مجلّد 12 عدد 1 | ربيع 2026
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What Is the Opposite of Chemical Munitions?

تايلور ميلر
السيرة: 

تايلور ميلر

حصلت تايلور ميلر على شهادة الباكالوريوس والماجيستر في الفنون الجميلة  والتعليم الثقافي البصري من قسم الفنون والثقافة البصرية في جامعة أريزونا في تعليم الفنون. تتضمّن أبحاثها لنيل شهادة الدكتوراه الثقافة المعاصرة والجغرافيا السياسية لتل أبيب ومارسيليا، التحوّل المديني من خلال الفنون وإستتيك (aesthetics ) الاحتلال في البيئة العمرانية الحضرية. مشاريعها العابرة للاختصاصات تستخدم التصوير الفوتوغرافي والشعر والهندسة المعمارية النقدية والنظرية العمرانية/المدنية. بالإمكان زيارة موقعها على الانترنت للاطلاع على المزيد من أعمالهاhttp://www.taylorkmiller.com/

اقتباس: 
تايلور ميلر. "What Is the Opposite of Chemical Munitions?". كحل: مجلّة لأبحاث الجسد والجندر مجلّد 12 عدد 1 (15 تشرين الأول/أكتوبر 2026): ص. -. (تمّ الاطلاع عليه أخيرا في تاريخ 16 تشرين الأول/أكتوبر 2026). متوفّر على: https://kohljournal.press/ar/node/498.
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El Paso-Chihuahuita section of the US-Mexico wall, March 2026. Photos by the author.

My daughter, mom, dad and I planned a drive to White Sands National Park; it was the first week of March, just over 100 hours into the United States-Israel’s campaign of annihilation across Iran and Kurdistan – building on its (35 months, 78 years-long) genocide across Gaza and greater Palestine and Lebanon. The floaters have returned in my left eye – greyish streaks clouding my sight that emerged in late January 2024. I noticed them while staring out at the Pacific Ocean towards the Channel Islands, my eyes toggling between the bleached-out horizon and my Instagram feed: A group of babies are in a very risky situation right now, as they might lose their lives if this blackout continues.1

When driving along Interstate 25 or 10, bugs don’t splat into your windshield the way they used to. I’d wake up at 3am to leave Tucson, Arizona – head due west before the desert sun scalds the asphalt – towards Los Angeles for lengthy stints of solo car camping along the sea during uni breaks. My old Tacoma headlights and hood would be smeared, just before the Campo Station Border Patrol checkpoint. The internet says this is “windscreen phenomena,” and the internet also says anecdotes are not scientific evidence. Anecdotally, insect breeding is in decline because of monocropping and the abundance of pesticides. Evidentially, like this spring, the Defense Production Act of 1950, as amended (50 U.S.C. 4501 et seq.) (the “Act”), and section 301 of title 3 shared the Executive Order, “Promoting the National Defense by Ensuring an Adequate Supply of Elemental Phosphorus and Glyphosate-Based Herbicides.”2 The headlines whine Trump betrays MAHA! And there’s diarrhea in the lettuce and hepatitis A in the clams. I don’t know the difference between elemental phosphorus and white phosphorus. Under the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (amended December 2001),3 it is illegal to use white phosphorus munitions in or near populated areas, though Israel is not a signatory to the convention. The Institute for Middle East Understanding reminds us that throughout Operation Cast Lead in 2009, the Israel Occupation Forces (IOF) used white phosphorus across Gaza, firing more than 200 shells during the assault.4 It was also deployed across Lebanon by the IOF in 1982, 1993 and 2006. Forensic Architecture, who analyzed the IOF’s 2008-2009 assault, alongside the United States’ use of the chemical against the Iraqi army in Fallujah, 2004, concluded:

Within a parametric model, we simulated projectiles detonating over various configurations of a generic urban environment. We concluded that in Gaza, white phosphorus was likely used to harass and terrorise citizens in order to clear neighbourhoods, rather than as a ‘smoke screen’, as the Israeli military had claimed.5

Between October 10-16, 2023, the IOF attacked Dhayra, al-Mari and Aita al-Chaab, Lebanon,  with indiscriminate carpet bombing and white phosphorus attacks.

Amnesty International’s Crisis Evidence Lab verified photos taken by AFP photographers on 18 October near the Lebanese border. These photos show 155mm white phosphorus smoke ammunition shells lined up for use next to Israeli army M109 howitzers. These shells have a distinctive pale green colour and red and yellow colour bands, as well as visible markings reading M825A1 and D528, respectively the shell’s nomenclature and the US Department of Defense Identification Code (DODIC) for white phosphorus-based ammunition, as already documented by Amnesty International near the Gaza fence. While these are US codes and nomenclatures, Amnesty International cannot confirm where these shells have been manufactured.6

Strange to call it a fence.

