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Asymmetrical effects of chemical weapons surpass their tactical utility
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02 April 2003 |
Asymmetrical effects of chemical weapons surpass their tactical utility
That Iraq possesses, and is willing to use, chemical weapons (CW), is perhaps the only widely remembered lesson of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War. In just one chemical attack in 1988 on the town of Halabja Iraq inflicted over 5,000 fatalities.
The victims were Iraqi civilians unprepared for this chemical onslaught from their own government. Against the prepared Iranian Army the use of CW had a somewhat different impact.
In May 1982, Iranian battlefield triumphs questioned the ability of Iraq to survive the war. The Iraqi leadership reasoned that perhaps the threat of chemical weapons - a 'poor man's atomic bomb' - would intimidate the Iranians into ending the war. However, Iraq's use of CS and mustard gas in 1982, and even the use of the nerve gas Tabun in 1984, had an unpleasant but very marginal impact on the battlefield.
Despite the unimpressive results the development of such CW continued. By 1987 significant quantities of nerve gas, both Tabun and Sarin, were produced and weaponised, but mustard gas became the mainstay of Iraq's chemical armoury. These weapons were not used to any strategic effect, and Iraq mainly used chemical attacks as a desperate last resort in the face of continued Iranian advances.
In early 1987 the balance of the fighting finally turned in Iraq's favour, ushering in a new confidence in Iraq's use of CW. All Iraq's successful offensives of 1988 were opened by a chemical bombardment. However, much more important than CW were the massive Iraqi advantages in military hardware and the Iraqi Army's improved capacity to wage all-arms warfare.
At the end of the war, by gassing its own Kurdish citizens, Iraq did achieve an unintended strategic impact. Iran, anxious to prove to the world that Saddam was a war criminal, showed television pictures of Halabja. As a result many Iranian citizens fled their cities.
However, the impact of Iraqi CW measured in terms of casualties remained marginal. The real impact of gas was to force a frightened enemy to use chemical protection equipment and fight less effectively. Iranian fatalities from CW numbered a few thousand, while conventional weapons inflicted fatalities in their hundreds of thousands.
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