Iraq 5th International CBRN Safety and Security Conference (#CBRNIraq2020) Magazine

Thoughts following the 5 th International CBRN Safety and Security Conference

Welcome to Thoughts following the 5th International CBRN Safety and Security Conference . This magazine has been created with the kind help of the University of Babylon, DTRA, and Falcon Communications.

Inside you will find a snapshot of the many voices that were dedicated to improving safety and security in Iraq when it comes to chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) weapons. The majority of people that gave their time to speak to us were presenters at the 5th International CBRN Safety and Security Conference, and we are grateful for their efforts on the day and also for working on this magazine.

CBRN Safety and Security is a major issue for Iraq, as it is for many other countries. There has been a lasting legacy of war damage and hostile actors in the region for greater than twenty years and this has left institutional and security challenges that the country is still trying to overcome. All of the people in these pages are dedicated to making Iraq a safer and cleaner place to live.

The magazine is thematically split into five sections. The first, pages four to twenty one, look at the conference itself. What was done and said, and what are the plans for the event in future years. If you missed the event, and have found this on a coffee table somewhere, please check out http://cbrnssd.uobabylon.edu.iq/index.html and we all hope to see you at a future one!

experience from the CBRN Civil Defense force and the second from the Peshmerga. The third section, pages 31 to 42, is looking at some of the friends that Iraq has in the region, both next door in Jordan and across the Mediterranean in Europe. Finding solutions takes many partners, and even more good ideas and there are individuals that are keen to help, and these pages look at some of the initiatives that are underway.

The fourth section, pp43 to 52, investigates what was a major focus of the 5th conference, the issue of hazardous material waste in Iraq. Here are two voices from the region looking at the hazmat challenges to Iraq and what best practice can be used to overcome them. There are many difficulties in overcoming them, and this will be an ongoing thrust of the conference until they have been reduced.

The final section, pages pp53 to 56, looks at the legacy of Daesh in the North of Iraq. The devastation done to the area is a scar that will take over ten years to heal, and the work of the DoD is examined and suggestions made as to where the priorities should be.

I hope you enjoy the magazine and the efforts that have been undertaken for improved CBRN security in Iraq. If you want to know more about initiatives in the region please email gwyn.winfield@cbrneworld.net and I will be happy to pass your request on.

The second section, pages twenty two to thirty, have two insights into the CBRN security situation in Iraq. The first deals with the

Gwyn Winfield Editor

A higher education

GW: How did the University of Babylon (UoB) get involved in CBRN? What of its research are you looking forward to seeing come to completion? Is it on track to become an international university this year, or has Covid killed that?

FH: In 2008, various US government partners associated with the department of defence and state department’s cooperative threat reduction (CTR) chemical security programmes, initiated capacity building efforts to train Iraqi scientific cadres to better understand and implement chemical and biological safety and security practices. As a graduate of Nottingham University in the UK, I have long been aware of the importance of this subject as it concerns the life of students and teachers, and have joined many seminars inside and outside Iraq to develop this programme. The UoB noticed my great interest in this area and recognised the value and importance of making progress in chemical (and later CBRN) security. In 2014 UoB decided to build an ideal

chemicals store, where many dangerous chemical materials are held, and in 2015 a national symposium was launched, which attracted many chemical, biological, radiation and nuclear security specialists. UoB like other Iraqi universities, takes safety and security measures in labs and public utilities very seriously. To this end, a central committee was formed to monitor the safety of all dangerous and prohibited materials. The great support of the UoB president and their scientific assistance has established the University of Babylon as a pioneer and leader in Iraqi CBRN safety and security since 2008.

Right from the start of the project, UoB has put a lot of effort into outstanding scientific progress. The UoB’s leadership is very concerned about international rankings and takes all necessary steps to ensure a place in the distinguished scientific hierarchy of Iraqi universities. Despite the spread of Covid-19, the UoB, has experienced no negative impact whatsoever on the scientific

Professor Falah H Hussein, emeritus professor at the faculty of pharmacy, University of Babylon and member of the ministerial CBRN committee in the ministry of higher education and scientific research talks about his plans

progress that plays a prominent role in helping our community combat and avoid the virus. At this stage of the pandemic, the CBRN team is taking all necessary measures to help all citizens be fully aware of its [potentially] fatal consequences.

The most important subject that I'm looking forward to seeing in Iraq is the establishment of a CBRN centre that can serve as a central institute to continually monitor, understand, prioritise, support, and coordinate technical and policy education surrounding CBRN safety and security competencies.

GW What kind of centre is it going to be? Will it be science or training based, or both?

FH: Currently we have no CBRN centres in Iraq and I always say that this is my dream! Having the centre will ensure a training venue for the ministries of defence and the interior, and all other security ministries. It will be led by CBRN professionals and will increase

people’s abilities in many areas. How can we control the border? How can we control the sale and purchase of hazardous materials? How do we monitor the movement of hazardous material from when it enters Iraq through the supply chain, whether it’s in transit elsewhere or used in an end product?

This centre will provide practical training for our people and will need subsidisation from the international community in two ways. The first subsidy is for the tools and the second is to train the staff and leadership of this centre, not only in advanced institutions in Iraq but also in Britain, Germany, or the US. Another element, and one of the most important, is how does this centre get certification that is accepted by the national and international community? Any certificate that is not recognised by the international committee, is worthless. We have the human resources, specialists in biosafety and security

as well as chemical, nuclear, and radiation, it’s the tools and acceptance from the international centres that we need. Once we are established and respected then we can call or invite experienced people from outside Iraq to give lectures or seminars. For the past six years we have been trying to establish this centre, but there has been a lot of government indifference. Now I have decided to establish it privately without government support. We have the land, the infrastructure, and the people, even if we don’t have the government.

GW: Is this going to be low level awareness training, where you will probably have many hundreds of people needing training? Or is this at a more advanced level, where you might perhaps have tens of people? All of this impacts the type of facility that you build.

FH: Currently we have no centre, so I think that when we have it

The audience for the conference has grown year on year ©Falah Hussein

thousands of people will be trained! When you look at the size of the audience, it includes people working for the ministry of defence, ministry of interior, the border staff that check goods entering or leaving Iraq, and those working in customs on desk jobs. It will also help people working in the oil ministries, analytical chemists, and many industries. All these people need to be trained on CBRN regulations.

GW: Would this will be something that you will provide, for example, to people like General Mahmoud Delli and his civil defence force? Or will they have their own training facility and you’ll deal with other agencies?

FH: I don't mind! I'll be very glad if any of these ministries like the idea and run with it, because even if the CBRN basics are the same, the rest will be unique for all the ministries. People and infrastructure need regulations on safety and security that are dedicated to them, as do the people working in the ministry of health. The specialisations will need to be written specifically for them, but the basics are for everyone.

GW :You work with both the University of Babylon and AlMustaqbal University College, and chair both CBRN committees. Do they both want to be of international rank and is there one that specialises in CBRN regulations?

FH: My primary ambition is to help both the UofB and the College of the Future reach international ranking not only because I belong to them, but because they really deserve prominent ranking. They strive to implement all the measures needed for CBRN. I would like to see the UofB at the top of the rank of state universities and AlMustaqbal University College at the top of the rank of private universities. To be honest the leadership in both institutes are working on that and they’re capable of reaching this goal.

GW: Do they have different foci within CBRN? Is, for example, one looking at basic research and the other looking at applied research, one on chemistry and the other on biology? How do they fit into that CBRN research space?

FH: They are both interested in all of CBRN. Babylon University has a radiological and nuclear focus, and Al Salam University concentrates on chemical and biological, but we are working on a curriculum and compulsory subjects for people who need skills in safety and security. Undergrads and postgrads would need to pass this compulsory course.

GW: Has the improvement in the security situation in the north meant that CBRN has moved down a level in priority?

FH: Priority is given to CBRN in all circumstances. The improved

security situation does not mean that the strict adherence to CBRN safety and security moves to a secondary level due to local change, risk is everywhere in all communities.

After Daesh entered the north of Iraq, they used chemical weapons and we found that they were concentrating on chemical stores and laboratories to access more chemicals to use as weapons to harm the people. The government and friends of Iraqi tried to overcome this problem and we did a workshop via the CTR, with a great deal of training. We included intensive courses about chemical and biological safety and security, so they are capable of protecting their laboratories and their chemical and biological stores. As you say the security situation has calmed in the north and everything is under control.

GW: Daesh made a mess of Mosul University. Have you managed to work with them to try and resolve some of the legacy problems there?

FH: The University of Mosul was one of the most august universities in Iraq for a long time. Though ISIS did its best to destroy it completely, the university regained its glory very quickly following the expulsion of those criminals. What helped was the significant efforts of the ministry of higher education as well as all other universities including the UoB. I helped the University of

Mosul benefit from assistance offered by international organisations via the CBRN central committee at the university and also encouraged the university cadres to participate in all local and international scientific workshops especially those involving CBRN. This culminated in outstanding participation of its cadres in those workshops.

GW: You have been working on a national CBRN conference for four years. How have you seen the conference grow? What are you hoping to achieve from this one, and how will 2021’s be different?

FH: The first national conference was held in 2016, when there were 210 participants, mostly from the ministry of higher education and scientific research. It was quite difficult to convince other ministries, especially the security ones to send their employees to the event. Also the security ministries did not give approval for such conferences. Despite their refusal, we decided to hold the second conference in 2017. There were more participants at this conference and that increased over the following years. When the security agencies and ministries were certain that the University of Babylon was an authentic and credible stakeholder and highly qualified in dealing with CBRN and spreading governmental and community awareness of its importance, they started sending

delegates to these events. Moreover, the university began creating new relationships in many different sectors to enhance security. This is, of course, is in line with conferences’ strapline: We all work together for a secure Iraq. Due to the increasing number of foreign participants, a decision was taken to convert the conference into an international one. This goal was achieved and the number of delegates increased to 615 from 21 countries.

GW: What happens to the conference findings in the months after it takes place? Are there teams of people working on deliverables like mitigating market gaps or vulnerabilities? How do you integrate with existing work on these things?

FH: We are assisted by knowledgeable decision makers in various Iraqi ministries and the office of national security offers great support. Many gaps in CBRN have been filled, especially in the transport sector and Iraqi borders,

concerning the transport of dangerous and prohibited materials into the country. All borders are controlled lest some prohibited items enter Iraq.

What I really looked forward to in 2020 was the discussions on the transportation of hazardous material inside Iraq, and chemical and biological waste treatment. Both are very dangerous, and were discussed in detail. International support will be good as currently we have no clear recognition on the transportation of hazardous material inside Iraq. We have a great deal of chemical and biological waste, mostly treated imperfectly, and unfortunately much of the medical waste now goes into the rivers, which is a disaster. I'm looking forward to international cooperation to help us with this.

GW: Are you seeing other government agencies start to engage, or engage more, thanks either to Covid or greater CBRN appreciation? Are we close to a

Prof. Falah Hussein (centre) has been a driving force in Iraq CBRN for years ©Falah Hussein

‘whole of government’ approach to CBRN?

FH: There has been full awareness of the CBRN challenges facing different sectors for more than 10 years, long before Covid-19’s appearance. The national security adviser conducted a comprehensive study to unify our strategic security policy concerning CBRN and all sectors, including the ministry of education, participated in this study. I have to mention that many international organisations such as the Chemical Security program (CSP HomeCSP-State (csp-state.net), Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR Cooperative Threat Reduction (dtra.mil)), Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), and Health Security Partners (HSP) have provided Iraqi establishments with all types of financial and advisory support to enhance safety and security progress.

GW: How useful has international support been for the event? Does it act as a transmission belt for positive activity in the following year? Are there any other significant players that you are hoping to bring in for 2021?

FH: International support is very important for us in CBRN. DTRA hopes to attend it in person, rather than online, like this event.

GW: Are there any successes from past conferences that you could talk about? Have gaps been filled either because of

research undertaken, funding secured or contacts made?

FH: We have had many successes. In one example a chemical engineer from a company north of Babylon admitted openly that this conference was the first event looking at the challenges of how to transfer materials to and from this company, and to different parts of Iraq. At that time, it took more than two to three months to get the necessary agreements but now this can be done in 72 hours, all because the conference provided a good opportunity to meet people from different agencies and sectors. They included people from national security and a numbers of ministries, including defence, the interior, industry and minerals, oil, etc. Having them all under one roof, even in their breaks, enabled them to discuss the problems and reach solutions.

