It is stuffy and hot in the Lebanese capital Beirut. There are not nearly as many tourists as before; They stay away because of the constant Israeli attacks in Lebanon and the unrest in the region.
Yet Ahmad Baydoun spends the summer here, just like many from the Lebanese diaspora. He lives in Amsterdam and is a PhD student at the TU Delft architecture car. There he investigates what he calls Weaponized Environmentsplaces that are not only the scene of struggle during conflicts, but are also a weapon themselves. Think of the on fire of fields and forests, poisoning or closing of water sources and of fields full of land mines. Baydouns source material varies from satellite images to everything that can be found online, also known as Osint (Open Source Intelligence).
Baydoun: “I am investigating the systematic use of white phosphorus in southern libanon, with the emphasis on its environment and spatial impact. I combine open source information, satellite images and architecture analysis to locate and verify attacks.” His work is inspired by that of organizations such as Forensic Architecture and Bellingcat.
What is it like to investigate an ongoing conflict in your own country?
“It’s difficult. Especially last year was difficult [toen de gevechten tussen Hezbollah en Israël escaleerden]. The country where you have friends and family, with which you have an emotional bond, is bombarded so violently. There is no distance, it is involved with your personal life. But it is also a motivation. I have to pay for this research myself, I do this because it concerns me and I can do something for my country and people. And in the end you come back and you will undergo the consequences like everyone else. This poisons us all.
“I like to work with satellite images because they-perhaps it is strange to say-not that have a human perspective. You look from a very high bird’s eye view, you see no bedrooms, no people, you don’t hear voices. That is the most difficult for people who do interviews or people in the Osint community have to count those bodies. I can’t.”
Before the 30-year-old researcher started fully focusing on the war in his home country, he investigated a number of other cases in the region. For example, he delved into a scandal around chemical waste from Italy that was dumped on a large scale in Lebanon in the 1980s.
Ahmad Baydoun.
Photo Tamara Saade
Baydoun: “It was a deal between the Italian Mafia and the Lebanese Forces [een rechts-christelijke politieke partij en voormalige militie] During the civil war. In exchange for dumping that waste, they received money and weapons. “
He then looked at the use of chemical weapons in Syria, pollution of the Qaraoun Lake in the Lebanese Bekaa-Valley, and a windmill project of Israel in the Golan [Syrisch gebied dat Israël sinds 1974 bezet]. His hypothesis was that the location of the windmills, set up in fields at Druzische Villages, had been deliberately chosen to expel these communities there with so -called soft violencesuch as the noise of the mills. In retrospect, they were finger exercises for the real thing.
Since October 2023, Baydouns PhD research has been fully engaged in the use of white phosphorus by the Israeli army in southern Lebanon. This ammunition consists of a projectile containing 116 pieces of felt soaked in white phosphorus (molecular formula P4). After shooting, the projectile comes to explode tens of meters above the ground, after which the felt pieces come down in recognizable tentacle -like strings. NRC found grenade residues of American and/or Israeli-made in southern Lebanon in November 2023.
The grenades are usually used to construct smoke curtains or to mark goals. Because of the flammability, however, they can also serve as an (an unfocused) fire weapon. This is controversial: the felt particles fall over a large surface, can stick to (human) meat and burn through to the bone. The smoke also causes breathing problems and a fiddle rest can ignite weeks or months later if enough oxygen is added.
“When the war started here it felt more meaningful to work on this,” says Baydoun. “White phosphorus became a very large subject. My research maps its use and I develop methods to do that. You must be able to identify white phosphorus well for that. One of the problems is that there is a lot of noise due to image manipulation and old images of other conflicts on (social) media.”
You mean fake news and disinformation?
“Exactly. It also happened that a building in Beirut was hit by a rocket, after which Israel had used Witte Phosphorus in Beirut, although that was not right. Many people cannot identify weapons well, which in itself is not bad, but also the media will hardly stop you.”
Why was there so much interest in white phosphorus at all?
“I think first of all because of the name. It is clearly a chemical and that scares people. White phosphorus is also not a precise weapon, with a single, clear impact. It is everywhere and nowhere, a kind of fluid organism that enters your house, is taken by the wind.”
By international treaties, white phosphorus is not considered a chemical weapon because it works primarily due to heat and fire instead of toxicity. The same applies to the eligible as a fire weapon, because the international law is based on the primary use of use and not any side effects. The ammunition falls under Protocol 3 of the CCW Convention on conventional weapons.
International humanitarian law sets strict conditions for its deployment. For example, use in densely populated areas is prohibited, with a few exceptions. Organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and various countries have strongly criticized and called on those applications to be called white phosphorus as a fire weapon.
Can this method be used for other weapons and conflicts?
“Yes, that is exactly the idea of The website I create. Everything is open source, so people can take over the entire structure. For example, Russia used a lot of white phosphorus in Ukraine at the start of the war.
“Together with Dutch and American weapon experts, I have developed my own method for the identification of white phosphorus. We mainly use images that show the ammunition until very shortly after the explosion, because after a few seconds the ‘tentacles’ are no longer clearly visible and the weapon may be incorrectly identified. The method must be watertight.
“If you map out all those cases afterwards, you will start to see patterns. For example, when this weapon is used – during the day or at night. You also see that it is almost only around the border area [tussen Israël en Libanon] go.”
What does that say?
“That Israel certainly tried to construct a buffer zone between the two countries and the population of the border villages wanted to expel. That worked. Moreover, you see a large overlap between the areas where Israel used white phosphorus and the places that are completely destroyed.”
How do you estimate the consequences of the pollution with white phosphorus in Lebanon?
“I am currently working with the American University of Beirut on the question of what the consequences are for the environment, not only from white phosphorus but also of heavy metals [afkomstig uit de grote hoeveelheden munitie in het algemeen in Zuid-Libanon]. Many areas in the direct border area are still inaccessible, but we have been able to take soil samples in a number of places. The levels of white phosphorus are often high. Phosphorus in itself Is an essential nutrient for plants, but the remains of white phosphorus are very reactive and toxic. Due to its complex behavior in the environment, it may not be biologically available for plants. But that needs to be further investigated.
“It is also problematic that it remains flammable for so long. Two friends of mine, journalists, went back to a place in the south on which white phosphorus had been shot a year earlier. After they broke the felt pieces, they started smoking again. A year later! That also means that if a farmer is working the earth and this is the bird to be bothered again. And then perhaps a person who eats meat again, which is also toxic.
Can it still be cleaned up?
“I couldn’t find much about how to clean the surroundings of this. Theoretically, you shouldn’t use it in civil areas, so there are no protocols. The only thing I found was a document from the US Army made after a train in the US was derailed and had leaked a lot of white phosphorus. There they removed the top layer of the bottom.”
What do you want to do next?
“I want to finish this and then save it as an archive. The goal is to provide justice and other parties with evidence so that they can continue, such as journalists and human rights organizations. I hope to be able to continue to do OSINT research myself, perhaps on a journalistic editors. I have already worked on many assignments with news editors.”