Chemical weapons (CW) are man-made toxic chemicals that have fatal or incapacitating
effects. They work in a variety of ways, for example, by damaging the lungs,
blistering the skin, or disrupting the nervous system. During World War I, the
United States, Canada, and the European combatants manufactured, stockpiled,
and used CW. With the possible exception of Russia (see Proliferation
Threat and Response, page 68 on the screen), all these countries have
terminated their programs. The Chemical
Weapons Convention (CWC) entered into force in 1997, and as of January
2007, has 181 states parties. Under the CWC, states parties
must destroy all CW in their possession and all
their CW production facilities, as well as any CW
they abandoned in other countries. Six states have
declared CW stockpiles: the
United States,
Russia,
India,
Albania,
Libya, and South Korea. According to the
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
(OPCW),
member states declared stockpiles totaling 70,000
metric tons of CW agents in 8,600,000 munitions and
containers, and 65 CW production facilities. The CWC
mandates that all CW stockpiles and production
facilities be destroyed by 2007, but all countries
with stockpiles requested extensions.
As of September 2006, 55 of the 65 declared
CW production facilities worldwide have been destroyed, but only
18 percent or 13,000 tons of the CW stockpiles and
30 percent of munitions have been destroyed. In
December 2006, the OPCW members granted Russia and
the United States a five-year extension until 2012
for destroying their CW. However, neither Russia nor
the United States is expected to be able to meet the
new deadline because of financial and technological
challenges. The The United States
and Russia started with the largest stockpiles:
28,500 metric tons of CW agents in the U.S. in 1997,
40,000 metric tons in Russia. The
United States has or will destroy agents and
munitions at several facilities. As of September
2006, it had destroyed 39 percent of its CW agents
and 50 percent of munitions; but total elimination
probably will not be completed until 2017. Russia,
with seven CW stockpile sites, has destroyed only 3
percent of its CW stockpile. The
United States and other nations in the
Global Partnership Program have pledged
over a billion dollars to help Russia build a
facility at
Shchuch'ye to destroy the more than two
million nerve-agent filled weapons stored there, but
little progress has been made.
China
has declared
stocks of chemical munitions abandoned by Japan on Chinese territory during
World War II. In August 2006, Japan announced that it would take until at
least 2012 to dispose of the hundreds of thousands
of abandoned CW; it has removed 38,000 of the
weapons and plans to build a new CW disposal plant
in northeastern China in 2007. Several other countries have also declared abandoned CW on their
territory.
States Developing Chemical Weapons
Western intelligence notes that the following states may possess CW programs:
Iran,
Syria,
Egypt, and
North Korea. In addition,
after the 1991 Gulf War, UN inspectors
uncovered a sizeable CW arsenal in
Iraq and destroyed
all known elements of that arsenal. Nonetheless, the United States relied on Western
intelligence suggesting Iraq had an active CW program as one justification for
invading that country and toppling Saddam Hussein's regime in March 2003.
Subsequent
investigations by the Iraq Survey Group revealed that Iraq had never
given up its CW ambitions and had maintained the ability to produce CW
(including sulfur mustard and nerve agents). However, Iraq had not resumed
production of chemical munitions and probably had no plans to use CW against the
U.S.-led invasion.
With the help of foreign suppliers,
Libya began an offensive CW
program in the 1980s, and rapidly erected three sites for CW production. Under
Colonel Mu'ammar al-Qadhdhafi, Libya pursued CW for several reasons, including
to offset Israel's larger conventional forces and presumed nuclear capabilities,
and to bolster its overall military strength. By the mid-1990s, Libya reportedly
had the ability to produce CW and a program to acquire ballistic missiles to
deliver CW. It had built two of the largest CW production complexes ever
constructed in the developing world at Rabta and Tarhuna. On December 19, 2003,
Qadhdhafi declared that Libya would abandon its programs to develop WMD and
allow international inspectors to tour WMD facilities. Libya became the 159th
country to join the Chemical Weapons Convention in January 2004; it declared
23.62 metric tons of mustard agent and about 1,300 metric tons of ingredients
for nerve agents stored in the Libyan desert. The United States has agreed to
help Libya pay the estimated cost of $100 million to eliminated these
stockpiles.
After World War I, the best-documented cases of CW use are the following:
- by Italy against Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia) (1935);
- by Egypt against Yemen (1963-1967);
- by Iraq against Iran (and against Iraqi Kurds) in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq
War;
- possibly by Iran against Iraq in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War;
- and by Libya against Chad (1987).
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