Quick skim shows me that M825A1 white phosphorus smoke projectiles are manufactured for the US military by IMT Defense Corp, and the final munitions are then loaded and assembled by government-owned facilities like Pine Bluff Arsenal and Iowa Army Ammunition Plant.7 IMT Defense is 40 miles from Pickaway County, Ohio, where Anduril Industries is building out its massive “Arsenal-1” five-million-square-foot hyperscale manufacturing facility slated to “redefine the scale and speed that autonomous systems and weapons can be produced for the United States and its allies and partners. This is a monumental and essential step toward rebuilding America’s defense industrial base, strengthening America’s warfighting capabilities, and enhancing deterrence amid rising international threats.”8 Anduril is the official sponsor of Ohio State University Athletics. Eighteen hours ago on The Washington Post: “Two cheers for Anduril’s submarine-building project…The Navy desperately needs more subs…”9 but it’s paywalled and I can’t access archived pages because I’m presently in Italy – and also in the first week of October, the Sea-Eye 5 ship rescued more than 50 people in the Mediterranean, followed by the Ocean Viking ship rescuing over 100 more.

Anduril Sentry towers line la manche (the “English” Channel) and, along with Elbit and General Dynamics products, comprise the surveillance dragnet along the US-Mexico border. On September 29, 2026, a ten-year-old child and two women died in the Channel near Sangatte. Five days later, two men died in the Channel off the coast of Berck. This July, French riot police, funded by UK taxpayers, used CS gas on asylum seekers on Page du Braek. Last week (let’s call it September 28, 2026), Gendarmerie fired tear gas at migrants on Gravelines beach.

I could feign sensical chronologies, but I return to this essay a few months after it sat stagnate;

Israeli forces used phosphorus munitions while shelling several towns in southern Lebanon on Friday [September 24, 2026], state news agency NNA reported. Artillery struck the outskirts of Zawtar al-Sharqiyah, Mayfadoun and Nabatieh al-Fawqa in the Nabatieh district. Phosphorus shells were used in Nabatieh al-Fawqa, while Israel later renewed attacks on Zawtar al-Sharqiyah with similar munitions.10

Scores of my friends shared on socials, via The Public Source, “In South Lebanon, Cultivating Resistance Against Israel’s “Substance from Hell.”11 The images of scorched earth-by-white phosphorus – burned forests in Naqoura and dying cows with pulmonary hemorrhages in Kfar Kila – are arresting. But I think we should axe that from our lexicons. Captured. Took. Shot.

The essay, from 2024, synthesizes:

The immediate impact of white phosphorus attacks–economic, environmental, and psychosocial–is devastating. And while the long-term damage is little studied in Lebanon, studies from around the world point to serious and sometimes fatal consequences to the health of people and animals. These attacks are just the latest in Israel’s long history of war and occupation in south Lebanon…Israel’s long-term goal is to sever the deep connections southerners have with their villages by rendering the lands barren.12

Fires broke out across Yohmor on March 3, 2026, and correlated, authenticated images show white phosphorus munitions fired by the IOF. The White House says, Elemental phosphorus is pervasive in defense supply chains and is therefore crucial to military readiness and national defense.13 The White House says elemental phosphorus is also a critical precursor element for the production of glyphosate-based herbicides, which play a critical role in maintaining America’s agricultural advantage.14 Glyphosphate is an active ingredient in Agent Orange; I am first penning this essay manically on March 16, 2026 – on March 16, 1968, the United States military perpetrated the My Lai Massacre. I’m reading about the Peers Inquiry and Bravo Company and      none of my social studies classes in public schools in Illinois and Arizona ever mentioned General Westmoreland. I’m pulling the New Yorker pieces15 on the Wayback Machine and learning I need to read much more Seymour Hersh.

Public concern over the use of herbicides in Vietnam began in 1964, even before the toxicity of TCDD was first reported. At that time, the Federation of American Scientists urged the government not to use chemical and biological weapons unless they were used first by the enemy. The federation was concerned about the use of defoliants in Vietnam because the government was not discriminating between fighting forces and civilians while using the herbicides, and that constituted biological and chemical warfare.

