Only three countries are definitely known to have chemical weapons: the USA, Russia and Iraq. Most experts believe that France has them, although official statements are ambiguous. And according to official American statements, based on intelligence assessments, between twenty and thirty Third World countries have chemical weapons or the capability to produce them if they took the political decision to do so. Iran, Libya and Syria have been named in these statements as having chemical weapons, but the other countries in the list have not been named.
The USA has not officially announced the size of its chemical arsenal, but the best estimates put it at about 35,000 tons of agents. Stocks are held at eight locations in the USA and on Johnston Atoll in the Pacific.
Until the end of 1990, the USA had deployed chemical weapons in its munitions depot at Clausen in the western part of Germany. This stockpile, which was returned to the USA, consisted of 400 tonnes of nerve agents in about 120,000 artillery shells. The shells, for 155-millimetre and 203-millimetre (8-inch) howitzers, weighed about 7,000 tonnes. It was said that these artillery shells represented about 1 per cent of the total American supply of chemical weapons (Lundin and Stock 1991).
Until its 1990 bilateral agreement with the USSR, the USA planned to deploy about 9,000 tonnes of binary agents in 'Big-eye' aircraft bombs and artillery shells. In January 1988, President Reagan gave approval for the production of Big-eye bombs and in fiscal year 1988 Congress funded the production of both binary bombs and artillery shells. These programmes have been cancelled now that the bilateral agreement prohibits the production of chemical weapons. But the Pentagon seems to be continuing with the development of binary
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chemical warheads for strategic cruise missiles and for the multiple-launch rockets system (MLRS).
In addition, the Pentagon hopes to develop two new types of chemical-warfare agent. One is an agent that penetrates gas-masks and protective clothing to make such protection ineffective. The other is a non-lethal agent that incapacitates very rapidly - a sort of 'knock-out gas'.
The agents in today's American chemical-warfare arsenal include: Sarin nerve gas; binary Sarin nerve gas; VX nerve gas; and mustard gas. In addition, chemical weapons designed for close combat include the agents CN and CS (Lundin and Stock 1991).
Sarin is contained in 105-millimetre, 155-millimetre and 8-inch (203-millimetre) artillery shells. Binary Sarin is contained in artillery shells. Mustard gas is contained in 4.2-inch mortars. Aircraft bombs contain Sarin. Aircraft sprays contain Sarin and VX. The arsenal also includes land mines containing VX and hand grenades containing CS and CN.
The bulk, some 94 per cent, of the American chemical arsenal is kept in the USA, in eight army sites (Aberdeen, Maryland; Anniston, Alabama; Lexington-Blue Grass, Kentucky; Newport, Indiana; Pine Bluff, Arkansas; Pueblo, Colorado; Tooele, Utah; and Umatilla, Oregon). The remainder is at Johnston Atoll.
When Congress authorized the development of binary chemical weapons, in November 1985, it required the Pentagon to destroy existing American chemical stockpiles. In addition, the 1990 American - Soviet bilateral agreement requires each side to begin destruction of declared chemical stockpiles by the end of 1992; to destroy at least 50 per cent of them by the end of 1999; and to reduce them to 5,000 tonnes of chemical-warfare agents by 2002.
To carry out this destruction programme, called the US Chemical Weapons Demilitarization Program, the USA is to build a destruction facility, using a high-temperature incinerator, near each of the eight stockpile sites in the USA and near the one at Johnston Atoll. This construction programme began on Johnston Atoll in 1988 and at Tooele in October 1989; it should be completed by mid-1994. Actual disposal operations of chemical weapons began in 1990 and are scheduled to be completed by the end of 1998.
The destruction of large stockpiles of chemical weapons is today a difficult and politically sensitive task because of the potential environmental impact. The problem is particularly difficult because, apart from binary weapons, no thought was given to destruction when the weapons were designed. The transport of chemical weapons, particularly aged ones, is also a major problem, with considerable environmental ramifications.
