Weapons of War: State Actors and Chemical Weapon through the Years

Like other weapons of mass destruction, Chemical warfare agents (Chemical weapons-CW) have all the appalling elements which represent a serious danger to living beings at large. Countries like the US, UK, China, Russia, Iraq and Libya were the pioneers in the field of chemical weapons research and production in the world. As a matter of fact, any country which possessed a well-developed chemical industry could produce chemical agents for warfare purposes. Presently, large numbers of industrialized countries have the potential to produce a variety of chemical agents.

Chemical warfare agents have been defined in a report authorized by the United Nations General Assembly as “chemical substances, whether gaseous, liquid, or solid, which might be employed because of their direct toxic effects on humans, animals and plants.” 1 These toxic chemical agents (CWs) may be used to accomplish a wide variety of military missions. Tagged as ‘search weapons’, the CW agents are able to penetrate shelters, buildings, trenches, bunkers and other types of military fortifications; they are also capable of inflicting casualties over large areas without damaging vital economic and military infrastructures. Chemical weapon agents are largely invisible and indiscriminate in their effects and offer a prospect of killing or incapacitating enemies and civilians. This category of insidious weapons generates more fear than any other conventional munitions and could very well terrorize civilian populations and demoralize any ill-equipped and exposed military units.

CWs in World Wars

Throughout the history of warfare attempts have been made to use chemical agents as weapons of war. Most attempts were unsuccessful until the growth of the chemical industry during the latter half of the 19th century. By the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the first military chemical agents were already in the arsenals of the major powers. The French were the first to use chemical agents in the form of tear gas grenades against the Germans, who defoliated with tear gas artillery shells. Their effect was minimal, mainly due to a complete lack of understanding of how to utilize such weapons. On April 22, 1915, the Germans launched a chlorine gas attack against British and French troops at Ypres, resulting in 5000 deaths. 2 The second major development was the use by the Germans of mustard gas and phosgene at Verdun in 1917. The persistence of this agent and its effects were such that in a few months, the number of British casualties reached 125 000, one-third of the total British gas casualties for the whole war. 3

The only incidents involving the actual use of gases between the world wars were in 1936, when the Italians employed a type of mustard gas against the Abyssinians (Ethiopians), and on several occasions in 1937 and 1945, when Japan attacked China. About 50,000 Ethiopian army fatalities were caused by chemical weapons during the Italian invasion. It is stated that the Italians used mainly vesicants and asphyxiants. 4

The use of gas against Chinese civilians was extensive between 1941 and 1942. When Chinese peasants took refuge from the invaders in the caves and tunnels, the Japanese troops used chemical agents to drive them out. In May 1942, Japanese soldiers were said to have discharged gas into the tunnels, killing some 800 Chinese people. 5 After World War II, there have been numerous reports of the use of poison gas in warfare. The first was in Korea and China in the early 1950s. It was claimed that in May 1951, one B-29 aircraft attacked the city of Nampo (North Korea) with gas bombs. As a result, a thousand people were affected, and nearly 50% died of suffocation. 6 Again, in July, August and January of the following year, US planes were said to have spread gas in Won San and Hwanghai. However, the casualties and damage done by these attacks were not known.

CWs in the Post-World War Era

During the 1963-67 civil wars in Yemen between the Royalist regime and the Republican authorities, allegations were made that Egyptian forces used lethal gas. It was alleged that gas had killed people and animals by asphyxiation in Kitaf (North Yemen) in January 1967. 7

Chemical agents were used on a large scale as defoliants to remove jungle growth and prevent their use as cover for guerrilla activities in Indo-China in 1960-70. After this, it was left to the Iran-Iraq conflict to spawn yet another round of large-scale use of chemical weapons in war. The war showed definite evidence of the employment of nerve and mustard agents in the Persian Gulf War during 1980-88. It is necessary to discuss at length the massive use of chemical agents in these two above-mentioned wars, not only because of the large-scale employment of chemical agents but also because of their devastating effects on ecology and mankind. Also, the curious case of Libya needs special mention here, which secretly stockpiled CWs even after declaring and destroying some of them as per international obligations. 

Beginning in 1961, the United States started the “experimental” use of herbicides in South Vietnam as a weapon to exterminate forests and crops. The initial objective was to undermine the economic resources of the national liberation movement. In 1962, defoliants became a central weapon in the overall chemical and biological warfare strategy of America throughout Southeast Asia. Estimates suggest that between 1965 and 1970, more than 50,000 tons of herbicides were dropped on South Vietnam alone. 8 Although the operation began with the intention of merely destroying the economic base of the National Liberation Front (NLF), it was soon expanded into a critical aspect of the shift from ground to air power in South Vietnam. Besides destroying crops, defoliants were used to destroy the forest canopy that hid NLF Forces from detection by air. For the Complete Paper, Read CBW Magazine, July-Dec 2011. 

Notes

• 1. United Nations, Chemical and Bacteriological Weapon and the Effects of their Possible Use, UN Publications, New York, 1969, p. 5.
• 2.John Cookson, Judith Nottingham, A Survey of Chemical and Biological Warfare, Monthly Review Press, 1971, p. 5.
• 3.S. Murphy, et al., No Fire, No Thunder: The Threat of Chemical and Biological Weapons, Pluto Press, London, 1984, p. 8.
• 4.SIPRI, The Rise of CB Weapons: The Problem of Chemical and Biological Warfare Series, vol. I, Humanities Press, New York, 1971, pp. 142-143
• 5.Ibid., p. 149.
• 6.Murphy, et al., No Fire, No Thunder, p. 15.
• 7.W. Andrew Terrill, “The Chemical Warfare Legacy of the Yemen War,” Comparative Strategy,. No. 10, April-June I991. 
• 8.Orville Schell and B. Weisberg, “Ecocide in Indo-China”, in B. Weisberg, ed., Ecocide in Indo-China: The Ecology of War, Canfield Press, San Francisco, 1970, p. 19.

For Complete Paper, Read CBW Magazine, July-Dec 2011.