Accusations have risen about the usage of white phosphorus by the United States armed forces in the fight against the Islamic State.

What happened?

Accusations arose on Friday by the Islamic State and monitoring groups operating near Eastern Syria, when trails of white smoke followed flashes of white light in the aftermath of battle. Along with the duration of the battles, commonplace signs of white phosphorus usage in a battle zone were detected. Video clips and photos have been posted online which exhibited the signs aforementioned, resulting in the relative validity of the accusation.

International law prohibits the usage of the weapon in populated areas, as the effects can easily be widespread. Additionally, contact with the substance can result in rapid burning of the skin as well as internal structures due to the extremely incendiary nature of the substances. The substance can be easily stored in canisters, a method revolutionized upon the creation of the “Willy Pete” hand grenade, designed to carry chemical incendiary substances as an extremely mobile explosive. The gruesome effects of white phosphorus and its easy capacity to spread over a region has resulted in its ban by international law.

The accusations become extremely problematic given the context, as Raqqa is home to nearly 40,000 trapped children as well as a large population once accounting for adult civilians. The usage of white phosphorus is extremely troubling as this would render the entire accounted population of Raqqa vulnerable to the effects of the chemical weapon, something that would easily be considered a war crime of the highest accord.

What does this mean?

Despite being in the middle of a war-zone, ethics are there in place even in the duration of war in order to preserve the absolute minimum of humanity. However, such violations paint a completely new picture of the fight against terror and whether the entire concept ought to be reimagined. The very nature of such levels of warfare can be characterized as devastation in its maximum. To use such measures presumes much about the current nature of the United States troops with their position in the war.

External evidence indicates that the IS leaders had already moved from North of Raqqa before the strikes took place, information that was apparently available to the soldiers present in the battlefield. Upon such revelations, this form of warfare brings a lot of questions to the rationale of the ordered attacks and whether they were legitimately ordered, or merely an act of defiance. Regardless, it was an act that potentially endangered a large population, including a massive number of children, which definitely warrants further investigation into the matter. Such issues being completely ignored would mark the United States as a nation reluctant to even follow international law, which would indicate the trajectory of the country travelling in a direction fundamentally antithetical to the nation’s existence.

Such behavior in the fight against terror may as well reverse the labelling of who the terrorists truly are in the duration of the fight.