Just a load of gas?

A Belgium pharmaceutical company introduced it for the first time in 1968. The negative effect of this drug is that it causes death in case of an overdose due to respiratory arrest. Fentanyl sold in the US carries a warning that the anaesthetic can be fatal if administered in too high a dose.

Immediately after declaring that the gas used in the theatre was a variant of fentanyl, the Russian government was quick to add that they have not used any chemical substance that was banned under international law. Also they have denied that the gas was manufactured for military use.

However, this has not stopped a debate about the reliability of Moscow, with regard to conventions banning the use and development of chemical weapons.

The main questions are: did this action violate international law? Does possession of the agent used suggest that the Russians have been covertly pursuing research and production of chemical weapons that can fool the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)?

Incidentally, this is not the first incidence of the unconventional use of fentanyl. In October 1997, the Israeli Mossad had used fentanyl in an assassination attempt on Khalid Mishal, a Jordanian-based Hamas leader.

The operatives travelled to Jordan, following Khalid Mishal in a car. The plan was to deliver fentanyl in a spray that would be absorbed through the target’s ear but Mishal was able to escape.

There are even reports that this drug was found fit for weaponisation, though on a small scale. It was thought that fentanyl could have some applications in specialised warfare or covert operations. During his tenure in Southeast Asia in the late sixties, John K. Singlaub, a retired major-general of the US Army, recalls a time when the military use of fentanyl or similar drugs was considered for tactical roles in Vietnam.

The use of fentanyl by Russian forces should therefore be seen against the backdrop of these incidences and the present status of CWC.

Today CWC is a global treaty with more than 170 signatory nations. It bans the production, acquisition, stockpiling, transfer and use of chemical weapons. It also requires its signatories to declare and destroy, by certain deadlines, the chemical weapons they possess. But it also permits the production and use of riot-control agents for law enforcement purposes.

Coming back to Russia, it would be difficult to evaluate whether the recent use of fentanyl was a violation of the CWC. This is because fentanyl-derivatives are not listed in any of the Schedules and are traditionally characterised by the rapid onset and short duration (15 to 30 minutes) of analgesia. So fentanyl can be legally considered a riot control agent, according to the definition set forth in the CWC.

But CWC also states that each chemical produced/procured for the purposes of riot control should be declared by the user nation and it is not known whether the Russians made such a declaration for fentanyl-like compounds.

Today, when the Americans with UN-backing are turning the screw on Iraq for demolishing it stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, it would be interesting to know that Russia retains roughly 40,000 tonnes of chemical warfare blister agents and nerve gas. It is required by the convention to destroy them but the US efforts to help them under the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program are stalled in Congress.