Soviet Rain
Rothwell, Nicholas
THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR VOL. 15, NO. 11 / NOVEMBER 1982 Nicholas RothweU S OVIET RAIN Drought may be t h e problem with Soviet agriculture, but rain is one o f t h e K r e m l i n ' s major e x p...
...Houses h e r e s t a r t at o n e - a n d - a - h a l f Ben Stein is author, most recently, of Ludes: A Ballad of the Drug and the Dream (St...
...11 / NOVEMBER 1982 Nicholas RothweU S OVIET RAIN Drought may be t h e problem with Soviet agriculture, but rain is one o f t h e K r e m l i n ' s major e x p o r t s - - d o e s anyone care...
...government cannot be considered a reliable source for such allegations, there is extensive documentation, in the form of eyewitness testimony from victims of the chemical warfare in both Afghanistan and Indochina...
...According to Gul Badin, the leader of the Hezb-EIslami resistance fighters in Afghanistan, every Soviet division in the country has a chemical warfare unit which uses its weapons when attacks by helicopter gunships fail to dislodge resistance fighters...
...Updated in July and August, and entitled "Fourth Session of the Group of Experts to Investigate Reports of the Alleged Use of Chemical Weapons," the report was prepared for the UN by an international team of experts...
...accusations with some seriousness...
...officials should become easier, however, now that new details have come to light, and from an Nicholas Rothwell is now based in New York as a f o r e i g n correspondent f o r the Australian...
...house in Malibu, protected from the mobs at the public beaches by a guard dog and chain-link fences with barbed wire on top...
...Like a mad, short-circuited sociologist among the producers and the starlets and the tax-shelter attorneys, I keep coming into the living room with a new analysis of California-life...
...State Department released a detailed dossier containing evidence of its claims that the Soviet Union has been using chemical weapons in Laos, Cambodia, and Afghanistan...
...The political significance of the controversy over chemical weapons extends far beyond" the sensitive issue of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and colonial role in Indochina...
...Australia was given samples of contaminated vegetation from Indochina, similar to those used by U.S...
...unexpected source at that: a recent United Nations report on chemical warfare in Afghanistan...
...The task of U.S...
...We rented a house here for the summer and I sat at the junction of sand and surf and saw what I could see...
...It lists all the individual villages and describes the techniques used in the attacks...
...Soviet and Vietnamese officials contend that U.S...
...In addition, it will likely shatter whatever confidence American legislators might have in the talks be!ng held with Soviet negotiators on strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, leading to an even worse deadlock between the two superpowers...
...It fell to French officials in Bangkok to receive the most important evidence yet of the chemical warfare...
...Dward Embeya of Kenya, and Dr...
...it has been suppressed, however, no doubt because of its clear conclusion that the Soviet army is using chemical weapons against resistance fighters and civilians throughout Afghanistan...
...million each, and t h a t ' s generally for a tear down that needs complete reconstruction...
...Smoke gas was disseminated from a plane, and people inhaling it became unconscious, with many dying...
...Brigadier Dararwal Bismilla, chief commander of Wardak front, described a chemical attack mounted by Soviet troops in late July 1981 that caused the bodies of victims to become swollen and covered with boils...
...Two standard issue gas masks from captured Soviet troops have been sent to the UN, along with "dum-dum" type bullets and poison canisters said to be the ammunition for a special kind of "large pistol" used by Soviet troops to dispense the toxic weapons...
...Minutes of the group of experts show that well before the disarmament special session the group was in possession of a wide range of samples from Afghanistan contaminated by chemical sprays, but no mention of these samples or of the testimony received was made public...
...When finally made public, theUN report will require the General Assembly to review the Soviet Union's compliance with international treaties...
...Take the Malibu Beach Colony, for example...
...My wife tells me to go back to sleep, but I cannot help myself...
...experts in first isolating the chemicals, but its experts failed to find any suspect chemicals on the leaves...
...Initially commissioned by the UN General Assembly over objections from the Afghan and Soviet missions, the report was not presented to this summer's highly publicized UN special session on disarmament, even though the experts worked closely with the UN Center for Disarmament...
...I have,reached a few new conclusions about life in Southern California...
...Other nations have been less helpful...
...Every one of these men, at some point during the day, emerges from his house with a woman about half his age, so thin that she makes Lauren Hutton look like a hippopotamus...
...Testimony from Mohammad Sharif, an eyewitness who survived" several attacks, included a detailed account of a February 1981 bombing of Arghandab in Kandahar province, in Which a balloon 700ram in diameter was dropped from a helicopter and burst, scattering pink and yellow powder while still in the air...
