The first
large-scale chemical weapon attack was carried out with chlorine and mustard
gas (yperite) on April 22, 1915, at Ypres in Belgium
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| Mustard gas-filled 155mm projectiles inside a chemical storage igloo, in an undated photo provided by the U.S. Army Chemical Materials Activity (CMA) in Pueblo, Colorado |
This
happened during the First World War when the Germans attacked French, Canadian and
Algerian troops. It killed 90,000 people and over one million casualties were
seen during the war.
The
use of chemicals in weapon tools was prevalent for thousands of years now.
Poisoned arrows, boiling tar, arsenic smoke, and noxious fumes were commonly
known agents of chemical weapons.
How were chemical weapons used?
The
mode of formation of chemical weapons started on the battlefields of World War
I.
In
this war, the battlefields were immersed with gases like chlorine and phosgene.
They were released from canisters and dispersed by the wind on the battlefield.
These
chemicals were manufactured in huge quantity by the turn of the century. After
being manufactured, they were deployed to the battlefields of trench warfare
that lasted for an unusually long time in World War I.
A
trench warfare is a type of combat in which opposing troops fight from trenches
facing each other. The most famous use of trench warfare is the Western Front
in World War I.
Around
124,000 tonnes of chemical agents were used by the end of World War I.
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World War I and II munitions prepared for destruction lie in a cage at
the Society for the Disposal of Chemical Weapons and Ordinance (GEKA), is the
only German company which is able to destroy chemical munitions countrywide:
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Chemical weapons were deployed on a large
scale in almost all theatres in the First and Second World Wars.
The United States and the Soviet Union
maintained tens of thousands of stockpiles of chemical weapons during the Cold
War. This amount of chemical weapons was enough to destroy most of the human
and animal life on Earth.
How
can chemical warfare cripple lives?
Those injured in chemical warfare suffers from
the effects for the rest of their lives this is what makes the events like at
Ieper during World War I, a generation scarring.
Blistering skin, eye damage, and excruciating
deaths were other reasons that the nations decided to ban chemical weapons
after World War I.
Major
instances where chemical weapons were used
Examples of the use of chemical weapons were the
sarin poisoning incident in Matsumoto, a Japanese residential community, in
1994, and the sarin attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 -- both perpetrated by
the Aum Shinrikyu doomsday cult.
Iraq used
chemical weapons in Iran during the war in the 1980s.
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| At least 5,000 people were gassed to death in 1988 when the Iraqi air force dropped chemical bombs on Halabja in the country's Kurdish north - a defining moment in a long history of oppression: |
East Ghouta, Saraqeb, Douma in Syria are the most
recent victims of chemical weapons in 2018. Chlorine gas was used to attack the
civilians in these areas.
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A diagram released
in a United Nations report in 2013 on possible use of chemical weapons in Syria
shows markings and dimensions of warheads found in the area visited by UN
inspectors:
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Combatting
chemical weapons
The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) is
implemented by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW),
which is headquartered in The Hague with about 500 employees.
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Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Director
General, Ahmet Uzumcu speaks during a news conference in the Hague. The OPCW
has won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013.
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CWC is a multilateral treaty that bans
chemical weapons and requires their destruction within a specified period of
time.
The duration of this treaty is unlimited and
more comprehensive than the 1925 Geneva Protocol. Geneva protocol of 1925
outlaws the use but not the possession of chemical weapons.
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