When environmental issues raised little public interest, chemical
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weapons were simply dumped at sea. For example, some 35,000 tonnes of old chemical munitions from the First World War were dumped in the North Sea, off Zeebrugge, Belgium, and as much as 150,000 tonnes of chemical munitions were dumped in the Skagerrak off the west coast of Sweden after the Second World War. Many other examples of sea-dumping could be given. This method of disposal, however convenient for the authorities, is simply no longer publicly acceptable.
Today, it is most desirable to destroy chemical stocks at the places where they are stored. The Americans currently destroy chemical weapons by incinerating the chemical agent and decontaminating the munition. The Russians prefer a thermochemical neutralization process.
Until 1987, the USSR denied that it had any chemical weapons. President Gorbachev then said that the USSR had stopped making chemical weapons and that a destruction plant was being built in the Soviet Union. In January 1989, the then Soviet Foreign Minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, confirmed that the USSR was not producing chemical weapons, and stated that it had none outside its territory, and had never transferred them to any other country.
Later in 1989, under Gorbachev's glasnost policy, the Soviet Foreign Minister announced that the net weight of the chemical-warfare agents in the Soviet stockpile did not exceed 50,000 tonnes. In 1990 the Soviet Union officially announced that its 'stockpiles of toxic substances exceeds US stockpiles by 10,000 tonnes' and that this excess was accumulated before 1945.
The official American and British estimates of the size of the Soviet chemical arsenal were much higher than the Soviets have admitted, suggesting that the Soviets had at least 300,000 tons of chemical-warfare agents. Also, the British government maintained in 1989 that the USSR had not stopped producing and testing chemical weapons.
The difference in these figures may arise from the definition of chemical weapons. The 300,000 tonnes estimate may include 'weapons that have already been manufactured, and munitions and materials assembled for making weapons'. If this is so - and there is some evidence from British intelligence sources that it is - both the Soviet figure of 50,000 tonnes, which applied only to the weight of chemical-warfare agents in the arsenal, and the British and American estimates of 300,000 tonnes, which then includes the weights of agents and munitions, may be right. Be this as it may, in late 1989 the Central
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Intelligence Agency reduced its estimate of the size of the Soviet chemical stockpile from 300,000 to 75,000 tonnes (Lundin 1990).
Another example of glasnost was the invitation to governmental disarmament experts, of countries participating in the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, and journalists to visit the chemical-weapon testing-ground at Shikhany and the chemical-weapon destruction facility being built at Chapayevsk in Kazakhstan. The visit took place in October 1987.
The Soviet chemical weapons displayed at Shikhany were: Sarin nerve agent contained in 122-millimetre, 130-millimetre and 152-milli-metre artillery shells; VX nerve agent contained in 130-millimetre and 152-millimetre artillery shells; Thickened Lewisite contained in 122-millimetre artillery shells; Sarin nerve agent contained in 122-milli-metre, 140-millimetre and 240-millimetre artillery rockets; VX nerve agent in 122-millimetre artillery rockets; Mustard and Lewisite mixture in 100-kilogram aircraft bombs; Sarin nerve agent in 100-kilogram and 250-kilogram aircraft bombs; VX in 540-millimetre tactical missile warheads; Thickened VX in 884-millimetre tactical missile warheads; Thickened Soman in 250-kilogram spray tanks; Mustard and Lewisite mixture in 250-kilogram and 1,500-kilogram spray tanks; and CS in hand grenades. The weight of the munitions varied from 0.25-kilogram hand grenades to 963-kilogram spray tanks, and the agent-fill varied in weight from 0.17 kilograms in each hand grenade to 630-kilograms in each of the largest spray tanks.
The Soviets claimed that the munitions displayed included all the types in the existing chemical arsenal. The 1985 US Defense Intelligence Agency Report claimed that, in addition to these types, the Soviet chemical arsenal contained warheads for cruise missiles, warheads for long- and medium-range ballistic missiles, land mines and mortar rounds. The Report also claimed that, in addition to the agents displayed at Shikhany, the Soviet arsenal included phosgene, hydrogen cyanide, tabun nerve agent, and psychochemical agents.