...those-who do not simply dismiss eyewitnesses as liars and diplomats and relief workers as "politically motivated...
...Martin 's/Marek...
...Doc~tors at the Hezb-E-Islami hospital in Pakistan told the team of an attack on the border region, involving chemical gas delivered from an airplane, producing black smoke which turned yellow and caused asphyxia, laryngeal spasms, and unconsciousness...
...The women are, of course, second or third wives or girlfriends...
...The asphyxiants have an offensive smell but the most toxic poison is odorless...
...Nineteen-year-old Anatoli Sakharov, a conscript from the Moldavian Republic who was captured by the Afghan resistance, told of seeing stores of chemical weapons at Soviet bases and he described the different types he saw...
...The medical authorities also provided evidence of an attack on the city of Herat, in which 100 people were killed in a single day of chemical warfare...
...Recently a group of Southeast Asian lawyers, assisted by the nonpartisan Australia-Cambodia Association, conducted interviews and carried out medical tests in the Thai camps, and uncovered evidence consistent with that collected by the UN in Pakistan_9 The reports from Thailand closely resembled sections of the UN studymsuggesting that in both areas similar agents are devastating vegetation, rupturing the ears and lungs of exposed victims, making their eyes swell and THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1982 9 "protrude from their sockets as if they are about to fall out...
...Those who want to know have access to all the information...
...Testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Howe stated that the main avenue for protest against the use Of chemical weapons is enforcement of the 1925 Geneva Protocol, and that mere possession of the toxin-derived weapons is a violation of the 1972 biological weapons convention...
...All of them contained the tell-tale mycotoxin derivates...
...Some officials are concerned with the plight of the Vietnamese--more than 200,000 still in re-education camps in the jungle zones of the country, on starvation rations, and millions marooned in desolate "New Economic Zones...
...Esmat Ezz of Egypt, Dr...
...On the very day the samples were taken, REgis Debray, enfant terrible of Marxist orthodoxy and currently foreign policy adviser to President Mitterrand, was touring Vietnam as a guest of the Hanoi government and holding cordial talks with party officials...
...It is a small row of oceanfront...
...First, I noticed that the modal inhabitant of the Colony is a Jewish man of about fifty with a thin waist and a tortured look (only thinly masked by a beard...
...Unfortunately, the State Department has failed to follow up on its report--endorsed unanimously by the entire U.S.intelligence community--with any pressure on allied governments to take a public stand on chemical warfare generally and on the connection between the Soviet Union and the use of poisons in the proxy states in particular...
...Such a disingenuous explanation can only mean that the Kremlin is taking the U.S...
...Because of its perceived "independence" from the United States, France could play a critical swing role in mobilizing world opinion...
...10 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1982...
...Life here spreads itself infront of me like statistical data on the incidence of mortgage foreclosures, and I cannot stop myself from drawing concl~usions about the life I see day by day...
...More realistically, any progress in stopping the chemical warfare will depend on the international mechanisms adopted by concerned governments...
...L a s t March the U.S...
...If the U.S...
...However, several Western states are expected to attempt to have the contents of the report made public this fall during the 37th session of the UN General Assembly, together with analyses from experts in Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, and Japan, who have isolated toxic chemicals in the samples collected by the refugees in Indochina...
...My wife and I have come to call the Colony "Second Wife City," which does not amuse the neighbors at all...
...Other types of weapons reported to the UN group include chemical tablets that poison the water supply, and "paralysis bombs," dropped from aircraft, that induce 48-hour paralysis...
...Curiously enough, on September 8 the BBC reported that refugee accounts o f chemical warfare have for the first time been confirmed by a Soviet soldier...
...Ben Stein SECOND WIFE CITY Sunning with t h e sad sacks o f Hollywood...
...A separate report submitted to the UN team by the islamic Liberation Front for Afghanistan and the Islamic World gives extensive det~iil-s of chemical attacks in the Pansher Valley and eight different provinces...
...In July, four Khmer Rouge guerrillas, seriously injured in an attack of "yellow rain" on Cambodia, were brought to a Thai border hospital, wlaere samples of their blood were taken...
...His report, "Yellow Rain Over Laos, " appeared bt the January issue of The American Spectator...
...Now, over a half year later, the attacks continue in all three countries, and the nations o f the world remain silent...
...Some died after 24 hours, bodies decomposed and limbs separated from each other when touched _9 . . skinrash, necrotic ulcerations--some of the individuals who survived showed necrotic points below the skin and ulcerations which took months to h e a l , " the report indicates...
