Iraq Faces Major Challenges in Destroying Its Legacy Chemical Weapons
Iraq joined the Chemical Weapons Convention in February 2009 and now faces major challenges destroying the chemical munitions it inherited from the Saddam Hussein regime.
Before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Saddam Hussein's Iraq produced and
stockpiled hundreds of tons of chemical weapons (CW), a small fraction of which
still exist. After Iraq acceded to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) on
February 12, 2009, it was obligated to declare and destroy any surviving CW
agents and munitions according to the detailed procedures set out in the treaty.
Because some of Iraq's legacy chemical weapons were damaged by aerial
bombing during the Gulf War and are extremely dangerous to handle, Baghdad will
have great difficulty disposing of them. In addition, chemical munitions from
the pre-1991 era will probably be recovered in the future and will have to be
destroyed in a verifiable manner. How Iraq and the international community deal
with these issues will have important implications for the CWC and the prospects
for chemical disarmament in the Middle East.
Iraq's Chemical Weapons Activities
Before Iraq acceded to the CWC in early 2009, it
had a long history of involvement in chemical warfare. The Saddam Hussein regime
used mustard gas and the nerve agents tabun and sarin on a large scale during
the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) and the ensuing terror campaign against the Kurdish
minority in northern Iraq, including the infamous chemical attack on the town of
Halabja in March 1988 that killed some 5,000
civilians.
[1]
In late 1990,
during the run-up to the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Iraq produced a large stockpile
of chemical weapons at the Muthanna State Establishment, some 20 kilometers
south of the city of Samarra, including aerial bombs, shells, artillery rockets,
and Scud missile warheads filled with mustard and nerve agents. Chemical weapons
were stockpiled at Muthanna in eight large cruciform
bunkers—semi-underground structures resembling truncated pyramids that
were built of reinforced concrete one meter thick and covered with a three-meter
layer of sandy clay. Each bunker was about the size of a football field and had
a main storage room with a capacity of about 10,800 cubic
meters.
[2]
During the Gulf
War, U.S. retaliatory threats deterred Saddam Hussein from using his chemical
arsenal, and Coalition aircraft bombed much of the Muthanna complex, shutting
down Iraq's chemical weapons production. On February 8, 1991, an aerial
bomb hit the roof of Bunker 13 at Muthanna. According to Iraqi declarations,
this bunker stored 2,500 sarin-filled 122mm artillery rockets, which were
partially damaged or destroyed in the bombardment. In addition, the bunker held
about 200 metric tons of sodium and potassium cyanide salts (precursors for
tabun production) and 75 kilograms of arsenic trichloride (a precursor for
blister agent).
[3]
Post-Gulf War Chemical Disarmament
In the aftermath of Iraq's military
defeat in the 1991 Gulf War, the cease-fire agreement—United Nations
Security Council Resolution 687—required Iraq to eliminate its entire
chemical weapons stockpile under the supervision of inspectors from a newly
created UN disarmament agency, the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq
(UNSCOM). Chemical munitions, bulk agent, and precursors stored throughout Iraq
were consolidated at Muthanna and destroyed by incineration or neutralization.
The destruction campaign, which lasted from June 1992 to June 1994, disposed of
more than 38,000 filled and unfilled chemical munitions, 690 metric tons of bulk
and weaponized CW agents, and over 3,000 metric tons of precursor
chemicals.
[4]
Although the
damaged Bunker 13 at Muthanna contained thousands of sarin-filled rockets, the
presence of leaking munitions and unstable propellant and explosive charges made
it too hazardous for UNSCOM inspectors to enter. Because the rockets could not
be recovered safely, Iraq declared the munitions in Bunker 13 as
"destroyed in the Gulf War" and they were not included in the
inventory of chemical weapons eliminated under UNSCOM
supervision.
Another nearby storage bunker at Muthanna, called Bunker 41,
was in good condition, so UNSCOM used it to entomb contaminated materials left
over from the CW destruction effort. These items included about 2,000
mustard-filled artillery shells that had been drained and burned to speed
decomposition of the agent, and 605 one-ton mustard containers and other items
that could not be thoroughly decontaminated. Because these items still bore
traces of mustard, they posed a threat to human health if handled improperly. In
1994, Iraqi personnel working under UNSCOM supervision secured Bunkers 13 and 41
by sealing the entrances with massive barriers of brick, tar, and reinforced
concrete more than 1.5 meters thick. They also used reinforced concrete to patch
the hole in the roof of Bunker
13.