During the Shikhany visit the Soviets demonstrated a mobile unit for the destruction of chemical weapons. But it was only suitable for small-scale destruction. Because of public concern about environmental effects, the larger (although still relatively small, being able to destroy up to 500 tonnes a year) facility at Chapayevsk has not been put into use. The Russians may build a small number of automated destruction facilities in sparsely populated areas, but a final decision about a chemical-weapon destruction programme has yet to be taken.
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On 29 September 1988, President Mitterrand told the United Nations General Assembly that France 'has no chemical weapons'. But most experts believe that, in fact, France has a chemical arsenal containing a few hundred tonnes of chemical-warfare agents. It is also believed that France has developed binary weapons but has not yet decided to deploy them.
That France has chemical weapons is likely given France's intention, also expressed by President Mitterrand, to deploy any types of weapon held by other powers, including chemical weapons. An explanation of the controversy about France's chemical capability 'might be that France had not weaponized its bulk stockpiles of chemical warfare agents, that is, had not filled munitions with them' (Lundin 1989). President Mitterrand's denial may, in other words, be a matter of definition.
There is considerable concern about the rate at which other countries may be acquiring chemical weapons. We do not know for sure which countries have chemical weapons. The uncertainty arises because any country with a significant agro-chemical or pharmaceutical industry could produce chemical weapons if it chose to do so. This means, of course, that virtually all industrialized countries and many Third World countries have the expertise and industrial capacity to produce chemical-warfare agents.
Nerve agents, for example, are organophosphorus compounds, similar to pesticides. A producer of pesticides could rather easily also produce nerve agents. And, of course, a country intent on setting up a plant to produce chemical-warfare agents clandestinely could disguise it as a pesticide plant.
The production of mustard gas is particularly easy to disguise. The main chemicals in its production are thiodiglycol and hydrogen chloride. Thiodiglycol is extensively used in the pharmaceutical industry and is relatively easy to acquire; hydrogen chloride is a very common chemical compound, the production of which is impossible to control. If a country was unable to obtain thiodiglycol in sufficient quantities, it could make it itself from chloroethanol, a commonly used chemical in the pharmaceutical and agro-chemical industries.
The technology of most chemical munitions is relatively well known and should give little trouble to countries able to produce chemical-warfare agents. Chemical munitions include grenades, artillery and mortar shells, land mines, multiple-launch rocket systems, aircraft
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bombs, warheads for missiles of all ranges, bomblets and cluster weapons. The munition converts the payload of chemical-warfare agent it carries into a cloud of particles or vapour or an aerosol of droplets. In an artillery shell, for example, a cylinder of high explosive, with an appropriate fuse and detonator, is aligned along the axis of the shell which is then filled with the agent. When the explosive goes off the agent is dispersed - a relatively simple process.
Recent statements, particularly by President George Bush, imply that the major powers are anxious to prevent the further proliferation of chemical weapons. But the actions of these powers are sometimes not consistent with this policy.
For example, there was very little international criticism of Iraq for using chemical weapons against Iranian forces during the Iran-Iraq war. This fact, and the undoubted military advantage gained by Iraq over Iran by the use of chemical weapons, was, of course, noted by all countries and may well have persuaded some of them to acquire a chemical-weapon capability.
The lack of criticism is all the more serious because the use of chemical weapons by Iraq is without doubt a blatant violation of international law. Iraq is a party to the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibiting the use and asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases and of bacteriological methods of warfare. Actually, all nations are, according to most international lawyers, bound by the Protocol because a ban on the first use of chemical weapons has become a well-established customary international law, binding both on parties and non-parties.
An important characteristic of chemical weapons is that small nations can produce them relatively easily and cheaply in amounts which may, in the region, be strategically significant. This is why chemical weapons are seen by many as potential weapons of mass destruction for smaller countries - 'poor countries' atom bombs'. This adds to the current concern about the danger that such weapons may proliferate. It should, however, be emphasized that after the Gulf War the military utility of chemical weapons is being questioned. This may reduce the enthusiasm for, and therefore the spread of, these weapons.