...efforts to stop chemical warfare have shifted to the UN Committee on Disarmament...
...Indeed, in one of the most bizarre developments yet in this hallucinatory saga, the Soviet Union has itself admitted that mycotoxin poisons--identified by the State Department as the lethal agents used--have suddenly appeared in Indochina, far from their natural habitat...
...The bombs used in such attacks were said to have a different scent from those used in conventional explosive attacks, giving off tittle smoke but breaking into small particles and catching fire on the ground...
...The bodies of the victims decomposed rapidly...
...In a typical report, the guerrilla general commander of Paktia province, Moulvi Arsala Rahmani, stated that the bodies of victims were soft and rotted, a yellow and bloody discharge came from the burns, and the faces were blackened...
...Survivors often bore marks of rashes where their bodies had been exposed to the gases...
...The medical experts in Pakistan have told the UN that the Soviets are using four types of gas agent--asphyxiating agents, agents that cause pressure on the heart, skin irritants, and burning gases...
...The dilemma should by now be familiar...
...Although the UN report was not made public during the critical special session on disarmament, Rear Admiral Jonathan Howe, director of the State Department's Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs, has announced that the U.S...
...Humberto Guerra of Peru, assisted by other UN officials...
...Among the common factors in the scores of reports assembled by the UN team, the following stand out: The weapons were multi-colored gases, often yellow, green, gray, black, or red, and victims would sense a sweet smell, would vomit blood profusely, bleed from the eyes, feel dizzy, their heads " t u r n i n g and spinning ar o u n d . " The bodies of the dead would decompose rapidly and would be rotten inside and filled with foul-smelling blood...
...The report includes 36 pages of interviews with Afghan eyewitnesses, the conclusions of the experts, and details of medical tests carried out on samples of toxic chemical sprays handed to the UN team by refugees from Cambodia and Laos...
...Gas is delivered from airplanes and via artillery shells, the whole area where the bomb explodes becomes black and there is an offensive smell...
...The houses are on tiny lots right next to each other, with each household's five Mercedes crowding up against the next household's five Mercedes...
...With the ASEAN states in the forefront, a consensus is emerging among, some nations regarding the seriousness of the issue, while a new report to the Canadian government has supported claims that some kind of toxic agent is in use in Indochina...
...Those exposed to the powders experienced rashes and discoloration, difficulty in breathing, and dysentery attacks...
...use of defoliants during the Indochina war disturbed the regional environment, causing "elephant grass weeds" to serve as a breeding place for the poisons, which are now carried by "the wind" into Cambodia and Laos...
...Routinely, the Soviets are said to have poisoned the kharez systems of the resistance, and the guerrillas ~xposed to the gases always mentioned that they had experienced difficulty in 'breathing...
...The reaction of France has been particularly disappointing...
...These samples were in turn given to the French...
...One eyewitness account describes an aerial chemical weapon bombardment: "It was a sweet-smelling gas which put people to sleepmsome bombs were so powerful that when inhaled, people would fall down and become unconscious...
...The problem is no longer to prove that the chemical attacks are taking place, but to make the indifferent member nations of the UN stand up and be c o u n t e d - - t o shame them into taking action...
...Nonetheless, the BBC report cautioned, there is still no "conclusive" proof that the Soviets are using chemical weapons in Afghanistan_9 In late 1981 the same UN team carried out extensive investigations in refugee camps in Thailand, where Laotian and Cambodian resistance fighters claim to have been attacked with similar chemical weapons...
...But other diplomats are sympathetic to the " r e - building" of the region and the UN High Commission's policy of returning political exiles to the Communist states controlled by Vietnam...
...The UN document is based largely on interviews conducted with refugees in Pakistani camps and hospitals by the 8 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1982 experts group of Major General ,Dr...
...Both the man and the woman set their faces grimly and stride along the beach as if showing the world that they can suffer the fate of living at the Colony and come back for more each day...
...Numerous accounts describe poisoning of the water supplies of the Afghan villagers by Soviet troops who pour a greenish liquid into the subterranean irrigation channels, or kharez'systems, used in the Afghan countryside...
...None of this evidence--implicating the Vietnamese and Soviets in illegal chemical attacks--has been mentioned in any public forum...
...integrity of the witnesses, although it has reservations about the precision of some of their statements...
...Soviet soldiers are issued with gas masks before such actions...
...Like many other embassies in Bangkok, the center of intelligence collection on the chemical attacks on Cambodia and Laos, the French mission to Thailand is split between different political factions...
...The LtN team concludes that there is no reason to doubt the...
Vol. 15 • November 1982 • No. 11