[5]
After the UNSCOM
inspectors left Iraq in December 1998, the United States had no reliable sources
of information on the ground. U.S. intelligence agencies assumed that in the
absence of UN monitoring, Saddam Hussein would replenish his chemical arsenal.
Iraqi opposition groups such as the Iraqi National Congress also provided
misleading information that reinforced this belief. By late 2002, the CIA
estimated that Iraq had acquired a stockpile of about 500 metric tons of
chemical weapons, even though in early 2003 inspectors with the United Nations
Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC, the successor
agency to UNSCOM) found only a few chemical artillery shells dating from the
pre-1991 era.
[6]
The UNMOVIC
inspectors were forced to leave the country in March 2003, shortly before the
start of the Iraq War (Operation Iraqi Freedom). In the aftermath of the
U.S.-led invasion and the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime, the CIA-led
Iraq Survey Group (ISG) scoured Iraq for weapons of mass destruction, but found
none. The ISG concluded that contrary to the pre-war intelligence estimates, the
Iraq had unilaterally destroyed most of its undeclared CW stockpile after the
1991 Gulf War and had not resumed the production of chemical
weapons.
[7]
Destroying the Chemical Weapons at Muthanna
On February 12, 2009, Iraq acceded to
the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), a multilateral treaty banning the
development, production, stockpiling, transfer, and use of chemical
weapons.
[8]
(To date, 188 countries
have signed and ratified the CWC.) After joining the Convention, Iraq was
obligated to declare within 30 days any legacy stocks of chemical weapons it had
inherited from the Saddam Hussein regime. On March 12, 2009, Iraq declared
Bunkers 13 and 41 at Muthanna containing filled and unfilled chemical munitions
and precursors, as well as five former chemical weapons production facilities,
to the international body overseeing CWC implementation—the Organization
for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague, the
Netherlands.
[9]
Because of the
hazardous conditions in Bunker 13, UNSCOM inspectors were unable to make an
accurate inventory of its contents before sealing the entrances in 1994. As a
result, no record exists of the exact number or status of the sarin-filled
rockets remaining in the bunker. According to the UNMOVIC final report in 2007,
the rockets "may be both filled and unfilled, armed or unarmed, in good
condition or
deteriorated."
[10]
In the
worst-case scenario, the munitions could contain as much as 15,000 liters of
sarin. Although it is likely that the nerve agent has degraded substantially
after nearly two decades of storage under suboptimal conditions, UNMOVIC
cautioned that "the levels of degradation of the sarin fill in the rockets
cannot be determined without exploring the bunker and taking samples from intact
warheads."
[11]
If the sarin
remains highly toxic and many of the rockets are still intact, they could pose a
proliferation risk.
Even if the sarin inside the rockets in Bunker 13 has
degraded to the point that it has no military value and is little more than
hazardous waste, the CWC still requires that all such materials be destroyed.
Following Iraq's submission of its initial CW declaration in March 2009,
the OPCW Technical Secretariat processed and analyzed the data. In April, Iraq
submitted a general plan for destroying the CW materials stored in the two
declared bunkers at Muthanna, as well as dismantling its former chemical weapons
production
facilities.
[12]
Because
Baghdad acceded to the CWC more than ten years after the treaty entered into
force in 1997, Iraq is not subject to the April 29, 2012 deadline for completing
destruction of its chemical weapons that applies to the other member-states that
are still eliminating their stockpiles (Libya, Russia, and the United
States).
[13]
Instead, under
paragraph 8 of Article IV of the CWC, Iraq must destroy its chemical weapons
"as soon as possible," with the order of destruction and procedures
for stringent verification to be determined by the OPCW Executive Council. In
April 2009, OPCW Director-General Rogelio Pfirter observed, "Undoubtedly,
history and the unique complexities that we can envision for the implementation
of Articles IV and V of the Convention [dealing, respectively, with the
destruction of chemical weapons and former production facilities] make the Iraqi
accession to the Convention a special case, and one that might provide unique
implementation
challenges."
[14]
In
another statement on November 30, 2009, Director-General Pfirter noted that
"exceptional safety considerations" had impeded Iraq's ability
to comply in a timely fashion with the obligation in Article III of the CWC to
declare its chemical weapons
stockpile.