Before their August 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the Iraqis were producing mustard gas and nerve agents. The main production site was at Samarra and was called the Muthanna State Establishment or the State Enterprise for Pesticide Production (Sigmund and Sigmund, October 1991). It was heavily damaged by bombing during the Gulf War. A team of experts from the United Nations Special Commission visited the site after the war and found it to be 170 square kilometres in area;
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the major facilities occupied some 25 square kilometres. The team found mustard gas and Sarin (GB) and GF nerve agents, and evidence of the presence of impure Tabun (GA), used in the Iran - Iraq War. It appears that the site had been used for the production of two herbi-cides, and that research had been performed on Soman (GD) and VX nerve gases but that these agents had not been produced on a large scale. The facility could produce 2.5 tons of Sarin and 5 tons of mustard gas a day. The total Iraqi chemical-weapon stockpile is estimated to have been about 2,000 tonnes of agent, including some 400 tons of mustard gas and 150 tons of nerve agents, mostly Sarin but also some GF and Tabun, and large amounts of tear gas, mostly CS.
The Iraqis were able to deliver chemical weapons by artillery shells and aircraft bombs. They also apparently had chemical land mines and, according to a statement made to the United Nations after the war about their remaining chemical weapons, they had some warheads containing chemical weapons for their Scud ground-to-ground missiles.
There are reasons to suspect that Middle East countries, other than Iraq, possessing chemical weapons include Egypt, Iran, Israel, Libya and Syria. Israel's Science Minister, Yuval Neeman, said in June 1990, when commenting on Iraqi threats to attack Israel with chemical weapons, that Israel had the chemical-weapons capability to respond to the Iraqi threats. It would be extremely surprising if it hadn't. According to a CIA assessment the Israeli production of mustard and nerve gases began in the 1970s.
Iraq accused Iran of using chemical weapons several times against Iraqi forces during the Iran-Iraq War. If true, these allegations mean, of course, that Iran possesses chemical weapons. Iran itself has made contradictory statements about a chemical-weapon capability, implying on several occasions that it has a chemical-weapon production capability. Iran has certainly tried to purchase chemicals, like thiodiglycol, that could be used to produce chemical-warfare agents.
American officials frequently stated during the late 1980s that Libya has constructed a chemical-weapons plant at Rabta. Libya responded that the plant, built with assistance from Austrian, Italian, Japanese, Thai and West German companies, was for the production of agro-chemicals. The USA threatened to bomb the plant, which was reported to have burned down in 1989.
It was later claimed that the fire was faked to distract attention from the construction of another chemical-weapon plant at the Sebha Oasis. It is of interest to note that, while the USA was strongly criticizing
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Libya for making, or preparing to make, chemical weapons, it was ignoring Iraq's growing chemical-weapon capability.
Little is known about Syria's chemical-weapon capability. The Syrian chemical-weapon plant is said to be located in a remote desert site north of Damascus. Initially, Syria reportedly imported chemical weapons from the USSR. The Soviets were also accused of assisting Syria in developing chemical weapons but denied having done so.
But Syria is now apparently producing indigenously chemical agents, including lethal nerve gases, and the warheads to deliver them, including warheads that can be fitted to Scud-B and SS-21 surface-to-surface missiles. Syria would, of course, also have the option of using aircraft to deliver bombs filled with chemical-warfare agents.
Egypt is thought to be the first country in the Middle East to have chemical weapons. As we have seen, Egyptian forces probably used chemical weapons during their intervention in the Yemeni civil war. And it is reported that Israeli troops captured Egyptian stocks of nerve gas in the Sinai in the 1967 Six-Day War.
The Egyptians may have acquired British chemical weapons left behind when British forces departed from Egypt in 1952. German rocket scientists were employed in the 1970s by President Nasser's administration to build missiles for Egypt. According to some reports, warheads filled with chemical-warfare agents were fabricated for these missiles. Allegations were made in 1989 that Egypt was building a chemical-weapon production plant - reports denied by President Mubarak.
African countries suspected of possessing chemical weapons include Angola, Ethiopia, Somalia, South Africa and Sudan. Angolan forces allegedly acquired various types of chemical weapon from the Soviet Union. Somalia and Sudan are said to have acquired chemical weapons from Libya.
