The Gulf: Clouds of Desperation

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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."