Environmental Injustice in Afghanistan: How environmental destruction leads to human injustice
Illicit resource extraction, purposeful environmental degradation, & why the Afghan population struggles to breathe
The longest ‘forever war’ led by the imperialist empire of the United States in Afghanistan costs American taxpayers near trillions of dollars. Upkeeping the largest, strongest, and most advanced military in the history of the world is not cheap — around 25 cents of every American tax dollar goes to funding the military (and their imperialistic endeavors). In many cases, Americans are happy to fund their military under the guise of patriotism, even raising more money outside of their tax dollars for nonprofits dedicated to soldiers and veterans. The less obvious costs of such a high maintenance military can be found externalized all over the world, mostly invisible to the average American.
The US military operates 800 military bases at home and abroad, with over a million active-duty personnel. This incredibly vast system of armed forces consumes 269,000 barrels of oil a day, emitting more greenhouse gases annually than most nations. While contributing an enormous amount to the global climate crisis, military bases have begun to prepare themselves for the impending consequences (e.g., rising sea levels), while continuing to pollute the regions they are based in. Afghanistan is not the only victim of outsourced American pollution: nations throughout the global South have been negatively affected. In the case of Afghanistan, the damage is extensive and severe because the ‘War on Terror’ and American military presence has been so long lasting. Afghans have one of the shortest life expectancies in the world (x), one of the highest child mortality rates (x), terribly polluted water supplies, and air quality that is so bad that it’s considered deadlier than the war itself. It’s no coincidence that Afghanistan carries all of these burdens while being the site of America’s longest war — the US has maintained its presence there for over 20 years.
The Crisis of Air Pollution
Measuring particulate matter floating in the air that is 2.5 micrometers or less (PM2.5) by micrograms per cubic meter (µg/m3) is a common way of measuring air pollution. The World Health Organization recommends that PM2.5 doesn’t exceed 10µg/m3, but currently Afghanistan is suffering from a mean concentration of PM2.5 at 57µg/m3. This is nearly 6 times the recommended maximum of particulate matter. International air quality monitoring networks have rated Kabuli air as hazardous. Afghan researchers have reported that over half of the Afghan population suffers from breathing problems and eye and skin irritation. The State of Global Air project reported on pollution in Afghanistan, and in 2019 they counted 8,680 deaths that were attributable to PM2.5 alone. This number has been increasing exponentially since 1990. In 2017, roughly 26,000 Afghan lives were lost due to air pollution related diseases and illness.
It should also be noted that there are just over seven physicians, nurses, and midwives per 10,000 people in Afghanistan. Locals in Kabul often say that during times of violence, which is frequent, the air is unbreathable and they cannot go outside. Long-term exposure to air pollution has been shown to lead to lung cancer, heart disease, and other chronic illnesses.
Some folks will attribute the use of poor fuel resources and industrial production to this air pollution crisis, but further investigation proves that the main culprit is the US military. The multiple military bases in Afghanistan have long practiced ‘open-pit burning’ to get rid of their accumulated waste. The method is simple: dig a ditch, fill it with waste, and burn it all without any type of filter, conducted on a daily basis. Examples of the waste that is burned in these pits are plastics, styrofoam, rubber, medical waste, metals, and unexploded weapons. The science is also simple: unfiltered and open burning of such materials will release dangerous toxins and particles into the air. Some of these toxins include, but are not limited to, dioxin, acetone, carbon disulfide, and carbon tetrachloride.
The US military failed to keep track of how much waste was burned in these open burn sites, but to estimate, consider that each service member produces roughly 8–10 pounds of waste a day. The Department of Defense (DoD) reported in 2010 that 184 open-burn pits were being operated in Afghanistan. Eric Bonds of the University of Mary Washington Sociology and Anthropology Department calculates that at the peak of the war in Afghanistan, the US military was producing 900,000 pounds of waste daily, an untold amount of which was burned in open-burn pits with no pollution control whatsoever.
