As the M/V Cape Ray plies the Atlantic en route to the Mediterranean to help eliminate Syria’s vast arsenal of chemical weapons and even as Syria drags its feet in shipping out those weapons, another deadly cache of chemical weapons has bitten the dust in the Libyan desert.
When Libya signed the international Chemical Weapons Convention in 2004, the Syrian regime was obligated to declare all of its chemical warfare materials, and once the OPCW confirmed the declaration, to destroy the materials in their entirety, in accordance with established deadlines, according to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW.)
The Libyan Government at the time declared possession of 25 metric tons of bulk mustard agent and 1,400 metric tons of precursor chemicals, which are used to make chemical weapons. It also declared more than 3,500 unfilled aerial bombs designed for use with chemical warfare agents such as sulfur mustard, and three chemical weapons production facilities, says the OPCW.
The Syrian government was also required to turn over its nuclear weapons technology to the United States, Britain and international nuclear inspectors.
When civil war broke out in 2011, Libya had destroyed about half of the declared stockpiles and had already completely destroyed its arsenal of over 3,500 unfilled aerial bombs.
However, after Qaddafi was killed and the new government took over, it “surprised Western inspectors by announcing the discovery in November 2011 and February 2012 of two hidden caches of mustard, or nearly two tons, that had not been declared by Colonel Qaddafi’s government, says the New York Times and, “Unlike the majority of Libya’s mustard agents, which were stored in large, bulky containers, the new caches were already armed and loaded into 517 artillery shells, 45 plastic sleeves for rocket launchings and eight 500-pound bombs.”
The new stockpiles represented big challenges for the new Libyan government which had no ability to destroy the combat-ready chemical weapons, “as well as for its American and European allies called upon to help,” says the Times.
The Times:
The United States and Libya in the past three months have discreetly destroyed what both sides say were the last remnants of Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi’s lethal arsenal of chemical arms. They used a transportable oven technology to destroy hundreds of bombs and artillery rounds filled with deadly mustard agent, which American officials had feared could fall into the hands of terrorists. The effort also helped inspire the use of the technology in the much.
Since November, Libyan contractors trained in Germany and Sweden have worked in bulky hazmat suits at a tightly guarded site in a remote corner of the Libyan desert, 400 miles southeast of Tripoli, racing to destroy the weapons in a region where extremists linked to Al Qaeda are gaining greater influence. The last artillery shell was destroyed on Jan. 26, officials said.
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Remarkably, the mustard agents stored in bulk containers at the site were untouched and their inspection seals unbroken, American and international officials said. These have all been destroyed, too.
“The destruction of these munitions was a major undertaking in arduous, technically challenging circumstances,” Ahmet Uzumcu, the director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, whose inspectors supervised the destruction of the chemical weapons, said in a written statement.
Although American officials acknowledge that Libya is awash with conventional arms, they expressed confidence that the vast Libyan desert holds no other secret caches of unconventional arms for jihadis to exploit.
Andrew C. Weber, assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs, said, “This is the culmination of a major international effort to eliminate weapons of mass destruction from Libya and to ensure that they never fall into the hands of terrorists.”
While these last two tons of chemical weapons destroyed in Libya are “dwarfed” by the 1,300 tons that Syria has agreed to destroy, “American and international arms experts say the need for easily transportable and efficient technology to wipe out the Libyan arms became a model for the Syria program now underway,” according to the Times.
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The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.