[A-List] US military: chemical weapons alert in Iraq

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Out of the straitjacket

The US wants to use potentially lethal chemicals against Iraq - despite the
fact that this would contravene international law

Alastair Hay
Wednesday March 12, 2003
The Guardian

The US secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, recently argued that the
military should again be allowed to use chemicals as weapons of war in
Iraq - not the tonnes of lethal nerve gases, such as sarin or tabun, which
the US possesses, or its supply of mustard gas, which causes severe injuries
and sometimes kills; no, Rumsfeld wants to take advantage of the US's
stockpile of the misleadingly named "non-lethal" chemical agents,
particularly those used for riot control. These cause temporary
incapacitation for the majority, but can be lethal in confined spaces.

What Rumsfeld is proposing is illegal. The rules are set down by the
chemical weapons convention (CWC), which became international law in 1997.
It states that "any chemical which through its chemical action on life
processes can cause death, temporary incapacition or permanent harm to
humans or animals" is forbidden as a method of warfare. The US, along with
some 140 other countries, including the UK, has signed this treaty and is
pledged to uphold it.

Rumsfeld, in his testimony to the House of Representatives armed services
committee last month, referred to the CWC as a "straitjacket" limiting US
options in war. What the US should be able to do, Rumsfeld claims, is resort
to the use of non-lethal agents in combat situations when there are
civilians present and there is a need to preserve life. He gave two
examples. The first was "when transporting dangerous people in a confined
space", such as an aircraft. The second was when "women and children" are
trapped with enemy troops "in a cave".

Such action is forbidden by international law. The CWC explicitly forbids
the use of riot-control agents except for domestic law enforcement purposes.
Under the CWC these and other chemicals can also be used for policing
operations if the country's own laws permit them. The exemption applies only
to those policing operations and not to any external armed conflict. It
would be stretching credulity to argue that any prospective conflict with
Iraq was a simple, policing operation.

Rumsfeld's desire to protect civilians is, in any case, totally impractical.
In a confined space - an aircraft, or a cave - there is no way to guarantee
that civilian exposure to the chemicals will always be low, and in high
concentrations they kill.

Another group of chemicals Rumsfeld may be thinking of using are the
so-called calmatives. There are a vast number of possible chemicals in this
category based on the known substances used to relieve anxiety, treat
depression or reduce pain. Precisely what calmatives the US possesses is not
known.

Here, too, there are great risks, particularly in war. The recent Moscow
Opera House siege was ended through the use of a calmative fed into the
building through the air conditioning system. The Russian special forces are
said to have used an opiate-based compound, a derivative of a chemical
fentanyl, which is generally used in operations. But as we all now know it
may have ended the siege, but at a terrible cost involving over 120 dead.

Why so many died is still a matter of dispute. What is incontestable is that
many people were exposed to lethal concentrations. Although calmatives are
effective at non-lethal concentrations, it is extremely difficult to ensure
that everyone is only exposed to those amounts. To guarantee that
individuals in the middle of a large room are sedated it is inevitable that
those at the periphery and near air vents will be exposed to lethal amounts.
Deaths are inevitable and if emergency services are not equipped to
counteract the effects of the chemicals, the death toll will rise. The
Moscow siege would appear to exemplify all these problems. In a war the
situation would be even worse. Guaranteeing low exposure to chemicals would
be very difficult, and as for providing emergency medical help in time, this
is a forlorn hope.

The CWC is meant to be a straitjacket. Its provisions, elaborated over
nearly 30 years of negotiations exist precisely to constrain combatants in
war. There is, or should be, a mutual recognition that certain codes of
conduct are important to uphold, such as accepting the surrender of an enemy
and protecting prisoners and civilians. The CWC rules are an attempt to
civilise war, if that is possible, and to protect non-combatants. This one
group is increasingly vulnerable to the use of chemical warfare agents
because it is always likely to have no protection against them.

The irony of all this is that should Rumsfeld persuade President Bush to
authorise use of non-lethal agents (riot-control and/or others) Iraq would
be entitled under the 1925 Geneva protocol to retaliate in kind. This
protocol (of which both Iraq and the US are signatories) forbids first use
of chemicals in war. And if, as is likely, use of chemicals resulted in
deaths, Iraq could arguably resort to the use of lethal agents in its
arsenal. In the heat of battle it would be difficult for Iraq's forces to
discern that only non-lethal agents were being used against them. It would
be understandable therefore, that they might resort to whatever was
available to them to use. If, of course, they have any.

Should the US resort to the use of non-lethal agents it will seriously
undermine the CWC. This fledgling disarmament treaty is universally cited as
a model set of rules which we will all benefit from. Because a few members
of the current US administration object to its constraints, this treaty may
be about to be holed below the waterline.

· Alastair Hay is professor of Environmental Toxicology at Leeds University