[15]
On December 1, 2009,
on the margins of the annual Conference of the States Parties in The Hague,
representatives from Iraq, the United States, and the Technical Secretariat met
to review the "possible enhancement of Iraq's declarations"
concerning the status of the chemical munitions at Muthanna. The three sides
agreed that additional information was needed to clarify the situation,
including ground photographs, aerial imagery, documents, and findings from the
UNSCOM and UNMOVIC inspections in Iraq. A follow-up meeting took place in The
Hague on January 13-14, 2010, and efforts to clarify the Iraqi CW declaration
continue.
[16]
It now appears likely
that Iraq will amend its declaration to list only the contents of Bunker 13,
given the fact that Bunker 41 contains no filled munitions or bulk agent. The
OPCW Technical Secretariat is also consulting with the Iraqi authorities about
how to conduct an initial inspection to verify the declaration.
Iraq has
asked the United States to provide technical and financial assistance in
eliminating the CW materials stored at Muthanna. Because the conditions inside
Bunker 13 remain extremely hazardous, however, Iraq and the OPCW Technical
Secretariat have not yet decided how to proceed. One possible approach would be
to drill holes in the bunker and use sensors to detect the presence of leaking
chemical munitions. It would then be necessary to unseal the entrances, use
robots and/or bomb-disposal teams in full protective gear to recover the
sarin-filled rockets, and destroy the weapons by incineration or chemical
neutralization—a difficult, dangerous, and expensive process. Reportedly,
a preliminary estimate of the cost to evaluate and inventory the bunkers (not
including destruction) is $500 million, including providing security for the
workforce and assessing and managing the danger from unexploded ordnance and
agent leaks. Accordingly, the cost of the operation is a major concern.
A
second option under consideration would be to entomb Bunker 13 in a concrete
"sarcophagus" that would render it permanently inaccessible, as was
done with the highly radioactive nuclear reactor at Chernobyl. However, the
CWC's prohibition on "land burial" in paragraph 13 of Part
IV(A) of the Verification Annex creates a potential obstacle to this approach.
Some experts also argue that failing to recover and destroy the sarin-filled
rockets would be inconsistent with the basic obligation in the CWC to eliminate
all chemical weapons in an irreversible manner, and would therefore set a bad
precedent.
Destruction of Recovered Chemical Munitions
Iraq's CW destruction efforts face an additional
challenge that is likely to persist for some time. Between the end of major
combat operations in Iraq on May 1, 2003, and Iraq's accession to the CWC
on February 12, 2009, U.S. and British occupation forces recovered hundreds of
chemical munitions containing degraded mustard or sarin, all dating from the
Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s or the 1991 Persian Gulf
War.
[17]
According to the ISG
final report, published in September 2004, "Beginning in May 2004, ISG
recovered a series of chemical weapons from Coalition military units and other
sources. A total of 53 munitions have been recovered, all of which appear to
have been part of pre-1991 Gulf War stocks based on their physical condition and
residual components. The most interesting discovery has been a 152mm binary
Sarin artillery projectile—containing a 40 percent concentration of
Sarin—which insurgents attempted to use as an Improvised Explosive Device
(IED). The existence of this binary weapon not only raises questions about the
number of viable chemical weapons remaining in Iraq and [sic] raises the
possibility that a larger number of binary, long-lasting chemical weapons still
exist."
[18]
On June 21,
2006, at the request of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence,
Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte declassified the "key
points" from a U.S. Army National Ground Intelligence Center report on the
recovery of chemical munitions in Iraq:
- Since 2003 Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500
weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent.
- Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf
War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are
assessed to still exist.
- Pre-Gulf War Iraqi chemical weapons could be sold on the black
market. Use of these weapons by terrorists or insurgent groups would have
implications for Coalition forces in Iraq. The possibility of use outside Iraq
cannot be ruled out.
- The most likely munitions remaining are sarin and mustard-filled
projectiles.
- The purity of the agent inside the munitions depends on many
factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives, and
environmental storage conditions. While agents degrade over time, chemical
warfare agents remain hazardous and potentially lethal.
- It has been reported in open press that insurgents and Iraqi
groups desire to acquire and use chemical
weapons
.
[19]
At
the time the Iraqi chemical munitions were recovered, Iraq was under military
occupation by the United States and the United Kingdom, which were parties to
the CWC. Accordingly, both countries were subject to paragraph 1(a)(i) of
Article III of the Convention, which provides that a state party must declare to
the OPCW Technical Secretariat all chemical weapons "located in any place
under its jurisdiction and control." In addition, according to paragraph 1
of Article IV, the CWC's requirements for verifiable destruction apply to
"all chemical weapons owned or possessed by a State Party, or that are
located in any place under its jurisdiction and control." Finally,
paragraph 9 of Article IV states, "Any chemical weapons discovered by a
State Party after the initial declaration of chemical weapons shall be reported,
secured and destroyed in accordance with Part IV(A) of the Verification
Annex."
