From the Editors
Once in a while you find out
about something you instantly
wish you’d never heard of—but
once you have, you can’t get it out of your
head. UXO may be one such thing. Short for
unexploded ordnance, UXO means bombs,
missiles, and other projectile weapons
that were fired but never detonated, and
remain scattered across the globe.
Photographer Jonathan Olley is documenting UXO all around the world
because every place where there’s been a
modern conflict, there remains UXO.
Some of it arrives via artillery; in other
cases it is dropped from the air. These
shells and bombs typically contain live
explosives and are therefore still capable
of detonating. Some also hold lethal
chemicals such as mustard gas. Still
others contain depleted uranium, a
radioactive leftover of the nuclear-energy
cycle. UXO ranges from hand grenades to
huge shells to cluster bombs—large
bomb casings that contain anywhere from
dozens to hundreds of bomblets, roughly
30 percent of which fail to detonate on
impact. Often, UXO remains hidden
beneath the ground until a farmer comes
though with a plow—reaping the so-called iron harvest—or someone decides
to dig a backyard garden.
PHOTOGRAPH l JONATHAN OLLEY
UXO is, of course, prevalent in Iraq,
where uncounted tons of bombs, shells,
and land mines litter the country. The
United Nations estimates that southern
Lebanon contains a million unexploded
bomblets from cluster bombs dropped by
Israel during its month-long war with
Hezbollah in 2006. The country of Laos,
which has the distinction of being the
most-bombed nation (having been the
recipient of roughly 5 million tons of ordnance during the Vietnam War), is another
UXO stronghold. Olley’s photographs in
this issue of Orion (page 38) were taken
around the city of Verdun in the Lorraine
region of France, in a forest so littered with
World War I artillery shells that it is known
as the Zone Rouge. A cleanup effort,
begun following World War II, is ongoing,
with French démineurs roving the landscape to locate, defuse, and dispose of the
ancient, rusting shells. Statistically, an
average of twelve démineurs will die in the
line of duty each year.
UXO haunts our thoughts as another
in what seems like an endless parade of
“environmental” problems the world must
solve. But they aren’t just problems; they
are symptoms. It is surely true that environmentalism has had many individual
successes in getting people to save a par-
ticular landscape or species. But real victory
demands something different than individual, isolated success stories. What the forest
of Verdun—and the poisoned landscapes
around Chernobyl, and the 1,305 toxic
Superfund sites dotting every state in the
nation—demonstrates is that we, that most
dangerous of species, have managed to turn
the very landscape against ourselves. Now,
as a result of carbon build-up in the atmosphere, even the climate is becoming lethal.
Our activities—industrial-scale war, industrial-scale poisoning of the land, air, and
water—reveal a systemic disrespect for the
value of life. This is our collective iron harvest, and environmentalism as a movement
simply isn’t sufficient to save us from it.
We’re going to need something bigger
and more dynamic to rise to that task, and
soon. It will come out of the recognition
that violence inflicted upon ecosystems
and animals is also an attack on human
beings. It will come out of the recognition
that all living things have non-negotiable
rights. It will come out of the recognition
that démineurs and social-justice activists
and peace advocates and wilderness preser-vationists all share a noble and essential
goal: valuing life, the most precious
resource of all. It will come. It has to. And
when it does, get on board. a
