Iraq established a Chemical Corps in the mid-1960s, tasked with the nuclear, biological, and chemical protection of troops and civilians. The Corps developed a laboratory-scale facility in the early 70s to gain practical experience in synthesizing chemical warfare (CW) agents and evaluating their properties. The laboratory's work constituted a necessary step in the training of a national cadre for future research and production of offensive chemical weapons. In addition, it contributed to the creation of a support infrastructure and acquisition system for equipment and materials.[1]

Iraq invaded Iran in 1980 and following a series of military defeats in 1981 and 1982, Iraq began to employ chemical weapons against Iranian forces. In 1988, in the closing stages of the war, Iraq mounted a massive chemical attack against the Kurdish town of Halabja, killing approximately 5,000 civilians.

Iraq's capacity to develop chemical weapons was greatly assisted by its ability to import precursor chemicals and production equipment, and obtain technical support from western suppliers. Iraq eventually produced mustard blister agent and nerve agents such as tabun, sarin, and VX. Following its defeat by United States and allied forces in 1991, Iraq declared to UN inspectors that between 1982 and 1990 it produced 3,859 tons of CW agents and more than 125,000 filled and unfilled special munitions, most of which were stored at the Muthana State Establishment, Iraq's primary CW production, filling, and testing facility. This declaration served as the basis for UNSCOM's subsequent efforts to verify the destruction of all Iraqi chemical weapons.

By December 1998, UNSCOM inspectors had destroyed 38,537 filled and unfilled chemical munitions, 690 metric tons of CW agents, more than 3,275 metric tons of precursor chemicals, over 425 pieces of key production equipment and 125 pieces of analytical instruments.[2] Taking into account items unilaterally destroyed by Iraq prior to the beginning of inspections, UNSCOM was able to account for the destruction of 88,000 filled and unfilled chemical munitions, over 690 metric tons of weaponized and bulk CW agents, approximately 4,000 metric tons of precursor chemicals, 980 pieces of key production equipment and 300 pieces of analytical instruments.[3]

UNSCOM's final report to the UN Security Council noted a number of outstanding issues arising from efforts to verify the accuracy of Iraq's declarations. These included:

• discrepancies regarding Iraq's use of CW during the 1980s;
• 550 artillery shells filled with mustard agent declared to have been lost shortly after the Gulf;
• a large number of R-400 aerial bombs;
• a lack of information regarding Iraq's production of VX agent and its plans for the use the agent;
• and inadequate accounts of the disposition of precursors used in the production of VX.

In August 1998, Iraq unilaterally declared that all outstanding CW-related disarmament issues had been resolved and effectively ceased to cooperate with UNSCOM. This ultimately led to UNSCOM's withdrawal in December 1998 followed by Operation Desert Fox, in which the United States and Great Britain bombed a number of facilities thought to be associated with reviving Iraq's WMD programs.

International sanctions against Iraq were maintained in the continuing belief that it was secretly storing a significant quantity of CW agent, particularly nerve agent, and was in a position to rebuild much of its chemical weapons production infrastructure.

From January 1999 to November 2002 very little new information became available regarding Iraqi attempts to revive its WMD programs. However, given Iraq's past efforts to conceal its activities and retain its capabilities, Western intelligence agencies considered it likely that UNSCOM's withdrawal had led to a restoration of CW production capabilities. Intelligence provided by Iraqi opposition groups such as the Iraqi National Congress (INC) reinforced these concerns.

In November 2002, following a period of escalating pressure on Iraq, UNMOVIC inspection teams were finally allowed access to Iraq. Between 27 November 2002 and 18 March 2003, UNMOVIC conducted 731 inspections covering 411 sites, 88 of which had not been inspected previously.[4] In addition, UNMOVIC was able to conduct 14 interviews with Iraqi personnel. UNMOVIC inspection efforts ended with the withdrawal of all personnel from Iraq in anticipation of military action on 18 March 2003.

The UNMOVIC inspections were able to verify the destruction of between 30 and 39 per cent of Iraq's declared stockpile of 1.5 metric tons of VX. They also identified a small number of CW munitions that appeared to have been produced prior to 1990. UNMOVIC concluded that it had not found evidence of the continuation or resumption of WMD programs.[5]

The U.S. government refused to accept the validity of UNMOVIC's conclusions and continued to assert that Iraq had failed to account for 1.5 tons of VX, 1,000 tons of mustard gas, and 550 munitions containing mustard gas during the UNMOVIC inspections, violating UN Security Council Resolution 1441.

On 19 March 2003, a United States-led coalition invaded Iraq and, following the defeat of Iraq's armed forces overthrew, Saddam Hussein's regime. One justification for military action was the suspicion that Iraq had clandestinely amassed large stockpiles of chemical weapons including VX, sarin, and mustard gas, among other WMD that it had successfully concealed from the United Nations.

Following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in April 2003, the United States tasked the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), headed by former UN inspector David Kay, with locating suspected WMD stockpiles and equipment. The process of searching for evidence of Iraqi WMD programs was greatly complicated by the country's large size; an ongoing insurgency that made unescorted travel extremely dangerous, and the destruction of most official Iraqi government archives in the closing stages of the 2003 war. In January 2004, David Kay resigned as head of the ISG and began to criticise the underlying premises of the group's work. On the basis of his work with the ISG, Kay rejected suggestions that there had been any significant Iraqi WMD activities since the end of the first Gulf War. Dr. Kay was replaced as head of the ISG by former UNSCOM member Charles A. Duelfer.

On 30 September 2004, the ISG released its final report on Iraq's WMD programs. Its key findings regarding Iraqi chemical weapons programs were as follows.