In January 1966, 29 scientists banded together to protest the U.S. policy on the use of herbicides and demand their complete abolition. They requested that President Lyndon B. Johnson begin discussions with the allies on adherence to the ban on the use of herbicides in Vietnam. “Even if it can be shown that the chemicals are not toxic to man, such tactics are barbarous because they are indiscriminate; they represent an attack on the entire population of the region where the crops are destroyed, combatants and non-combatants alike. [This is] … a precedent for the use of similar but even more dangerous chemical agents against our allies and ourselves.”16

There’s a 265-page document on Operation Ranch Hand (1961-1971)17 but by the time I read through that I’ll have missed the IOF aircraft that directly targeted paramedics from the Health Authority in Aitat and Kfarsir – which killed several paramedics and medical personnel;18 and the slaughter of the Odeh family in Tammun – parents and their five and seven year old children murdered, while the other two children sustained wounds to their heads; and the IOF storming Ein Munjed Mosque in Ramallah during Laylat al-Qadr; and the shelling of Al-Khiam with phosphorous bombs.

The Department of Defense War tested and stored Agent Orange at the Eglin Air Force Base in Florida and the Naval Construction Battalion Center in Gulfport, Louisiana in the 1950s, but the weapon was discovered around 1943 by a United States Department of the Army-contracted botanist. Shourideh Molavi and her team document:

Since 2014, the clearing and bulldozing of agricultural and residential lands by the Israel military close to the eastern border of Gaza has been complemented by the unannounced aerial spraying of crop-killing herbicides.

This ongoing practice has not only destroyed entire swaths of formerly arable land along the border fence, but also crops and farmlands hundreds of metres deep into Palestinian territory, resulting in the loss of livelihoods for Gazan farmers.19

Strange to call it a fence.

The IOF’s aerial herbicide extends to agricultural and grazing lands in Quneitra Governorate, Syria, in addition to the widespread, decades-long atrocity across Lebanon and Palestine. In February 2026, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor emphasized:

The pattern across Gaza, Lebanon, and now southern Syria suggests that chemical spraying functions not merely as border management but as a tool of territorial reshaping. By undermining agriculture and grazing, such practices gradually depopulate buffer zones and reduce civilian presence in contested border areas.20

The Bath Riots of January 1917 were sparked by resistors to the El Paso-Juárez Immigration and Naturalization Service’s forced kerosene baths required of Mexicans crossing the border. “De-lousing” baths and mandatory vaccination were purported measures against the spread of typhus. Men, women, and children – stripped naked – were subjected to cyanogen gas chambers and kerosene oil disinfections. Even after the uprisings against this torture, the program morphed to include cyanide-based Zyklon B on border crossers. Nazi scientists lauded El Paso’s methods and used their facilities as models.

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El Paso-Chihuahuita section of the US-Mexico wall, March 2026. Photos by the author.

My timeline is full of phrases like Gaza Doctrine and echo-chamber accusations, We let it happen in Gaza, now Tehran! The Yale School of the Environment posts: No one set out deliberately to spray dioxin on Vietnam, but war is defined by catastrophic accidents as well as by deliberate cruelty, and Agent Orange may have been the worst of them.21 Yale’s School of Global Affairs offers the Henry A. Kissinger Visiting Scholars program for predoctoral and postdoctoral fellows. In a December 1975 Memorandum of Conversation between US President Gerald Ford, Israel Prime Minister Golda Meir, and Secretary of State Kissinger, Ford said:

We do think progress has been made in the Middle East. We and Israel have gotten along well. We have had some sharp words, but as friends, not as opponents. I want to reaffirm that we are dedicated to the safety and survival of Israel. We may have had some sharp words, but as friends, not as opponents. I want to reaffirm we are dedicated to the safety and survival of Israel. We may have tactical differences, but this Administration is going to continue our long history of standing with Israel. There is no backing off that firm commitment.22

The United States sprayed over 20,000,000 gallons of “rainbow herbicides,” including Agent Orange, and various defoliants across Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. The Lao PDR states it’s the most heavily bombed country in the world in terms of “the number of unexploded ordnance per capita. The bombs dropped include more than 270 million cluster munitions…”23 as the United States flew more than a half million bombing missions, delivering more than two million tons of explosive ordnance. Upwards of 80 million ordnances are estimated to have failed to explode. All the most recent search results about clearing and cleaning Gaza date to 2025, and the US-IOF has ceaselessly bombed the region since. In April 2025 from Reuters: “The U.N. Mine Action Service estimates that between one in 10 and one in 20 bombs fired into Gaza did not go off.”24 Somewhere else in Jared Kushner’s slideshows, an estimate of five years to fully clear and rebuild the besieged enclave. I scroll through the page and an infographic depicts a Mark 83 1,000 lb. bomb, Mark 84 2,000 lb. bomb, and Joint Direct Attack Munitions (amongst others), pretending to torpedo down towards my laptop’s icon dock. I neither recall attribution to General Dynamics, Elbit, and Boeing (respectively), nor to the constellation of subsidiaries across UK, Europe, and the US who piece together these death machines. Sorry, bomb bodies. 