GW: Did Covid impact on the choice of topics this year? Are

you seeing more interest in biological issues, whereas chemicals was the previous ‘hot topic’?

FH: For this conference, priority has been given to discussions related to Covid-19. There were also three other sessions that focused on prevention and treatment protocols. These sessions were attended by world experts in the field.

GW: What do you see as the major challenges facing Iraq, UoB and the conference in the next few years? How are you orientating to face them?

FH: I am fully certain that this conference will be a great success and fulfil all our ambitions. There will be no major challenges facing this conference; however, we feel that the real challenge for us is to maintain momentum and success in upcoming conferences to better coordinate and coalesce the international community on CBRN safety and security priorities.

Covid enforced a smaller audience and the ever present PPE ©Falah Hussein

Level up

GW: What is the role of the joint planning centre for the national security advisory in Iraq and how does it fit into CBRN defence?

AY: The centre’s role is to build security strategies and policies at national level, as well as national plans and contexts to deal with challenges, threats and interests. In short, it is the driving force for Iraq’s national security. The centre’s responsibilities are for preparing Iraq’s national chemical security strategy, its national policy for the transport of hazardous substances, the

national report on the level of preparedness of the authorities concerned with handling CBRN accidents, and the requirements for supporting and developing the national CBRN response teams. In addition to all this it also works on Iraq’s national strategy to counter threats from WMD in the country, and the mechanism and controls for issuing import licenses for chemical and dual use materials and hazmat, and liaising with the end user. The centre accomplishes all of the above through the organisation and coordination of national

Dr Ali Abdel Aziz

al-Yasiri, director general of the National Centre for Joint Planning and head of the CBRN Team Development Team in Iraq talks to Gwyn Winfield about taking Iraq’s CBRN to the next level

The National Centre for Planning's responsibilities are for preparing Iraq's national chemical security strategy ©Civil Defence

authorities and the adoption of state and national standards. Everything was approved in accordance with the decisions of the national security council - the highest security authority in Iraq.

GW: What agencies are in the joint planning centre, and how do you ensure that they all ‘pull’ in the same direction to achieve the centre’s goals?

AY: The centre has full control and powers to coordinate and deal with all responsible agencies, or those that deal with the requirements to respond to a CBRN incidents. We help build their capability and plan their leadership and coordination work with them. The various bodies that have provided representatives to work within the control of the centre include the prime minister’s office’s national operations centre, and no fewer than 13 departments of state. The latter comprise the ministries of foreign affairs; defence; the interior; finance; planning; oil; trade; transport; industry and minerals; agriculture; higher education and scientific research; science and technology; and health and environment. In addition to these, there are further representatives working within the control of the centre from the border ports authority; the counter-terrorism service; the Iraqi national intelligence service; the Iraqi national security service; the Iraqi commission for the control of

radioactive sources; the Iraqi chemists syndicate and finally the private sector.

GW: How are you looking to get increased buy-in to the centre? How are you intending to improve this?

AY: We look forward to developing our work through developing skills, training, and knowledge about international experiences. In addition, we have significant coordination with organisations and countries that can provide the aforementioned services and further develop the Iraqi national authorities, raise their capabilities and modernise their equipment to meet these challenges.

GW: What are the centre’s priorities? What tools and staff have been given to you to enable you to meet them?

AY: Our priorities are to complete the building of the command and control system, build national policies and plans to organise work, coordinate efforts, develop institutions, officers, employees, and even society in general to deal with various circumstances, challenges and risks. The risks we are dealing with relate to the need to combat terrorism, outlaws and organised crime so that we can achieve the highest level of national security for our citizens and homeland, and help to strengthen security and international peace. To achieve this we have our official authority and the successes made by our

employees and partners towards our goals, along with the great confidence that partners give us!

GW: What is the centre’s role in crisis coordination? What has been achieved in the past few years on this topic?

AY: The centre sets plans and policies, and provides advice on the near, medium and long term goals. In the past few years we have made great progress on preparing the national policy for transporting dangerous materials in Iraq, the initial work on the national report on the level of preparedness of the authorities concerned with handling CBRN incidents and the requirements for supporting and developing the CBRN national response teams. In addition we have completed preparations for the national strategy to confront WMD threats in Iraq and completed the preparatory work for our national strategy for chemical security.

Preparatory work is now finished on the mechanism and controls for issuing import licenses for chemical, dual use and hazardous materials, and following up on the end user. We have also contributed to developing contexts and opportunities for training and skills development and building contexts of coordination and joint action between national partners. Finally, we have encouraged various entities and agencies to work, participate and cooperate with each other.

GW: This is the fifth iteration of the Iraq CBRN Safety and Security Conference. What have been the successes in this time? How has capability improved?

AY: The University of Babylon has been making distinguished efforts in the field of CBRN and has organised this annual gathering, which attracts national and international CBRN experts. At the end of each conference a list of important recommendations is prepared and sent sent to our department, and elsewhere, and we carefully follow the recommendations and implement them. The most important thing to have been achieved during these conferences has been presenting the challenges facing Iraq as regards safety and security in all sincerity and transparency, and to ask friends and international organisations to help overcome them. I believe we have made many achievements in this field, and look forward to more support in the future.

GW: What impact has Covid had on appreciation of CBRN threats in Iraq? Have CBRN concepts, decontamination/safe undressing etc, appeared in a response to an emerging infectious disease?

AY: Yes. Advice was provided to the authorities responsible for dealing with these risks. So we sent information to the prime minister’s office, and the ministries of finance, planning, oil, health and environment, and labour and social affairs.

GW: How important are international institutions to achieving better CBRN safety and security in Iraq? What would be the most important thing for an agency new to Iraq to understand?

AY: The importance of international institutions in this field lies in providing support for quite a lengthy list of activities. These include capacity development, training, regional and international participation and coordination, exchange of experiences and information. The rehabilitation of leaders and those responsible for challenging areas, reducing accidents and strengthening laboratories and border crossings also rate highly among our priorities.

GW: Iraq has a strong petrochemical industry, which requires access to some dangerous chemicals. How do you balance ensuring industry can obtain these chemicals and support a strong economy with the need for safety and security?

AY: We have set a national policy for the transport and protection of dangerous materials, and this helps in addressing this challenge. Iraq will continue to develop its capabilities in this area.

GW: What do you see as the challenges that the centre will be facing in the next two to three years and how are you orientating yourself to meet them?

AY: The most important challenges facing our strategic planning and decision-making centres are threefold. Firstly, there are the external challenges in the emergence of new forms of terrorism with new names and new tools of terrorism. Secondly it is quite likely that financial and health crises that may weaken the funding of projects that support our efforts and training and technical activities both inside and outside Iraq. And finally, fluctuations in the political process may affect some policies and priorities.

There are three challenges facing Dr al-Yasiri's strategic planning and decision-making ©Civil Defence

Photos from the CBRN demonstration at the 5th International CBRN Safety and Security Coordination Conference

*All photos are ©Civil Defence

The unsuspecting terrorist pulls up in front of his clandestine laboratory

Suddenly the SWAT unit appear, before the terrorist can do anything

Their sudden appearance means he is quickly apprehended without a struggle

Once he is under control other teams can arrive to secure the scene

The suspect is taken into custody and will provide security forces with useful information

It is important to have EOD clear the scene to ensure it is safe for other assets to start deploying

After a

SWAT leave the scene and other specialist assets start to appear

thorough search of the premises, EOD is happy for other units to be deployed

CBRN troops turn up and discover a laboratory on the premises, what has he been building?

The IMASS is able to sample a wide variety of white powders for a range of threats

The CBRN mission includes forensic attribution and care, this will make for a much smoother court case

Having been in a potentially contaminated environment the CBRN team needs to go through individual

Their sampling work done they exit the building

decon

The samples will be analysed at the lab, if there are any mistakes the team will need to go back in

CBRN in the time of Covid

Brigadier General Mahmood Delli, Iraqi CBRN Department Manager at the Department of Civil Defence in Iraq talks about their experience on the front lines

GW: When last we spoke (December 2018) there were 15 CBRN civil defence teams in Iraq, how many are there now and how has the capability improved? What is the CBRN incident response department doing these days?

MD: Yes, there are still 15 teams distributed across the Iraqi provinces, apart from the Kurdistan region, where there are three teams in the region’s interior ministry, in addition to the chemical division in the peshmerga. We are looking for more cooperation and coordination between the federal administration and regional administration regarding the work of these teams, in the hope that an exercise will be conducted throughout Iraq to put the relevant emergency plans into practice.

We have developed our teams’

capabilities through continuous daily training and by conducting exercises using virtual scenarios determined in advance according to the threats for each province, the specificity of that province and potential incidents. Good strides have been made in this area, and we are now in the second phase of this work, preparing a database of institutions in these provinces, which deal with chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear materials and preparing a special map for that. We’re also activating their self-defence teams, training them to work with our teams in responding to likely accidents, working out the right ways to deal with them and address the gaps that exist at the same time, and of course coordinating with the relevant authorities. The campaigns carried out by our

teams in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic have given us a lot of momentum through 10 months of field experience and 810 hours of hard work daily .

The CBRN Department has a lot of tasks to accomplish especially at present, as we are now working to improve coordination with the rest of the departments in the civil defence directorate and the ministry of interior directorates as well as other institutions. There’s work for the members of the response teams and others in the support agencies as well as awareness raising lectures. We have also been planning advanced training courses for the response teams in Baghdad and the provinces.

GW: What has happened in the rest of the civil defence directorate, away from CBRN?

Have you seen an increase in interest and/or expertise in other departments, which means you can call on them more?

MD: Those other departments comprise, fire, rescue, explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) and the department of operations and environmental police. A plan was prepared by the CBRN department at the end of 2018 to train and qualify teams from these departments and conduct field exercises on supporting response teams in the field. Implementation began with teaching them the concepts of responding to chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear accidents. That meant explaining what these incidents are and the ways of responding to them. They needed to know what are the roles of each team in supporting the main, CBRN, response teams. They also learnt about the support available from the health departments, security forces, evidence and explosives experts, and representatives of veterinary departments in the ministry of agriculture and other relevant entities.

GW: How are you building on your EOD and forensics capability? Have you had any missions where you have needed to use them?

MD: One important and effective section within the directorate of civil defence is the EOD department, which is highly experienced in its field, including dealing with mines and explosives dropped from the air, however it lacks expertise in dealing with improvised explosive devices. Currently we are working on developing expertise to deal with explosive charges among its operatives so they can be involved with the CBRN response teams, but due to the coronavirus pandemic this project has been postponed until further notice. Even so, the response teams in Baghdad and the provinces have experts from the directorates of criminal evidence and explosives, who have been trained and prepared to work with the CBRN response teams.

Civil defence have been training fire, rescue, explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) and the department of operations and environmental police in CBRN ©Civil Defence

They have participated in many incidents to which our teams responded, especially during the liberation of Nineveh province, where explosives experts dealt with a car bomb carrying a 1,000l (220gallon) container of chlorine gas. The situation was controlled and the necessary action was taken.

GW: Are you working with the new environmental police, especially in the post-Daesh north? What kind of cases are you finding, and how is this affecting the training and capability of the team?

MD: The environmental police in the directorate of civil defence work in direct coordination with the Ministry of Environment in Baghdad and the provinces. This police department has 16 environmental police stations in Baghdad and the provinces, which is one more than the number of CBRN response teams, as in this case Baghdad is considered as two provinces, Al-Karkh and AlRusafa, whereas the national response team covers all the province of Baghdad.

The environmental police played a good role in the success of the campaign carried out by the directorate of civil defence in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. They were assigned to work with the response teams, especially in the northern provinces of Kirkuk, Nineveh, Salah al-Din and Anbar, and in coordination with the ministries of health, and

environment, the security services and related authorities to follow up on the remnants of ISIS's use of chemical weapons such as mustard gas. In normal business we also work with these agencies to sustain the database of chemical materials.

GW: A variety of international agencies have been keen to support you, like Interpol and the US state department. Has that continued, what have you found useful?

MD: International support from Interpol and the US state department continues, but it is also affected by the issue of coronavirus as are the directorate of civil defence and the CBRN department. We are working to implement many plans with the support of partners, and have good and successful relations with these friendly entities. Coordination continues to reach better stages and we are investing all efforts in raising the level of Iraq’s response teams.

