Until silence

Posted: May 24, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Chemical, War | Tags: , , | 2 Comments

Children and babies—whether born or unborn—suffer immensely in any armed conflict. Mental trauma from witnessing human wasting, which no person should really be exposed to anymore. Physical injuries that scar the young ones for the rest of their lives, even if a sense of normalcy could ever be recaptured. And death, often considered the worst possible outcome, but nonetheless a fortuitous escape from a lifelong suffering inflicted by a senseless war ripping apart the early stages of their far too many young lives. For the survivors—bereft parents and mothers of the stillborn one—deep-reaching psychological wounds far beyond consolation.

Until the silence says goodbye

Addressing her companion after a mutual acquaintance, a British naval officer who had served in World War 1, suddenly passed away in 1923, Vera Brittain (Testament of Youth, Chapter XXII, 4) wrote:

I don’t think victory over death is anything so superficial as a person fulfilling their normal span of life. It can be twofold; a victory over death by the man who faces it for himself without fear, and the victory by those who, loving him, know that death is but a little thing compared with the fact that he lived and was the kind of person he was … That’s why those war victories with which I was especially associated are still incomplete. That the people faced their own deaths without fear I have no doubt. It is through me that the victory is incomplete, because I cannot always quite feel that their deaths matter less to me than the fact that they lived, nor reconcile their departure, with all their aspirations unfulfilled, with my own scheme of life.

Having lost her fiancé, two brothers and a close friend in the Great war, she was still struggling make sense of death, despite a self-induced mental numbness to cope in a post-war British society that had no time or space to embrace its many scarred veterans with the human carnage she saw firsthand as a voluntary nurse.

No pantomime of time to heal…

For the unborn child or infant physically or psychologically mauled by detonating bombs or shells, there is no victory for having lived that parents could savour. Chemical weapons add to that despair: a person living under their threat has no sense of being able to escape them. There is simply no place to run (to paraphrase Tim Cook’s magnificent book on Canadian soldiers’ adaptation to survive under a perpetual gas blanket during World War 1).

Hurt and fear are overwhelming emotions. Children and gas, when combined, allow for easy, but powerful manipulation of public opinion beyond the battlefield, often for purposes that have little bearing on relieving the plight of those actually facing the threats. Add a couple of graphic pictures; throw in one or two names to make the suffering tangible and direct public emotions to these few foci in order to momentarily blur out the 150,000 fatalities and millions of other casualties shared by all sides in the Syrian civil war. Can a policy maker or shaper fail to respond to such concentrated emotion? This is why I reacted strongly to the unsubstantiated claims that sarin exposure was causing the deformed babies in ‘Must the Belgian babies be bayoneted all over again?’

Today, a week or so after The Telegraph (London) and The Daily Star (Beirut) ran their respective ‘scoops’, no additional claims, no new names of children from the Ghouta area, have surfaced. A few media outlets reported on the original stories, but to the best of my knowledge, nobody seems to have delved further into the matter. Claims of sarin’s mutagenic properties appear to have vanished into thin air.

Survive to die alive

In contrast, other factors that may explain the incidence of miscarriages and malformed babies have come to the fore: prolonged extreme stress, concussion, exposure to high levels of dust, malnourishment, unsanitary conditions (at home, in shelters or in hospitals), etc.

Last December, many months before the sarin claims, a trained paediatrician with 20 years experience working Médecins sans frontières attributed the malformations in Syrian infants she was treating to possible deprivation of folic acids. No or insufficient intake during especially the first four weeks of a pregnancy profoundly compromises the neurulation process, which in turn leads to severe congenital deformity.

If this doctor’s surmise is correct, then the rising incidence of stillborn or malformed babies testifies to the dreadful state of Syria’s health system more than anything else.

She also described the wrenching plight of two pregnant women caught up in aerial bombing on their way to the market one sunny day. One lost her baby in her struggle to survive …

No hint of sarin or chemical warfare in her accounts.

