What came next


HI: Hopefully the peshmerga will retain the capability to deal with large ISIS chemical attacks and the police will deal with smaller, or urban attacks against civilians. We want good cooperation between the two, especially the police within the Ministry of Interior and civil defence.


GW: When we look at the legacy of the conflict, especially in terms of environmental hazards, what role will the army have? These hazards span from mustard contamination on the battlefield all the way through to Al Mishraq, so there is much to do. Is that a role for military CBRN troops, or will it become a civilian contractor task? HI: Al Mishraq is outside Kurdistan territory, so the Iraqi security forces will need to protect it. This place has been a major problem for the Iraqi people on two occasions, in 2003 and 2016, and remains a major problem. There are


1,000s of tonnes of sulphur and chlorine in the area needing to be controlled. Chlorine is an endemic problem, with 1,000s of businesses and individuals using it and it is not under government control, so they need to think how they are going to start to control that.


GW: Lets look at the small scale then, in terms of chemical attacks on the Kurdistan region. Those areas that have been contaminated with CW, is that a CBRN task or merely a commercial task? HI: I have previously mentioned Halabjah in 1998. Even now some of those areas have not been cleaned up, so we don’t allow people to go there. We have a relationship with the Iraqi chemical defence battalion and they go there and try and help us, to see how we can clean it. ISIS has used CW against peshmerga many times, especially on the front lines, and we


will need to revisit those places and see whether they are clean or if we need to do something about them, especially in Mahmoud and Mosul dam. That said, we still have an active front line, and hopefully after ISIS is defeated we will revisit those areas


GW: There are certain people who feel that the sarin we have seen in Khan Sheikhoun was used by Daesh and not Assad. Are you seeing anything that suggests they might have sarin? HI: I think that the Khan Sheikhoun CW attack was done by the Assad regime. There are still plenty of chemical caches left, either hidden by the Assad regime or among things ISIS has found, and that, too, will be a big problem in the future. We don’t know whether they have sarin, but if do have it they will use it, they are inhuman and evil.


The focus is also on building up a civilian CBRN defence capability ©DoD CBRNe Convergence, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Indiana, USA, 6 - 8 Nov 2017 www.cbrneworld.com/convergence2017 22 CBRNe WORLD June 2017 www.cbrneworld.com


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