GW: Two years ago you were already worried about biological incidents. Had you managed to get anything ready in preparation by the time Covid landed?

MD: The seriousness of biological weapons and the obstacles we face in responding to them are no secret to anyone interested in CBRN, and ISIS has continued to promote its message about the use of silent death, referring to biological weapons. One of the

most important points we face is the means of detecting biological factors, and the laboratories to deal with such agents. The detections kits we use have a shelf-life not exceeding two years, which causes a continuous deficit in their availability, especially in light of the financial crisis that we are going through. As for coronavirus, we have prepared for this by purchasing personal protection equipment (PPE) and the appropriate disinfectant solutions with international specifications and the approval of the ministry of health and the veterinary department of the ministry of agriculture for the sterilisation and preparation of trucks used by the directorate of civil defence.

GW: How has your decon capability been improved by the Covid crisis? You have bought a lot of commercial equipment, will that be replaced like for like, or will you start to order specialised kit?

MD: This equipment is still ready for operation and is very effective. If finance is available, it will certainly be purchased according to lists prepared to meet the specific needs of the CBRN department.

GW: The civil defence directorate was heavily involved in public education campaigns for Covid. Has that been re-examined for a CBRN incident, and what lessons have you taken from it?

MD: More than one analytical conference has been held about the incidents to which the CBRN teams responded, and the lessons learned and the gaps that have been identified have been discussed. The need to expand the CBRN culture has been taken into account at various levels and for all institutions, but the awareness campaigns for coronavirus have given our teams the opportunity to meet with the largest number of citizens. Campaigns have spread the message in the streets, markets, malls, and demonstration yards, as well as prisons, and it can be said that we were able to reach the farthest possible point in this field by using various means including audio, video and print. In my opinion we have gained great experience in the process of spreading awareness and communicating the necessary information.

GW: What have been your lessons from the fogging/ fumigating missions? Is this going to continue into the Spring, or have you started to step down these missions as more is known about the agent?

MD: I can confirm that the fogging campaigns carried out by our teams in Baghdad and the provinces were difficult and tiring tasks where we were working around the clock. My opinion is that the lessons we learned are to break the fear barrier among the

staff in the response teams and other teams in the face of such incidents. [It is important to have] high confidence in our ability to driving what works into the command, and [trust] the effectiveness of the equipment, and PPE we use. At the same time we have [gained] further field experience in responding to such incidents and ways to manage them, and have invested all available resources to make the mission a success.

In addition, the necessary updates have been made to our plans relating to the work of the civil defence directorate, and in particular service resolution one for the medical service and service resolution eight for reconnaissance and disinfection, which are contingency plans included in the civil defence law 44 of 2013. A plan was adopted to

support the teams of neighbouring governorates, whereby all three neighbouring governorates support the team of one governorate in the event of an accident.

GW: What do you see as the major challenges to the force in the next two to five years and how are you preparing to meet them?

MD: In my opinion as a CBRN specialist and expert, I consider that repercussions from the coronavirus pandemic amount to free lessons for terrorists and terrorist organisations on the usefulness of biological weapons by informing them of the weaknesses in all official and informal facilities and in all institutions.

I think the biological threat is continuing and I'm afraid will get worse. For the first time, I hope I'm wrong.

The coronavirus could amount to free lessons for terrorists on the usefulness of biological weapons ©Civil Defence

Only sleeping

Brigadier General

While many areas in Iraq can lay claim to having been targeted with chemical weapons, few have experienced more attacks than the Kurds. First through the Saddam regime, and then during the ravages of Daesh, the Kurdistan region has suffered the use of a range of chemical weapons1. The most recent experiences started in 2015, when Daesh began to attack using vehicle borne improvised explosive devices with chlorine payloads. As is often the case when new weapons are introduced to a conflict, response was improvised, but, through April 2015, when Daesh first deployed improvised chemical mortars the Kurdish CW response to these attacks was more synchronized and expeditious.

Most deployments of Chemical weapons were small, isolated attacks, but on occasion, as at Taza2, there were sustained bombardments causing hundreds of casualties. Had Daesh ever managed to step up the toxicity ladder to nerve agents, there

seems little doubt that the fatalities would have been in the thousands, as happened in Halabjah in 19883.

National and international CBRN support began arriving in for the Kurdish region from 2015. Limited quantities of PPE and detectors were welcome, but there was never enough to allow the Kurds to adequately protect their citizens and forces from Daesh’s the imminent threat of mustard and chlorine attacks. To assist in the fight, the Kurdistan Training Coordination Centre (KTCC), was stood up in 2014 with eight countries helping to train the peshmerga. This is the fourth time I have interviewed Brig Gen Hajar Ismail, the first time being in 2016 when they stood up a chemical protection company and laboratory. In addition to this they needed to provide generalist CBRN training to the police and peshmerga forces, a total of approximately 20,000 individuals.

The threats that the Kurdish CBRN forces have to face are not

Hajar Ismail, director of coordination and relations at the Ministry of Peshmerga, talks to Gwyn Winfield about preparing for Daesh’s re-awakening

just CBRN, but also toxic industrial chemicals. Another touchstone of memory is al Mishraq4 chemical plant which contains thousands of tonnes of sulphur. While this is outside Kurdish territory, a plume released there had previously affected Kurdish citizens negatively, even though it was only activated as a screen against allied bombing; and when Daesh dug in around Mosul, there was the concern that the same thing would happen again. Unlike the Saddam era release, this time it was a more limited exposure, and a combination of Iraqi CBRN forces and firefighters managed to contain the plant. In addition, Daesh also released and burnt a great deal of black oil to act as an obscurant. There is a suggestion that along with the oil they included mustard and this was confirmed by US forces5. All

of this has left Brig Gen Ismail very aware of the threat that chemicals are to his region.

“The peshmerga CBRN unit is a new unit in the ministry of peshmerga, but very important to have so that we can protect our forces and civilians. This was especially necessary when ISIS started using gas against us in 2015 and ’16. We built a new unit, small at first but now growing. Currently it is a CBRN company, and command is centralised so it is controlled by the ministry of peshmerga based in Erbil, the centre of the Kurdistan region.

“Instead of just one company we plan to have a CBRN regiment with enhanced capacity. We are grateful to the US and Germany for opening training courses for our CBRN soldiers, and many of them have attended courses in Germany and the US. Some

training was done by the DoD and some by the state department. Sandia Labs, for example, received funds from the state department, and opened joint training courses for peshmerga and Iraqi ministry of defence CBRN, both inside and outside the country. We also received some good equipment from Germany and the US. The goal is not just to have a CBRN laboratory, but to have all the skills and equipment necessary to face our CBRN enemies.”

The laboratory is a work in progress, and the peshmerga have also received training on using the lab from the Germany and the United States. This will allow them confirmatory analysis of what their handheld detectors tell them in the field and means that they don’t need to reach back to other allies and lose valuable time. What has been a success for them is the

The security situation in the north resulted in widespread destruction ©DoD

KTCC, this has four training centres in the Kurdistan region: Bnaslawa training centre, Atrush training centre, Sulaymanyia training centre, and in Manila training centre6. Before Covid shut them down, the centres had trained 40,000 peshmerga in a variety of skills, including train the trainer in CBRN.

The plan was to include greater oversight and monitoring of the KTCC, but even before Covid hit the coalition decided to have three operations central advisory teams7. One of these is OCAT North, and this is in Erbil. As Brig Gen Ismail explained: “These are

providing advice and monitoring the training of the peshmerga forces. They will also look for the gaps that we have within the ministry of peshmerga in order to provide more logistical support to the peshmerga. So we won't have KTCC any more, we will have OCAT North.

Though Daesh doesn’t hold any physical ground in Iraq, it is not dead, it is just sleeping. Brig Gen Ismail is keen to point out that the ideology is the threat, it provides a siren song to elements of the Sunni population and former Ba’ath party members. In addition, there are the various foreign

fighters, or at least the ones that haven’t escaped to continue the fight in Libya or elsewhere. Returning good governance to the ruined areas of Iraq will take a long time, and in the interim there is fertile ground for recruitment and caches of weapons, explosives and potentially chemicals for the recruits to use. Daesh is the latest incarnation that started with Al Qaeda in Iraq, and there is every expectation that a new variant will be just as unpleasant - Brig Gen Ismail uses the word ‘evil’ - as the last. It will take a strong unified government to defeat Daesh, and that is likely to take a generation8

Mosul, thanks to unexploded ordnance and abandoned arms dumps, has become a highly dangerous place for the population ©DoD

Brig Gen Ismail explained: “We always say Daesh are defeated but not destroyed. They still exist and are active in some areas like Kirkuk, Hamreen, Makhmoor, Diyala, and the disputed territories. We used to have a joint security mechanism between the ministry of peshmerga and Iraqi ministry of defence, but we don’t have that now. Instead, there’s dialogue and negotiations with the Iraqi army and support from the coalition forces in the disputed territories. We are working to rebuild or restart the joint security mission, joint checkpoints, joint forces, and joint operations against Daesh. Right now we have a Kurdistan defence line and an Iraqi defence line, and in some places there is a big gap, hence the disputed territories. ISIS takes advantage of this gap, which can be 5-40 km wide, and uses this vacuum to grow. ISIS remains a threat, and whenever they are a threat so are chemical weapons against the Kurdish and Iraqi people.

“In the past ISIS had their own terrorist caliphate, when they controlled major cities and large areas in Syria and Iraq. Now they are forced back into attacking as small terrorist groups, like guerrilla warfare. They lost their leaders, with many of them killed, particularly Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, but they remain a threat, not only in Iraq but also Syria. The border between the two countries is not fully controlled, so they can easily slip between the two.”

The coalition is still very active in helping the Iraq military forces and the peshmerga forces defeat Daesh. In addition to combat operations they are equipping four peshmerga brigades and are also looking to equip more peshmerga and Iraqi army brigades for the Mosul area. Included within this will be chemical protection and detection devices. Even if there is no actual attack, there is still the likelihood that Iraqi forces will come across chemical weapon agents and explosive caches in the north. Daesh had a habit of putting everything with a hazard sticker together in one site, regardless of any cross-reactivity or what the storage conditions might be like. In some cases this could be a task for civilian forces, but dependent on the situation the peshmerga CBRN could well have to deal with it.

Brigadier Ismail explained: “One of the problems with fighting ISIS, and why they are still around, is because they make so many tunnels. Some are underground and others are in caves in the mountains. We are concerned, as maybe they buried some chemical equipment or chemical agent in tunnels or caves and they are really difficult places to infiltrate. Coalition forces are still trying to bomb them and shelling their tunnels, but they have so many long distance tunnels and we don't know where they could be in the Hamrin mountains or in the disputed territories like Hwaeeia or Qarachoog.

“It was too early for prime minister Haider al-Abadi to announce the defeat of ISIS in 2017, because even then they still existed. The Iraqi army would enter the cities and control the main roads, but they never went to some of the open areas or mopped up ISIS villages like Hawaeeia and the Hamreen mountains or other places close to the Iraq/Syria border.”

Unlike when I first spoke to Brig Gen Ismail, the Kurdistan region doesn’t have to rely on the peshmerga alone. In addition to the Iraqi civil defence units, they have now built up some of their own civilian units that can deal with threats from Al Mishraq or any other hazmat situation. He explained the plan for the force. “We have firefighter units that are now building CBRN units under the ministry of the interior in the Kurdistan region. We saw the need for them in the past, when they were needed to deal with civilian accidents, like when Daesh attacked at Kirkuk. So while we plan to build a regiment for peshmerga CBRN there is also a plan within the ministry of the interior for their own CBRN unit. It will be based in Erbil. A centre has been opened for them, many of them have been trained outside the country, and they have been supplied with good equipment from the US.”

Another improvement in recent years has been the relationship with national CBRN units outside the Kurdistan region. Due to the

nature of the warfighting, and the shortage of assets, that relationship had initially been fractious, but in the current breathing space they have moved ahead together. “We are looking forward to further improving the relationship between peshmerga CBRN and Iraqi CBRN. We have worked together successfully in the past as they provided us with training, support, advice and some equipment. Especially when we were first attacked with chemical weapons in 2015 the first team to assist was the Iraqi CBRN unit, who came and did a survey of what ISIS had attacked and what the danger was when ISIS used gas against us. We also had cooperation from the Iraqi government when we asked the UN and the Organisation for the

Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, to view the situation on the ground. They came, saw the situation, the mortars and rockets and interviewed injured peshmerga. During our fight with ISIS, we had significant casualties, out of a total 10,000 injured peshmerga 400 were affected by chemical weapons. We're looking forward to cooperation with the Iraqi CBRN units.”

