A guest blog post by Wim Zwijnenburg

The direct and long-lasting impacts of wars and armed conflicts on the environment, and subsequently on human health, has long remained an ignored and under-reported issue. Largely, this was due to the difficulty to identify, assess and monitor conflicts due to security issues during ongoing wars. But also partly because of a lack of knowledge on the long-term consequences for civilians affected by conflict pollution and the time it takes for health issues to manifest themselves. The handful of examples that did hit the news were often related to major catastrophic events, such…

Military build-up in northern Iraq

Tensions between the Iraqi army, its associated Popular Mobilisation Units and Kurdish Peshmerga are mounting since the former overtook Kirkuk in October 2017 and moved further into Kurdish controlled territory. The move by the Iraqi army forced the Kurdish troops to retreat to the pre-2014 borders and give up some of the disputed territories under their control. Since then, there have been a number of violent incidents between Peshmerga forces and the Iraqi army or the PMUs. Both sides have been accusing of building up military forces around vital strategic areas.

In November 2017, Kurdish…

The destruction brought upon Syria and Iraq in the last six years has left deep scars throughout these countries’ urban and rural landscapes. As part of our ongoing work to monitor conflict-related environmental damage and related health and social-economic cost for communities, PAX has been tracking attacks on the oil infrastructure of these war-torn states.

In northern Iraq and a large part of eastern Syria, oil resources have played an important developmental role prior the war. This resulted in the build-up of significant oil infrastructure throughout these countries, including refineries, wellheads, pumping jacks, pipelines, storage and transportation facilities.

After the…