Tag Archives: Sarin

NBC Warfare

Nerve agents and their deadly effect

CHEMICAL WARFARE

NERVE agents are among the most deadliest chemical weapons used in warfare and assassinations over the last 30 years.

Experts say the clear liquids can be made at only “a few laboratories in the world” and are strictly government-controlled.

They can kill within minutes, by disrupting electrical signals through the nervous system which makes it difficult to breathe. People cough and foam at the mouth as their lungs fill with mucus, they vomit, sweat, become incontinent and their eyes run. Victims typically die from suffocation.

It is described by experts as “turning on all the taps”. Dr Simon Cotton, from the University of Birmingham, says: “If you have ever seen a fly sprayed it drops on its back and lies with its legs in the air, twitching – this is the result of nerve agents taking hold.”

. See also History is littered with examples of chemical and biological attacks…

Nerve agents were developed in Germany in the 1930s as pesticides but were found to be extremely toxic. The first modern nerve agents, including sarin – released by a Japanese cult on the Tokyo subway in 1995 – were devised by the Germans during World War II.

Germany never used chemical weapons, despite producing ten tons of sarin. Production was taken over by the Soviet army after it captured the plant at Dyernfurth.

A new generation of the chemical weapons including VX, which was invented by the British during the Cold War and is 150 times more deadly than sarin. The UN classes it as a weapon of mass destruction.

A “fourth generation” of nerve agents, developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, are said to be even more toxic than VX. These Novichoks, meaning newcomer in Russian, contain two harmless chemicals which become toxic when mixed in an aerosol or missile. This makes them easier to store and transport safely.

Professor Malcolm Sperrin, of the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine, says: “Symptoms of exposure may include respiratory arrest, heart failure, twitching or spasms – anything where the nerve control is degraded.”

Scientists do not want to say how nerve agents are created, for fear of copycat attacks. However, the ingredients are cheap and easy to obtain. They were first used in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

VX is one of four main nerve agents and is usually inhaled or absorbed through the skin. Just a fraction of a drop can take effect within seconds and “fatally disrupt the nervous system”, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. They can be administered via aerosol or smeared on a victim’s face.

North Korean leader’s Kim Jong-un’s half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, died within 20 minutes after his face was smeared with VX at an airport in Malaysia last February.

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Russia, Syria, United Nations, United States

Was the attack in Idlib province really sarin – and, was Assad to blame?

SYRIA

The evidence that sarin nerve gas was used against civilians in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun largely comes from reports (from Turkish doctors) who treated survivors of the Syria attack earlier this month.

Victims were choking, foaming at the mouth, defecating and vomiting – all of which are consistent with sarin use.

Sarin, a colourless, odourless liquid at room temperature, is expensive and complex to manufacture.

The two key chemical compounds – a phosphorus variant and isopropyl alcohol – are mixed near the point of use, usually hours before it is released.

This is to avoid accidents and degradation in storage. The level of sophistication required in handling sarin would suggest state involvement.

Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was supposed to have surrendered his entire chemical weapons stockpile – including sarin – to Russia after an earlier attack on an opposition-held area near Damascus in 2013. More than 1,000 victims died and only a Russian-brokered deal – with Assad agreeing to give up his chemical weapons for destruction – prevented US airstrikes then. According to some reports which have now surfaced, a consignment of sarin was missing from the stockpile handed over.

At the same time, Assad signed up to the Chemical Weapons Convention, a group of states which ban these weapons. However, chlorine gas, which produces similar symptoms to sarin, was not covered by the removal deal. And unlike sarin (which is 3,000 times more lethal) chlorine is easily accessible and has many everyday uses.

Medecins Sans Frontieres doctors, who treated some victims, have said that both a toxic nerve agent and chlorine may have been used. But until impartial experts establish whether, and what, chemical weapons were involved, sole reliance on the observations of doctors is insufficient.

Central to the issue for many is why Assad would use chemical weapons in a war that he’s clearly winning? It is a perplexing question. Since September 2015, when the Russians first intervened in Syria, Assad’s regime has made steady progress in defeating various rebel opponents, notably when his forces took Aleppo in December.