This close cooperation paid dividends when Covid hit, the Kurdistan health and peshmerga CBRN as well as other Iraqi agencies have been working together for the citizens. In addition to training peshmerga CBRN unit and health care staff they have also gone into cities to decontaminate them and educate the public. The whole process has

1 https://kurdistanmemoryprogramme.com/index/poison-gas/

strengthen relations at all levels. Kurdistan will need to leverage this relationship in the coming years. The expected economic downturn post-Covid is going to have a negative impact on their plans to develop and grow the CBRN team, though Brig Gen Ismail is convinced they will have their regiment, as well as increased local tension. Such tension will swell Daesh’s ranks and prompt further misinformation about how Baghdad is not looking after youth in the regions, and this is likely to create problems for peshmerga and CBRN too. Additionally, there is the cost of the clean up from decades of strife. Not only those areas that were targeted by Daesh, but also places like Halabjah, which is still not being dealt with over 40 years later.

2 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/12/isis-launches-two-chemical-attacks-in-northern-iraq

3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_chemical_attack

4 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3955005.stm

5 https://cbrneworld.com/magazine/archive/magazine-archive/2017-06

6 https://nationalinterest.org/feature/exclusive-inside-kurdistans-anti-isis-training-camps-17155

7 https://ahmadtan740.medium.com/the-hostile-against-isis-proceeds-in-iraq-93a755772c00

8 https://theglobalcoalition.org/en/why-are-coalition-forces-still-needed-iraq-syria/

Iraqi and Kurdish CBRN forces are learning to fight together ©Ismail

A strong Center

GW: Could I ask you to give a top down description of what the European Union (EU) Centres of Excellence (CoE) are doing, have done and will do in the next few years?

TS: The CBRN CoE network is a very strong, robust, resilient network developed over 10 years that will open doors to other synergistic programmes in the coming years.

family

When the CBRN CoE was launched 10 years ago, it needed to convince countries to join and establish regional secretariats. Today there are 62 partner countries besides the 28/27 EU

member states. They are split into different regions, three in Africa. one for the western part of the Middle East, one for the Gulf region, one in Central Asia, one in Southeast Asia, and yet another for the very important area that encompasses Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Caucasus. National “customers” or authorities benefit from regional funding for projects, which might be for training, supplies, equipment or field exercises. They are also provided with confidential methodology to assess their CBRN gaps and needs, and to build and develop national CBRN action

Tristan Simonart, European Commission Director General for International cooperation and development, EU CBRN CoE, Gulf and Central Asia, talks to Gwyn Winfield about the wider Center of Excellence

The global impact from Covid has meant that some COE activities have been delayed ©Davide Costanzo

plans. These are shared for free with partners and they either use them alone or they can activate our EU technical support. In the latter case, we would organise missions to these countries to look at their gaps and risks, or build comprehensive all hazard systems or dual-use export control regimes and developments.

Covid has made things very difficult indeed in many places, but the networks have been activated in all regional centres. A series of webinars/exchanges on lessons learnt on Covid, have been organised, and additional funding was provided for Covid supplies, equipment and special online training. This has kept up the momentum by maintaining active networks and contacts with and between partner countries.

On the structure, the CBRN CoE programme relies on an entry point appointed by each government, the national focal point, which is in charge of coordinating an interagency/interministerial approach to do the work for that country. It’s a bottom up programme, but also trying to achieve intra/intercountry silos to enable the participating countries to have a better view on any situation. We focused on some flagship actions, including a €10m project in Africa to build a fleet of five mobile labs that are fully equipped and fully integrated in the regional architecture. That was signed off last summer with Preasens Care and the Pasteur

Institute in Dakar, helping it become the fully-fledged training and research and reach-back centre for Africa on the epidemic intelligence, preparedness, response and recovery.

The network is quite robust and resilient. Each of the host countries in the eight regions has an acting regional director, who is appointed by the host country’s government. They are supported by a full time UN regional coordinator (UNICRI) and full time internationalonsite assistance experts who will work in these regions to support the programme technically or scientifically on a permanent basis. The regions are quite autonomous and proactive in taking ownership and promoting new programmes. They work at different speeds, so it's difficult to compare the Middle East with North Africa, Sahel and Central Asia, for example. But each region has its own dynamic, and contact is maintained two to three times a year through regional round tables between partner countries, the European Commission, the UN, partners and experts involved in the programme.

GW: Have you seen the CoEs change and evolve since they first started out? Initially the focus was on each country having a national action plan and developing interoperability. Can you claim mission success on that bit and move on to something else, or is it never ending and just about getting better?

TS: There are things that always need to be consolidated and maintained because the international and local contexts are changing. The programme has contributed to enabling countries to be better be prepared to face new challenges and Covid has been one of them. But in parallel, I've seen the quality of the network and the trust building up. Now, several regions are working on developing regional action plans, which is something we would probably never have heard of 10 years ago! Two years ago the Central Asia country representatives asked for the programme to look at building, starting, designing and developing regional action plans for CBRN, based on their national action plans, need assessments and focused on the UN SCR 1540 resolution requirements. This is now ready at the technical level, it was shared during the last Central Asia regional table in October and is being considered by each country. They will make their own decisions, but there is potential to move forward on a regional action plan for CBRN matters. It might take years, it might take months, and there will be some strong challenges as it could become political, but it is something that has been built and is now on the table. In the near future we will continue in this kind of regional action plan preparation in different regions. The Middle East COE also has a draft to be further elaborated on.

Another direction for the future is enabling the network to organise or connect to crossborder field exercises involving various CBRN stakeholders from different countries. A further dimension that will be continued is strengthening the connection with international bilateral and multilateral programmes, activities, networks and interactions that are in progress. With Covid, we even see more of these opportunities and sometimes duplication. The best way of adding value when approaching outside countries for possible partnering is to invite them to consider establishing a single entry point and a national CBRN team across ministries. This would enable them to reach a point where they can have a valid overview on all interactions, avoid internal duplication and find synergies.

We can dream of global partnership and other systems that map approaches, matrices etc, but it will only work if it's in the hands of each country. We cannot do partnership and efficiency for them, they have to do it though we can contribute.

GW: In terms of global legacies, how do you work with other multinational partners, such as Interpol, the US state department, or the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) to ensure that you're neither providing training that runs contrary to theirs or is just duplication?

TS: The starting point is to share the vision with each country, then it's in their hands. Besides, the EU has strong connections with the US, with DTRA, and the departments of energy, state etc. Currently, due to Covid, face to face meetings are not taking place , the last physical one took place in 2019, but I am sure it will be reconvened soon between the US and EU CBRN partners. This has been very useful in some countries in Central Asia, like Uzbekistan, where we have been able to identify potential overlap or competition between Russia, the US and Europe. The EU is also part of the International Science and Technology Centre, hosted in Kazakhstan, where the US, Canada, the EU as a body, Japan, South Korea and additional regional partners, share activity and projects as well as funding for specific activities. This was initiated after the Cold war and is now an intergovernmental science and technology platform for

exchanging information and deciding on co-funding of activities linked to export control, security, science and CBRN in particular. That’s another great example of interaction with other global partners.

There is also regular, systematic interaction with Interpol, Europol, UN agencies and the World Health Organisation (WHO) in many parts of Africa and Central Asia. I would come back to the initial principle of the CBRN CoE, which is to stimulate the thinking. National teams should include all their CBRN stakeholders as representatives; that means their 1540 focal point, their WHO international health regulation focal or contact point or officials who represent the country externally. This delivers not only interministerially, but also a crosscutting national team or network to include everyone interacting with internal and external CBRN stakeholders. This way they can

Additional funding was provided for Covid supplies, equipment and special online training ©CBRNe World

filter and collect all information from all external bodies.

GW: Has a disaster like Covid, for all the human loss, allowed member countries to see the benefit of a whole of government approach by forcing cooperation between government departments? Also there's an understanding that emerging infectious diseases are like bio-weapons and other CBRN-type incidents and they need to work together far more closely than in the past Have you seen feedback from any CoE nations suggesting that there have been breakthroughs?

TS: Definitely. Although I cannot share examples from all 62 countries as I do not have specific overviews of each of them! I've been engaged in the results from Africa, the Gulf and Central Asia, especially this year with Covid. In the UAE, for example, they have been facing this crisis with a lot of proactivity and engagement. They have been able to take quick decisions and apply them across the whole country, taking some direct technical and scientific advice from the CBRN programme and its regional experts. A regional CBRN Hub was inaugurated in November in the Abu Dhabi.

Even in Europe, we were not sufficiently well prepared to face and react quickly to such an event. Our systems have suffered, and we have not reacted as efficiently as we could have. Easier to say than implement! There are some big

lessons learned, but there will be a need for a wider discussion and far away from the daily stress and work.

GW: How do the CoEs ensure they don't ‘fight the last war' so we end up with an excellent emerging infectious disease system but not a very good chem system, for example? How do you try and raise awareness that even though what is happening now will seem as if it’s going to be important forever, other crises will come along?

TS: I think they know this. If we just consider what happened in Lebanon in August, it's a clear demonstration that if your chemical safety and security governance is inappropriate it needs some major attention. Equally there’s the question of command and control, you may have well trained people but if the

systems are not working well for any reason, then good procedures, protocols and people won’t help if something happens.

International cooperation and multilateralism is the efficient way to share best practice. You can’t close a discussion with a fixed and final solution, nothing is the best technology for everyone. Sometimes the best compromise is the way to save lives. Most important is the interaction and exchange of experience and then, with top up funding, to help bring out the substance on the ground. You need to have awareness of the interactions that are taking place inside a nation or ministry and this is how such a programme can contribute as it's always the country that is responsible. It's about creating a place that contributes to multilateralism and international partnership.

The COE can introduce partner countries to international experts and exercises, like this one in Belgium ©CBRNe World

A Culture of CBRN

Of all the regions around the world that need CBRN Centre of excellence it would be hard to find one where it’s more necessary than the Middle East. If the CW usage wasn’t bad enough there have been tens of wars there, involving one neighbour/faction or another, resulting in extended periods of instability and weak government further bedevilling rebuilding and capability development.

A variety of factors influenced the location of the European Commission’s CBRN Centre of Excellence (COE), but the fact that Jordan has a strong and well respected government and hasn’t been in a conflict with any neighbours since 1973 has to be significant. Nasser bin Nasser explained how it came about: “The Middle East Scientific Institute for Security (MESIS) was established in 2002. Around 2010, given Jordan's multi-dimensional role in regional security, the European Commission requested that Jordan, as a credible, reliable partner, host the regional secretariat for the Middle East.

During discussions about what this regional secretariat could look like, both sides recognised that there was already an organisation working like a centre of excellence, which was MESIS, and able to host a secretariat, so there was no need to reinvent the wheel!”

The COE mission is to: “mitigate risks and strengthen an allhazards security governance in partner countries of the EU following a voluntary and demand-driven approach. Under the responsibility of CBRN national focal points and their inter-ministerial CBRN national teams, EU support is provided to implement a wide range of CBRN risk mitigation activities including needs and risk assessments, national and regional action plans, training, train the trainer modules, table top and real time (including cross-border) field exercises, in all partner countries and regional secretariats1.”

The Middle East is a compact COE, with Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon, and MESIS is its home. MESIS’ mission is: “mitigating

Nasser bin Nasser, Managing Director of MESIS, gives his opinion to Gwyn Winfield on what is working well at the CBRN COE in the Middle East

CBRN risks in a region facing regular unrest… advocat[ing] a networked approach to foster robust partnerships and collaborations in the face of the threats of an ever-changing security landscape. MESIS believes that a deep understanding of culture is essential for developing successful approaches to reducing threats. [They] design and implement culturally-relevant, engaging, and sustainable capacity building programmes in addition to being a driver for policymaking and legislation development in areas related to CBRN risk mitigation2.”

Many of the ambitions in the above statement would be true throughout the COEs and the 61 nations involved, but the one that jumps out is culturally-relevant.

MESIS isn’t interested in a tickbox exercise where individuals lecture busy people without regard for whether knowledge is actually being transferred or retained in a sustainable manner. Under its tutelage, the COE has been looking for local solutions to local problems. Nasser explained the vision further: “We do three things at a very high level. One is that we try to promote a whole of government approach in dealing with CBRN risks, because there's a tendency across our region to have an over-reliance on security institutions like hard security, military and intelligence agencies that will deal with anything that has a security dimension.

