Assad and the West Use It in Different Forms — Has the World Truly Abandoned Chemical Weapons?

After anticipation and concern, on July 7, 2023, the U.S. government announced the destruction of its last chemical weapons, equipment, and bombs from its arsenal at Pueblo, a U.S. Army ammunition storage and supply facility operated by the military in the state of Colorado, where a specialized team worked on dismantling these weapons.

Immediately afterward, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), based in The Hague, Netherlands, released a statement confirming that they had verified the irreversible destruction of all declared chemical weapons stockpiles after the destruction of the last weapon from member states’ inventories.

They affirmed that the United States (the last state possessing these weapons) destroyed its declared final stockpile at the Blue Grass Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant in Kentucky.

In a congratulatory statement to the world on the destruction of 100% of the member states’ chemical weapons stockpiles under the Chemical Weapons Convention, OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias stated that 193 member states of the organization out of 201 countries in the world fulfilled their commitments.

However, he pointed out that there are abandoned and old chemical weapons that still need to be recovered and destroyed, as they pose potential threats of use or threat as toxic weapons, and this will be a priority for the organization.

Since 1997, the Chemical Weapons Convention has been in force, with participation from 193 countries.

 

Why the Last One?

However, four countries—Egypt, North Korea, South Sudan, and Palestine—have continued to refuse to sign the treaty for various reasons. For instance, Egypt rejects joining the treaty due to “Israel” possessing nuclear weapons.

Despite “Israel” having signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, it has not ratified it, and therefore, it is not committed to disarmament. There is evidence of its actual use of toxic agents, including suffocating substances and phosphorus ammunition, during its aggression on Gaza.

Similarly, despite Syria signing and ratifying the treaty in September 2013 as part of an agreement with the international community to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile, the Bashar al-Assad regime has used chemical weapons, such as chlorine gas and nerve agents.

So, what is the story behind the treaty? Has the world truly rid itself of this “odious and fierce” weapon, or are there loopholes involving the use of non-prohibited chemical substances as weapons?

The long history of the United States concerning chemical weapons dates back to the pre-World War I era when America established numerous research and development facilities, chemical factories, packing facilities, laboratories, and training fields.

In 2012, the U.S. government announced its commitment to completing the destruction of its military chemical arsenal by September 30, 2022, in agreement with all parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention, which came into effect in 1997.

However, in March 2022, Russia, represented by its embassy in Washington, accused the United States of delaying the process of destroying chemical weapons.

The matter eventually led to the official announcement of the complete destruction on July 7, 2023, and President Joe Biden encouraged the rest of the world to sign the 1997 Convention to achieve universal global prohibition of chemical weapons.

This significant development in the global conflict with this terrifying “chemical” weapon grabbed attention-grabbing headlines in American newspapers, such as U.S. Is Destroying the Last of Its Once-Vast Chemical Weapons Arsenal and U.S. Destroys Last Of Chemical Weapons.

On July 6, 2023, the New York Times clarified that the accumulated American stockpile, spanning over generations (70 years), included cluster bombs, landmines filled with nerve gas, and artillery shells capable of covering entire forests with mustard fog, alongside tanks filled with toxins that could be loaded onto military aircraft.

According to the report, the specialized team dismantled and decontaminated these weapons, subjecting them to a special furnace with temperatures exceeding 1500 degrees Fahrenheit (815 degrees Celsius) to turn them into inert scrap pieces.

The article noted that the process of destroying this massive arsenal of dangerous weapons took decades, indicating that these weapons have been classified as “inhuman” since World War I.

However, the United States and other international powers continued to develop and stockpile them.

It remains unknown whether the U.S. forces used chemical weapons since 1918, although they employed herbicides as defoliants during the Vietnam War, which were later found to be harmful to humans.

The United States possessed an advanced program based on biological and germ warfare weapons, which was later destroyed in the 1970s.

 

A Dark History

The First World War (1914–1918) witnessed the first widespread use of deadly chemical weapons in ground warfare. In 1914, French and German forces used limited quantities of tear gas (ethyl bromoacetate and chloroacetone).

The first large-scale use of lethal tear gas occurred during the Second Battle of Ypres in Belgium on April 22, 1915, when the German Imperial Army released 188 tons of chlorine gas against French and Canadian forces, resulting in 6,000 to 7,000 injuries.

Following this incident, the U.S. Army began to explore chemical warfare methods. The Army Ordnance Department allocated a special budget for the development of the Chemical Warfare Service (CWS), established on June 28, 1918.

