An improving situation

Colonel Jeff Brodeur (ret.), CBRN subject matter expert, and Dr Laima Warnecke, talk with Gwyn Winfield about the challenges of chemical security and radiological safety in Iraq, tracing the current situation’s origins through the past few decades

John F Kennedy, paraphrasing the first century historian Tacitus, said: “Victory has 100 fathers, failure is an orphan”. Ironically the parlous state of chemical, biological and radiological waste in Iraq, specifically in the north, has many fathers. Prior to the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Iraq was a world-leading country for education and certainly a leader in the Middle East. For 20 years it offered free education up to postdoctorate level, encouraged female education and encouraged literacy . Following the destruction caused by the first gulf war came 13 years of international sanctions which decimated its economy. After the overthrow of the Ba’ath party came instability and finally terrorist insurrection. These 30 years have all contributed to a situation where elements of the chemical safety and security regime that should have been upgraded have not been, and practices that would have been deemed dubious 30 years ago, are now regarded as highly dangerous.

Drinking water in Iraq was a source of tension during the sanctions , and perhaps because of this, investment in pipes, treatment plants and waste run off has never been properly addressed. In 2018 Human Rights Watch reported that 118,000 people in the Basra region had been hospitalised owing to waterborne issues, from viruses, parasites and bacteria, through to sewage, agricultural waste and industrial pollution . Dealing with run-off is clearly an endemic problem too large to be tackled wholesale, and so the country lives on bottled water. When this mitigation becomes accepted as a norm, there is less pressure on infrastructure, health, and industrial authorities to correct shortfalls that allow chemical or biological waste from academia or industry to enter the water table..

Just because the problem is large, doesn’t mean it can’t be tackled, however. Jeff Brodeur and Dr Laima Warnecke were part of a US government nonproliferation campaign to remove or secure potentially hazardous chemical sources from theft and nefarious use. They received an initial call in December 2017, requiring IB3 Global Solutions to deploy CBRN expertise immediately and embed with Department of State Sponsored Explosive hazard clearance teams. The objective

were to develop force protection techniques in the event of an explosive ordnance disposal operation unexpectedly coming into contact with toxic chemicals and a second task of identifying and mapping toxic chemical surveys in former ISIS occupied territories so that the government might inform families and businesses of the hazards and allow time for remediation.

The first part of the survey programme focused on university chemical laboratories and related, in the greater Mosul area. ISIS had been in charge there for three years, and in addition to their nefarious activities there was a great deal of war damage to all buildings. The university alone had 420 labs and in the first survey of the area the team only managed to see 42 of them, mainly due to their deplorable condition. Equipment had been stolen, buildings had been set on fire, and the team had to contend with a variety of improvised explosive devices. Despite this, work was still going on in some of the labs!

The second rotation was in mid2018 and saw the team return to the university laboratories and start looking at the medical and industrial sites that fed them. While the team was trying to look at sites and ensure that they were safe, a re-building campaign was going on, so the time to survey, mark and secure sources was hampered by bulldozer drivers who lacked CBRN awareness!

In addition to the medical and academic labs, the team also chanced upon a government facility that handled bulk chemical supplies and repackaging for the region. Among the harmless chemicals there was a significant stash of dual-use items, including approximately 348,260l (92,000gal) of glycerin, an explosive precursor, and approximately 95,250kg (210,000lbs) of other chemicals in both powder and granular forms remained as part of the inventory. In addition the damaged state of the building let the weather in and caused havoc with some of the items. The vast facility was also insecure with a high chance of bad actors being able to get access.

The concern for Mr Brodeur and Dr Warnecke was, how much else is there that they had not discovered? The facility itself was found because of a chance remark by one of the academics along the lines of ‘well if you think this is bad, you should take a look at…' Mr Brodeur stated that good things were happening, but slowly. Due to the security situation in the north there was only so much the Iraqi government could do and a lot of it takes time.

“Our priority was what is a risk to public health and what is a risk for reuse and weaponisation? If we’re in the western desert then this encourages the mindset that we've got time and the space to delay and work on that problem later: it’s a problem for a different day. When there’s an immediate threat to a residential neighbourhood then that is a problem we have to address immediately, the same is true if we can weaponise something. The first part of the solution is gates, guards and guns, to secure it, to make sure it's not reused, and then to figure out how to dispose of it properly. It's a phased approach.

“An example of a priority one issue is the University of Mosul. This is an overarching term for about 12 different universities. There's the medical school, a college of arts and sciences, a dental school, pharmacy etc and all under the overarching term University of Mosul. They have a central chemical storage facility. So when inventory from an outside vendor reaches the gate, it goes straight to a chemical warehouse. They have good inventory practices, checking for authorization and appropriate use and then they disperse the chemicals from that central warehouse to the university, med school, pharmacy etc. This means that there is low inventory in the school itself, leaving the central chemical warehouse with the bulk. Unfortunately these products have a shelf life.