“But these hybrid threats need a

whole of government approach and that's why the region struggles in countering other hybrid threats like violent extremism, or CBRN, because they require all of government in partnership. CBRN threats can be addressed with a solereliance on the guns, gates and guards approach.

“The second thing we do is try to create some regional cooperation on these threats and risks as they're cross border by nature. Our third aim is to promote what role there is for civil society, and there are very few civil society organisations working on security issues in our region. Typically, relations between authorities and civil society are complex here. So, we try to sort of promote that positive working relationship in the security sphere.

“On a more granular level that translates to helping identify what the emerging needs are in the region, so there's a two-way street between the region and the international community, as opposed to having the international community dictate to us what we need to work on. We localise and culturalise international best practices and this is probably the most important thing we do. We can't technically compete with the international community’s expertise on these risk mitigation , but by virtue of being from the region, we can design and implement sustainable solutions to some of the regional needs.

“We're increasingly offering innovative approaches to building capacity, including gamified simulation-based training. We think the PowerPoint eight hour workshop model is becoming obsolete, and we want to infuse our very traditional sector with some new thinking when it comes to capacity building and the learning sciences. We attempt to measure our impact and quality, and not just look at some of the more quantifiable metrics that policymakers are caught up with: how many workshops, participants or nationalities. We act as a driver for policy making in the region and hope to carve out a role for civil society to help shape the discussion. That's pretty much how we see our role in the region.”

When it comes to a whole of government approach it’s hard to find a better example than Covid. While it is an emerging infectious disease it gives a massive insight into how a real biological attack would look. All arms of the government from education and health through to the military and law enforcement have had to come together, first to understand the problem, and then to start orientating themselves to deal with it. There is no single approach but it is fair to say that centralised states capable of forcing different departments to work together have done better than those that have not.

Likewise, it is fair to say that states that enjoy higher levels of

trust among their citizens have also faired better. Covid has worked not only as an educational tool for CBRN, but also a warning as to why some of the things that CBRN professionals have been talking about for decades are important.

Nasser agreed that it had its positives, but capturing all these lessons will be a big task. “It's a bit of a mixed bag. Covid has been a wake-up call in emphasising the need for all parts of government to work together. But what tends to happen with the way the international community engages this sector is that they prioritize and invest in hard security, focussing on bio-terrorism, even though bio-terrorism might not be a priority for the region. Investing in public health capacity on the other hand, inadvertently builds capacity to deal with weaponised viruses and bio-terrorism. That capacity building approach needs to be revisited.

“The public health system should be invested in as heavily as those parts of government that tend to get priority because they're combating terrorism, or involved in things that the international community thinks should be a priority. We mustn’t lose the positives, such as the way governments have tapped into universities, research institutions, or even the private sector for diagnostics, research and leveraging their wealth of data to make data-informed decisions.

“We're looking at governments

turning to the private sector to deal with the very complex supply chains that are needed to receive and administer the vaccine to populations. We are seeing these dynamics but the question is, will we retain these lessons going forward? Are we actually ushering in a new phase with a very strong partnership between different communities of stakeholders, or is it just a one-off case in a crisis?

“Currently, governments across the region are rightly preoccupied with managing the crisis, but I do believe that some people are thinking more long-term about how we ensure these changes are sustained going forward. We can't find ourselves in another situation like this in the future and given the anthropogenic stresses we're putting on the environment, we’ll be here again soon enough. The question is whether we can build resilient and sufficiently adaptive systems, to be in a better position to deal with the next crisis when, rather than if, it happens.”

One of the big challenges for the international community will be in looking at countries that did well during Covid and trying to see what will work elsewhere. The stance that Vietnam took, for example, cannot just be transplanted to France. For a centre focussed on culturallyrelevant solutions it will be interesting to see which out of the huge palette of options MESIS and its partners select, as the ones that might fit for future response. Nasser explained what he meant by culturally-relevant. “Every country, region, even an organisation has its unique values, national psyche, organisational culture that dictates its behaviour, action, performance within the system that it’s operating. If we look at the corporate sector, why did VW lie about emissions tests a few years ago? What was it about the organisational culture of the system it operated in that allowed for that? Or Boeing with the 737 Max crashes, what is it

Mesis has been working on radiation training ©MESIS

about that organisational culture that prevents it from taking responsibility over this? After years of accumulated neglect, Covid is an excellent example of how countries are responding. When we talk about culture, we're not talking about cultural tourism, or being able to greet someone in their native language, but understanding the deep rooted factors that shape success.

“Working in our sphere, there's a tendency for organisations and subject matter experts from outside the region to parachute in solutions and implement topdown approaches that lack the foundation blocks for success. You need to develop programmes that reflect local priorities and attitudes, but also the administrative realities, which will be key to their eventual acceptance and success. I'm very skeptical about a contractor model where you fly in experts to magically solve the problem in a week. For example, there's a rush towards among the international community to want to get our region to develop strategies or legislation to address particular issues. That takes up so much time and effort, but most of the time those strategies end up collecting dust on the officials’ shelves because they're unimplementable. As an organization, we prefer instead to look at how we can build that

bottom-up approach. I'll give you a few specific examples.

“There's a big interest in nuclear forensics, because it's topical. Everybody's interested in forensics and there's lots of funding. But you can't do forensics without proper quality control in your labs and any investment in forensics is misplaced unless there’s prior investment in the underlying foundational blocks. Another example is that my organisation does a lot of Arabic language text development for the IAEA and we develop the Arabic best practice guidelines for the World Institute for Nuclear Security (WINS). That's not because there's any shortage of Arabic language translators in Vienna, but because both organisations realise that there's a big difference between the literal translation of something and indigenising it. That's what we do. We work a lot on trustworthiness. Trustworthiness, and human reliability require such a delicate cultural approach that I don't think anybody from outside the given region can meaningfully inform this issue.”

There’s concern that Covid will loom so large that itcould obscure any other threats. The job of the COEs is to focus on the mediumto-longer term risk as they relate to their specific regions, rather than what the rest of the world might be fixated on. At some point the COE will have to work

1 https://europa.eu/cbrn-risk-mitigation/index_en

2 http://mesis.jo/about

with its partner nations and set its risk priorities for the next three to five years, when Covid is reduced to innumerable Powerpoints! Does Nasser have any idea what they might be?

“If I could really effectively tell what could happen in the next three to five years in my region, I'd be a very wealthy man! We can't find ourselves in another situation like this in the coming years and given the anthropogenic stresses that we're putting on the environment, we're probably going to be there before long. The question is, is whether we're able to build resilient and responsive systems to be in a better position to deal with the next crisis when it happens. From my personal perspective, some of the biggest threats including cyber risks which have been made more pronounced by rapid digitization caused by Covid. Likewise, there are continued threats posed by ungoverned spaces and their relation with non-state actors, whether criminal or terrorist. Increasingly blurred lines between terrorists and criminal organisations is also something to be concerned about. In the most immediate term, the biggest priority across the globe will be dealing with the repercussions of Covid, namely the socioeconomic damage it has created and potential that it could lead to social unrest.”

Crimping the terrorist threat

Gwyn Winfield looks at Project CRIMP, Interpol’s project to combat potential chemical terrorists in Iraq

Since 2010 Interpol’s CBRN sub directorate has been working around the world with specialist law enforcement officers to try and combat individuals that would use weapons of mass destruction for criminal or terrorist acts. The nexus of global criminality, spread of foreign fighters, the accessibility of CBRNE materials and the need for complex cross-governmental approaches to any CBRN attacks means that there is a serious issue to grapple with. The sub directorate revolves around three distinct teams dealing with the prevention of bioterrorism, radiological and nuclear terrorism, and chemical and explosive terrorism. Each unit has a current or retired senior law enforcement

officer and is staffed with other law enforcement individuals and subject matter experts. A UK law enforcement officer, David Hargreaves, is a chemical and explosive prevention lead, who gave a presentation on Project CRIMP at the 5th CBRN Safety and Security Conference in Baghdad.

The chemical risk identification and mitigation programme (CRIMP) is part of a stable of projects within Interpol’s sub directorate. These include: Oleander (coordination table top exercise); Sapphire (biological threat assessment); BRC (current bio threats); Petrichor (cross border bio attacks); Chasm (chemically contaminated crime scenes); CCC (chemical security

Interpol works internationally to help eradicate organised crime and terrorism ©Interpol

for top officials), Rhino (West African project for improved coordination for bio attacks), Chase (chemical smuggling) and Litmus (early warning of chemical attacks). In addition to these they hold a wide variety of training and other workshops, as well as open source monitoring on CBRNE, a monthly digest of incidents, the Geiger and Watchmaker databases for radiological and bomb making activities. All this is done in conjunction with the local partner’s law enforcement community. Interpol does not tell, or mandate, what training needs to be done, but makes it available to all partners, and if a nation decides that it’s needed, Interpol can provide it as long as resources allow.

At the pointy end of the spear Interpol can, on request, provide operational support to any of its 194 member countries. On occasion it has helped with proactive operations targeting the illicit trafficking of CBRNE materials across borders, supplied an Interpol response team or the addition of CBRNE expertise to a pre-planned Interpol major event support team. For example, in 2014, Interpol coordinated and supported an operation conducted by the Moldovan authorities which resulted in the interception and seizure of 200gr (0.44lbs) of enriched uranium worth €1.6m on the black market. The successful operation led to the arrest of seven members of an organised criminal group who specialised in

smuggling radioactive materials. While Crimp is available to many nations, Mr Hargreaves and his team ran it in Iraq in March 2018 and 2019. He explained to the audience, about the work that Interpol does and how it coordinates with Iraq. “Interpol is the only global international policing body, we are not secret agents! Our whole aim is to encourage mutually beneficial relationships between law enforcement agencies and bring to justice those that wish us harm. Among the benefits is that each member country is connected by a national centre bureau, usually run by that country’s federal policing body, which in Iraq is the Iraqi police service. They are the link between the police officers in the field, and the information that comes back from investigations and terrorists, who do not respect boundaries. Crimes are often transnational. We share that information and connect all member countries via a secure network to progress investigations. We have a significant number of databases including on individuals, biometric forensic data like fingerprints and DNA, high quality photographs for ID, documentation on works of art and foreign terrorist fighters.

Those are the ones that I consider relevant for law enforcement bodies in Iraq. We have 100m police records and do 19m searches a day.

“I run the chemical security programme and Crimp. This is a

multiphase chemical security programme that has three aims. These are to identify chemicals most likely to cause risk to a country, to establish multiagency working groups and to propose sustainable countermeasures to support existing security practices to reduce risk. It is designed to add to existing security regimes. Despite excellent work in Iraq we know that terrorists exploit vulnerabilities, so it is only right that we review what we do and implement international best practice.

“During 2018 we delivered the first two phases of Crimp to a broad mix of delegates. We had the national centre bureau, huge supporters of Interpol, and we both provided a huge amount of two-way resources and support. The ministries of environment and the interior, the commission of customs, Brigadier Delli’s team in civil defence (see page 22), the directorates of explosive controls and criminal evidence, the federal intelligence and investigations agency, security services and the Iraq national monitoring agency (INMA) all took part over the two phases. In 2018 I also ran two specialist investigation courses dealing with contaminated crime scenes (Chasm) and crimes that cross international boundaries. We had many of the same agencies involved in both courses, this was important as it allowed us to build trust and confidence. We look at the chemicals of most concern to a country, and while all chemicals

are dangerous a focus is necessary.

“The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) specifies 43 CWA and their precursors plus some discrete chemicals, like fluorine, that we should monitor.

Iraq as a signatory to the CWC will already be monitoring them. Other law enforcement groups monitor additional databases. For example, the Australia group, which has 87 CW precursors. The Environmental Protection Act in Canada has 151 chemicals that they consider dangerous, India’s pollution control board monitors 708 chemicals, whereas the US monitors 86,000 chemicals under its toxic substance control act!

That is all great, and these lists are detailed and comprehensive, but are they relevant to what Iraq uses, distributes or

possesses? More importantly what are you seeing threat actors use in Iraq? We should focus the bulk of our endeavours on those chemicals that cause most risk to Iraqi nationals.”

