An important question for American and British troops in Iraq 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 Saddam has been prepared to use these weapons.
During the war with Iran about 100 000 Iranians were affected by chemical weapons and about 10 000 died shortly after the attacks.
A report last year by the International Institute for Strategic Studies concluded that Iraq’s chemical weapons capability probably comprises hundreds of tonnes of agent, made up of a mixture of mustard and nerve agent, probably sarin and perhaps VX. United States Secretary of State Colin Powell has put the stockpile at between 100 and 500 tonnes.
Iraq’s biological weapons capabilities, the report said, are unknown. Iraq was believed to still have anthrax.
Saddam declared 8 500 tonnes, which he said was destroyed in 1991. The inspectors are seeking proof.
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. Nonetheless, 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.
Powell told the United Nations 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.”
Of that list, 340 litres of gas gangrene has been declared, although the inspectors’ assessment is that there could be 15 times that amount.
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. 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, dispersable 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 a weapon, even smallpox has its limitations, said Oxford. ‘The virus 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 telltale scarlet rash appeared.
Anthrax or botulinum toxin are more practical propositions. Iraq has admitted loading them, along with aflatoxin, which causes internal bleeding, 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 organisms 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, said Iraq could have as many as 500 tonnes of VX, the most lethal 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 small amount it will be disruptive. Its use would also reverberate around the world.” —