These provisions of the CWC suggest that during the period
after the 2003 invasion and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein when the United
States and the United Kingdom controlled the territory of Iraq, they were
legally obligated to declare any recovered chemical munitions to the OPCW
Technical Secretariat and ensure that the weapons were stored and destroyed in a
manner that could be verified by the international inspectorate. Yet because of
the deteriorating security situation that prevailed during the early years of
the military occupation of Iraq, Washington and London decided to conceal the
recovery of hundreds of pre-1991 chemical munitions in order to protect their
own troops and Iraqi civilians from the possible theft and use of such weapons
by terrorists or insurgents. The recovered chemical munitions were then secretly
destroyed.
Not until April 2009, in response to Iraq's accession
to the CWC two months earlier, did the United States and the United Kingdom
provide information to the OPCW Technical Secretariat about the
ad hoc
recovery and destruction of chemical weapons by U.S. and British occupation
forces in Iraq from 2003 to 2008.
In early September 2009, teams from the Technical Secretariat's Verification Division, including the Chemical Demilitarization Branch, visited Washington and London to review documents related to the recovery and destruction operations.
In both cases, the Technical
Secretariat's teams concluded that the documents appeared consistent with
the information provided by the two governments in April
2009.
[20]
Other CWC member
states were troubled by the implications for the Convention of the unilateral
destruction of chemical weapons in Iraq by U.S. and British forces. During a
meeting of the Executive Council in October 2009, South Africa's permanent
representative to the OPCW, Ambassador Peter Goosen, speaking on behalf of the
African Group of CWC member states, called for the development of guidelines for
"the security and destruction of chemical weapons that come into the
possession and/or control of a State Party or States Parties in situations not
foreseen by the Convention, including conflict situations." Although
Goosen did not mention Iraq by name, his statement clearly referred to the
ad
hoc
destruction of Iraqi chemical munitions during the occupation. In
Goosen's view, destroying such weapons "without the engagement of
the Convention and its provisions" threatened to undermine the
CWC.
[21]
To address this
situation, South Africa urged that the Executive Council establish a working
group, open to all interested CWC member states, to develop a set of guidelines
for declaring and destroying chemical weapons in cases where foreign military
forces recover chemical munitions from an area under their
control.
[22]
On October 16, 2009,
the Executive Council duly approved the creation of a working group for this
purpose, chaired by Michael Hurley of Ireland, and encouraged the participating
states to complete their work as soon as
possible.
[23]
The new working group
will focus on developing guidelines to deal with similar circumstances in the
future, rather than rehashing the details of the Iraq occupation.
Given
the way chemical weapons were stored in Iraq—often unmarked and combined
with conventional ordnance—it is quite likely that pre-1991 chemical
munitions left over from the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War will continue to be
discovered for years to come. According to the ISG final report, "An Iraqi
source indicated that when weapons were forward-deployed in anticipation of a
conflict, the CW weapons often became mixed in with the regular munitions, and
were never accounted for again. Another source stated that several hundred
munitions moved forward for the Gulf war, and never used, were never recovered
by retreating Iraqi troops. A thorough post-[Operation Iraqi Freedom] search of
forward depots turned up nothing—if the weapons were indeed left behind,
they were looted over the 12 years between the
wars."
[24]
Now that
Iraq is back in control of its own territory, the United States wants the Iraqi
government to deal with any future chemical weapons finds on its own. (The
United Kingdom ended its six-year occupation of southern Iraq in June 2009, and
the United States plans to pull out its combat troops by the end of 2011.) Given
the likelihood that additional pre-1991 chemical munitions will be recovered in
Iraq, the U.S. military is currently training Iraqi Army soldiers to identify,
recover, render harmless, transport, and safely destroy chemical weapons.
Because Iraq is now a party to the CWC, any chemical munitions recovered in the
future will have to be disposed of under international verification, in a manner
fully consistent with the provisions of the Convention.
