Ableism is a direct product of colonial capitalism. The disabled or sick body is one that cannot join in the work of upholding capitalism at the relentless pace the system requires. Instead, it is spat out to the peripheries of society. War reinforces this hierarchy to the nth degree—because the conditions that typically produce invisible and chronic illness, such as pollution, the proliferation of toxic chemicals, poor living conditions that facilitate the growth and spread of disease, lack of access to clean water and healthy food as well as access to medical care, intensify during times of war.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that there are around 4.9 million people with disabilities living in Yemen—though this number is likely already outdated and inaccurate given “the conflict’s effects, such as widespread landmines and explosive remnants of war,” according to the report. It’s a dire situation that is compounded by the country’s destroyed infrastructure, which becomes unable to meet the fundamental needs of people with chronic illness as well as new and existing disabilities. During violent conflict, the number of people with disabilities spikes exponentially, yet those same people are often “overlooked… [and] expos[ed] to heightened safety risks” during forced evacuations.

These humans are casualties of the capitalist hierarchy, which does not deem all life as valuable. This goes for nature too, unless it is to be exploited, extracted from, or weaponized towards the destruction of the other.

In an interview titled “Contemporary Nature” between Curator Lorén Elhili and Dr Samaneh Moafi in The Slow Grind: Practising Hope and Imagination, the historic weaponization of land by the Israeli state towards Palestine is made clear. Dr Samaneh Moafi is the assistant director of research at Forensic Architecture, a team of investigators who employ architectural techniques towards the examination of state violence, environmental destruction, and human rights violations the world over. Among the organization’s findings is how herbicidal warfare has been used to disrupt and destroy the plant-based ecosystems of Gaza—ultimately throwing the agricultural economy out of whack. The investigation itself was aided by the local community, who shared evidence of environmental violence with Forensic Architecture.

“We received from Palestinians… leaves of a savannah, which is a local to Palestine, zucchini, spinach, and edibles,” Dr Moafi told Elhili. “These were leaves that if you looked closely, you could see that they were burnt, there were burn marks of herbicidal spraying on them. We were also sent videos by Palestinian farmers of all these Israeli planes that were flying very close to the eastern border of Gaza, that were spraying herbicide… When we recreated that environment, and we simulated the movement of the particles, we realised that the particles are being carried by the wind… hundreds of metres into the Gaza territory destroying the Palestinian farms.”

Ultimately, Forensic Architecture found that herbicide was spread unannounced by Israeli planes twice-annually at harvest time for four years prior to when their research began in 2014. As Dr Moafi said: “When you kill the land once, you kill it again and you kill it again, at some point, it stops being fruitful.” When I see an image of a Palestinian holding an olive tree, or the terracotta red soil stained hands of a Sudanese person, I know that these people listen to the heartbeat of their land. These weapons stop that heartbeat.

The insidious, shapeshifting guise of war is enduring, cyclical, and intersectional. In warzones, agriculture and the production of food is repeatedly sabotaged, which in turn impedes on a state’s ability to feed and support its people. Undernutrition and food insecurity cause premature death, and has been linked to avoidable disabilities and disease. When a nation has low food production and lacks industry it also isn’t able to participate in the world market because of the limitation of goods it can exchange for money. The inability to enter the world market then impacts the nation’s ability to thrive economically and socially, stunting its advancement and fortification and increasing the likelihood of its reliance on aid. This, in turn, means less investment in crucial services like medical care and security—which disproportionately impact persons with disabilities.

Our understandings around violence are often one dimensional, in that we try to comprehend what we can see and it often stops there. But when the violence that is witnessable has happened, the quiet violence ensues.

You see, the shadow of chemical warfare is with all living things as porous entities. We all bear the brunt of the borderlessness of capitalism and imperialism; forces that transform our human bodies, bodies of water, our electrically networked minds, and webbed connections beneath the ground. When these forces are synthesized through chemical technology, “they get into the water, into the soil, into our fatty deposits and they cause all sorts of havoc—from endocrine disruption to cancers, chronic breathing difficulties to generations of birth defects and much more,” climate leader, curator, and educator Dani Admiss told Atmos. In other words: they are poison.

The distinction between the violence enacted upon the land and that which is targeted towards bodies only diminishes our understanding of the inextricable relationship between the two. “Colonial occupation always necessitates the destruction of landscapes,” said Admiss, referring to the long parallel histories between ecocide and imperialism, and the destruction of land for profit.

This goes for hyper-industrialized states in the West, too, and the transfiguration of what was once green and alive into something grey and commercially productive. According to Admiss, this is best summarized by Professor Rachel Lee’s theory of “border wall thinking,” which captures the essence of the West that separates chemical warfare from the “ecocide of chemicals used in acts of industry,” and advancement. This separation flattens our understanding of colonialism through what Lee calls “psychic cover” that enables “elite subjects not to feel morally culpable because no intentional [or obvious] war has been declared.”

The destruction of nature via chemical means is all around us. It is an act of slow violence that everyday activities contribute to. Many chemicals “produced for [or heavily used in war and medicine] have then gone on to be used as fertilizers, defoliants [and for] water retardant purposes for consumer items,” said Admiss. Ammonia, for instance, is widely being used as a fertilizer today, as well as in hair dye and to improve the dyeability of cotton. Its history, however, is much more sinister. Synthesized in the 20th century by German-Jewish chemist Fritz Haber  as a fertilizer to replace the nutrients missing in soil due to over-farming, his invention—for which he was later awarded a Nobel Prize—was scaled by the German government with his cooperation for the production of poison gas and explosives during World War One. In its use today, the ammonia process is celebrated as a chemical wonder that ensures the world is fed, but its violent history still impacts our planet negatively today, causing the widespread release of pollution into both the air and waterways and helps to facilitate rampant over-farming.