WHATEVER happened to worries about the environment in Iraq? Flagged up immediately after last year鈥檚 invasion as a major concern by the UN and others, it has all but disappeared from the reconstruction agenda.
That is the view of senior British politician Peter Ainsworth, a Conservative MP and chair of the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee. On Monday he announced an inquiry to explore why environmental concerns are not being factored into 鈥渕ilitary operations and construction鈥� plans.
鈥淚t鈥檚 very disappointing,鈥� Ainsworth says. Almost a year after the invasion, Baghdad does not have a single operational sewage works; the country鈥檚 main rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, are filling with raw sewage and oil from sabotaged pipelines; and the land is spattered with depleted uranium from coalition munitions. Ainsworth will be asking British defence and international aid ministries what went wrong.
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Underlining the emerging crisis, the French news agency AFP reported from Baghdad this week that the interim environment ministry had been given just a $1 million for its first year鈥檚 budget. Environment minister Abdul-Rahman Kereen has been touring western capitals in recent weeks to ask for assistance, but to little effect so far.