Oh! What a Lovely War
* Encourage insurgents
* Weather the (Desert) storm
* Play the great game
You love war. Most of all, you love how it moulds some of the most divine landscapes around. Forget broken bodies and human misery – you relish war for the way it never fails to f**k up the planet. During quiet hours, you often find yourself flicking idly through images of the WW1 Flanders battleground. Not a blade of grass anywhere, just miles of flat, mud-churned fields dotted with stumps of shattered trees like upright corpses.
Nothing can compete with war when it comes to reinforcing the natural order: who’s going to care about species preservation when your very own is at stake? The poisons and toxic chemicals which accompany weapon production congregate in the atmosphere, ocean currents, and soil. Landmines are the perfect soldier: cheap, efficient, expendable, never hungry, never tired. They hang around harming the planet long after the fight has finished, and clearing them is laborious, dangerous, and thirty times more expensive than the weapon itself. Then there is the epitome of modern warfare, the nuclear bomb, proudly wreaking the most profound and persistent environmental damage during both its explosive release and its waste-rich aftermath. But the nuke is about to be toppled from its summit. A glorious new weapon is ascending the heights.
As he sat down for his nightly counsel with state television, President Ahmadinejad of Iran was in fine spirits, making bullish remarks about the Americans and insisting that Iran’s controversial nuclear programme would continue, regardless of US threats. To the west of his country, Iraq’s slide into internal conflict was gaining momentum. More than 4,000 US soldiers, almost 200 British, and at least 90,000 Iraqi civilians had died, victims of a mounting spiral of criminal, insurgent, and sectarian violence. But Ahmadinejad’s concerns lay elsewhere. He knew that conflict in Iraq had fuelled rather than quelled support for Islamic extremism.
Ahmadinejad could never have dared imagine that Saddam Hussein would be overthrown and Shia co-religionists would come into power in Iraq. It was the first time that a Shia community had run an Arab country. Iraq, with its Shia majority, was, the president noted, a natural ally for the almost entirely Shia Iran. Now, Iran is ready to assume the role of spearhead state, leading the Muslim masses against international enemies who oppose their interests. You are delighted. You had been hoping that the environmentally debilitating war would continue in Iraq; now, another one looms. Checklist: convince the US to antagonize Ahmadinejad with threats of action. Tick. Impose several rounds of hardline sanctions against Iran. Tick. Leak detailed plans of military strikes against Tehran. Almost ticked. Let the Persian war begin.
Nukes have had their day. With more than 150,000 troops stranded in Iraq, a full-scale military invasion seems too risky. What you need is a weapon which doesn’t involve infantry, tanks or missiles yet can precipitate full-scale environmental Armageddon. Luckily, the US military, with a little help from your chums at British Aerospace Systems, have invented a wily system which, some analysts believe, could dwarf conventional- and strategic-weapon systems. The remote town of Gokona, Alaska, is home to the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), an array of high-powered antennae that transmit, through high-frequency radio waves, massive amounts of energy into the upper layer of the atmosphere, the ionosphere. Official reports disagree, but some believe this system is capable of disrupting radio communications, interfering with electricity supplies, oil and gas pipelines, and even warping the mental well-being of entire regions. Some see HAARP as a potential weapon of mass destruction, capable of destabilizing agricultural and ecological systems, although it wasn’t invented for this purpose. Others liken it to a gigantic heater which can burn long incisions in the protective ionosphere, allowing lethal radiation to strike the planet. It is thought that the system can trigger floods, hurricanes, droughts, and earthquakes.
You must persuade your twitchy but dependable comrades in the US defence department to unleash what you like to call ‘weather modification’. As conflict with Tehran heightens, HAARP might be considered a non-conventional means of bringing those troublesome Iranians under control. What potential for generating precipitation, fog, and storms with which to whip Tehran into submission. Weather manipulation will ruin Ahmadinejad’s agriculture and economy; his land will be at the mercy of food aid and imported staples from the US and your allies.