Asian countries said to possess chemical weapons include Afghanistan, Burma, India, North Korea, Pakistan, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. Latin American countries suspected of possessing chemical weapons include Argentina, Chile, Cuba and El Salvador.
A number of these countries have made official declarations of nonpossession of chemical weapons: Afghanistan, Argentina, Burma, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Pakistan, South Africa and Vietnam. But ambiguities about definitions make these declarations difficult to evaluate. For example, sometimes a country will say it opposes the possession of chemical weapons but does not say whether or not it possesses them. Or a country may say that it does not have chemical weapons but does not say whether it is deploying chemical weapons of an ally.
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'Terrorists' access to chemical and biological weapons is a growing threat to the international community. There are no insurmountable technical obstacles that would prevent terrorist groups from using chemical weapons.' This grim warning was given by George Shultz, the US Secretary of State, on 7 January, 1989 in his speech to the International Chemical Disarmament Conference in Paris.
Up to then, the authorities had been extremely reluctant even to talk about terrorists' access to weapons of mass destruction - nuclear, chemical or biological. Shultz decided to break the taboo because the CIA believed that Libya was producing chemical weapons and feared that it would give them to terrorist groups like the IRA or an anti-Arafat Palestinian splinter group. Presumably, these CIA fears still apply.
If terrorists manufacture weapons of mass destruction in the near future, they are likely to opt for chemical rather than biological or nuclear weapons. Chemical terrorism is of considerable current concern because it is relatively easy to find out, from the open literature, how to make chemical-warfare agents, including nerve gas, get the chemicals required to do so, and then prepare the agent.
Of all the chemical-warfare agents, the most attractive for terrorists are likely to be the nerve gases because of their high lethality. Of the nerve gases, Tabun is the easiest to make and is, therefore, the most likely candidate for chemical terrorism. Tabun is prepared in two stages. First, dimethylamido-phosphoryl dichloride is prepared from dimethylamine and phosphoryl chloride. In the second stage, Tabun is prepared from dimethylamidophosphoryl dichloride and sodium cyanide in the presence of ethyl alcohol. Details of the method of preparation are openly available.
It is not difficult to buy on the open market moderate quantities of the chemicals used in the preparation (which include dimethylamine, sodium cyanide and phosphoryl chloride) even though relatively large quantities of phosphoryl chloride are needed. It takes ten times as much phosphoryl chloride to produce a given amount of Tabun.
If terrorists were nervous about buying the precursor chemicals, they could make them. They could make dimethylamine, for example, by simply mixing methanol and ammonia. These chemicals are easier to get hold of than dimethylamine, and their purchase would give rise to less suspicion.
Anyone that can handle chemicals reasonably competently can make
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Tabun. You would not need very special chemical apparatus to do so, although the preparation should take place, with stringent precautions, in a fume-cupboard. In the first stage, for example, the solution is boiled for some hours in an atmosphere of carbon dioxide. Some distillation has to be done in vacuo. And, of course, the final compound must soon be transferred to a sealed container! But these are not difficult problems for a competent chemist.
A reasonably sophisticated terrorist group would have little difficulty in having enough Tabun made to kill a large number of people. If the group did not have chemists among its members, it could find qualified sympathizers or hire them.
A terrorist group would, in fact, need only a small volume of a nerve gas. A fraction of a litre of nerve agent would, therefore, give a terrorist group an enormous killing power.
Currently, it would be virtually impossible to prevent terrorists getting hold of the chemicals needed to produce such quantities of nerve gas. Anyone can buy enough of the chemicals, with no questions asked.
Having made the nerve gas, a terrorist group would need to disperse it. Again, the technology for dispersal is not difficult. Terrorists could, for example, make or acquire a device to produce an aerosol so that the nerve gas could be released as a cloud of droplets. The device could be placed so that the aerosol cloud passes into, say, a city's underground-train tunnel system. If the aerosol was set off during the rush hour, which could be done by a timer or by a remote-control device, a very large number of people would probably be killed. Alternatively, if the nerve gas were injected into the air-conditioning or ventilation system of a large building it would probably kill a large fraction of the people in the building.
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