There is simply no need to add gas to feel the pain of Syrian mothers …

 

[Cross-posted from The Trench]

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Taking stock of the chemical weapon ban

Posted: April 14, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Biological, Chemical, Nuclear | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

On 20–21 March the University of Rome III hosted a roundtable discussion to reflect on the current status of the prohibition on chemical weapons (CW) and the future challenges to that ban. Although convened by the Law Department, the speakers represented an eclectic group of experts with backgrounds in international law, political sciences, chemistry and biology, as well as practitioners. Notwithstanding, the meeting yielded considerable coherence in arguments, with questions, challenges and supplementary insights contributing further to an already rich multi-disciplinary texture.

The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) is at the heart of today’s prohibition on CW and their use in armed conflict. However, it does not stand in isolation. In fact, one could build a case that the norm against CW has a variable geometry. Approach it from the ban on chemical warfare, and the 1925 Geneva Protocol and its links to the International Criminal Court or the United Nations—in particular, the UN Secretary-General’s mechanism to investigate alleged use of chemical or biological weapons (CBW)—may take centre stage. Approach it from the angle of scientific and technological developments, and the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) emerges as a possible point of entry. Approach it from the threats posed by terrorism and UN Security Council resolutions, including 1540 (2004), with their demands for national legislative action come into play. And so on. The various tools available today have created mutually reinforcing bridges. However, they are also the source of contradictions and large gaps remain between them. As the Rome roundtable brought out, it is not always clear how they can be reconciled or filled.

And then, of course, there are the politics. As we are about to commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War and are just eight days before the 99th anniversary of the chlorine attack near Ypres, Syria’s civil war shows that humanity still has not been fully able to relegate these weapons to history. And while political leaders of the great powers loudly invoke the inhumanity of poison weapon use, their actions today—just like those during the Abyssinian war in the 1930s, the Yemen war in the 1960s, the Iran–Iraq war of the 1980s—demonstrate once again that other geopolitical considerations, national security interests or domestic political agendas trump halting chemical warfare and holding the culprits accountable under international law. (True, some would argue that the 2003 invasion of Iraq served such a purpose, but alas, few are those who believe the proffered unbelievable unbelievables.)

Unsurprisingly therefore, Syria made up one of the main threads tying the various sessions together. But it was not the only one: other recent issues pose remarkably similar challenges to the future of the prohibition on CW. This blog posting summarises the presentations and offers a few personal reflections on points raised during the discussions.

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UK Government Releases Intelligence Assessment on Chemical Weapons Use in Syria and Legal Position on Use of Military Force against Syria

Posted: August 29, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Chemical | Tags: , , , , | 4 Comments

The UK government has released its intelligence assessment of chemical weapons use in Syria, and its legal position on using military force against Syria in the absence of a Security Council authorization.

UN Human Rights Council: Claims of CW Use in Syria, But No Proof

Posted: June 4, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Chemical, War | Tags: , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

This morning the UN Human Rights Council published the report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic (ICI).

While detailing the horrors of the escalating civil war and the atrocities committed by both sides, the document was eagerly awaited after Commissioner Carla del Ponte had claimed on Swiss-Italian television four weeks ago that the ICI has evidence of rebel use of chemical weapons (CW). She added that it still had to see direct evidence of government chemical warfare. The next day the ICI clarified that ‘it has not reached conclusive findings as to the use of chemical weapons in Syria by any parties to the conflict. As a result, the Commission is not in a position to further comment on the allegations at this time’. Despite its terseness, it did not exactly refute del Ponte’s asseveration.

The 29-page ICI report, however, supports none of the details in her television interview. The introductory summary notes that ‘there are reasonable grounds to believe that chemical agents have been used as weapons’, but ‘the precise agents, delivery systems or perpetrators could not be identified’. CW are addressed in more detail in Part IV(D) on Illegal Weapons:

