Sometimes through deception, but often with the silent acquiescence of Western governments, Iraq was able to acquire the machines, components, tools and expertise to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, as well as its own ballistic missiles.
In order to procure materials, Iraq created an international network of 'shells', or dummy companies, who routinely obscured technology transfers by using false end-user documents and intermediaries. Although Western intelligence agencies monitored these companies, nothing was done to prevent their activities.
West German companies were some of the main suppliers for Iraq's major weapons projects, including its nuclear weapons programme, chemical weapons facilities, ballistic missiles and long-range 'supergun' development. German companies are said to have contributed to the Iraqi government's weapons programme since the mid-1970s. According to the 17 December 2002 edition of the German daily, Tageszeitung, some German companies continued to do business with Iraq right up until 2001. This would have been a clear breach of the UN sanctions imposed on Iraq in 1990 after it invaded Kuwait.
According to Tageszeitung, German companies comprise more than half of the total number of institutions listed in Iraq's 12,000-page weapons report to the UN in December 2002. The newspaper said it had seen a copy of the original Iraqi dossier that was vetted for sensitive information by US officials before being given to the five permanent Security Council members.
German companies also provided Iraq with technology to make heavy cannons that could launch CBW shells. In January 2003, two German businessmen went on trial in Mannheim, charged with supplying Iraq with equipment for the manufacture of Saddam Hussein's ill-fated Al-Fao cannon project - the 700km-range 'supergun.' In 1999, they allegedly acted as intermediaries in a series of deals aimed at supplying drills "capable of and made to" bore the huge barrels needed for the supergun.
German assistance was allegedly given to Iraq for the development of chemical agents used in the 1988 massacre of Kurds in northern Iraq. After the massacre, the USA reduced its military co-operation with Iraq, but German firms continued their activities until the Gulf war.
The USA reportedly approved the export to Iraq of US$1.5bn worth of dual-use items, including powerful computers, precision machine tools and advanced electronics. Suspicions by Pentagon officials halted the export of certain items, such as 40 kryton nuclear triggers (high-speed timing devices) which US and UK customs agents had seized in London in 1990, and 'skull' furnaces that could be used in the development of missiles and nuclear bombs.
An investigation of US corporate sales to Iraq, headed by Republican Congressman Donald Riegle and published in May 1994, listed some of the biological agents exported by US corporations with George Bush's approval as head of the CIA and later as vice-president under Ronald Reagan. The Iraqis are reported to have acquired stocks of anthrax, brucellosis, gas gangrene, E. coli and salmonella bacteria from US companies.
Throughout the 1980s, the UK Conservative government proactively assisted 'non-lethal weapons' and dual-use equipment to Iraq, such as high-temperature-resistant electric switches and computerised rocket simulators. Through a number of UK companies, machine tools and lathes were manufactured and exported to build shells and detonation fuses in Iraq. In January 1988, trade minister Alan Clark held a meeting with British arms manufacturers in which he advised them to 'downgrade' the official description of arms-related material when applying for export licences - to make it appear to be equipment for civilian use.
Between 1999 and 2001, Whitehall officials sanctioned more than US$2.36m worth of export licenses to Syria for military items including thermal infrared imaging equipment, now suspected of being supplied to Iraq. Despite the Labour government improving arms controls since 1997 and passing an Export Control Act in 2002, there is still no definitive evidence of serious commitment to monitor the final destination and end-use of UK-supplied arms
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When Saddam was toppled, Iraq's largest sovereign debt was to Russia ($25 billion), France ($5 billion) and China ($5 billion); as Stephen Green commented, "Is it any coincidence that these are three of the loudest voices against us getting into Saddam's filing cabinets?"
To that evidence, we can add another contemporaneous study, The report, titled Project Babylon: Who Armed Iraq?, was published in the April 2003 Investigate Magazine (Australian/New Zeeland): The WMD (weapons of mass destruction) trail begins in 1975 when Saddam Hussein – at that stage still the Vice President of Iraq - joined forces with French Prime Minister (now President) Jacques Chirac in a deal to purchase French military equipment and armaments.
Hussein had, only weeks earlier, signed an agreement with the Soviet Union to purchase a nuclear reactor facility from the Russians, but the Soviet deal contained a catch: Russia was insisting on safeguards to ensure that fuel from the reactor could not be reprocessed to make nuclear weapons. Saddam was hoping he could get a better deal out of France.
Jacques Chirac sent an arms negotiation team to Iraq on March 12, 1975, who offered up to 72 of the then state-of-the-art Mirage jet fighters, as well as 40 German Dornier jets (West Germany, in 1975, was still under a United Nations ban on exporting weapons, imposed after WW II, and channelled their defence sales through France to undermine the UN sanction).
The French, for their part, were desperate to source cheap oil from Iraq in order to maintain their overall share of the world oil market. Saddam needed weapons and the ability to manufacture them under license in Iraq; France needed Iraqi oil. It was, noted commentators at the time, a marriage made in heaven. . .
A year later, in 1976, Saddam Hussein was pushing for chemical weapons manufacture as well. The French Prime Minister again helped out, opening doors for Iraq in the United States. Because of its reputation for supporting terrorism, Iraq was on the US banned list, but by going through France it was hoping to bypass US restrictions. The "personal friend" of M’sieur Chirac was introduced to a French engineering company with a subsidiary branch in the US. That branch called on a New York chemical equipment company, Pfaudler & Co, and told them Iraq needed to build a pesticide factory because "Iraqi farmers are unable to protect their crops from the ravages of desert locusts and other pests".
This seemed like a reasonable request, and Pfaudler sent staff to Iraq to begin work on the project. The US company pulled out of the deal several months later when it became apparent that Iraq wanted to manufacture 1,200 tonnes of Amiton, Demeton, Paraoxon and Parathion – highly toxic organic compounds that can be converted into nerve gas. . .
Having constructed its "pesticides" factory, Iraq began purchasing raw materials for it in July 1983. The first shipment, 500 tonnes of thiodiglycol – an ingredient of mustard gas – was sourced through a Dutch company, which went on to supply many hundreds of tonnes more. The Dutch company acted as a ‘front’, ordering the chemicals in from the US. That particular deception wasn’t discovered by US authorities until 1986, three years after the first chemical weapons had been used by Iraqi forces against Iran. But US intelligence agencies had acted swiftly after the first gas attacks in December 1983, and a report to the US Government in early 1984 recommended the immediate imposition of export controls on chemicals that could be used in weapons. Iraq and Iran were the first on the banned list, but the warring nations went through so many middlemen that eventually the banned list included the entire world, save for 18 Western nations.
