Chemical and Biological Warfare

V

Warfare Possibilities

The chemical and biological weapons employed in nuclear or conventional war may also play a part in future guerrilla warfare or terrorist sabotage actions. In such situations, inert toxic materials, such as dusts that are activated on contact with moist surfaces such as the lungs, might be surreptitiously sprayed into city air from moving vehicles or from offshore vessels. Another possible tactic is the delivery of soluble toxins into urban water supplies.

Chemical and biological agents have possibilities for use in limited wars. The fact that it does not take a very sophisticated industrial base to produce lethal chemicals makes this a viable means of warfare for developing countries and has led to them being dubbed “the poor man’s atomic bomb” as they are close to nuclear weapons in terms of their destructive power.

VI

Iraq

The use of chemical weapons by Iraq on its Kurdish population and evidence of Libya’s growing chemical warfare capability reinforces the danger that these weapons will not only proliferate, but could be used not only in future wars, but also in civil war or for the oppression of minorities. On April 3, 1991, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 687, which required Iraq to declare and destroy its stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. In the years following the Gulf War, the UN found no evidence of biological weapons stocks, though it did find thousands of chemical weapons.

According to the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM), following a series of increasingly hampered inspections of Iraqi weapons sites in the 1990s, Iraq was found to have ingredients to make 200,000 litres (44,000 gallons) of the nerve agent VX, a quantity sufficient to kill the world’s population. It was also thought to have the capacity to produce more than 20,000 kg (20 tons) of anthrax; it is estimated that an aerosol spraying 100 kg of anthrax from a height in a densely populated area could kill three million people. In addition to anthrax, plague and botulinum toxin, which Iraq was suspected of having before the Gulf War, UNSCOM inspectors also found 2,000 litres of aflatoxin, which produces liver or lung cancer, and clostridium (gas gangrene). It was also believed that Iraq had built up large stocks of Agent 15, which incapacitates victims by attacking the central nervous system, proving fatal in heavy doses. However, after the US-led invasion of Iraq of 2003 to both disarm that nation and depose the regime of Saddam Hussein, no significant finds were made (see War on Iraq).

VII

Terrorism

The attraction of such weapons for terrorists is also a matter of great concern, since release of relatively small amounts of toxins in a water supply or into the air could cause a widespread catastrophe. In March 1995, the first major terrorist incident involving chemical warfare occurred in Tokyo, where a weak form of sarin was released into the underground transport system by members of a religious cult. Four people were killed and 3,000 were affected by the sarin. Up to 6 tonnes of the chemical were discovered at premises occupied by cult members. Four subsequent attacks were made on railways in Japan, two of which involved hydrogen cyanide gas.

In February 1998, two white supremacists were arrested in Las Vegas, United States, on suspicion of plotting a terrorist attack with a biological agent, believed to be anthrax. Although the agent was later found to be harmless, one of the detainees, a scientist, was at the time of his arrest on probation for obtaining bubonic plague bacteria from a laboratory.

These isolated events have highlighted growing concern over possible terrorist use of chemical or biological agents. Analysts point to the growth of increasingly marginalized groups, including religious fanatics and separatist or survivalist factions, who may be less constrained by the need for public sympathy for their cause.

VIII

International Control

The Hague Conference of 1899 made an attempt to outlaw projectiles carrying poison gases; the agreement to this effect lasted only until World War I. In Geneva in 1925 a League of Nations protocol against chemical and biological war was signed; it was not, however, ratified by the United States until 1974. The treaty outlaws the first use of such weapons in warfare, but nations generally reserve the right to use them in retaliation. Arms control agreements totally banning chemical warfare have proved difficult to achieve.

A

Chemical Weapons Convention

At the George Bush-Mikhail Gorbachev summit in June 1990, a treaty was signed providing for both the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to reduce stockpiles of chemical weapons. In May 1991, 19 industrial nations—including the United States—committed to adopt controls on the export of 50 common chemicals used to manufacture these weapons. The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) of 1993 banned manufacture of chemical weapons and restricts trade in substances used to make them. In April 1997 the CWC came into force, and as a result it is estimated that just under 10 per cent of the world’s stockpile had been destroyed by 2004.