Westerners, particularly Americans, tend to perceive Afghanistan as a deserted, unpopulated warzone or wasteland, and this perception allows such practices to go on unchecked. But the open-burning was conducted near villages, farms, neighborhoods, orchards, and rivers — and the long-term effects are still visible as Afghans struggle to breathe on their own lands. There were few attempts by the DoD to implement pollution controls, like in 2010 when they funded hundreds of millions of dollars toward the building of two trash incinerators at a Forward Operating Base Salerno in Khost. Even though trash incinerators are still incredibly pollutive, military inspectors found that they had never even been used: the FOB Salerno had still been practicing open-burning until 2013.
The Crisis of Water Pollution
In 2017, the Afghan Research Center based in Kabul reported that 80% of drinking water was polluted, causing food poisoning and other illnesses. Low rainfall and insufficient infrastructure makes Afghanistan particularly vulnerable to widespread water pollution, but it must be acknowledged that the US military has played a significant role in both polluting water supplies and draining groundwater wells. Military bases extract water from aquifers to meet their needs while also importing water from other regions which costs both money (tax dollars) and transportation miles, simultaneously adding to carbon emissions. The mass contamination of drinking water is not solely because of civilian activity, but is a direct result of decades of warfare and international military presence. It should also be acknowledged that polluted water not only causes illness through direct consumption, but when contaminated water seeps through soil it can damage orchards, farmland, and groundwater reserves.
Afghanistan lacks sufficient public sanitation infrastructure and wastewater treatment systems. Population in the cities are growing rapidly while only 39% of Afghans have access to basic sanitation. The rugged, mountainous terrain of Afghan land is only one reason why it is difficult to establish such infrastructure. Lack of peacetime, lack of resources, and lack of funding are other reasons Afghanistan has been unable to implement sanitation systems.
Remnants of War: The Crisis of Landmines
While air and water pollution are both causing health crises and disease among the Afghan population, the most violent leftover side effect of wartime is the remnants of landmines, improvised explosive devices (IED), and other unexploded battlefield detritus (UXO). Landmines are explosive hidden mines laid just beneath the surface of the ground, and currently Afghanistan is the most mined country in the world. For the past 30 years, landmines have been planted indiscriminately on grasslands, footpaths, residential areas, and agricultural lands by the US military, Russian forces, the United Islamic Front and the Taliban.
The United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) reported that since 1989 (when they first started keeping count), 38,328 Afghan civilians have been killed or have been injured by unexploded mines, the vast majority being children. In 2019, 78% of civilian casualties caused by mines were children. In the years between 2009 and 2018, around 6,500 children were killed by accidentally stepping on UXO with another 15,000 seriously injured. UXO are a unique threat to the lives of Afghan people because they have been laid so randomly that any area could potentially be infected with unknown landmines. Some civilians describe their lives as ‘living on a minefield’, where there are victims of landmine explosions everyday. Landmines are designed to kill or seriously injure the victim.
Even though it was predominantly foreign military forces who so heavily mined Afghan land, it is Afghan civilians who have been killed, injured, lost limbs and lives as consequence. And it is predominantly Afghans who have been left to clean up the mess. UNMAS put together an all-female demining team in 2018, a crew of 39 Afghan women who risk their lives working to demine their lands. The demining process is done entirely by hand.
But Who Benefitted?
Historically, war has always included — or better yet, prioritized — environmental destruction. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not unique in this regard. The US military has structured itself so that environmental devastation is an essential part of its strategy. What makes the land of Afghanistan alluring, in the eyes of the American imperialist, is that there is over $1 trillion worth of unmined essential minerals and vast untapped fossil fuel reserves underneath the surface. This makes Afghan land an American interest. Even more appealing is the 200 billion barrels of oil underground Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan which was previously under Soviet Union control and would require a pipeline through Afghanistan and Pakistan to extract. John O’Neill, the Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under the Bush administration, reportedly informed French intelligence analysts that:
“the oil and gas reserves of Central Asia have been controlled by Russia. The Bush government wanted to change that…” (source)
This is unsurprising, seeing that many of the top Bush administration members had strong oil connections, including Vice President Dick Cheney who was previously president of Halliburton Corporation. The DoD’s Task Force for Business and Stability Operations has allocated hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars towards the extraction of petroleum and minerals.
