ABSTRACT
In this article, a former chemical and biological chief inspector for the UN Special Commission on Iraq from 1996–1998 concludes that the UNSCOM experience was a successful full-scale experiment in disarmament that uncovered and destroyed the infrastructure of the Iraqi bioweapons program. The UNSCOM experience, however, also illustrated the limitations of inspection methods, especially when it comes to small-scale activities in a distrusted country.
I arrived in New York in the bitter-cold April of 1994. UNSCOM’s chair, Ambassador Rolf Ekéus, had asked for Swedish assistance on the chemical side, and I had signed up. My main task when I first arrived was to produce a database of the production equipment used within Iraq’s chemical weapons program. I was struck by the easygoing atmosphere and the very qualified and diverse competence that was present at UNSCOM’s headquarters on the 31st floor of the UN Secretariat high-rise. Rolf Ekéus had evidently succeeded in creating a well-functioning organization of mainly civilian experts on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from a wide range of specialties and nationalities. To me, and to many of my colleagues, UNSCOM became the perfect training ground for the complex, sensitive, and partly secretive profession of weapons inspector.
By the time I left UNSCOM in 1998, I had carried out two chemical weapons missions in Iraq as chief inspector (CW33 and CW41) and one biological weapons mission as chief inspector (BW69).
From verification to monitoring
When I arrived, the first key step to disarming Iraq was nearing its conclusion. The most obvious components of the Iraqi arsenal had been identified and had more or less been taken care of. The Iraqi nuclear program was fully uncovered, chemical weapons were assembled and destroyed, and most Scud missiles were accounted for. At headquarters, I progressed well with my database and slowly matured into a useful member of the Chemical Desk.
Coming to the end of the dark tunnel of the declarations and verification process, pressure began to build on UNSCOM to prepare for the next phase: lifting sanctions and monitoring. Accordingly, my work shifted to produce site folders on key chemical installations that were to be kept under close watch when the sanctions were lifted. UNSCOM was slowly preparing to close the books on the disarmament step and to proceed with monitoring of critical infrastructure.
Among the inspectors, we intensively discussed two critical issues that essentially remained unresolved: Iraq’s biological weapons program and Iraq’s plans and progress on the advanced nerve agent VX. These aspects were both considered late developments in Iraq´s weapons of mass destruction programs and they had not yet been fully surfaced or sufficiently explored – and were certainly not recognized by Iraq in its declarations to the Security Council. It became my task to “squeeze” the VX story out of our Iraqi counterparts. As a fresh chief inspector, I was entrusted with the best international experts who existed on VX research and production. The international brainpower assembled by UNSCOM proved enough to penetrate the Iraqi wall of reluctance to share their progress on the VX program.
Military significance as inspection endpoint
In late 1997, UNSCOM got a new chair. As a “newcomer” he wanted a second opinion on the status of the Iraqi biological warfare (BW) program. Following my success with VX, I was tasked with coordinating efforts to finalize the Iraqi biological warfare program declaration. This involved a series of high-level meetings in New York, Vienna, and Baghdad involving some 16 nationalities. Our efforts, although partly fruitful, never satisfied the panel of international experts. UNSCOM, accordingly, had serious problems giving Iraq a clean bill of health for its biological warfare program.
The key sticking point related to the issue of military significance. How little of the remaining weapons, material and equipment could still challenge Iraq’s neighboring countries? What weapons and relevant material and equipment still remained in Iraq, under the UNSCOM radar? The answer was to be found in the achievement and relative success of Iraq’s research and development with chemical weapons, biological weapons, and delivery systems. Our assessment, at the time, was that a handful of Scud missiles, filled with either the most effective nerve agent, VX, or very dangerous Anthrax spores in dry powdered form, were a threat to Iraqi neighbors and accordingly militarily significant.
To fulfil its mandate, UNSCOM’s inspection activities would therefore be required to detect small volumes of agents and a very small number (a handful!) of potential delivery systems, as well as to monitor relevant research and development and small-scale production sites. To our dismay, we realized that inspection activities that could confidently capture such minute elements were incredibly difficult and demanding, if not impossible. The proposal to observe and monitor staff in order to obtain the resolution necessary for such monitoring was suggested to Iraq, but of course never accepted. Therefore, in spite of brilliant work, many ingenious ideas, access to sometimes good intelligence, and military activities to increase pressure on the Iraqi government, UNSCOM was never in a position to guarantee that Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons programs were rendered harmless.
