ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - ISIS is feared to be readying crude chemical weapons to use against civilians if it comes under military pressure to dislodge from territory it holds in Iraq, according to a leading British expert. “I think it is very likely ISIS will use chemical weapons, especially if things start going badly for it,” said Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former British colonel who has helped to provide proof that chlorine gas was used by Bashar al-Assad in Syria. “ISIS has shown intent by using chlorine a number of times on Iraqi army units already,” he told Rudaw. He is currently looking into how to provide the Iraqi army with up-to-date gas masks. “They (the militants) have also seen how effective chemical weapons have been in Iraq and have probably been on the receiving end of some of the attacks by the Syrian regime so they are well aware of the terror effect,” he added in a telephone interview. In the last couple of weeks, there appear to have been several incidents in which chlorine was used in Iraq although it was difficult to get exact confirmation, de Bretton-Gordon said. ISIS seized chemicals during its sweep across Iraq this summer and appears to be experimenting with their use. Three ISIS militants were killed when the rocket they were filling with chlorine exploded. A chlorine gas attack on the Iraqi army was reported to have killed some 300 soldiers, Ali Al-Budairi, a member of the Shiite-dominated National Iraqi Alliance, told the Iraqi parliament earlier this month. Another chlorine attack by ISIS killed seven Iraqi soldiers. Commercially available chlorine was used in all these incidents. Chemical weapons remain a highly emotive issue for the Kurds, who suffered the largest chemical attack ever directed against a civilian population in Halabja 26 years ago when around 5,000 people were killed. The final death toll could reach 12,000 because of lingering contamination, says de Bretton-Gordon, who has investigated how to clean up Halabja for the Kurdish Regional Government. Mustard gas derivatives that can be highly carcinogenic have been found in the region. The Iraqi public needed to be informed that chlorine, by contrast, was not very dangerous as long as basic principles were known, he said. “Because chlorine is a very obviously a green and yellow cloud, first of all you just avoid it. It blows away quickly on the wind so if you hold your breath and run upwind, you will be very quickly out of the hazard area,” he said. “And urea in urine neutralises chlorine. So you urinate on a cloth and breath through it, this is very effective. It’s a method used in the First World War and recently in Syria.” He has been training Syrian activists, including doctors and medics, about how to deal with chlorine attacks and was in the country as recently as last week. “Though the trip to Syria was potentially dangerous because of the high kidnap threat, I was extremely well received by the Syrians and felt pretty safe,” he said. There have been more than two dozen deadly attacks using chemical weapons in Syria since the civil war erupted in 2011. John Kerry, US secretary of state, said last month that Assad’s use of chlorine was a breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention. “Syria has been absolutely devastated by the war and even small gestures like this training appear to have a positive impact,” de Bretton-Gordon said. He met secretly with activists on the Syrian-Turkish border to start the special training and the distribution of equipment to prevent deaths from poison gas. The activists hope to train a network of village leaders around Syria to understand the dangers of the weapons and how to use decontamination kits. “Chemical weapons have shattered the morale of the Syrian population even more than barrel bombs and other attacks,” said de Bretton-Gordon. “The locals told me they can hide from barrel bombs and snipers but not chemical weapons. But now they can do so; that is at least taking one horror off the battlefield.”
