Landless farmers cultivate chemical weapons site despite risks
 
By Abdulsamia al-Samarai
 
Azzaman, December 18, 2005
 
A dozen landless and poverty-stricken farmers have pitched their tents in Muthana, the chemical weapons site which once produced thousands of tons of chemical precursors, nerve agents and mustard gas.
 
Muthana was the largest chemical weapons production and storage site in Iraq and it took U.N. weapons inspectors three years to dispose of its chemical warfare munitions.
 
Thousands of tons chemical agents including mustard gas, Sarin, Tabun and VX were burned on the 5 km by 5 km facility. Thousands of barrels still lie there, some full and some empty.
 
But the risks have not deterred Widha al-Shamari to move to the site and cultivate part of its land with tomatoes, cucumber, onions and other vegetables.
 
“It is an empty land. It now belongs to nobody and it is arable and fertile and very good for agriculture,” said Shamari, one of the farmers on the site.
 
Asked whether he feared that the site was still contaminated and that some of the barrels still had chemical agents in them, Shamari said:
 
“We have pushed all the barrels aside and used some to fence off our own areas. No one has told us anything about the dangers. No one has objected to our presence here,” he said.
 
U.S. troops have erected check-points over the paved road leading to the site which is about 75 km north of Baghdad.
 
“We are farmers and had no land of our own. We have come here to stave off hunger. We are living in abject poverty,” said Shamari’s wife standing before a ramshackle mud house.
 
The site is without electricity but the farmers have their own diesel-driven pumps which they use to lift water from a nearby river.
 
Mohammed al-Jubaisi, his brothers and cousins have been here for more than a year. “I don’t think the site is dangerous anymore. The land is safe. It is so fertile, much better than any other land I had cultivated before,” said Jubaisi, 54.
 
But not every body agrees with Jubaisi.
 
Ali Khazraji, a farmer who had fled the site some months ago to a nearby village, has a tragic story to tell.
 
“We were there (at Muthana) nearly a year ago. My uncle picked a barrel, and after cleaning it, used it to store fresh water. A few days later, the skin and part of the flesh on his hands started falling,” he said.
 
Khazraji said he took his uncle to a hospital in Baghdad and took him three moths to recover.
 
Iraqi scientists are wary of the consequences of leaving the country’s former nuclear, chemical and biological weapons sites unattended. 
 
“This is a dangerous issue which must be solved immediately,” said DR. Khalaf Faris, chemistry professor at the College of Sciences in the nearby city of Samarra.
 
“If these farmers are not evicted and go ahead with their cultivation, there is high risk of them and consumers of their produce to catch cancer and other dangerous diseases,” he said.
 
U.S. troops did not and have not secured any of the former Iraqi weapons sites since their 2003 invasion.
 
The Muthana facility, like many other military and civilian establishments, was looted shortly after the invasion.
 
Saleh Mahdi from the Ministry of Agriculture says the authorities are aware of the risks involved in living on the site and cultivating it.
 
“We have issued several warnings in this regard. The farmers in Muthana are trespassers and violators of the law. But we lack the means to apply the law. We simply do not have a vehicle to take us there and tell them to leave,” he said.