Britain may have helped the regime make nerve gas

It has become something of a cliché for Whitehall to reassure British citizens that it has “one of the most robust arms export controls in the world”. However, there is little doubt that UK-produced chemicals sold to Syria in the past have been used in the production of weapons.

The then foreign secretary William Hague admitted as much in 2014, when he told parliament: “We judge it likely that these chemical exports by UK companies were subsequently used by Syria in their programmes to produce nerve agents, including Sarin.”

The substances, which were exported in the 1980s, may have had legitimate uses, but knowing the risks, and the nature of the cruel regime, then led by Bashar Al Assad’s father, Hafez Al Assad, they should never have been sold.

The story of weapons being sold to brutal and authoritarian leaders with little thought for the consequences is a common one, and not confined to the 1980s. After being “brought in from the cold” in 2004, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya became a major target for UK arms sales. In 2007 a “defence cooperation agreement” was signed between Tony Blair’s government and Gaddafi, paving the way for “training in operational planning processes, staff training, and command and control” and the “acquisition of equipment and defence systems”.

Arms companies were quick to cash in, with tens of millions of pounds worth of arms sales to follow.

In 2010 alone the UK licensed the sale of more than £34 million (Dh155 million) worth of arms to Libya, including small arms ammunition and crowd control ammunition. The sales continued right up until the uprising and civil war in 2011, when Gaddafi’s forces turned their weapons against Libyan people.

Not only can weapons survive a deterioration of government relations, they can easily change hands. There is no such thing as arms control in a war zone.

In 2013 a UN committee traced weapons that had been sold to Gaddafi to Egypt, Niger, Somalia, Gaza and Syria. There are even reports of UK arms being sold over social media.

Likewise, in 2015 the Pentagon had to admit that it had lost track of $500 million (Dh1.84 billion) worth of weapons that it had sent to the Yemeni government.

One of the reasons Daesh is so well armed is because it has obtained large quantities of weapons that were originally sold to governments in the region, including guns and armoured vehicles. In 2015 Amnesty International identified 25 countries, including the UK, that had produced arms which were diverted to Daesh.