In 1928, the U.S. Army Chemical Warfare Service selected seven chemical agents for military use: methyldichloroarsine (MD), adamsite (DM), chloroacetophenone (CN), phosgene (CG), and hexachloroethane and zinc oxide (HC smoke).

Between 1940 and 1945, the Chemical Warfare Service produced nearly 146,000 tons of chemical agents across the United States.

However, with the onset of World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt adopted a policy of not initiating the use of chemical weapons. Consequently, no American chemical weapons were employed during the war.

After the war in Europe, the Allies discovered a massive stockpile of German chemical weapons totaling around 296,100 tons.

The Allies agreed to dispose of these weapons at sea, although some countries, including the U.S., are believed to have used samples from the captured German stockpile for research in the post-war period.

During this time, they developed deadly sarin gas, which attacks the human nervous system and leads to certain death.

The first American use of chemical weapons occurred in Vietnam between 1955 and 1973, during the Vietnam War. Chemical weapons were indiscriminately used on civilians and fighters in North Vietnam, leading to repercussions for some American soldiers.

America also used napalm, developed at Harvard University in 1942. It generates temperatures up to 1200 degrees Celsius, causing severe burns, suffocation, carbon monoxide poisoning, and fiery storms.

One notable example is the iconic photograph of the nine-year-old Vietnamese girl, Kim Phuc, screaming and naked, with her body covered in burning napalm, dropped on Vietnamese villages by South Vietnamese forces with American support.

According to American studies, chemical weapons were also tested and experimented on in a poor African–American neighborhood in St. Louis, Missouri, as part of secret trials conducted by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps to understand how chemical particles disperse in the atmosphere.

This occurred on September 17, 2017, as reported by the History Collection website.

During the Iraq War, the United States used white phosphorus gas, which kills by burning human tissues and reignites even after attempts to extinguish it.

White phosphorus was also used by the U.S. Marine Corps in the First Battle of Fallujah against what they referred to as “insurgents,” in reference to Iraqi resistance fighters, as a tactic to force them out of buildings.

It was further revealed that the United States used chemical weapons in 2009 against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

 

Zionism and ‘Assadism’

During the Israeli aggression on Gaza in 2009, doctors in Gaza hospitals, along with international newspapers and medical organizations, revealed that Israeli invasion forces extensively used internationally prohibited weapons, the most dangerous of which were the white phosphorus munitions known as “Willie Pete.”

They also used thermobaric bombs that burn and destroy internal body parts. These revelations underscored the necessity of prosecuting the Zionist war criminals before international war crime tribunals.

During the 2009 aggression, Ibrahim al-Zafarani, the Secretary-General of the Relief Committee at the Doctors Union, revealed to Islam Online that Egyptian doctors who entered Gaza reported that “Israel” was using internationally prohibited chemical weapons and incendiary phosphorus.

Al-Zafarani stated that there were medical evidence, such as leukemia patients experiencing severe bleeding due to the use of toxic and carcinogenic gasses, which provided concrete medical proof of the use of prohibited weapons, in addition to lung inflammations and chemical burns.

In the 2011 war, other medical reports emerged about foul-smelling gasses killing civilians in Gaza. The Israeli Occupation forces also used deep-penetrating bombs to uproot residential towers from their locations, resulting in injuries because of prohibited weapons and ammunition.

International reports warned of the ongoing possession and use of chemical weapons by the Israeli Occupation during its aggression on Gaza without any punishment.

In January 2023, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of using chemical weapons during the conflict that erupted in the country following the Arab Spring revolution in 2011. The investigation revealed the dropping of chlorine gas cylinders on residential buildings in the Syrian city of Douma, which was under the control of opposition fighters in 2018, resulting in the death of dozens.

The organization also investigated the use of nerve gas against the former Russian spy and Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny in the United Kingdom, which dates back to the Soviet era.

Opponents of the Syrian regime have accused Bashar al-Assad and his government of killing 500,000 people and using chemical weapons against their own people, as well as exporting drugs.

Chlorine gas is highly toxic, but it is not officially classified as a chemical weapon because it is an elemental substance used extensively for peaceful purposes. However, the Assad regime in Syria used it in the manufacture of chemical materials and combat ammunition.

The recent chemical massacre carried out by the Assad regime in 2017 against children and women in Khan Shaykhun, leading to the death of 100 people and the injury of 400 due to suffocation, reignited discussions about multiple Assad regime chemical massacres.

Between January and April 2017, the Syrian regime executed a total of 9 new attacks using chemical weapons in Idlib, Hama, Damascus countryside, and Damascus, according to reports from Syrian and international human rights organizations.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) stated that the total number of chemical massacres by the regime against its people reached 167 attacks from 2011 to 2017.