Honoring the past victims and preventing the future,
Is what the international day against chemical war fare is there to remind us.
Serious efforts towards preventing chemical warfare were launched a century ago. When the world first witnessed the disaster of chemical warfare.
France was the first country to use chemicals in warfare, ethylmoboacetate and chlorbromacetone.
However it was Germans who used chlorine and mustard gas who brought home the horror of it all. it was the 22nd of April 1915. This was despite the agreements of no chemical warfare, the loophole that the Germans used was very legal, they did not deploy a explosive or weapon, they just opened the canister and let the fumes waft.
1,124,000 were used in the first world war and the race for the deadlier chemical weapon began.
Over the years the world has seen really scary effects of chemical warfare, like 1919 British deployed adamsite through a summer to village in Russia that was held by the Reds, the civilian causalities are not accounted.
1988 saw the Iraqi’s deploy mustard gas on the Kurds of Halabja, it was rather scary, the day had begun with routine rocket barrage that sent the civilians into hiding into the basement, allowing the Iraqi’s to achieve their target for the poisonous gas is heavier than the air in the atmosphere and sediments bellow causing death, and maiming people.
In 2011 when the fights in Syria took to streets the Assad commenced the use of tear gas and chlorine, from there they eventually graduated to mustard gas and nerve gas in 2013, the US and Russia then stepped in threatening to take action.
Which is why Organization for the prohibition of chemical warfare has classified it as customary international humanitarian law?
Chemical warfare agents are classified as per their potency, there are persistent agents are added to ensure persistency. Choking, blisters and effects on blood and nerves are the intensity of these chemical agents on human body. they are dispersed through air, thermal activation.
India declared a stockpile of 1044 tons of sulphur mustard in 1997, and entered the chemical weapons convention formed in 1993, India is one of its original signatories. By 2006 about 75% of the weapons were neutralized and May 14 2009 India declared to United nations that it had completely destroyed its stock pile of chemical weapons.
Could we take a minute honor the dead, and hope to prevent future deaths by chemical warfare? More importantly can we visualize an India where chemical warfare does not turn domestic?