Eye floaters feel trivial when each day, Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta pulls shrapnel from small children’s eye sockets. I had to click two separate “See Photo” buttons to access the image;25 “Sensitive Content” is one of the greatest travesties of our era. I’m trying to finish editing this goddamned essay and this same day Dr. Abu Sitta posts:

Rough operating day:

9 year old girl from Gaza. Shoulder reconstruction. Both parents killed. Cared for by uncle.

5 year old boy from Gaza. Right lower limb amputation. For revision of stump so he can start fitting a prosthesis.

Medical student from Lebanon, early twenties. Blast Injury to face with loss of both eyes. For reconstruction of facial bones and eyelids so he can have glass eyes fitted.

To top the day off, message from lawyers: High Court Appeal case by GMC, court date set for end of January 2027.26

I’d put a rock through the face of the soldier who hurt them, every soldier – just as I lusted to put one into the face of the CBP agent who complimented my tattoos while I photographed the underside of the Paso del Norte Bridge; concertina on the wall, above the wall, in the río. And I’m thinking about the attention span of a genocide and I’m thinking about the other toddlers and kindergarteners my daughter’s size – the ones (Wounded Child, No Surviving Family) currently breathing unquantifiable toxic hydrocarbons, sulfur oxides, and nitrogen compounds (as well as benzene, acetone, toluene, and methylene chloride) before they’ve spoken their first words; and the ones who are still in ICE’s helados but weren’t wearing a blue bunny hat the day they were kidnapped by this failed state, so we don’t re-re-re-post them.

Narges Bajoghli wrote on March 13, 2026:

The harm that lasts the longest often doesn’t make the news cycle. Estimates of those who died from chemical-weapons-related causes in the years after the Iran-Iraq War — from cancers, from respiratory failure, from the slow collapse of lungs that never fully recovered — run into the tens of thousands. The full toll has never been precisely accounted for. It is only because of the careful clinical documentation of Iranian physicians in the 1980s that the United Nations finally agreed to seven investigative missions to assess how seriously the 1925 Geneva Protocol’s ban on chemical weapons had been violated during the Iran-Iraq War. Those missions found the violations to be systematic and extensive, establishing that war as the most extensive confirmed battlefield use of chemical weapons since World War I and the first use of nerve agents in military history.

But here is what that history also shows: The documentation did not stop the weapons. Iraq continued its chemical campaigns after the U.N. findings, and the international response amounted to formal condemnation and little else. In the decades since, the tacit lesson absorbed by militaries around the world is that toxic harm to civilian populations — if delivered in ways that preserve deniability, or are attributed to industrial accident, or simply are overwhelmed by the pace of other events — will not be meaningfully punished. The military doctrine of “surgical strikes” has always papered over a more brutal reality: that modern warfare is a chemical event. Every missile, every bomb, every burning fuel depot releases its payload of toxic compounds into the air people breathe. The difference is whether we choose to count it.27

Editors consistently tell me to cut my block quotes. Sometimes those same editors repost Noor Hindi’s Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying28 even though Noor’s people aren’t their people; but what we’re still not understanding is that her people are everyone’s people when we really don’t believe in all these borders built around and between us. But abolition isn’t here, yet. Narges shows us with laser precision how each of our lungs are filling (are filled) with petrochemical toxins – that the body’s corrosion is an acceptable externality of war. What words will we have left if we eradicate terror from it? What I mean is, laser precision also includes Lockheed Martin’s January 2026 Next-Generation Short-Range Interceptor testing in White Sands Missile Range. And Raytheon’s August 2025 Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor flight test in support of an Integrated Battle Command System and a PAC-3 MSE missile intercept of a threat representative target, also in White Sands. And how on March 7-8, 2026, the Joint Interagency Task Force 401 and Federal Aviation Administration conducted advanced counter-drone laser tests to “continue advancing the safe use of counter-unmanned aerial systems in the United States,”29 to secure the southern border, or somewhere.

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En route to White Sands National Park, via White Sands Missile Range, March 2026. Photos by the author.

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Clipping from the White Sands National Park visitors guide, featuring the missile range boundary and the Border Patrol checkpoint, March 2026. Photo by the author.

The Trinity test never ended. By rebrand, by 42% increase for the Department of War Fiscal Year 2027 budget,30 it permeates our shared air, tectonics, and arroyos31 while demanding our subservience to its systems, cellular restructuring by poisoning. Per chance, the antidote to structures productive only of death is not language or gesture or asthmatic breath of anti-, but stoking the tenderness and audaciousness of what we’re for.

 

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