• Saddam never abandoned his intentions to resume a CW effort when sanctions were lifted and conditions were judged favorable.
• While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991.
• Iraq's CW program was crippled by the Gulf War and the legitimate chemical industry, which suffered under sanctions, only began to recover in the mid-1990s. Subsequent changes in the management of key military and civilian organizations, followed by an influx of funding and resources, provided Iraq with the ability to reinvigorate its industrial base.
• The way Iraq organized its chemical industry after the mid-1990s allowed it to conserve the knowledge-base needed to restart a CW program, conduct a modest amount of dual-use research, and partially recover from the decline of its production capability caused by the effects of the Gulf War and UN-sponsored destruction and sanctions.
• Iraq constructed a number of new plants starting in the mid-1990s that enhanced its chemical infrastructure, although its overall industry had not fully recovered from the effects of sanctions, and had not regained pre-1991 technical sophistication or production capabilities prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF).
• ISG uncovered information that the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) maintained throughout 1991 to 2003 a set of undeclared covert laboratories to research and test various chemicals and poisons, primarily for intelligence operations.
• ISG investigated a series of key pre-OIF indicators involving the possible movement and storage of chemical weapons, focusing on 11 major depots assessed to have possible links to CW. A review of documents, interviews, available reporting, and site visits revealed alternate, plausible explanations for activities noted prior to OIF which, at the time, were believed to be CW-related.[6]

Over the course of the period April 2003 to December 2004, a series of events highlighted the lack of security for sites formerly associated with Iraqi WMD programs. These events included the looting of the Tuwaitha facility and the discovery of missile parts with UNMOVIC tags still attached in European scrapyards. The ISG has noted that all the sealed buildings at the Muthanna State Establishment containing various items associated with the Iraqi chemical weapons program had been breached and some equipment and materials removed. These buildings had been inspected and sealed by UNSCOM / UNMOVIC and contained various items, including chemical process equipment that had been destroyed or rendered harmless, empty 155mm artillery shells, and sarin filled rockets dating back to the 1980s.[7] It is unclear how much of this material was removed but it is unlikely to be useful for CW purposes.

Following the conclusion of the primary phase of the U.S. military operations in the city of Fallujah, the U.S. Marine Corps released photographs documenting what it described as a "chemical / explosives weapons laboratory." It was claimed that this laboratory, which was clearly being used for the production of Improvised Explosive devices (IEDs), "may have served as a testing and research area for construction of improvised chemical devices (ICDs)."[8] Currently there are no indications that insurgents had actually produced chemical weapons at this or any other facility in Fallujah.

The ongoing insurgency in Iraq has included several attempts to produce chemical weapons or alternatively use industrial chemicals as weapons. In late 2003, an Iraqi insurgent group that maintained ties to Abu Musab al- Zarqawi, the “al-Abud network” managed to secure the services of an Iraqi chemist with a view to manufacturing Tabun nerve agent (GA) and nitrogen mustard (HN). The group's efforts to produce CW agents were completely ineffective due to a combination of inadequate skills and difficulties securing suitable precursors. An effort by another Iraqi group to produce hydrogen cyanide for incorporation into IEDs was equally unproductive and was discovered in late 2004. Even if successful, this latter effort would not have produced a useful weapon given hydrogen cyanide’s flammable nature and the problems with achieving lethal concentrations in the open air.

In late 2006 and early 2007, insurgents launched a series of attacks, primarily in the Baghdad area, using canisters of chlorine stolen from water-processing facilities. Although these attacks were initially ineffective, by the end of the cycle, the attacks were beginning to produce casualties. In the most successful attack, at least 250 people were injured by exposure to a cloud of chlorine gas. Although a small number of victims were hospitalized, no deaths were caused by the released gas. Attacks of this sort ended shortly afterwards but security forces continued to discover chlorine gas cannisters in insurgent arms caches as late as early 2008.

Treaty Status

Iraq acceded to the Geneva Protocol banning the first use of chemical weapons in September 1931. In November 2007, Iraq completed the domestic legislative requirements for accession to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). On 13 January 2009, Iraq submitted its accession document to the United Nations and became the 186th member nation to the Chemical Weapons Convention on 12 February 2009. Iraq has formed a National Monitoring Directorate to implement the country's obligations under the CWC. The OPCW will conduct inspections to verify the accuracy of Iraq's CW declation. Furthermore Iraq will be required to put in place a plan for the destruction of the 500 or more remaining chemical weapons discovered since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Key Sources:

[1] Sixteenth quarterly report on the activities of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission in accordance with paragraph 12 of Security Council resolution 1284, S/2004/160, 27 February 2004, United Nations Security Council, 2004, p. 4.
[2] Thirteenth quarterly report on the activities of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission in accordance with paragraph 12 of Security Council resolution 1284, S/2003/580, 30 May 2003, United Nations Security Council, p. 40.
[3] UN Security Council Document S/1999/356, Annex 1 para 19.
[4] Thirteenth quarterly report on the activities of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission in accordance with paragraph 12 of Security Council resolution 1284, S/2003/580, 30 May 2003, United Nations Security Council, p. 6.
[5] Thirteenth quarterly report on the activities of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission in accordance with paragraph 12 of Security Council resolution 1284, S/2003/580, 30 May 2003, United Nations Security Council, p. 5.
[6] Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq's WMD Volume 3, 30 September 2004, Central Intelligence Agency, pp. 1-3, http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/index.html.
[7] Nineteenth quarterly report on the activities of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission in accordance with paragraph 12 of Security Council resolution 1284, S/2004/924, 26 November 2004, United Nations Security Council, p. 3 and 5.
[8] Fallujah Update, Insurgent Chemical/Explosives Weapons Laboratory, Multi-National Force, 26 November 2004, http://www.sftt.org/PPT/article12022004a.ppt.

	Updated March 2009