The United States 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 incapacitation or permanent harm to humans or animals” is forbidden as a method of warfare. The US, along with about 140 other countries, 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 claimed, 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 is 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 more than 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 who are 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 George W Bush to authorise the 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 (to 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. — Â