In recent days, the US has strongly suggested it was prepared to leave Assad in power, as it saw him as a potential ally in the fight against Islamic State. Syria’s military continue to categorically deny that it was responsible for the attack, but, of course, Assad has used various weapons indiscriminately against civilians, including barrel bombs (dropped from helicopters) and unfocused artillery bombardment. He has also ‘weaponised’ gases – for example, putting tear gas in shells used by police to quell rioters.

Many are likely to believe, however, that Assad would have to be insanely overconfident to have brazenly used sarin, not least because of the risk – since realised – of heavier US reprisals and greater involvement in the area. All the evidence is that this cruel and calculating man is not insane.

He has remained intent, though, on corralling the remaining rebels in Idlib province where the attack took place. This act of terror may have been a signal that he felt he could act with impunity, particularly following the call by the US Ambassador to the UN that America was no longer seeking for the Syrian president to stand down.

The natural follow-on question is if not Assad, then who was it and why?

Charges of using chemical weapons are a very useful propaganda tool to blacken the reputation of any opponent, however dark already. Conspiracy theorists will see various nefarious hands at work.

The Russians, who back Assad’s regime, claim the Syrian air force bombed chemical munitions held by rebel forces in a warehouse, which then exploded. Another claim is that it was a gas manufacturing plant.

Such a strike would probably have destroyed what sarin there was and distributed the rest over a smaller area, affecting fewer victims.

Given that the highly flammable isopropyl alcohol is one of the chemicals in sarin, a fireball might have been expected but there have been no reports of this.

The numbers of women and children caught up in the attack would also rule against a rebel-held munitions depot in the immediate area.

Sarin can be delivered via shells, but some witnesses saw ‘chemical bombs’ falling. The first reports from the site described a crater where a chemical-bearing rocket was said to have landed. There were no structural remains suggesting an explosion at a warehouse.

While it is possible that rebel forces acquired the chemicals to make sarin, or other nerve agents, these are unlikely to have been in large enough quantities to cause so many casualties.

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Europe, Foreign Affairs, Government, Middle East, Syria, United Nations, United States

Syria’s chemical weapons and the deadlines to eliminate them…

SYRIA’S CHEMICAL STOCKPILES

The United Nations set deadlines for Syria to remove its chemical weapons. At first, the country cooperated. But as time has gone on Syria’s promise of removing its deadly chemical stocks appeared to stall, triggering concerns it would drag its feet as the regime of Bashar al-Assad became more confident of prevailing in the civil war. Its response in general terms to the UN’s decree has never been easy to read. Some of those fears, though, have now been allayed and to some extent seem exaggerated. The complex and difficult process, being overseen and supervised by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), has gone in fits and starts. The process has involved transporting toxic and dangerous materials from some 23 sites through a war-torn country to the port of Latakia. The target for getting most of the dangerous stockpiles onto waiting cargo ships by the end of April has now been met.

A week ago, on April 22, the OPCW declared that 86.5% of all chemicals and 88.7% of the most deadly ‘Priority 1 substances’, such as sulphur mustard and precursors for sarin nerve gas, had been boarded and removed. According to reports, six consignments have been delivered to Latakia since early April, leading to the OPCW to declare that a ‘significant acceleration’ has occurred following a long gap when very little had happened.

A pictogram highlighting sites previously attacked using Syria's chemical weapons.

A pictogram highlighting sites previously attacked using Syria’s chemical weapons.

The chemicals are destined for a container terminal at Gioia Tauro, in southern Italy. Most of it is then expected to transfer to an American ship, the MV Cape Ray, which is equipped with two mobile hydrolysis units for neutralising the chemicals. The Cape Ray will then head into international waters with a ten-country security escort, and begin its work.  The director of American naval operations in Europe and Africa, Rear-Admiral Bob Burke, says that if the sea is fairly calm some 60-days of round-the-clock processing will be needed to neutralise the chemical agents. That makes it just about possible for the June 30 deadline to be met, a date in which all of Syria’s chemical weapons must be destroyed.

Anxieties persist, however. The first is the continuing disagreement between Syria and the OPCW over the destruction of production and storage sites. The issue is of setting bad precedent because, whilst the Syrians are arguing only for ‘destruction by inactivation’, which merely implies just locking some doors, the OPCW has a completely different interpretation as to what destruction of structures means. Because the Chemicals Weapons Convention (CWC) does not specifically define what that is, the OPCW has reverted to using a ‘common law’ standard which implies structures being ‘taken down to the foundations’. A compromise may be possible, but the setting of an inappropriate international legal precedent will be something the OPCW will wish to avoid.

