Dan Kaszeta
By Dan Kaszeta
So far, the effort to strip Syria of its chemical weapons capacity has gone surprisingly well. In difficult circumstances, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons met a November 1 deadline for disabling all the country’s declared production facilities and assembly plants.
That, however, was always going to be the relatively easy part. A competent inspector will readily find the critical machinery for chemical weapons production, and with a sledgehammer and drill can put it out of commission. Empty artillery shells, rockets and spray tanks can be crushed by driving over them. An artillery shell won’t work as intended if you just bend it a bit.
It will be much harder to dispose of the chemical agents themselves. After decades of denial, the Bashar Al Assad regime has acknowledged an inventory of approximately 1,000 tonnes of chemical warfare agents, seemingly stored in bulk. Eliminating such a large stockpile will require creativity.
In the 1960s, the US military got rid of chemical agents by dumping them into the ocean, but nobody’s going to sign off on such an environmentally hazardous plan these days. After the Gulf War, US demolition crews used conventional explosives to get rid of Iraqi chemical munitions at a place called Khamisiyah, about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad. This may have exposed the workers to harm and is still the source of controversy.
The generally accepted methods of destruction are incineration or neutralisation using chemical reactions to produce less-toxic waste products. The US and Russia have invested billions of dollars constructing special facilities employing these means in their decades-long efforts to demilitarise enormous chemical weapons arsenals.
Some precursors in Syria’s stock may be industrial chemicals, such as isopropyl alcohol, that could be re-purposed, but most of the 1,000 tonnes will have to be neutralised. Building a factory in an active war zone seems unlikely. It’s hard to imagine any company signing such a contract. Moving the chemicals for destruction elsewhere is the only real answer. But where? Neither the US nor Russia makes sense. US laws make the import and transport of chemical warfare agents problematic. If that could be finessed, vocal groups representing residents near the demilitarisation sites would certainly raise objections.
Russia could probably take the chemicals, but getting them there would be hard to negotiate. The US asked Norway to consider accepting some of the agents for destruction there, but the government declined, saying it lacked the necessary capacities.
Transporting Syria’s chemical arsenal to a restarted Qafemolle plant would be a challenge, for legal and safety reasons. The Chemical Weapons Convention prohibits the transfer of chemical weapons, although presumably the OPCW could waive this provision to serve a greater good. The US has experience in safely moving chemical agents. In Operation Steel Box in 1990, a much larger stockpile than Syria possesses was moved from West Germany to Johnston Atoll, a US territorial island in the South Pacific, for disposal. The undertaking succeeded, but it didn’t occur in a war zone.
If the goods could be removed from Syria safely, there are still obstacles to face in Albania. It is a poor country. The world would have to pay it well to accomplish this task. Security and corruption are issues. Albania is a centre for smuggling and organised crime.
Nevertheless, the Qafemolle experience demonstrates that, in principle, chemical munitions can be disarmed in Albania. It might take many years for a facility built to burn 16 tonnes of chemical agents to get through 1,000 tonnes.
Yet the date of final destruction isn’t as important as getting the material in the hands of international inspectors and out of the war zone. That makes Albania the least bad option for disposing of Syria’s chemical weapons stores. WP-BLOOMBERG
By Dan Kaszeta
So far, the effort to strip Syria of its chemical weapons capacity has gone surprisingly well. In difficult circumstances, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons met a November 1 deadline for disabling all the country’s declared production facilities and assembly plants.
That, however, was always going to be the relatively easy part. A competent inspector will readily find the critical machinery for chemical weapons production, and with a sledgehammer and drill can put it out of commission. Empty artillery shells, rockets and spray tanks can be crushed by driving over them. An artillery shell won’t work as intended if you just bend it a bit.
It will be much harder to dispose of the chemical agents themselves. After decades of denial, the Bashar Al Assad regime has acknowledged an inventory of approximately 1,000 tonnes of chemical warfare agents, seemingly stored in bulk. Eliminating such a large stockpile will require creativity.
In the 1960s, the US military got rid of chemical agents by dumping them into the ocean, but nobody’s going to sign off on such an environmentally hazardous plan these days. After the Gulf War, US demolition crews used conventional explosives to get rid of Iraqi chemical munitions at a place called Khamisiyah, about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad. This may have exposed the workers to harm and is still the source of controversy.
The generally accepted methods of destruction are incineration or neutralisation using chemical reactions to produce less-toxic waste products. The US and Russia have invested billions of dollars constructing special facilities employing these means in their decades-long efforts to demilitarise enormous chemical weapons arsenals.
Some precursors in Syria’s stock may be industrial chemicals, such as isopropyl alcohol, that could be re-purposed, but most of the 1,000 tonnes will have to be neutralised. Building a factory in an active war zone seems unlikely. It’s hard to imagine any company signing such a contract. Moving the chemicals for destruction elsewhere is the only real answer. But where? Neither the US nor Russia makes sense. US laws make the import and transport of chemical warfare agents problematic. If that could be finessed, vocal groups representing residents near the demilitarisation sites would certainly raise objections.
Russia could probably take the chemicals, but getting them there would be hard to negotiate. The US asked Norway to consider accepting some of the agents for destruction there, but the government declined, saying it lacked the necessary capacities.
Transporting Syria’s chemical arsenal to a restarted Qafemolle plant would be a challenge, for legal and safety reasons. The Chemical Weapons Convention prohibits the transfer of chemical weapons, although presumably the OPCW could waive this provision to serve a greater good. The US has experience in safely moving chemical agents. In Operation Steel Box in 1990, a much larger stockpile than Syria possesses was moved from West Germany to Johnston Atoll, a US territorial island in the South Pacific, for disposal. The undertaking succeeded, but it didn’t occur in a war zone.
If the goods could be removed from Syria safely, there are still obstacles to face in Albania. It is a poor country. The world would have to pay it well to accomplish this task. Security and corruption are issues. Albania is a centre for smuggling and organised crime.
Nevertheless, the Qafemolle experience demonstrates that, in principle, chemical munitions can be disarmed in Albania. It might take many years for a facility built to burn 16 tonnes of chemical agents to get through 1,000 tonnes.
Yet the date of final destruction isn’t as important as getting the material in the hands of international inspectors and out of the war zone. That makes Albania the least bad option for disposing of Syria’s chemical weapons stores. WP-BLOOMBERG
