Clouds of Desperation

By William E. Smith

Poison gas, child soldiers and growing fears of a new offensive

Iran and Iraq have little to be proud of in their conduct of the 42-month-old war in the Persian Gulf. Iraq shoulders the blame for starting it all, invading Iran in a reckless attempt to seize some long-disputed border territory from the new and untried revolutionary government of the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. Iran, having repulsed the invasion, has taken the war into Iraq in hopes of forcing the downfall of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the creation in Baghdad of an Islamic republic modeled on Iran's own. Iran has routinely executed large numbers of Iraqi prisoners of war, in violation of the Geneva Convention. More recently, Khomeini has thrown tens of thousands of virtually untrained Iranian teen-agers and even children into battle in human-wave attacks, seemingly oblivious to the carnage. By contrast, Saddam Hussein, who now wants to bring the war to an end while he still has a job and a country, began to look almost like a humanitarian. Last week, however, there was evidence that tended to put matters back into a grimmer perspective. From Washington and elsewhere came convincing reports that Saddam Hussein's forces have been using poison gas against the Iranians.

Since last October, the U.S. has suspected Iraq of using homemade mustard gas, which burns, incapacitates and, in many cases, kills its victims. But the Iraqi chemical attacks were apparently not widespread until last month. "The real action has been since Feb. 22," says a senior U.S. official. "We have very conclusive intelligence." Evidence of mustard-gas burns is appearing in the blistered skin, lungs and other tissue of some Iranian soldiers, including 15 victims who were flown to Western Europe last week for treatment.

Mustard gas, first used by Germany during World War I, was banned under the Geneva Convention of 1925, which both Iran and Iraq signed. But many countries maintain stockpiles of the gas for possible retaliation in time of war. Iraq is believed to have started developing its own chemical capability in the 1960s, using Soviet-supplied equipment, and by the 1970s was making chemical weapons. There were reports from the Middle East last week that Iraq's mustard gas had been supplied by companies in Britain or Italy, and it is true that Iraq at one time tried but failed to buy chemical plants from British and Italian firms. Most authorities now believe, however, that the gas is manufactured by Iraq's own fairly sophisticated chemical industry.

A military expert in Iraq told TIME that some of the mustard gas has been fired at enemy targets in artillery shells, although most of it is put into large drums, loaded onto wooden pallets and then dropped from helicopters and Soviet-made 11-76 transport planes. Each pallet contains six drums and weighs about five tons. The drums burst on impact, spreading the gas over a wide area. The use of gas undoubtedly contributed to Iraq's recent victories. Says Ricardo Fraile, a Paris-based consultant on chemical and biological warfare: "The chemical weapons used by the Third World do not have to be sophisticated since the people they are used against do not have any protection. A simple gas like mustard gas can be very effective against men who do not have protective clothing."

By January, the Reagan Administration was sure that Iraq was using mustard gas, but did not know what to do about it. U.S. diplomats privately informed Iraqi officials of Washington's concern, yet were reluctant to go public with their criticism because they feared that to do so would diminish whatever limited influence the U.S. had in Iraq. Throughout the early years of the war, the U.S. had maintained its neutrality in the conflict. For the past several months, however, the U.S. has tilted slightly toward Iraq. Officials in Washington say that the Administration has been edging toward a restoration of diplomatic ties with the Saddam Hussein government, assuming Iraq was interested. The reason: if Saddam Hussein should fall and be replaced by a fanatical Shi'ite Muslim government, other regimes in the region, including those of Kuwait and perhaps even Saudi Arabia, would be threatened.

The ability of the U.S. to support the Iraqis could be seriously impaired by the poison-gas issue. U.S. officials have repeatedly denounced the Soviet Union for allegedly using chemical weapons in Afghanistan, Laos and Kampuchea. Washington has long advocated a permanent ban on the manufacture and possession of poison-gas weapons, though the Administration, somewhat inconsistently, is seeking to increase the Pentagon's chemical-and biological-warfare capability. Nonetheless, the U.S. has plans to negotiate a worldwide ban on such weapons and is expected to submit a draft proposal to that effect when the Geneva disarmament talks reopen next month. Since the Soviet Union has hinted that it might be interested, the U.S. regards the issue as a vehicle that could possibly bring about a slight thaw in East-West relations.

Last week, as charges that Iraq was using poison gas spread, the Administration decided it could remain silent no longer. It accused Iraq of using "lethal chemical weapons" against Iran but tried to soften the blow by including some criticism of the Khomeini government. After denouncing the Iraqis, State Department Spokesman John Hughes added, "The U.S. finds the present Iranian regime's intransigent refusal to deviate from its avowed objective of eliminating the legitimate government of neighboring Iraq to be inconsistent with the accepted norms of behavior among nations."

Until Washington weighed in, the Iraqis had been stoutly maintaining that they had not used poison gas and that the charges had been concocted by the Iranians to excuse their battlefield defeats. The Iraqis continued to deny the charge, though they did not rule out the possible use of chemical warfare in the future. Said Major General Sabah al Fakhri, commander of Iraqi forces east of the Tigris River: "If a superpower threatened the U.S., what would it do? We too have our dignity and honor. We are not going to meet the invader with flowers and perfume. We are going to use all available means at our disposal to defend the nation." Major General Maher Abed al Rashid, whose Iraqi Third Corps is fighting in the area around Basra, insisted that there were no such weapons within his command. He pointed out that poison gas would be extremely difficult to use in a close-combat situation. But he added, "If you gave me some insecticide that I could squirt at this swarm of mosquitoes, I would use it so that they would be exterminated, thus benefiting humanity by saving the world from these pests."