For Syria to be certified as being entirely free of chemical weapons, a mechanism for future ‘challenge’ inspections will be needed. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, the OPCW has never previously carried out such an inspection. It remains possible, of course, that the regime has hidden stocks, which on past form it might use (and then, later, blame the rebels for). The status of one chemical-weapons site, in an area the regime says is too dangerous for decommissioning purposes, remains ‘unresolved’.

Anecdotal evidence suggests the regime has not changed its ways. Reports earlier this month showed that helicopters dropped bombs filled with industrial chlorine gas on the rebel held village of Kfar Zita, injuring and terrifying dozens of civilians.

The use of chlorine gas is always hard to prove. It is not banned under the CWC and it does not linger, making the extraction of evidence from soil samples almost impossible. That is one reason why no signatory to the convention has asked the OPCW to investigate. If its use, however, was intended to maim or kill, and that would have to be established, it would be a clear breach of the convention.

A further requirement of the convention is that signatories give a full history of their chemical-weapons inventories and programmes, accounting for those scientists who worked on it and other countries that may have assisted it – in Syria’s case, probably Russia and Egypt with Iranian proxy support. But we should doubt that, with the architect of the programme still in power, the regime would reveal anything that might incriminate it in the killing of more than 1,000 people by sarin nerve gas in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta exactly 12 months ago, a crime for which it still denies all responsibility.

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  • 2 May, 2014

SYRIA’S CHEMICAL WEAPONS

Reviving the Geneva peace talks is urgently needed…

Last autumn, America (along with France) came within hours of launching military strikes on Syria in punishing the regime of Bashar al-Assad for killing at least 1,400 people in sarin gas attacks. Had those air strikes gone ahead Syria’s stockpiles and reserves of sarin would have been degraded along with other nerve agent stocks. Under an agreement brokered by the United States and Russia, Syria agreed to hand over its stocks of chemical precursors and weapons by February, a deadline which was later extended and which has just past. Yet, despite this added leeway, the evidence suggests that Damascus has still not surrendered its entire arsenal. UN monitors and observers believe that up to eight per cent of stockpiles remain.

Intelligence suggests that, even if the Assad regime had handed over its full inventory, it would not have mattered – for the regime has continued to use chemical weapons in rebel held areas. Tests on samples of soil taken after three recent attacks show definite and unambiguous traces of chlorine and ammonia, the first independent scientific confirmation of what has long been suspected: that the Syrian army has been fitting helicopter-borne barrel bombs with chlorine gas, and then dropping them on towns and villages. Chlorine gas reacts with moisture in the throat and lungs, which in turn forms into hydrochloric acid, leaving victims exposed to fits of coughing, choking and, ultimately, gasping for breath. Several people have died.

Using chemicals in this way is a clear breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention, which Syria signed last year. It is also an infringement of the international norms that have regarded the use of chlorine as monstrously barbaric since the First World War, when it was used to asphyxiate men in the trenches. Although the gas has many industrial uses, it is not a banned substance. Using it as a weapon, however, is strictly prohibited under the convention’s general purpose criterion.

With international attention having been clearly focussed on Ukraine in recent weeks, Assad has seemingly calculated that he can continue to carry out gas attacks with relative impunity, even though he pledged to end their use. He has come to realise there is little or no appetite in the West to intervene militarily in this savage civil war that has now claimed more than 150,000 lives. But he cannot be allowed to think there are no consequences for such ruthless actions.

A fresh effort to revive the stalled Geneva peace process is needed. Securing a diplomatic settlement in Syria remains the best way of ending the internecine warfare and the continued misery that are being suffered by its people. Pressure needs to be applied to Damascus to grant unfettered access to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which is sending a fact-finding mission to investigate the most recent attacks.

Syria’s protectors must also examine themselves. Vladimir Putin, in particular, must ask himself whether, despite his continued belligerence, he is really happy to sit and watch as his ally in Damascus gasses his own people.

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