In the past few years, there has been an upsurge of armed conflicts that have involved both the state and non-state actors globally. There have been various conflicts in the past, but some are still ongoing such as the civil war in Syria that started six years ago, Iraq and Libyan civil wars that began in 2014 and others. The world has also been wary of the terrorists, and this has made many countries to come together to fight them. One of the terrorist group that has been a threat to various nations is the ISIS which has seen countries such as the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Russia, Turkey, and others come together to fight them. Although people may go to war since they want to defend and expand their religious beliefs or acquire economic resources, they fail to realize that war has serious effects on the environment.
To begin with, people fight due to various reasons such as politics, ideologies, and arms race where a country wants to show its might by going to war with another nation. Natural resources have also been one of the reasons people go to war with each other. Therefore, the environment causes war in one way or another. Individuals may fight because of the resources that exist in a place. For instance, the Arab region has several oil reserves that have been the reason people fight (Alice and Lincoln 2013). The other way that the environment causes conflict is through its scarcity and degradation. The drivers of this type of war are the pastoralists who go looking for water resources and grazing lands. These types of conflicts are mainly common in Sudan and Somalia.
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"War Effect on Environment".
Wars have various after effects on the land, air, and water and wildlife. One cause of environment degradation is the use of deadly missile and bombs to attack the enemy during a conflict as illustrated by the Iraq War that took place in 2003 known as “Iraqi Freedom Operation.” When this war started on 19th March 2003, the U.S.-led coalition invaded Baghdad through an operation called “Shock and Awe” bombing campaign, in which they bombed, maimed, and killed many civilians (Sanders 40). The American-led coalition failed to do an environmental assessment that related to the war. They instead focused on attacking Iraq without considering the effect that the conflict would have on the environment. One effect of the war on the environment is toxic dust that occurs in the landscapes that are used excessively by the military vehicles. The dust contains heavy metals such as lead, cobalt, and aluminum and it may cause serious respiratory diseases. Moreover, when it settles on the soil, it may hinder plant growth and prevent regeneration of destroyed vegetations.
Also, war destroys vital infrastructures and materials. For instance, during the first week of these attacks, there was the bombing of Mesopotamia the region regarded as the cradle of literacy. It contained various manuscripts and books dated from around 3500 BCE, but they went up in flames as a result of the invasion. These documents were rare, and there was no way they could be written again. Also, the bombs did not save Iraq National Archives and this lead to the destruction of various irreplaceable documents which were some centuries old. The documents that were not destroyed during the fighting were stolen as people resulted in looting. The American–led invasion of Iraq destroyed the nation’s history since it destroyed a lot of state records and documents (Sanders 41). Equally, conflicts destroy the farming land, and the crops planted by the farmers and this leads to starvation. For example, in the case of Iraq war, the bombing took place in Mesopotamia a region where agriculture began around 13 centuries ago, and this meant that the farmers could not harvest
