India a dumping ground for Iraqi war
junk By Siddharth Srivastava
NEW DELHI - Small Indian steel mills fed
by scrap imported from Asian, African and Persian Gulf
countries are nothing new. But the war in Iraq has added a new
- and dangerous - dimension. India's hungry steel
industry is now being fed by remnants of destroyed Iraqi
infrastructure, sometimes even its armaments.
Huge consignments of looted machinery,
shattered tanks, mangled building material, chopped-up
railroad boxcars, machinery components, copper and aluminum
ingots and bars, steel rods and water pipes are
increasingly imported by India from Iraq. For Indian
businesses, Iraqi scrap is a prime catch because it's
dirt-cheap. With an overworked, understaffed and easily
corruptible Indian Customs Department choosing to look
the other way, Iraqi scrap thus easily makes its way to
Indian shores, but with a few live shells too. One of
them blew up late last month, killing 10 workers.
The hunt for war junk in imported scrap
began after this accident, which also left dozens injured in
a private foundry, when the shell - routed through
Iran, but originating in Iraq - blew up during handling in
New Delhi's bustling industrial suburb of
Ghaziabad. Subsequent investigations revealed that
extremely dangerous material is being illegally transferred
into the country along with war junk. "The find so far in
New Delhi and nearby towns alone can start a little
war," said a spokesman of the Indian army's bomb-disposal
unit.
Last week, 100 shells were found
from metal consignments at Tughlaqabad (near
Delhi), comprising mortar rounds, anti-tank
shells, anti-aircraft missiles and fragmentation shells.
Huge caches of live and extremely dangerous shells, bombs
and mortar rounds numbering in thousands are being
recovered from Jaipur (in the state of Rajasthan),
Ahmedabad (Gujarat), Bulandshahr (Uttar Pradesh), Mumbai,
Karnal (Haryana) and Delhi, which are dotted with
small-scale steelmakers and scrap consumers.
"No check is
carried out when scrap is picked up or dumped in the
exporting country. In most cases, bulldozers just tear
down remnants of buildings and bridges that have been
bombed. The scrap is then sold off. There are high
chances of live shells or partially exploded shells
being embedded in such scrap," said a customs official.
Piyooshe Goyal, an importer of metal scrap, says
India buys scrap from all over the world. "The dangerous
bit is coming mostly from the war-torn parts of the
world. It's very cheap. Imports from war-ravaged regions
figure high on the list of sensitive countries, but the
port of origin declared to the customs department is
often different." A correspondent from Jordanian daily
al-Arab al-Yawm visited a border crossing between
Iraq and Jordan last month and witnessed "scrap metal"
being sold over the border for export to Israel, India
and Japan. According to the Jordanian newspaper, most of
the scrap metal consisted of "old and new Iraqi tanks
broken down to facilitate their shipment, armored
personnel carriers, artillery shells, light arms, hand
grenades and missiles".
The Indian steel industry can be divided
into two basic categories: integrated big factories and
small steel factories; the latter deal with scrap.
Currently, the Steel Authority of India Ltd is the
largest domestic steel producer, with a capacity exceeding 11 million tons,
followed by Tata Steel at 6 million and Rashtriya Ispat
at 3.5 million tons. By the beginning of the next
decade, India could have a steelmaking capacity of about 90
million tons. The number of small steel factories
currently stands at more than 200, owned by the private sector, with a
total annual capacity close to 15 million tons.
With more than 2 million tons likely to be imported this
year alone, India is no stranger to scrap imports -
nor to explosive scrap, for that matter. A cache of
explosive scrap from Iraq was confiscated in 1995.
Several other consignments have been detected over the
past few years from countries such as Somalia and Iran.
But over the past year, two things happened that changed
the way the scrap business is conducted, making the
entire process much more incendiary. One, the price of
scrap increased dramatically because of high demand, to
US$240-$250 per ton as against the $100 level a year
ago. Second, the war in Iraq made available a whole lot
of junk that could be accessed at much cheaper rates
than the skyrocketing prices of conventional junk.
Though the provisional authority in Iraq
imposed restrictions on scrap exports this year, the
traders have carried on, taking advantage of the lack of
security in the country. The import of Iraqi scrap into
India has shown a steady increase in the past year,
leading to concerns about security. Some also fear that
even arms and ammunitions can get shipped in along with
live shells if scrap imports from Iraq are not stopped.
The Intelligence Bureau has sounded the Home Ministry
about the threat to internal security that emanates from
outdated customs laws.
Since such imports are, as a rule, not permitted
from war-ravaged countries such as Iraq, the scrap is first bought in bulk
by dealers who take them to dumping yards of
Dubai and Iran before exporting them. All it takes
is a declaration from the exporter certifying the
consignment is fit for "normal factory" use. The scrap
is offloaded at Indian ports and then transported
onward. "As the certificates stating the country of
origin declare the scrap originated from Iran or Dubai,
there isn't much that we can do," said a customs
officer.
The Indian government is now seeking
to tighten the scrap-import policy to filter out hazardous
material. There is a strong possibility that imports of
metal scrap originating from Iran, Afghanistan and
Somalia will be stopped altogether. Under the present
policy, metal scrap is allowed to be imported without a
license. There is, however, a set of rules to block the
import of hazardous material through metal scrap. But
obviously they are not working. So the government has
now sought to identify international ports where strict
export norms are not implemented. Moves are also afoot
to allow the import of only shredded scrap and running
them through X-ray machines. It will clearly take a lot
to ensure that the Iraq war doesn't trickle into India.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New
Delhi-based journalist.
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