BASHAR'S CHEMICAL LEGACY

Last Tuesday in The Hague, a discreet meeting of the OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) Council was convened at the initiative of its current chairman, Fernando Arias of Spain. Just days earlier, the Assad regime had collapsed in Damascus after 53 years in power and 13 years of civil war. The pressing question before the OPCW was the fate of Syria's chemical arsenal. A secondary concern was how the new regime, led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militia, might handle the stockpiles of mustard gas, sarin, and chlorine still present in the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic.

In truth, the sinister shell game between Syria and the international community over chemical weapons has been ongoing for at least 40 years. The chemical weapons program, initiated in the 1980s by Bashar’s father, Hafez al-Assad, and entrusted to the "Scientific Studies and Research Center," was effectively controlled by the regime's notorious intelligence services, the Mukhabarat. Several aboveground and underground facilities produced hundreds of tons of mustard gas, several tons of sarin precursors, and even larger quantities of chlorine. The aim was to deter Israel and its nuclear weapons—a "poor man's deterrent," as experts call it.

But Syria's chemical arsenal was used not against Israel, but against the Syrian population itself, beginning in the early days of the civil war in 2012. Various international investigations, including those by the UN, cite at least 130 attacks carried out by the Syrian army and air force, resulting in 14,000 deaths, primarily among civilians. The most infamous incident, the August 2013 attack on Ghouta near Damascus, claimed the lives of 1,400 women and children and shocked the international community. President Obama had threatened punitive airstrikes against the Assad regime, invoking his "red lines" policy, which prohibited the use of chemical weapons on civilians. However, Obama hesitated, citing the need for Congressional approval, which never materialized, much to the dismay of France's François Hollande, who abandoned plans to strike Damascus alone. Vladimir Putin stepped in opportunely, proposing a plan to dismantle Syria's entire chemical arsenal under international supervision and secure Syria’s accession to the OPCW, all backed by UN Security Council Resolution 2138 (2013). Capitalizing on the U.S. retreat, Putin marked his return to Syria in 2015.

The problem? Despite OPCW inspections and the destruction of 1,400 tons of chemical agents according to the CIA, at least 360 tons of mustard gas and 5 tons of the far more lethal sarin precursors disappeared. Damascus claimed these materials were "lost during transportation or due to accidents." Even in early December, on the eve of Bashar’s regime collapse, Syrian diplomats, backed by Russia, were still protesting at the UN against the "Western stigmatization of Syria."

The reality is that Bashar retained undeclared stockpiles and used them repeatedly against Syrian rebels until as late as 2019. The OPCW acknowledged in 2020: "It is established that the Syrian Arab Republic has neither declared nor destroyed all of its chemical weapons and production facilities." But the issue doesn’t end there. The Islamic State, from which Al-Joulani—the victor in Damascus—originates, also developed chemical weapons in Mosul with the help of Saddam Hussein's former chemist, Abu Malik, a veteran of the Al-Muthanna plant near Baghdad. Even worse, anti-Assad militias used these weapons in 71 documented cases, 30 of which occurred within Syrian territory. Acting urgently, the Israelis, unconvinced by the effectiveness of UN inspectors, immediately launched airstrikes on Syrian chemical stockpiles and facilities.

The question now is what the new Damascus leadership will do with the residual quantities of chemical agents still present in Syria, which could fuel various Salafist and terrorist groups. A small amount of sarin gas can have devastating consequences: everyone remembers the March 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway by the Aum Shinrikyo cult, which caused 13 deaths and injured 6,300. After causing the deaths of half a million of his people, Bashar, now comfortably settled in Moscow, has also left us with the haunting prospect of chemical attacks in Europe.

Pierre Lellouche - VA Tribune, December 18, 2024