the world’s largest polluter may soon have an ecological disaster of apocalyptic proportions on his conscience (if he has one). If we reverse the clock 12 years, we can see that Saddam Hussein is no stranger to using the region’s oil for what has been termed ‘ecological terrorism’. Following the defeat of his army in the first Gulf War, Saddam ordered his troops to blow up nearly 700 oil wells in Kuwait as they retreated. One billion barrels of oil went up in flames, and the fires took nine months to be extinguished; as a result the country suffocated under a curtain of soot and hydrocarbons, and unburned oil rained down in a fine mist. ‘Black rain’ fell on Turkey, Syria and Afghanistan, and the smoke reached the skies above India and Pakistan. Sixty million barrels of oil were released into the desert, forming hundreds of oil lakes and contaminating 40 million tonnes of soil, destroying valuable groundwater supplies. The effects on the fragile desert ecosystem are still being felt today. Saddam also released millions of gallons of oil into the Persian Gulf, which he planned to ignite to prevent marine landings by allied troops. The resulting spill was twenty times larger than the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska, and twice as large as the previous world record spill. As a result, 1500km of Kuwaiti and Saudi coastline were covered in oil, and 15-30,000 birds were killed.

Presuming that war does go ahead, Saddam is likely to be defeated, but he will not go quietly. In a last gesture of defiance, he may order the destruction of his massive oil reserves, a possibility of which America is aware, and is thus consulting with major oil well fire fighting companies. However, there will be several problems facing attempts to fight the fires. To begin with there are fewer than 100 wellhead firemen with Kuwaiti experience. There will inevitably be a lag time in fire fighting, due to fears of minefields and lingering Iraqi resistance. There are other problems - the Iraqi oil wells have stronger flow rates than those in Kuwait, are further from the sea, a vital source of water for fire fighting, and many wells are located in inaccessible mountain regions. If Saddam was feeling particularly spiteful, he could divert oil into Iraq’s major rivers: the Tigris and the Euphrates. Both of these empty into the Persian Gulf, and could create an oil spill of a magnitude never seen before, destroying deltas, coastlines and irreversibly damaging the marine ecosystem.

The Gulf is home to thousands of important birds, and endangered dolphins, turtles, whales, dugongs (manatee-like mammals), and coral reefs. Major fisheries will be damaged and economies will suffer. After the war, the Iraqi people may find themselves with a contaminated source of drinking water, as the rivers are a major source of freshwater in an arid region. The desert will also be affected, and is an ecosystem that will take decades to recover from oil pollution. Vast amounts of damage will also be caused by the presence of thousands of troops, tanks, and heavy artillery, through soil compaction, erosion, and waste disposal.

Air pollution from hundreds of blazing oil wells will damage the atmosphere, and it is thought that this time, smoke from the fires could reach Russia and Burma. This will also bring health problems to the region’s population -after the smaller fires in Kuwait skin and respiratory problems were rife amongst the local people.

Opposition to war against Iraq is usually based on the human cost - and thousands of innocent lives will be lost if war does go ahead - but a war will scar the Middle East in more ways than one. Bush and Blair should take heed of those warning of blackened skylines, and oil-covered seas and deserts, before charging full-throttle towards an environmental catastrophe. 

war,oil,saddam,ecosystem,desert