It’s an important consideration. Nations less touched by war and widespread terrorism don’t provide the same opportunities for terrorist chemical activity that Iraq does. When chemicals are safely locked up and monitored then the net has to be widened to find more exotic chemicals for nefarious purposes. If on the other hand, there is a super abundance of a dangerous chemical, why look further? By focussing on local threats Crimp can strip out the things that might happen, and instead drill into things that ‘will’ happen unless steps are taken.

Sadly the local situation precluded Interpol from flying into Iraq to do the presentations locally. Instead both phases had to be done in a neighbouring country, Jordan, with the first phase taking place in the port of Aqaba and the second in the capital, Amman. While there is a certain amount of ‘getting to know you’ in Crimp workshops the desire is for the Interpol team to understand what the problems and issues are, and to get different groups to discuss them. Mr Hargreaves explained in his presentation how they do it: “We bring together a wide group of government, law enforcement, academic, industry and other stakeholders to develop a comprehensive picture of chemical risks and possible mitigation measures. One of the activities on

In rare cases Interpol can deploy assets into country to deal with a major incident ©Interpol

day one is to get each agency to stand up, and in turn say what they do, what their roles are in the field of chemical security and incident management. Often one agency will explain what they do, and then a second and third will chime up and say, ‘we do that as well!’ We saw it in Iraq and elsewhere. Because some agencies don’t talk to each other there is a lot of duplication and wasted effort.”

In addition to the classroom element in phase one there was a field trip to the port at Aqaba to walk through the facility and see the security and how they dealt with hazmat cargoes. Once Mr Hargreaves’ team has finished phase one they then put together a bespoke package for phase two, in which they focus their efforts on the lessons from the first phase. Mr Hargreaves explained further: “Where possible we brought in the same participants for phase two and talked about how we could further implement some of the best practices we had identified, which agencies could take charge and whether legislation existed that would make it work better. We brought in subject matter experts from places like the FBI, and took people to see the Jordanian police forensic lab, especially the ballistics and chemical analysis unit. At the time we did that Jordan’s previous head of counter terrorism had been assassinated and everything we saw was being used to identify the DNA and ballistic residue on the bullet that killed him.

“I look at what a customer does well so I can share it with other member countries, and in Iraq we found that some chemicals have security escorts, which is really good, as some of the chemicals that bad actors want are exported. This is good practice! Iraq also has a review of high hazard chemicals, and the multi ministry group, led by the INMA. Not all countries have these, so we can share the experience and ask, why aren’t you doing this?

“All representatives are tasked with identifying vulnerabilities, and what can be done to reduce them. One example mentioned was that in most places around the world fire and civil defence provide schoolchildren with fire awareness training, while in Iraq they add a bit about chemical security and counterradicalisation. It is a great way to make the youth of Iraq aware. We also did awareness raising on who does what, and this included things like why decontaminating people before they go into hospital is important. I sat with the directorate of explosive control and someone from the CBRN unit and we discussed homemade mortars with a CWA fill that had been used. We learnt that the explosive ordnance disposal guys deal with the explosive but not the chemical and the CBRN guys deal with the chemical and not the explosives. I suggested that they get together which seemed sinister at first, but because of the leadership from

people like General Delli they started working together and are now well equipped to deal with such incidents. We also worked on test purchasing, where I go into a hardware store to see if I can purchase chemicals that if mixed correctly would make a good explosive. Often you need to educate the people working in these stores as they might not know these things.”

As was evident from many of the other presentations given at the conference, Iraq has a wide variety of chemical safety and security problems and some are significant. Working with partners like Interpol helps deal with some of them and following the Crimp work the Iraqi government moved to enhance those elements where there was best practice, like the school visits. It is not the case that having done this work Interpol moves on. There are other projects in the explosive, biological and radiological portfolios that could also help. A positive for Mr Hargreaves’ wider team is that there are likely to be some of the same staff working on those projects, meaning a cadre of officers that have a better understanding of how they can apply best practice. He suggested that it was important these lessons were taken on board: “Daesh is not dead, they’re merely sleeping, we must remain vigilant and [trust] that the mitigation measures we put in place are not forgotten, instead they are reviewed and refreshed.”

Being responsible

ZR: What is your role within Turkish Chemical Manufacturers’ Association (TKSD)? In the ‘league table’ of responsible countries, where does Turkey sit?

CZ: I was environmental advisor to the Turkish Chemical Manufacturers’ Association from 1994 to 2018. I was in charge of the Responsible Care coordination in Turkey and also liaison with the European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC) and other government entities here in Turkey, and in neighbouring countries.

In terms of a lead country, a league table, it is hard to say with the exception of five or six in Europe but knowing CEFIC and activities that are going on in the industry, I would say that Turkey is probably in the upper-mid level in such a league list.

ZR: How do we encourage countries to work better within chemical safety? Often rules and laws can be set, but they require government departments to respect and enforce them too. How do we

get a ‘whole of government’ approach to this?

CZ: There's no need to encourage countries to work better on chemical safety, they have to work on it, and they are. All EU applicable regulations and others are in place, and all EU countries, including Turkey, fulfil those requirements. In Turkey the regulations are harmonised, even though in some other member states they are not fully implemented. Therefore, the issue is the enforcement, management, and follow-up. How to encourage the companies within countries is the question. Enforcement is good, but Responsible Care1 somewhat provides that, not enforcement. Responsible Care is a voluntary initiative and is in some ways better than government regulations because it requires fulfilment of all the legal requirements, plus additional ones such as sustainable development, and talking and harmonising activities with the community and such.

Another good voluntary tool is the ISO standards, for example. Companies go for ISO standards

Caner Zanbak, Environmental Coordinator at the Turkish Miners Association, talks to Zoe Rutherford about careful management of chemicals

because they use them as an incentive over their competitors in the global chemical market. Even countries like China, the giant, are getting in line with voluntary requirements, although they may not be applying them internally.

Exports companies have to fulfil all the safety requirements and will. In the EU for example this is registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals (Reach). There are five or six different major Reach type applications, and almost every country has its own. Reach provides the necessary incentives or enforcement tools in the documentation and such.

ZR: Can you see CEFIC and Responsible Care, or things like them, being undertaken around the world? What do you think it would take to achieve this?

CZ: Responsible Care started in 1984, coinciding with the year of Bhopal. It is well spread now, around the world almost. Currently, I believe there are around 68 countries using it. I don't know if they are fulfilling all of the requirements, but they are at least signing up to much of it. The problem is, within countries not all chemical companies are signing up for Responsible Care. A country may say: ‘We are employing Responsible Care principles,’ but if you ask them, how many companies are members, you find that Responsible Care is actually managed by the chemical industry

associations or trade associations, and the number of member companies signed up to it is very small. All the big companies, of course, the global ones operating in many countries, employ the principles of Responsible Care. But its effectiveness is questionable on country basis.

ZR: Traditionally the users of chemical products, and sometimes the chemical industry too, prefer a ‘light touch’ that allows them to be competitive and not need expensive chemical safety and surety regulations. What can be done to educate governments and industry on how best to cooperate with their opposite numbers to promote a sense of unity and mutual respect, towards each other, the citizens, and the environment?

CZ: Encouraging governments is really a very hard thing to do. If you talk to any government authority or any officer in the government, they say: ’Well, of course. Our laws and regulations are very strict to protect the safety of our people and the environment.’ But when it comes to the effectiveness of those enforcement issues, they are not that strong. That's my feeling, especially in developing countries.

Industry people, in any country, even developing countries, are aware of the need to work on the safety and security of chemicals. But the way they handle it differs very significantly...

ZR: What can be done to encourage greater enthusiasm for chemical safety in countries that aren’t there yet? How do we encourage industry to get together and form associations such as the Turkish Chemical Manufacturers Association and ultimately become a part of the International Council of Chemical Associations? Some countries, such as India, experienced a lot of chemical related explosions in 2020.

CZ: Unfortunately, the global market is putting a lot of pressure on the companies, including the internationals and multinationals. Even though the headquarters may be tough on overseeing the activities of their overseas units very closely, the locals are under pressure to look good for headquarters, so, there are mishaps. Also, there’s global competition and price changes. Some countries manufacture some very hard-to-manage chemicals at low cost, but if it is low cost, that means they’re likely lacking on safety and environmental protection . Safety is the main issue because chemicals are like naughty kids. They need to be trained! They need to be managed properly otherwise if that’s overlooked, if not enough attention is paid to the immediate safety precautions, then chemicals behave unexpectedly, or expectedly, but in a manner that’s unwelcome!

ZR: In your presentation, you talked about adopting a more

integrated risk management approach. Chemical safety and chemical security are two sides of the same coin. So how can we get people to work together and recognise that?

CZ: Safety is the fundamentals of providing good control of chemical management. Security involves the illicit use of chemicals by people intent on unpleasant behaviour. Any very dangerous chemical in good hands can be managed properly under safety requirements, but the same chemical in somebody else's hand may become a security risk. The simplest example is sulphuric acid, a very potent chemical. In the right hands sulphuric acid is a very useful chemical that can be managed safely. In the wrong hands it is very destructive.

The difference between safety and security can be difficult to convey in languages other than English, as in lot of other languages the words for safety and security are the same. You may be talking to someone about chemical security, but the meaning is confused as the word is the same for safety. It’s even confusing in Turkish, we mix them, and too often we use them interchangeably as if they have the same meaning or use one when we mean the other.

ZR: In your opinion what are the biggest challenges facing Iraq in terms of hazardous waste management? Do you

think they can be overcome in the coming decade?

CZ: The challenges for Iraq have to be overcome not in 10 years but sooner than that. I have been in several seminars and workshops for Iraqi people, and there was almost no private chemical manufacturers or recognised chemical trade association, but it was decided to establish one. This syndicate, as it is called, wants to be accepted by government entities and establish a line of communication. That's the biggest challenge. The government, besides agreeing

to talk to them, should trust them, should make them feel liable for the industry’s behaviour. The industry, by the way is not only about manufacturing but also trade in chemicals. The production and the trade people should get together and establish a good association and then consider the principles of Responsible Care. Even if they cannot fulfil all the requirements of Responsible Care, they can follow the guidelines and principles. They have laws for chemical management, and also hazardous waste regulations and

Turkey has been improving its hazmat response agency, AFAD, in the past five years ©CBRNe World

the government wants to enforce them, but on the other hand, they don't know how and who should enforce them effectively.

ZR: In terms of best practice, what do you think is the most valuable piece of guidance you could pass on in terms of hazardous waste management? Is it communication and cooperation, or is there something else you would advise?

CZ: Totally, communication and cooperation are key, especially with hazardous waste issues. Generally waste management should start with recognition of the waste. It’s necessary to recognise the existence of hazardous wastes and what they are, otherwise, anything they

want to throw away is considered waste. During the conference I was following discussions and the only hazardous waste being talked about was the waste from universities and some government institutes like laboratories. But there are a lot of other sources of hazardous waste in Iraq, like in any country.

One big issue is that there is nowhere for hazardous waste to go, it’ll either go to landfills or dump sites, or into the rivers. If this waste is recognised as hazardous, they will act differently. The definition of hazardous waste has to be understood, it is not only certain types of waste from laboratories or certain lines of manufacturing. People are generating hazardous

waste too, all those small companies are generating lots of waste which is not good for the environment because they have to throw it away. There's no designated place for it to go.

To manage the waste effectively the government needs to first establish the existence of the waste producers, how many companies are there, where are they, what do they generate, how is the waste collected and disposed of? Then they can begin to work together to manage the problem.

ZR: Are there comparable standards between Iraq and Pakistan in terms of the training you have been involved with on the benefits of voluntary safety, security and environmental standards?

CZ:I would say yes, there are. But the way standards and such are managed or employed, are quite different. It varies from country to country, especially for very heavily populated countries, and those below certain income levels. For developing and underdeveloped countries, it is really hard to enforce or fulfil the regulations’ requirements. I'm sure every country has copycat waste management regulations, a copy/paste version of REACH, but is it manageable?

ZR: So, for countries like this, and those with lax chemical safety, do you think the incident in Beirut created shockwaves in governments, or do you think that it was of

Once waste is recognised as hazardous people treat it differently ©CBRNe World

passing interest for them and not enough to make them change their ways?

CZ: The Beirut thing…Who would keep that much of one type of commodity material for over a year, two years even, in one area just because of unresolved commercial or legal issues, and especially if it is fertiliser? You can't put all your eggs in one basket in terms of safety, same for security, and you don't let anybody with a sledgehammer come near that basket.

