Chemical Weapons

The first agreement to ban chemical weapons came in 1675. (France and the Holy Roman Empire forswore poisoned musket balls.) Three centuries and at least six international treaties later, they are still being employed, and at times it seems there’s little the world can do to stop it. In Syria, the regime of President Bashar al-Assad has repeatedly used chemical weapons in that country’s seven-year civil war, even after Assad agreed to surrender such munitions following a 2013 sarin gas attack that killed hundreds in a Damascus suburb. Russia has been tied to the deadly Novichok nerve agent used in the March 4 poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in Britain, the first reported use in Europe since World War II.

Most of the concerns about chemical weapons over the last few years have centered on Syria and Iraq. Weapons inspectors and independent groups claim the Syrian military has carried out repeated attacks, using sarin and also barrel bombs filled with chlorine. Chlorine has various industrial uses, and can also be used as a choking agent that burns the lungs. The United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution in 2015 that puts chlorine in the same category as other agents. In April, U.S., U.K. and French forces struck three Syrian facilities in response to a suspected chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held city outside the capital Damascus. A year earlier, the U.S. bombed the airfield it says was used in a sarin attack in Syria’s Idlib province. Sarin is a nerve agent that spreads quickly through the air, causing convulsions, coma and respiratory arrest. Britain blamed the Russian government for the March spy attack and said there’s evidence that Russia has been manufacturing and stockpiling Novichok for use in assassinations. Russia denied involvement and rejected the claim. In 2017, the nerve agent VX was used in the murder of Kim Jong Nam, the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, in Kuala Lumpur’s main airport.