Because Iraq acceded to the CWC more than 10 years after its entry into force, Baghdad is subject to Article IV, paragraph 8, which states that procedures for the "stringent verification" of chemical weapons destruction "shall be determined by the Executive Council." How the Iraqi government and the OPCW decide to eliminate Iraq's legacy chemical weapons—both those stored at Muthanna and any munitions that may be recovered elsewhere—will have broader implications for the region. Three Middle Eastern countries suspected of possessing chemical arms have yet to join the CWC: Israel has signed but not ratified the treaty, while Egypt and Syria have neither signed nor ratified. Destroying Iraq's remaining chemical weapons in a credible manner would bolster the chemical disarmament regime and set a positive example for the region. Conversely, a failure by Iraq to implement the Convention effectively could weaken the regime and reduce pressures on the remaining hold-out states to join.
Notes
[1]
See Jonathan B. Tucker,
War of Nerves: Chemical Warfare from World War I to Al-Qaeda
(New York:
Anchor Books, 2007), pp.
279-286.
[2]
United Nations
Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC),
Compendium of
Iraq's Proscribed Weapons Programmes in the Chemical, Biological and
Missile Areas
, June 2007, "Chapter III: Chemical Weapons
Programme," p. 65,
http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/new/documents/compendium/Chapter_III.pdf.
[3]
Ibid., 312.
[4]
Ibid., p.
256.
[5]
Ibid., p.
312.
[6]
Ibid., p.
256.
[7]
Iraq Survey Group,
"Iraq's Chemical Warfare Program, Annex B," in the
Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq's
WMD
, CIA website, September 30, 2004,
https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/iraq_wmd_2004/index.html.
[8]
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), "Iraq Joins
the Chemical Weapons Convention," January 14, 2009,
www.opcw.org/news/news/ article/ iraq- joins-the-chemical-
weapons-convention/.
[9]
OPCW
Executive Council, "Opening Statement by the Director-General to the
Executive Council at its Fifty-Sixth Session," EC-56/DG.10, April 21,
2009, p. 2, paragraph 5.
[10]
UNMOVIC,
Compendium
, p.
317.
[11]
Ibid., p.
318.
[12]
OPCW Executive Council, "Opening Statement by the Director-General
to the Executive Council at its Fifty-Sixth Session," EC-56/DG.10, April
21, 2009, p. 2, paragraph 5.
[13]
Three other states parties to the CWC—Albania, India, and South
Korea—have already completed the destruction of their declared CW
stockpiles.
[14]
OPCW Executive
Council, "Opening Statement by the Director-General to the Executive
Council at its Fifty-Sixth Session," EC-56/DG.10, April 21, 2009, p. 2,
paragraph 7.
[15]
OPCW Conference
of the States Parties, "Opening Statement by the Director-General to the
Conference of the States Parties at its Fourteenth Session," C-14/DG.13,
November 30, 2009, p. 5, paragraph
24.
[16]
OPCW Executive Council,
"Opening Statement by the Director-General to the Executive Council at its
Fifty-Ninth Session," EC-59/DG.16, February 23, 2010, p. 3, paragraphs
15-16.
[17]
UNMOVIC,
Compendium
, p. 118.
[18]
Iraq Survey Group, "Iraq's Chemical Warfare Program, Annex F,"
in
Comprehensive Report of the Special Adviser to the DCI on Iraq's
WMD.
[19]
Letter from
Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte to the Honorable Peter
Hoekstra, Chairman, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S. House of
Representatives, providing declassified "Key Points" from a National
Ground Intelligence Center report on the recovery of chemical munitions in Iraq,
dated June 21, 2006.
[20]
OPCW
Executive Council, "Opening Statement by the Director-General to the
Executive Council, at its Fifty-Eighth Session," EC-58/DG.13, October 13,
2009, pp. 4-5, paragraphs
22-24.
[21]
South African
Delegation to the OPCW Executive Council, "Statement on Behalf of the
African Group of States Parties at the Fifty-Eighth Session of the Executive
Council," EC-58/NAT.9, October 13, 2009, p.
2.
[22]
South African Delegation
to the OPCW Executive Council, "Request for the Inclusion of a Subitem in
the Provisional Agenda for the Fifty-Eight Session of the Executive Council,
13-16 October 2009," EC-58/2, October 1,
2009.
[23]
OPCW Executive
Council, "Report of the Fifty-Eighth Session of the Executive
Council," EC-58/9, October 16, 2009, p. 5, paragraph
5.17.
[24]
Iraq Survey Group,
"Iraq's Chemical Warfare Program, Annex F," in
Comprehensive Report of the Special Adviser to the DCI on Iraq's
WMD
.