ZR: After Beirut we saw quite a lot of scrambling, with people checking what sort of stocks of ANFO they have lying around. But do you think that was a gut reaction, they did a little bit, looked good, but don’t intend to actually do anything about it in the long-term?

CZ: Well, I'm sure they are doing something, it's a security issue. It's also an issue of accessibility with certain types of commodity materials, such as ammonium nitrate. It is a common commodity, unless you mix it with fuel oil and find the right igniter, then it becomes an explosive. Farmers are really suffering because of the nonsense restrictions that governments are enforcing on the distribution of ammonium nitrate. In Turkey, for example, they stopped selling it to cooperatives. What do people say? Nothing. Because of that the crop

value came down last year from two years ago. Now, they are distributing under tighter security. A terrorist doesn’t necessarily need tonnes of ammonium nitrate for a bad act, so it's not the quantity, it’s accessibility. We should cut the accessibility, that's the most vulnerable area we are facing in chemical security, especially in this region.

ZR: What do you see as the major challenges for chemical safety and security in the next two to three years, and how can countries orientate themselves to face them? How can we encourage both the private and public sectors to enter into voluntary partnerships to tackle chemical security matters together?

CZ: The main issue is to open up communication line between the government and the private sector, especially in the area of security. For safety, it is just to enforce the laws there are and keep good track of certain chemicals, especially the dual-use chemicals, and establish a knowyour-customer arrangement, be aware of who is buying what and establish a reporting scheme. In developing countries these issues are usually run by the ministry of the interior. It's not enough because those people do not necessarily know anything about chemical security and safety, they know policing security and

1 https://cefic.org/our-industry/responsible-care/

keeping people safe. So, communication is the biggest hurdle here.

Government authorities worry about customs duties and taxation, the private sector is concerned about its marketing network. If the government restricts or bans imports, exports, or the production of something, then availability of chemicals becomes a problem for the private sector, which cannot survive, therefore, they have to come together. The government will lose money if they ban certain things because nothing will be manufactured from the things that would have been imported commodities. Also, there is the issue of human safety, as banning something will lead to smuggling and uncontrolled trading. For narcotics, for example, there is good international understanding and cooperation between governments and companies, but for some everyday chemicals, there are problems.

The major challenges are first, realising that there's a problem for both the government side and private sector, then communication. Good governance is the most important. Governance doesn't just mean setting up regulations or copycatting them, but making them doable, workable, enforceable, manageable, and allowing infrastructure for it.

Pollution Solution

In a country such as Iraq, the world’s sixth largest oil producer, and therefore the sixth largest consumer of chemicals for petroleum production, the task of trying to map the chemical industry can be difficult. it encompasses massive multinational oil producers, small private companies, and public sector organisations that are using different chemicals for various purposes. The first thing to do is to carefully consider the system changes that have occurred in Iraq over the years.

In the 1970s Iraq’s chemical industry was well-developed and heavily invested in, with the main players being from the public sector and including the ministries of industries, oil and power. The private sector was there but in a limited way. By 1980 Iraq had the second largest economy in the Arab world, after Saudi Arabia, and the third largest in the Middle East. It had developed a complex, centrally planned economy, which was dominated by the state.

Later in the 1980s and 1990s however, industry in Iraq began

to experience difficulties because of the political situations resulting from the Iran/Iraq war, and the First Gulf war. These conflicts also damaged Iraq’s infrastructure, left the country isolated from the international community, and financially and socially drained. Because of these difficulties some of Iraq’s industries collapsed entirely.

As we entered the 2000s, and particularly after 2003, Iraq’s chemical industry was very weak, with less development and investment than it had seen in preceding decades. As these issues took their toll on both the government and industry, you might think it would be difficult to keep track of all the country’s chemical operations, and know exactly what was there and what they were doing. Companies were monitored, the funding mechanism that was then in place for this industry was the issue.

Prior to 2003 the system in Iraq was very different, the government subsidised industry’s expenses and covered them when money was lost. After 2003, this

Mr. Luay Al-Mukhtar, National focal point, from the Iraq Ministry of Health and Environment, discusses pollution and chemical safety in Iraq with Zoe Rutherford

process had to be carefully reviewed, this subsidy system was unsustainable. Many of the old government related companies began to seek financial investment elsewhere. The government also began to look for outside, private investment for these industries, which they could then turn into more development.

Iraq is now seeing new industrial investment, particularly the petrochemical industry, insofar as the production of oil, and their refineries, are the main consumers of chemicals. With superior raw materials in Iraq, it is hoped that renewed investment will continue to bolster the private sector and lead to further development.

As industry has rebounded, so has Iraq’s ability to map its chemical industry and monitor the materials used and produced. Luay al-Mokhtar, director of the ministry of environment’s chemical monitoring and site assessment department, said: “In Iraq we now have good tools for

monitoring and controlling chemicals. An environmental agreement is important for each chemical imported into Iraq. We have a yearly database delineating what types of chemicals are coming in, where they are from, and what they will be used for.” Plenty of data is held, but work remains to be done on the detail of the data as it relates to the security of chemical management.

If a facility falls outside the ministry of environment’s purview how can they know what contaminants/chemicals may be present on a site, and how can they manage the potential threat to civilians if they are not made privy to the information? Iraq, like other countries, has regulations, and environmental laws to assist with this, said Mr al-Mokhtar. “We have an environmental protection law, number 27, published in 2008. This is not the first environmental law, but it is a new one.” Under this law any new activity needs an environmental

licence before it can happen. Companies have to complete an environmental assessment report, and these explain all of the environmental impacts of an activity before premises can be built and the activity begun.

The ministry of environment also monitors every activity wherever it is in Iraq, that is the law, though there are issues. “I think the implementation is not yet efficient enough. It needs for example, more techniques, more technologies, and more cooperation with the stakeholders concerned over sharing their data and careful self-monitoring,” said Mr al-Mokhtar.Renewed investment, development and monitoring is of course a good thing, but one major issue that remains to be tackled, is pollution. Luay al-Mokhtar stated that there are some clear reasons for this. “When it comes to the chemical industry there is a huge pollution problem, largely because a lot of the old industrial sites are

The Shatt al Arab has been a problem for years ©Raymond Bucko

contaminated. We have to look carefully at oil production, oil refineries, and new petrochemical projects, as well as others, like cement projects, in terms of emissions and environmental risks.… As the ministry of environment, we need to consider how the private and government sectors can work together to control releases and emissions into the environment. We also need to look very carefully at chemical and hazardous waste management, because knowledge in that field is still limited.”

It is not just emissions that cause industrial pollution in Iraq, another is the way in which waste is dumped. This has been a perennial problem, with industrial and agricultural wastewater being discharged into the Shatt Al-Arab for more than a decade, and many oil spillages occurring on industrial sites.

As an environmental specialist Mr al-Mokhtar, divides waste into three or four categories. “In the first instance, we are only talking about solid wastes and emissions and releases into the environment, that is emissions into water and the air. Solid waste can be divided into hazardous and municipal wastes. Medical waste has special regulations. When we talk about dumping waste, we have to know clearly there is no dumping of waste in Iraq on official or unofficial sites, whether hazardous, medical or municipal waste.” To control hazardous waste, and ensure it is treated

safely, Iraq now has a directorate within the ministry of science and technology whose sole purpose is the careful management of the country’s hazardous wastes.

The Euphrates and Tigris come together at Basra to form the Shatt Al-Arab, and the water pollution problems here usually stem from sewage, not industry. Approximately 6m cubic meters of wastewater is delivered to the rivers every day, most of it untreated. “This is a very big problem” stated Mr al-Mokhtar.

To understand these issues, we first need some understanding of the water situation in Iraq. When we look at the river system the main sources of the water coming into Iraq are Turkey, Syria, and Iran. Some of these countries have built dams on their rivers over the years, which has caused issues with floodwaters coming into Iraq from neighbouring countries. The incoming waters are often polluted with sewage and crude oil, and some believe the dams have caused the water quality in Iraq to worsen because they reduce the natural dilution effect of waters that are allowed to flow naturally. Preventing these dams is not the solution for pollution though, says Mr al-Mokhtar, “The solution is to manage our water and wastewater carefully; we have to treat it and use these water sources carefully in development. We haven't depended on the dilution process; this is not enough,” he added.

At present no Iraqi city has a

fully operational sewage collection and treatment system, and maybe less than 20%, of the wastewater is treated. A lot of water treatment projects were started before Daesh, but they stopped during the troubles and until the oil price settled down.

“This was very sad, and very tragic, especially for Basra” says Mr al-Mokhtar.

Basra has a major problem with sewage treatment, as 12 rivers flow from the Shatt Al-Arab and return into it. If these were clean the city could become a very beautiful place - the Venice of the East, as it was once called. Unfortunately, people throw their sewage into these rivers and create a very bad situation. Mr alMokhtar stated: “We encouraged the government of Basra, and the ministry of municipalities to continue working on a project to fix the problem, but unfortunately that was stopped some time ago.

Iraq is now addressing the situation with new wastewater projects. “There is a fantastic project in Kerbala, which amounts to complete wastewater treatment,” stated Mr al-Mokhtar. This new wastewater project could cover all of Kerbala for the next 20 years, which is good news, and it is to be hoped that this will happen in every city in Iraq.

Iraq’s pollution issues require long term solutions and programmes around capacity building, as well as the provision of technical assistance to all stakeholders, enabling them to be

more engaged, and to understand how to carefully manage wastes and hazardous chemicals. One issue that is often raised when talking about Iraq, chemicals and pollution, is the north of the country. This region was targeted by terrorist groups for a long time, leaving a legacy of contamination, with places like Halabja being particularly damaged.

In working with the ministry of environment’s chemical monitoring and site assessment department, Luay al-Mokhtar assisted the ministry of defence at Halabja, when the government of Kurdistan sought help in moving the remains of people who died through previous regime’s use of mustard gas. As part of this work Mr al-Mokhtar and his team checked the environmental levels, and he commented: “We couldn't say that there is [still] mustard contamination. As you know mustard gas can be persistent in the environment, but it's limited and there is no clear evidence that the pollution continues.”

Iraq's environment ministry has also worked with the UN environment programme (UNEP), on post-conflict assessments after Daesh, and there is an ongoing project to remove waste from buildings in the old city of Mosul. Mr Al-Mokhtar has visited these sites and made reports with UNEP about the contamination.

“In Mosul, in particular, there were many fires and sulphur, as well as fires in the oil fields. These sites were thoroughly

assessed for the effect on public health and environment.”

With such hazardous tasks, assistance from international organisations is often needed to help clear up sites like Mosul and Halabja. As Mr al-Mokhtar explained, UNEP has a good approach. “The previous executive director of UNEP visited Mosul after Daesh. We worked together closely to assess that area, and I think there were discussions and agreements about how to fix some of the environmental problems. What happened, was actually very sad, it was disaster for the environment and the people. Sometimes we couldn't do more than try to fix things after they had happened.”

In recent years more and more Iraqis have created social media

pages to document environmental incidents. Does Mr al-Mokhtar think this is taken seriously enough by those in power in order to rectify the situation. “Actually, I'm one of them,” he says, “I'm one of the people who is raising the problems using social media, especially Facebook, usually trying to alert the government.”

Although working within the government, Mr al-Mokhtar believes the people sometimes have to send a clear message to the politicians, to make them listen and push them into action. “Sometimes that results in positive government action,” he said “sometimes not.” Action can be hindered as there are a lot of gaps in the regime itself because of political failure and corruption, gaps in management

The North of Iraq has been particularly hard hit, with a wide variety of contaminants ©US Army

of the government, how to manage resources, the money, and how to plan best for the future. “As an individual, I am trying to make my country better, I hope that we attend to these very important actions for the people, they need a better future and a better environment, and we have to do our best to help them to live in a better environment,” said Mr al-Mokhtar.

In terms of contaminated sites, government departments are still facing many challenges cleaning these up. The contaminated sites often mean that there is a lots of pollution, and certain types are distributed and dispersed in various locations. In order to begin the clean up there many factors to consider. There needs to be risk assessments of the different types of contamination, and what different areas they are affecting, such as the environment and/or the people. “Then we need to try to rehabilitate or remediate that pollution,” said Mr al-Mokhtar, “We have limited experience in that area and have worked in some places in Iraq trying to fix the contaminated soil. We are now thinking about oil contamination of the soil, for example, and how to use biological or physical treatment methods to fix that.”

