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chemical warfare

Use in war of gaseous, liquid, or solid substances intended to have a toxic effect on humans, animals, or plants. Together with biological warfare, it was banned by the Geneva Protocol in 1925, and the United Nations, in 1989, also voted for a ban. In June 1990 the USA and USSR agreed bilaterally to reduce their stockpile to 5,000 tonnes each by 2002. The USA began replacing its stocks with new nerve-gas binary weapons. In 1993 over 120 nations, including the USA and Russian Federation, signed a treaty outlawing the manufacture, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons. The Russian parliament ratified the treaty in 1997.

World War I

Gas was first used as a substitute for explosives in artillery shells in World War I: its first application in the field was by the Germans at Bolimov in February 1915. The attempt was unsuccessful. Chlorine released from storage cylinders to drift over enemy trenches was subsequently used with considerable success at Ypres, Belgium, in April 1915. As defensive measures such as gas masks evolved, so different agents were introduced to circumvent these defences, and different methods of delivery developed. Over 3,000 chemical agents were investigated for possible use during the war but of these only about 30 were found suitable for actual use in the field. Despite its fearsome reputation, gas caused more injuries than deaths and was mainly effective in incapacitating rather than killing troops and in its psychological effect.

Threat of chemical weapons

Some 20 nations currently hold chemical weapons, including Iran, Israel, Syria, Libya, South Africa, China, Ethiopia, North Korea, Myanmar, Taiwan, and Vietnam. The Geneva Protocol of 1925, the only international legal mechanism for the control of chemical weapons, has not always been observed. Iraq used chemical weapons during the 1980–88 Iran–Iraq war, inflicting massive casualties on largely unprotected Iranian Revolutionary Guards and on civilians; it threatened the use of chemical weapons during the 1991 Gulf War but did not use them.

Types of chemical weapons

Irritant gases may cause permanent injury or death. Examples include chlorine, phosgene (Cl₂CO), and mustard gas (C₄H₈CI₂S), used in World War I (1914–18) and allegedly by Soviet forces in Afghanistan, by Vietnamese forces in Laos, and by Iraq against Iran during their 1980–88 war.

Tear gases, such as CS gas used in riot control, affect the lungs and eyes, causing temporary blindness.

Nerve gases are organophosphorus compounds similar to insecticides, which are taken into the body through the skin and lungs and break down the action of the nervous system. Developed by the Germans for World War II, they were not used.

Incapacitants are drugs designed to put an enemy temporarily out of action by, for example, impairing vision or inducing hallucinations. They have so far not been used.

Toxins are poisons to eat, drink, or inject; for example, ricin (derived from the castor-oil plant) and the botulism toxin. Ricin has been used in individual cases, and other toxins were allegedly used by Soviet forces in Afghanistan and by Vietnamese forces in Cambodia.

Herbicides are defoliants used to destroy vegetation sheltering troops and the crops of hostile populations. They were used in Vietnam by the USA and in Malaya (now Malaysia) by the UK. Agent Orange became notorious because it caused cancer and birth abnormalities among Vietnam War veterans and US factory staff.

Binary weapons are two chemical components that become toxic in combination, after the shell containing them is fired.

Convention on Chemical Weapons In 1989 the 149-nation UN Conference on Disarmament unanimously voted to outlaw chemical weapons, and produced the Convention on Chemical Weapons (CCW) signed 1993. The treaty was unique in establishing verification procedures (to be administered by a new body, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, in The Hague, the Netherlands) and in allowing for sanctions against nations not party to the treaty. In November 1996 Hungary became the 65th country to ratify the UN agreement, which meant that after 28 years of negotiations, a sufficient number of countries had now ratified and the convention came into force on 28 April 1997. In November 1997 the Russian parliament ratified the convention; a 1998 budget of $100 million was proposed to cover destruction of existing weapons, approximately 20% of the estimated total cost. By 2000, 129 countries had ratified the convention.

Although the USA has not ratified the convention, as a signatory it will be bound by it and will be required to destroy their remaining stocks. Iraq, Libya, and Iran, nations that continue to cause concern, have not signed.

The ban binds signatories to destroy production facilities and prevents them from developing, manufacturing, acquiring, or stockpiling chemical weapons or from transferring them to anyone to engage in any other activity prohibited by the convention. The ban includes the use of riot-control gases in warfare.

The countries that ratified the convention on chemical weapons treaty set a final deadline for the destruction of all such weapons by 29 April 2007, but Russian and US officials admitted in May 2000 that they were unlikely to meet this deadline. In June 2001, Russia announced that it would destroy its 44,000 tonnes of chemical weapons by 2012.

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