As the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) sends teams on a fact-finding mission to investigate a suspected chemical attack that hit Douma town in Syria, the World fears for the collapse of the 100-year chemical warfare taboo in place since World War I.
While United States (US) officials confirm that victims of the suspected attack on April 7, tested positive for Chlorine and a nerve agent, France President, Emmanuel Macron says he has evidence that the Syrian Government perpetuated the chemical attacks in Douma, Eastern Ghouta, which left more than 80 civilians dead and 1,200 injured, mostly women and children.
“We have proof that last week chemical weapons, at least chlorine, were used by the regime of Bashar al-Assad.”
Western powers were perceived to be preparing for aerial attacks in Syria, as US President, Donald Trump, who has been canvassing support for strikes from France and UK, tweeted that “missiles are coming”. A strike which has just happened.
A BBC Political Editor, Laura Kuenssberg asserts that the UK may be planning a genuinely joint effort with the US and France, rather than playing a supporting role.
Meanwhile, Sources say the UK Prime Minister, Theresa May is prepared to take action against Syria Government without first seeking parliamentary consent.
The UK Cabinet meeting held on April 13 agreed that the use of chemical attack by the Syrian Government must not go “unchallenged”, though there has been no decision to take military action yet.
According to BBC, Labour’s shadow home Secretary, Diane Abbott, said the reason PM may take action independent of parliamentary consent is because “they are frightened they’ll lose the vote”.
“It would be outrageous for the Government not to bring military action in Syria to Parliament – for Parliament to have a vote”.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has accused the UK Government of “waiting for instructions” from President Trump, iterating that a military action was unlikely to solve the situation in Syria.
“More bombing, more killing, more war will not save life. It will just take more lives and spawn the war elsewhere.”
However, The Russian Government, an ally to Syrian President, Bashar Al-Assad, has refuted the claims of the chemical attacks in Douma, asserting it was a pretext to take military action against Syria.
Eastern Ghouta has been under siege by the Syrian Government since 2013, to regain control from the rebel forces.
Evolution of Chemical Weaponry
From World War I to the Cold War, Countries have continued to flex their military ‘arms’. With the help of Fritz Haber, the Germans began developing chemical gases as weapons during the first World War to show superiority of might, even that did not help secure its victory.
600 BCE; The Athenian military taints the water supply of the besieged city of Kirrha with poisonous hellebore plants.
479 BCE; Peloponnesian forces use sulfur fumes against the town of Plataea.
1675; France and Germany sign the Strasbourg Agreement, the first international agreement to ban chemical weapons, in this case outlawing the use of poisoned bullets.
1845; During the French conquest of Algeria, French troops forced more than 1,000 members of a Berber tribe into a cave and then use smoke to kill them.
1861–1865; In the American Civil War, civilians and soldiers on both sides, propose using chemical weapons. Among a multitude of unrealized ideas, New York City schoolteacher John Doughty recommends firing chlorine-gas projectiles at Confederate troops, and Confederate soldier Isham Walker suggests dropping canisters of poison gas from balloons.
1874–1907; A series of international treaties signed by most Western Nations bans the use of poison and poisonous weapons in war.
1914
August; During the first month of World War I the French deploy tear-gas grenades, first developed in 1912 for police use.
October; German forces fire 3,000 shells containing Dianisidine Chlorosulfate, a lung irritant, at the British army at Neuve-Chapelle. The British are unaware that they had been subjected to a chemical attack because the chemical is incinerated by the explosive charge.
1915
January; The Germans again fire 18,000 shells filled with the irritant Xylyl Bromide at Russian troops at Bolinow. The Russians are unharmed because the extreme cold keeps the liquid from vaporizing.
April 22; The German military launches the first large-scale use of chemical weapons in war at Ypres, Belgium. Nearly 170 metric tons of chlorine gas in 5,730 cylinders buried along a four-mile stretch of the front. In the end, more than 1,100 people are killed by the attack and 7,000 injured.
September 25; The British military use chemical weapons for the first time against the Germans at the Battle of Loos by releasing chlorine gas from cylinders.
December 19; Six days before Christmas, Germans first use phosgene on Allied troops which injured more than 1,000 British soldiers with 120 dead.
1917
July 12; Mustard gas is used for the first time by German forces, causing more than 2,100 casualties. During the first three weeks of mustard-gas use, Allied casualties equal the previous year’s chemical-weapons casualties.
1918
May; U.S. research on mustard gas moves from a lab at American University in Maryland to a site called Edgewood Arsenal run by the newly created Chemical Warfare Service. Soon 10% of American artillery shells contain chemical weapons.
June; The Allies begin using mustard gas against German troops.
October 13–14; A young Adolf Hitler, an enlisted messenger in the trenches at Werwick near Ypres, is temporarily blinded during a gas attack. Hitler is evacuated to a military hospital in eastern Germany and spends the rest of the war recuperating.
November 11; World War I ends with 1.3 million casualties caused by chemical weapons, including 90,000 to 100,000 fatalities, primarily from phosgene.
1925
The Geneva Protocol is adopted by the League of Nations. The treaty bans the use of chemical and biological agents in war but does not prohibit the development, production, or stockpiling of such weapons. Many Countries signed the treaty, with reservations permitting them to respond in kind if attacked with chemical weapons.
1935–1936
Benito Mussolini drops mustard-gas bombs in Ethiopia to destroy Emperor Haile Selassie’s army. Despite Italy being a signatory of the Geneva Protocol, the League of Nations did not stop its use of chemical weapons.
1936
German chemist Gerhard Schrader completes the synthesis and purification of Tabun, a potent nerve poison. His intention is to build a pesticide, not a chemical weapon. The chemical he creates is so potent that army researchers call it ‘taboo’.
1939–1945
During World War II poison gases are used in Nazi concentration camps to kill civilians and by the Japanese army in Asia. Nerve agents are stockpiled by the Nazis, but chemical weapons were not used on European battlefields.
1943
The Nazis force prisoners at the Dyhernfurth concentration camp to produce Tabun. Laborers are often denied medical treatment when exposed to lethal doses of the poison.
1953
British Serviceman Ronald Maddison dies of Sarin poisoning after being purposefully exposed to the toxin at Porton Down military facility.
1961–1971
The United States uses Napalm and the herbicide Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, sparking National and International protest.
1963–1967
Egypt uses Mustard gas and a nerve agent in Yemen to support a coup d’état against the Yemeni monarchy.
1972
The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention is completed. Combined with the 1925 Geneva Protocol, the new accord bans the development, production, and possession of biological weapons, with no mechanism to ensure compliance.
1980s
During the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq is accused of using chemical weapons, including Tabun, against Iran and Iraq’s Kurdish minority, which the Country denied. Iran initiates its own chemical-weapons program.
1993
The Chemical Weapons Convention is signed. Beginning in 1997, the disarmament agreement bans the development, production, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons.
2013
The Syrian military uses Sarin gas against civilians during the Syrian Civil War; hundreds are killed. Bashar al-Assad’s government relinquishes its arsenal of chemical weapons after threats of U.S. air strikes.