Big oil corporations were not the only entities excited to invade Afghanistan, as war is good for American industry and wealthy elites. The entire military industrial complex greatly benefits from wartime in foreign nations. Afghanistan is a landlocked country with limited water resources, so private trucking and transportation companies benefit by serving the military. Arms and defense weapons contractors make hundreds of billions of dollars annually from armed conflict by the US military. It was Alexander Berkman who said back in 1929 that,
“It is not for your country that you fight when you go to war. It’s for. . .your capitalistic masters.”
Ecological unequal exchange theory applies here. This theory holds that because of the position America and other rich Northern nations hold in the world system hierarchy, they take advantage of, exploit, and steal the natural resource wealth of periphery nations (in the global South). In doing this, they simultaneously export environmentally degrading activities to these periphery nations. Armed violence is essential to this process. In the case of Afghanistan, this describes why Afghans live on top of an enormous wealth of natural capital yet are some of the poorest people in the world, breathing the worst-quality air and drinking the worst-quality water.
How Does America Get Away With It?
It’s been made clear that the United States had significant money interests in the lands of Central Asia, and that following the 9/11 attacks they hastily invaded both Iraq and Afghanistan, not only destabilizing their societies and causing mass civilian deaths but destroying their environment and polluting their air and water in the process. The question of how America got away with this has a long and very nuanced answer, beginning with the process of legitimizing the war to their own citizens.
Let’s talk about war programming. War programming is a phenomena perpetuated by the American media and journalists that shapes the way Americans talk about war, the military, and global violence. Every time that you hear folks talking about ‘spreading democracy’ in the Middle East, that’s a result of war programming. Here is one example: Eric Bonds of UMW conducted a research survey on the kind of reporting that was done around the open-burn pits mentioned earlier. Looking at American newspapers from 2007–2014, he found that only one article during the seven-year period mentioned civilian impact substantially. Even if you Googled ‘US open-burn pits’ right now, you’d find dozens of articles centering the experiences of US military soldiers and ignoring the effects of the burning on Afghan peoples. It is Afghans who bear the brunt of this pollution, it is Afghans who will get the sickest, and it is Afghans who have little-to-no healthcare access. Afghan children and elderly are most negatively affected and Afghans will have to deal with this toxic crisis for generations, regardless if the US military decides to stay or leave.
Where To Go From Here
Americans pay little to no cost for the pollution and environmentally destructive tendencies caused by their military. Overall, Americans as a whole are largely disconnected from the realities of war and have very misconstrued ideas about what their military force is doing abroad and what they’re fighting for. There are currently many global initiatives meant to address the air and water pollution crises as well as UN Task Forces aimed at solving the landmine and UXO crisis. There are also initiatives to provide Afghanistan with medical services on a wide scale. These are not long-term solutions.
A long-term solution would be to end US intervention in Afghanistan and force the US to pay their ecological debt back to Afghanistan while ensuring that the Afghan people have complete control and autonomy over their land and natural capital. A personal recommendation to promote stability in Central Asia, while also combatting the impending climate crisis, would be to completely deconstruct and abolish the US military industrial complex as we know it and begin funding widespread reparations across the global South. This cannot be done without reversing the decades of ‘war programming’ propaganda conducted by mainstream media outlets. What would be required is large-scale re-education campaigns to teach the realities of war, with special focus on the human and environmental costs. Beyond that, reparations are imperative to restore balance to the resource disequilibrium between the global North and South. I would also recommend that the victims of American imperialism be the leaders of the reparations movements, as they know best what their nations need to restore stability to society.
Notes
- This piece was written within an environmental justice framework. I did not include the fact that over 90% of Afghan children suffer from PTSD, the emotional toll of the war on Afghan civilians, or the details about how extensively civilians are killed/injured by wartime.
- The abolition of the military industrial complex aligns with the abolition of the police/prison industrial complex here in the US. Some quick reads about PIC abolition can be found here, here, and here.
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