But mum’s the word. So far, HAARP has been developed in secrecy, which is of course the modus operandi of BAE Systems. Such mystery has ensured that even discussion of the system is taboo. With the greenies obsessed with man-made greenhouse-gas emissions, you have identified the ultimate means to alter the weather. Meteorologists and military analysts remain mute on the subject. As for the Pentagon – well, quite rightly, it pours cold water on speculation that the enormous collection of transmitters, radars, and magnetometers in Alaska is some sort of super-weapon. Officially, HAARP is presented by the US Air Force as a ‘research program’. They have no choice. After all, the 1977 international Convention ratified by the UN General Assembly bans ‘hostile use of environmental modification techniques’ characterized by the ‘deliberate manipulation of natural processes’.
Man has yet to find a better use for oil than to fuel war. More than 300,000 barrels are used every day by the US in the war on terror, for vehicles and maintenance alone. Soldiers in Iraq use more than sixteen times the amount of fuel than did those in WW2. No wonder the Pentagon is the single largest user of oil in the world. In monetary terms, the Iraq war has cost the US up to $3 trillion. Even more, when you consider that every cent has served not only to divert funds away from measures to tackle climate change but also to widen the global rift with Muslim militants the world over. In short, to ensure that more wars, terrorist strikes and attacks against the planet are guaranteed.
More than five years of fighting in Iraq have left the country littered with chemical spills, hazardous material, and at least 311 sites which are poisoned by toxic, radioactive dust from depleted uranium shells. According to the UN, thousands of locations need assessing for environmental pollution. The masssabotage caused during the first Gulf War, when scores of Kuwaiti oilwells were set alight, hasn’t materialized this time round. If someone were to repeat such an act it would desecrate the Mesopotamian marshes on the lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, Iraq’s most prized environmental asset.
There is another war which you are even more confident will keep on running at the earth’s expense. This one is a cracker, one that will take huge efforts – and decades – to resolve; in other words, one that will continue until the world ends. Chat to British soldiers in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan, about the intractability of fighting, the miasma of tribal politics, terrorism, and the deaths of yet more friends. Already the conflict in Helmand has morphed way beyond the objective of crushing the Taliban. The Helmand valley has mutated into a geopolitical battleground for jihadists, a blooding ground for budding martyrs from across the globe. According to military predictions, it will be at least thirty years before war ends in Afghanistan and there is any hope of stabilization or reconstruction.
Visitors to Afghanistan remark on its natural beauty. Then they see the rusting hulks of Soviet tanks, the vast minefields that scar huge tracts of the country, and the villages crushed by US air raids. In many ways, the impact of modern warfare is best witnessed in the wild Afghan contours: decades of war have laid waste to its environment with such unerring efficiency that the UN believes reconstruction is compromised; more than half the forests in three Afghan provinces have been destroyed and, better still, almost no trees are detectable by satellite instruments in Badghis province, compared with a 55 per cent land cover three decades ago.
A team from the UN environmental programme’s post-conflict assessment unit offers you a host of uplifting reasons to carry on fighting. It goes on, hailing Afghanistan’s environment as being in a ‘state of widespread and serious resource degradation: lowered water tables, dried-up wetlands, denuded forests, eroded land and depleted wildlife populations’. Even in the most remote areas, where there are snow leopards, Marco Polo sheep, wolves, brown bears, and Asian ibex, an upsurge in hunting has, with a certain panache, denuded populations.
War, you confidently predict, will continue both in Iraq and Afghanistan. Very soon, a third conflict will begin and, shortly after, the weather above Persia will begin behaving rather oddly. Forecasts will be bleak as the final, deadly assault against the planet gets well and truly underway.
* Leaked documents contradict US defence officials by revealing that HAARP was designed solely as a military weapon of mass destruction. Maybe.
* Iran increases frequency of Shia militia strikes against US troops. Pentagon threatens air attacks. Iran shrugs threats aside. Foreseeable.
* In late 2012 NATO generals admit Afghanistan may never be sufficiently stabilized. By then British casualties stand at four hundred, the same as those of Germany after it sent extra soldiers to Helmand in the summer of 2009. Plausible.
* Satellite photographs indicate that Tehran is, in fact, engaged in a nuclear-weapons programme. Other experts argue the images are doctored. US declares military action nonetheless. Likely.
* Britain withdraws its last troops from Iraq in 2012 amid heavy fighting in Basra as Iraqi forces struggle to pacify insurgency. Possible.
Likelihood of Iraq and Afghanistan remaining a conflict zone by 2015:92%