“The infrastructure they built to deal with expired products is a large pipe in the basement and chemicals are just poured into it. This pipe runs into an open sewer system and chemicals literally run downhill into an adjacent residential neighbourhood. Then when it rains in Iraq it often floods, so these chemicals go

everywhere. This is a problem that I would address immediately. It’s an infrastructure problem and not a hard solution. It would provide a big bang for your buck as it would have an immediate impact on 12 or more different universities and the surrounding community. We could then showcase the University of Mosul as a trophy example of what right looks like and the other universities would have to get into line with that.”

Mr Brodeur also felt optimistic that when change comes it will come quickly. The problem was disconnecting the current mindset to allow it to start. “My experience from dealing with the doctors and professors is that they're largely educated in Western Europe or the US, so they know what right looks like. They're just living with one of their country’s everyday problems. They do things in their country that they know are wrong and they wouldn't get away with if they were in Europe or the US.

“An example of that would be in one of the laboratory storage facilities we walked through. As soon as I walked in there was a horrible stench, which was because ISIS had just ransacked the facility and there were chemicals all over the floor. They said that I should wear a respirator and yet there was a lady texting in there who looked about eight months pregnant, working with no mask, no gloves. I looked at Laima and I scratched my head and the same doctor who knew what right looked like saw it too. As the threat to life and security decreases you become comfortable with a new normal. So if you used to walk through a minefield to get to work but someone clears a path through it, then you're happy to live with that minefield even though the threat remains.

“It's not healthy. All we can do is study the problem and help them see it for themselves by applying a size and scale to it. Academics who were educated in Europe and the US will see those reports published and be the megaphone inside the country to fix the problem. Then when we get to the point where we can bring the solution into the country, we'll have a better idea of what the workload is and how extensive the problem is.”

It isn’t just the chemical side, however, Dr Warnecke found similar problems with control of radioactive sources and hazards. The damage sustained during the conflict was extensive, but that didn’t stop people getting cancer and needing treatment. Dr Warnecke explained: “We visited the oncology hospital in Mosul. The hospital was hardly accessible from outside and inside there was major structural damage. We carried radiation detection meters and found minor levels throughout the hospital. Eventually we came to the room where we found the device that was causing heightened levels of radiation and we needed to evacuate everyone who had accompanied us from that space. The room was locked with a lead door, and we were told that the equipment generating a high radiation count was stored in there.

“We were there with a health ministry delegation and their main concern was how to remove the radiation generating equipment and rebuild the hospital since

The damaged state of some of the buildings has let weather in which has caused havoc with some items ©J. Brodeur

cancer patients couldn’t get treatment. [As a first step the] Iraqi government should be responsible for removing radiation equipment from shattered hospitals, chemicals from shattered pharmaceutical plants, secure university chemical laboratories and remove and sort chemicals that could react dangerously with each other.

“The remediation of radiological and chemical remnants, is under the purview of the ministry of health. Individual healthcare providers and academic leaders should provide more specific and accurate information, statistics should be collected and published so that the government and world would know and be concerned about these issues. Based on discussions with healthcare providers and research from what few available publications there are, the number of cancer cases is increasing drastically through the state.”

Mr Brodeur also felt that a greater audience for the problems would help, but outside assistance would be complicated by the security situation in Iraq. As such he suggested that improvements would probably happen in the medium term. “In three to five years, we can start to put the infrastructure in place so we no longer contribute to the existing problem. Universities will then properly dispose of their chemicals, the waste from a biology lab won't go down the trough and cause staphylococcus of the mouth because it has been floating through an open sewer system waiting for somebody to play in it and get infected. That’s phase one. Phase two is uncovering what is under the sand and could have been there for years or even generations.

“There was already an aggressive reconstruction programme in Mosul on the Eastern, “Right Bank” side of the river, the Western, “Left Bank” side, nobody touched and was extensively battle damaged. I don't know if it's written into their constitution but it was my impression that the minister of higher education had almost sovereign authority over university campuses and nobody could walk onto a campus without his approval or invitation. The same applied to laboratory issues, these were not community or city matters, but a problem to be resourced by the minister of higher education. It'll take a little bit of diplomacy to get that done.” The advantage of having one individual with supreme authority is that they can make problems disappear quite quickly, rather than having to seek approval or resources from a whole list of departments. If a case can be made that they have all the tools available to solve a problem, it is just a matter of helping them see why it is important. Mr Brodeur also felt that the chances of things happening quickly once they become priorities were good. “When a project like that begins, there will be reconstruction envy from the rest of the government. If that has something to do with chemicals, I would anticipate that people in industry and government who understand the situation they are responsible for, will be more than happy to come and tell you the size and scale of the problem and escort you to it.”

As has been mentioned elsewhere in this magazine, the first problem will be: ‘What is waste?’ When everything is waste, nothing is and it can go into landfills and rivers. As the tedious work is done on the regulations, categorizing different waste types and how they should be treated and disposed of, then the problem can be measured. Once the problem can be identified and recognized then the various ministries can start allocating funds to deal with it. The work of people like Mr Brodeur and Dr Warnecke is vital to this, shedding light on the problem and allowing those who are working on the legislation to know that this sector needs to be a priority.

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Iraq 2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iraq 3 https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/07/22/iraq-water-crisis-basra