UNSCOM’s legacy 30 years on
There are three areas where I think UNSCOM has had a lasting effect on practical disarmament efforts. The first is in training staff and providing hands on experience. Several thousand staff served UNSCOM under its seven-year lifespan. For many of us it was a fascinating journey into the secrets of weapons of mass destruction, working alongside people who had experience producing them or experience of previous inspection activities (bi- or trilateral) and who were gifted in rare areas like high-intensity negotiations, international law, interpretation of oversight imagery, and much more. UNSCOM was a good school for a lot of people who continued, some to this very day, to serve as weapons inspectors or disarmament experts. Former UNSCOM staff have gone on to play important roles in the disarmament work of the United Nations, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the International Atomic Energy Agency, and more.
The second significant impact of UNSCOM relates to the inherent challenge of verifying declarations from unwilling countries. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons' Declaration Assessment Team is presently struggling to verify Syria’s declaration of its chemical weapons program. It took UNSCOM from the spring of 1991 to the fall of 1998 to “help” Iraq properly declare its programs. That was seven years’ worth of iterations of new declarations, riddled with facts that did not match internally in the declaration or intelligence or other data known to UNSCOM. At the end, the declaration had gone from two-and-a-half pages to 10,000 pages.
Colleagues at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons are now “helping” Syria to declare properly. They have already assessed Syrian declarations for several years and probably repeated many of the stories experienced in UNSCOM. In some ways, the chemical weapons inspectors' task is even more difficult. Compared with UNSCOM, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has fewer tools and fewer strong friends to help them increase pressure on Syria. In addition, and similar to UNSCOM, the Declaration Assessment Team of the organization now also has to define the endpoint of its efforts. As the declaration verification gets iterated, there is a parallel drop of trust in the declarant. In the UNSCOM experience, a growing distrust in the “full and final” declarations from Iraq led to the concept of military significance being developed, and this became a useful endpoint.
For Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the Chemical Weapons Convention, this is different. When is a distrusted state party to be believed? What is a useful endpoint for organization in a situation like that with Syria? Could perhaps a dedicated monitoring of the chemical infrastructure, like UNSCOM intended for Iraq, be the answer?
The third area of lasting significance is the development and status of biological weapons inspections. Rightly or wrongly, in my mind, it is because of UNSCOM that the negotiation of a verification regime for biological weapons broke down in 2001. UNSCOM had a very wide mandate – almost anything could be justified in our chase for weapons, weapon components, or weapons development. In spite of this very permissive and extraordinarily intrusive mandate, it was impossible for us to verify Iraqi declarations to the extent deemed necessary to render Iraq harmless.
Few countries would accept a verification regime as intrusive as that of UNSCOM. In hindsight, the UNSCOM experience was a successful full-scale experiment of disarmament. UNSCOM, indeed, uncovered and destroyed the infrastructure of the Iraqi biological warfare program. The UNSCOM experience, however, also illustrated the limitations of inspection methods, especially when it comes to small-scale activities in a distrusted country. The prospect of creating an organization like Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for the biological weapons regime, was, accordingly, simply not acceptable to some countries. Instead of developing intrusive and inconclusive regimes to verify governmental declarations, the international community has instead engaged biodefense, biopreparedness, and public health laboratories to accept new security measures and a more meaningful transparency of their activities. The strategy seems to create the expected insight and the sought-after confidence.
Investigation and inspection activities following allegations of use of biological or chemical weapons is an activity that has been requested by the General Assembly. The UN Secretary General has been given a mandate to initiate inspections on his or her own initiative or following allegations of use. This mandate is referred to as the Secretary General’s Mechanism (UNSGM). The mechanism draws its inspectors from a roster and works on improving its training, logistical capacities, and laboratory network. In case of an allegation, the United Nations is likely to work in close cooperation with the World Health Organization, which under its Health Security Interface is training staff in handling an incident of deliberately spread infectious material. Former staff from UNSCOM have been instrumental in updating and developing the Secretary General's mechanism for this purpose.
In our shrinking world, the control of infectious material has become a priority. The risks of proliferating knowledge and access to material needs to be adequately managed. The present approach works through improved national control of biological activities and of supranational mandates for collective oversight. I, myself, believe that the UNSCOM experience was important for these developments.
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Åke Sellström
Åke Sellström is a former Director of the European CBRNE Centre and UN Weapons Inspector. He is associate professor in histology at Umeå University, with a research background in medical aspects of nerve agent intoxication. He was Chemical and Biological Chief Inspector for the UN Special Commission on Iraq from 1996–1998.