The looming question for American and British troops as they prepare to attack Iraq within the next few hours is whether Saddam Hussein will play his most fearsome card: chemical and biological weapons.
Experts are divided on the subject. Precisely which chemical or biological agents he possesses, in what quantities, and whether he has the ability to launch them, are all unclear.
What we do know is that President Saddam has been prepared to use these weapons.
During the 1980-88 war with Iran an estimated 100 000 Iranians were affected by chemical weapons and about 10 000 died shortly after the attacks. Between 4 000 and 5 000 are still under medical surveillance. Of these, about 1 000 are considered moderately or severely ill because of their damaged lungs.
A report last year by the International Institute for Strategic Studies concluded that Iraq’s chemical weapons capability probably comprises hundreds of tons of agent, made up of a mixture of mustard and nerve agent, probably sarin and perhaps VX. Colin Powell has put the stockpile at between 100 and 500 tons.
Iraq’s biological weapons capabilities, the report said, are unknown. Iraq was believed to still have anthrax although it was unclear whether it was the source of the powder sent in letters in the US.
President Saddam declared 8 500 tons, which he said was destroyed in 1991. The inspectors are seeking proof.
If botulinum toxin, which was produced in 1989-90, were still available, it would no longer be usable. Speculation and uncertainty prevail, however, because biological weapons are the easiest to hide.
The existence of mobile laboratories has been suggested, although Hans Blix has doubted the veracity of these reports. None the less, the agents can certainly be produced in bulk and quickly if Iraq wants them; turning them into effective weapons is a much more difficult task.
Colin Powell told the UN that, beyond anthrax and the obvious toxins, Iraq’s scientists had investigated the potential of a range of disease causing organisms.
”Saddam Hussein has investigated dozens of biological agents causing diseases such as gas gangrene, plague, typhus, tetanus, cholera, camelpox and haemorrhagic fever, and he also has the wherewithal to develop smallpox,” he said.
Of that list, 340 litres of gas gangrene has been declared, although the weapon inspectors’ assessment is that there could be 15 times that amount. This is a bacteria – Clostridium perfringens – which causes gaseous rotting of the flesh.
But no hard evidence exists that scientists have attempted to produce weapons-type quantities of the other diseases organisms named by Powell. The limitations of anthrax or botulinum toxin are that they could not trigger an epidemic: they do not spread from one individual to another, as some viruses do.
Smallpox, before it was eradicated, was the most infectious organism known to man, capable of wiping out the population of a whole city. If Iraq has any smallpox virus, it must have been stored before the World Health Organisation certified the country free of the disease in 1979.
Viruses would not be easy to convert into a weapon, however, according to John Oxford, professor of virology at Queen Mary School of Medicine in London.
”The chances of these things being used are vanishingly small because of the difficulties involved in getting people infected. You’d have to get it into a powdered, dispersible form even if you got your hands on smallpox. The others are non-runners. They are not very infectious. And viruses are very fragile – they wouldn’t stand being chucked around or sprayed.”
As far as he knew no virus had ever been ground to a powder, which is a prerequisite for its distribution.
As a weapon, even smallpox has its limitations, he said. ”The virus is like an old-age pensioner. It is such a plodder that it has an incubation period of 12 days during which you can vaccinate people.”
And a terrorist who had deliberately given himself smallpox would be infectious to pass it on to others for only one day: the day before the tell-tale scarlet rash appeared.
Anthrax or botulinum toxin are more practical propositions. Iraq has admitted loading them, along with aflatoxin, which causes internal bleeding and possibly cancer, into three weapons in 1990: 25 missile warheads, 157 aerial bombs and four modified aircraft drop-tanks with spray devices.
But the Institute of Strategic Studies says the missile warhead arrangement was crude and that 90% of the anthrax or other organism would have been destroyed when it exploded.
Garth Whitty, who in 1992 was chief inspector of the UN’s chemical destruction group, believes that any chemical weapons Iraq has are left over from before 1991.
Terry Taylor, a senior UN weapons inspector in Iraq between 1993 and 1997 who now works for the International Institute for Strategic Affairs, said Iraq could have as much as 500 tonnes of VX, the most lethal and advanced nerve agent, which would be delivered in aerosol form.
”You only need a very small amount to cause chaos on the battlefield or in rear areas,” he said.
”Explosive means of delivery will make it deplete, but if anthrax arrives on the battlefield in even a very small amount it will be disruptive, with troops having to suit up, etc, while it will also have an effect on morale.
”Its use would also reverberate around the world.” – Guardian Unlimited Â