Iraq is working hard to resolve these problems, but the contaminated sites are very costly and difficult to remediate. In order to address the matter effectively the present process is to identify the critical contaminated sites and

prioritise them, before going to the sources of the problems and trying to fix them.

Chemical pollution is not unique to Iraq. With such a large chemical industry, and a major exporter, it is only reasonable to wonder if the August 2020 explosion in Beirut caused Iraq’s legislators to sit up and take notice? Have they decided if this is a port or ANFO problem, and that if those criteria are not met then they don’t need to worry? Or have they realised that this could be any chemical in any city in Iraq. According to Mr alMokhtar: “The explosion in Beirut should be an emergency warning to everybody”.

Iraq’s ministry of environment and health heads something called the 92S committee which is a high level committee for applying chemical policy in Iraq." The different sectors on the committee have been working to produce this policy since 2015, and to build it up using the strategic approach to international chemical management (SAICM). Mr al-Mokhtar said: “The main ideas from SAICM and also from CBRN, should be applied by this committee, which is headed by the ministry. The committee met in September 2020 and discussed the issue of the Beirut explosion.”

Iraq has to resolve the situation in its ports, because, said Mr alMokhtar: “We think that it's not right to put chemical stores near ports. This is an important lesson from what happened in Beirut. [We must] tell the ministry of

transportation to establish stores far away from ports. Sometimes that takes a long time in cost terms, or testing of chemicals, is dangerous for the port and the people. Hopefully, we now have a resolution, and will be working on it very fast and very soon.”

Iraq has been working on its problems of pollution, conflict contamination, and chemical responsibility for some time, but will the current generation be the last to have to deal with these issues or are there quite a few decades of work ahead of them?

Ongoing projects to improve wastewater treatment are hoping to prevent issues such as over 11,000 people getting sick from polluted water in 2018. More still remains to be done as a majority of Iraq’s water treatment plants are only partially functional.

There have also been major efforts to clean up and monitor the conflict contamination in the north of Iraq, and as Mr alMokhtar commented, monitoring has shown that it is perhaps not as bad as has been reported in the west. What timescale can be put on the clean up efforts, is 10 years too little out too much for getting those sites completely clean? “In terms of damage and what happened to them 10 years is long enough for people to turn and forget,” says Mr al-Mokhtar. “They have to return to their cities and good memories not the bad ones. We have to help them go back, and we hope that 10 years will be enough to fix everything.”

An improving situation

John F Kennedy, paraphrasing the first century historian Tacitus, said: “Victory has 100 fathers, failure is an orphan”. Ironically the parlous state of chemical, biological and radiological waste in Iraq, specifically in the north, has many fathers. Prior to the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Iraq was a world-leading country for education and certainly a leader in the Middle East. For 20 years it offered free education up to postdoctorate level, encouraged female education and encouraged literacy . Following the destruction caused by the first gulf war came 13 years of international sanctions which decimated its economy. After the overthrow of the Ba’ath party came instability and finally terrorist insurrection. These 30 years have all contributed to a situation where elements of the chemical safety and security regime that should have been upgraded have not been, and practices that would have been deemed dubious 30 years ago, are now regarded as highly dangerous. Drinking water in Iraq was a source of tension during the sanctions , and perhaps because of this, investment in pipes, treatment plants and waste run

off has never been properly addressed. In 2018 Human Rights Watch reported that 118,000 people in the Basra region had been hospitalised owing to waterborne issues, from viruses, parasites and bacteria, through to sewage, agricultural waste and industrial pollution . Dealing with run-off is clearly an endemic problem too large to be tackled wholesale, and so the country lives on bottled water. When this mitigation becomes accepted as a norm, there is less pressure on infrastructure, health, and industrial authorities to correct shortfalls that allow chemical or biological waste from academia or industry to enter the water table..

Just because the problem is large, doesn’t mean it can’t be tackled, however. Jeff Brodeur and Dr Laima Warnecke were part of a US government nonproliferation campaign to remove or secure potentially hazardous chemical sources from theft and nefarious use. They received an initial call in December 2017, requiring IB3 Global Solutions to deploy CBRN expertise immediately and embed with Department of State Sponsored Explosive hazard clearance teams. The objective

Colonel Jeff Brodeur (ret.), CBRN subject matter expert, and Dr Laima Warnecke, talk with Gwyn Winfield about the challenges of chemical security and radiological safety in Iraq, tracing the current situation’s origins through the past few decades

were to develop force protection techniques in the event of an explosive ordnance disposal operation unexpectedly coming into contact with toxic chemicals and a second task of identifying and mapping toxic chemical surveys in former ISIS occupied territories so that the government might inform families and businesses of the hazards and allow time for remediation.

The first part of the survey programme focused on university chemical laboratories and related, in the greater Mosul area. ISIS had been in charge there for three years, and in addition to their nefarious activities there was a great deal of war damage to all buildings. The university alone had 420 labs and in the first survey of the area the team only managed to see 42 of them, mainly due to their deplorable condition. Equipment had been stolen, buildings had been set on fire, and the team had to contend with a variety of improvised explosive devices. Despite this, work was still going on in some of the labs!

The second rotation was in mid2018 and saw the team return to the university laboratories and start looking at the medical and industrial sites that fed them. While the team was trying to look at sites and ensure that they were safe, a re-building campaign was going on, so the time to survey, mark and secure sources was hampered by bulldozer drivers who lacked CBRN awareness!

In addition to the medical and

academic labs, the team also chanced upon a government facility that handled bulk chemical supplies and repackaging for the region. Among the harmless chemicals there was a significant stash of dual-use items, including approximately 348,260l (92,000gal) of glycerin, an explosive precursor, and approximately 95,250kg (210,000lbs) of other chemicals in both powder and granular forms remained as part of the inventory. In addition the damaged state of the building let the weather in and caused havoc with some of the items. The vast facility was also insecure with a high chance of bad actors being able to get access.

The concern for Mr Brodeur and Dr Warnecke was, how much else is there that they had not discovered? The facility itself was found because of a chance remark by one of the academics along the lines of ‘well if you think this is bad, you should take a look at…' Mr Brodeur stated that good things were happening, but slowly. Due to the security situation in the north there was only so much the Iraqi government could do and a lot of it takes time.

“Our priority was what is a risk to public health and what is a risk for reuse and weaponisation? If we’re in the western desert then this encourages the mindset that we've got time and the space to delay and work on that problem later: it’s a problem for a different day. When there’s an immediate threat to a residential

neighbourhood then that is a problem we have to address immediately, the same is true if we can weaponise something. The first part of the solution is gates, guards and guns, to secure it, to make sure it's not reused, and then to figure out how to dispose of it properly. It's a phased approach.

“An example of a priority one issue is the University of Mosul. This is an overarching term for about 12 different universities. There's the medical school, a college of arts and sciences, a dental school, pharmacy etc and all under the overarching term University of Mosul. They have a central chemical storage facility. So when inventory from an outside vendor reaches the gate, it goes straight to a chemical warehouse. They have good inventory practices, checking for authorization and appropriate use and then they disperse the chemicals from that central warehouse to the university, med school, pharmacy etc. This means that there is low inventory in the school itself, leaving the central chemical warehouse with the bulk. Unfortunately these products have a shelf life.

“The infrastructure they built to deal with expired products is a large pipe in the basement and chemicals are just poured into it. This pipe runs into an open sewer system and chemicals literally run downhill into an adjacent residential neighbourhood. Then when it rains in Iraq it often floods, so these chemicals go

everywhere. This is a problem that I would address immediately. It’s an infrastructure problem and not a hard solution. It would provide a big bang for your buck as it would have an immediate impact on 12 or more different universities and the surrounding community. We could then showcase the University of Mosul as a trophy example of what right looks like and the other universities would have to get into line with that.”

Mr Brodeur also felt optimistic that when change comes it will come quickly. The problem was disconnecting the current mindset to allow it to start. “My experience from dealing with the doctors and professors is that they're largely educated in Western Europe or the US, so they know what right looks like. They're just living with one of their country’s everyday problems. They do things in their country that they know are wrong and they

wouldn't get away with if they were in Europe or the US.

“An example of that would be in one of the laboratory storage facilities we walked through. As soon as I walked in there was a horrible stench, which was because ISIS had just ransacked the facility and there were chemicals all over the floor. They said that I should wear a respirator and yet there was a lady texting in there who looked about eight months pregnant, working with no mask, no gloves. I looked at Laima and I scratched my head and the same doctor who knew what right looked like saw it too. As the threat to life and security decreases you become comfortable with a new normal. So if you used to walk through a minefield to get to work but someone clears a path through it, then you're happy to live with that minefield even though the threat remains.

“It's not healthy. All we can do is study the problem and help them see it for themselves by applying a size and scale to it. Academics who were educated in Europe and the US will see those reports published and be the megaphone inside the country to fix the problem. Then when we get to the point where we can bring the solution into the country, we'll have a better idea of what the workload is and how extensive the problem is.”

It isn’t just the chemical side, however, Dr Warnecke found similar problems with control of radioactive sources and hazards. The damage sustained during the conflict was extensive, but that didn’t stop people getting cancer and needing treatment. Dr Warnecke explained: “We visited the oncology hospital in Mosul. The hospital was hardly accessible from outside and inside there was major structural damage. We carried radiation detection meters and found minor levels throughout the hospital. Eventually we came to the room where we found the device that was causing heightened levels of radiation and we needed to evacuate everyone who had accompanied us from that space. The room was locked with a lead door, and we were told that the equipment generating a high radiation count was stored in there.

“We were there with a health ministry delegation and their main concern was how to remove the radiation generating equipment and rebuild the hospital since

The damaged state of some of the buildings has let weather in which has caused havoc with some items ©J. Brodeur

cancer patients couldn’t get treatment. [As a first step the] Iraqi government should be responsible for removing radiation equipment from shattered hospitals, chemicals from shattered pharmaceutical plants, secure university chemical laboratories and remove and sort chemicals that could react dangerously with each other.

“The remediation of radiological and chemical remnants, is under the purview of the ministry of health. Individual healthcare providers and academic leaders should provide more specific and accurate information, statistics should be collected and published so that the government and world would know and be concerned about these issues. Based on discussions with healthcare providers and research from what few available publications there are, the number of cancer cases is increasing drastically through the state.”

Mr Brodeur also felt that a greater audience for the problems would help, but outside assistance would be complicated by the security situation in Iraq. As such he suggested that improvements would probably happen in the medium term. “In three to five years, we can start to put the infrastructure in place so we no longer contribute to the existing problem. Universities will then

properly dispose of their chemicals, the waste from a biology lab won't go down the trough and cause staphylococcus of the mouth because it has been floating through an open sewer system waiting for somebody to play in it and get infected. That’s phase one. Phase two is uncovering what is under the sand and could have been there for years or even generations.

“There was already an aggressive reconstruction programme in Mosul on the Eastern, “Right Bank” side of the river, the Western, “Left Bank” side, nobody touched and was extensively battle damaged. I don't know if it's written into their constitution but it was my impression that the minister of higher education had almost sovereign authority over university campuses and nobody could walk onto a campus without his approval or invitation. The same applied to laboratory issues, these were not community or city matters, but a problem to be resourced by the minister of higher education. It'll take a little bit of diplomacy to get that done.”

The advantage of having one individual with supreme authority is that they can make problems disappear quite quickly, rather than having to seek approval or resources from a whole list of

departments. If a case can be made that they have all the tools available to solve a problem, it is just a matter of helping them see why it is important. Mr Brodeur also felt that the chances of things happening quickly once they become priorities were good. “When a project like that begins, there will be reconstruction envy from the rest of the government. If that has something to do with chemicals, I would anticipate that people in industry and government who understand the situation they are responsible for, will be more than happy to come and tell you the size and scale of the problem and escort you to it.”

As has been mentioned elsewhere in this magazine, the first problem will be: ‘What is waste?’ When everything is waste, nothing is and it can go into landfills and rivers. As the tedious work is done on the regulations, categorizing different waste types and how they should be treated and disposed of, then the problem can be measured. Once the problem can be identified and recognized then the various ministries can start allocating funds to deal with it. The work of people like Mr Brodeur and Dr Warnecke is vital to this, shedding light on the problem and allowing those who are working on the legislation to know that this sector needs to be a priority.

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Iraq

2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iraq

3 https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/07/22/iraq-water-crisis-basra