136. As the conflict escalates, the potential for use of chemical weapons is of deepening concern. Chemical weapons include toxic chemicals, munitions, devices and related equipment as defined in the 1997 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and Their Destruction. Also applicable is the 1925 Geneva Protocol which Syria has ratified. The use of chemical weapons is prohibited in all circumstances under customary international humanitarian law and is a war crime under the Rome Statute.
137. The Government has in its possession a number of chemical weapons. The dangers extend beyond the use of the weapons by the Government itself to the control of such weapons in the event of either fractured command or of any of the affiliated forces gaining access.
138. It is possible that anti-Government armed groups may access and use chemical weapons. This includes nerve agents, though there is no compelling evidence that these groups possess such weapons or their requisite delivery systems.
139. Allegations have been received concerning the use of chemical weapons by both parties. The majority concern their use by Government forces. In four attacks – on Khan Al-Asal, Aleppo, 19 March; Uteibah, Damascus, 19 March; Sheikh Maqsood neighbourhood, Aleppo, 13 April; and Saraqib, Idlib, 29 April – there are reasonable grounds to believe that limited quantities of toxic chemicals were used. It has not been possible, on the evidence available, to determine the precise chemical agents used, their delivery systems or the perpetrator. Other incidents also remain under investigation.
140. Conclusive findings – particularly in the absence of a large-scale attack – may be reached only after testing samples taken directly from victims or the site of the alleged attack. It is, therefore, of utmost importance that the Panel of Experts, led by Professor Sellström and assembled under the Secretary General’s Mechanism for Investigation of Alleged Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons, is granted full access to Syria.

Is there anything new?
The strongest refutation of del Ponte comes in §138: insurgents ‘may access and use’ CW  refers to a future possibility, not events in a recent past. The 430 interviews and other evidence collected between 15 January and 15 May 2013 yielded ‘no compelling evidence that these groups possess such weapons or their requisite delivery systems’.

Although the next paragraph states that ‘allegations have been received concerning the use of chemical weapons by both parties’, it does not specify from whom the ICI obtained this information. Listing the main allegations between March and mid-May, the sources may just as well have been the UN Secretary General, the formal requests to Ban Ki-moon by Syria, UK and France to launch a formal investigation of alleged use, or the many media reports. It does not assert, as del Ponte did, that ‘Our investigators have been in neighbouring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report of last week which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated.’ As a matter of fact, the ICI document does not mention sarin a single time. The mere assumption that no UN member would submit to the Secretary general a frivolous request for an onsite investigation allows the Commissioners to write in the introductory summary that there are reasonable grounds to believe that CW have been used, possibly by both sides. In §140 the ICI nonetheless comes to the obvious conclusion that confirmation or refutation of the allegations will be possible only after samples retrieved directly from victims or the site of the alleged attack by an independent international expert team have been tested.

Much ado about nothing?
It is a plain shame that Carla del Ponte has felt the need to join the global chorus of blabberati. Commentaries will invariably focus on her statements, or on whether the ICI document buttresses the Obama Administration’s position that its self-proclaimed red line has not yet been crossed.

Yet, despite the brevity of the section on CW allegations, the report adopts some remarkably thinking in §136:

  • It accepts the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) as a foundation of international criminal law. In particular, it embraces the wide-ranging definition of a CW, which means that for criminal prosecution no discrimination between warfare agents based on an ill-defined lethality criterion is acceptable. The CWC applies to incapacitants and irritants (such as riot control agents, for instance, tear gas), as well as to industrial chemicals such as chlorine (a warfare agent of World War I vintage). Whatever toxicant any belligerent may choose to use, it will fall under the remit of an international criminal court for Syria. This statement may well be a first! (See, for example, Yasemin Balci’s discussion of criminal law in Future of the CWC in the Post-Destruction Phase.)
  • It also refers to the applicability of 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibiting the use of chemical and biological weapons in armed conflict and emphasises Syria’s ratification. The phrasing is interesting, because it juxtaposes rather than cascades both international agreements, thus implying that the scope of the CWC definition of a CW also applies to the Geneva Protocol.
  • It declares CW use as prohibited in all circumstances under customary international humanitarian law and determines that it is a war crime under the Rome Statute. Most significantly, it does so in a separate sentence and without specific referral to the Geneva Protocol. Usually, scholars, lawyers and officials will assert that the Geneva Protocol has entered customary international law. According to their phrasing, the ICI Commissioners strongly suggest that the CWC equally informs the customary norm, which is not without consequence given their emphasis on the CWC definition of a CW. It definitely sharpens the boundaries of a war crime as defined under the Rome Statute.

These points will be and have to be the subject of legal debate to bolster the CW prohibition under any and all circumstances.

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