When they learned of the U.S. charges, the Iraqis were annoyed. "What did the Americans have to say about the slaughter of Iraqi prisoners by the Iranians?" demanded Defense Minister Adnan Khairallah. He pointed out that the U.S. had been "the only state to use nuclear weapons" and had done so on the "pretext of limiting the period of war." He accused the U.S. of trying to curry favor with Iran and blamed the whole controversy on "some Zionist adviser" in Washington who was trying to incite "anti-Iraqi or anti-Arab sentiments." Saddam Hussein also accused the U.S. of hypocrisy, saying that Washington's policy was based on "selfish national interest at the expense of truth, honor and principle."

Much of the evidence was undocumented, to be sure. Radio Tehran declared that the Iraqis had used mustard gas in last week's fighting. It said that more than 1,100 Iranian soldiers had been affected by the yellow gas but that some had been treated and sent back into battle. In Austria and Sweden, doctors who examined the Iranian victims decided that their injuries had probably been caused by mustard gas but felt that the case against Iraq was inconclusive. In Belgium, however, toxicologists who examined the blood, urine and stools of two Iranian soldiers treated in Vienna found evidence of two poisons, mycotoxin and mustard gas. Three of the 15 soldiers who had been sent to Western Europe for treatment died of their injuries.

Iraq's resort to chemical warfare may betray a growing desperation on the part of Saddam Hussein over Iran's human-wave assaults. Many military observers in the region are expecting an Iranian offensive within the next few weeks that could prove to be the decisive battle of the war. Together the two sides have an estimated 400,000 troops in the battle zone, and the number is increasing. Iran has not yet committed its regular troops to battle, and Iraq has not moved in all its reserves.

During last week's lull, Western journalists visited some villages in the Al Huwaiza marshes that had been seized by the Iranians and then recaptured by the Iraqis. The town of Al Beida was badly damaged, with many of its houses leveled. Burned-out boats littered the shore. A few bodies of Iranian soldiers, now gray-brown like the earth, floated in the marshes. Arab women, in black chadors, their faces and hands tattooed, returned to their village to rescue whatever remained of their possessions--a bedroll, a television set. The thump of artillery sounded in the distance.

The next focal point of the fighting will be the Majnoon oilfield, which lies beneath a man-made island in the marshlands. The Iranians captured Majnoon last month, and the Iraqis have counterattacked several times in an effort to take it back. The oilfield contains 7 billion bbl. of known crude-oil reserves and is a prize for either side. Some Iranians have suggested that their government would gladly accept the oilfield as all or part of the war reparations due from Iraq in the event of an Iranian victory. In their counterattacks last week, the Iraqis are said to have lost 1,000 men in one day's fighting and 800 in the next. Even so, the Iranians are believed to be suffering between three and five times as many casualties as the Iraqis.

The Iranian objective is to capture the port city of Basra, deny Iraq access to its southern oilfields, sever its connection to the gulf, and thereby cause Saddam Hussein to fall. But at the same time, the Iranians have deployed some of their jet fighters and Hovercraft to southern Iran at the neck of the Strait of Hormuz. The implication is that they wish to be ready for a possible strike against Western tankers using the Persian Gulf. The rumors of a widening war were serious enough last week to cause Lloyd's of London to double the price of insurance for tankers using the gulf*

In Tehran, 500 miles from the scene of the recent fighting, Khomeini seemed little disturbed by the losses his forces are enduring. Those Iranians who are advocating a peace settlement, he told a throng of supporters, do not understand that "this is not a war for territory, it is a war between Islam and blasphemy." A clergy-controlled newspaper said two weeks ago that Iran must "liberate" enough of Iraq to create a base for "a government within a government" and to bring Iranian artillery within range of Baghdad. At that point, the paper continued, "the only option left to Saddam would be to withdraw from the capital." That is an intoxicating dream for the Iranian mullahs: an Islamic empire run by Shi'ite caliphs from Tehran, and not by Sunni caliphs from Baghdad.

In his speech last week, Khomeini urged his troops not to return home to celebrate the Iranian new year, which begins on March 21. This could have been a tacit admission that large numbers of "volunteers" have refused to participate in human-wave attacks and are taking any opportunity to desert the war zone. Many of them were lured to the front after being told that they would become part of a reserve corps for the defense of Iranian cities in event of an emergency and that they were needed to march in the giant parade to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the revolution. After that parade last month, tens of thousands of youngsters, many of them no more than twelve or 14 years old, were transported not back to their homes, as they had expected, but straight to the front.

Another sign that the nation's revolutionary fervor may be ebbing is that the Islamic Guards, Khomeini's elite military organization, are actively conscripting new members. Until recently, the Guards screened all applicants scrupulously to make sure that no opponents of the regime were admitted to membership. Now, however, the Guards are competing with the army for recruits. In some cases, the Guards have taken young draftees who were awaiting induction into the army, creating yet another area of friction between the Guards and the armed forces.

Thus, political pressure for ending the war is increasing on both sides of the Shatt al Arab waterway, but probably not quickly enough to prevent the loss of many more lives. Anthony Cordesman, a U.S. scholar specializing in gulf affairs, notes that as the level of engagement has intensified, the unwritten agreement that for two years restricted reciprocal attacks against oil installations has effectively collapsed. "It is a measure of how bad things have become," he says, "that after all these casualties, it is hard to get excited about the use of poison gas. It is just another of the steps that both sides are willing to take." -- By WilliamE. Smith. Reported by Barry Hillenbrand/Baghdad and Raji Samghabadi/New York

* The new rate: 1.5% of a vessel's value for seven days of coverage.

With reporting by Barry Hillenbrand, Raji Samghabadi