Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect (13 page)

Sergey Batsanov, a former Russian ambassador and director of special projects at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in Geneva, said delivery by helicopter seemed unlikely. The Syrian army would have had to install special spray tanks and put pilots in protective clothing. “I very much doubt it was delivered by helicopter,” he told me. “It makes no sense.”
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Those are the facts. Now the interpretation. It's been my experience that if something doesn't make sense politically, it doesn't make sense militarily. In this case, why would the Syrian army attack its own village? If it was seeking to discredit the rebels, why kill and injure so many of its own soldiers and civilians? On the other hand, the rebels—particularly extremists of al-Nusra and ISIS—would gain a lot from the use of chemical weapons. They would both kill the enemy, which included pro-Assad civilians, and discredit the Assad regime by blaming it for the attack.

One high UN official admitted that the government was not responsible for Khan Al Asal. Carla del Ponte told a Swiss TV interviewer, referring to the Asal incident, “This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities.”
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Del Ponte was a member of the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria and a former war-crimes prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. After her initial statement, she and other members of the commission of inquiry stopped commenting.

Then, in late May, Turkish newspapers reported that suspected members of al-Nusra were arrested carrying two kilograms of sarin with plans to attack the US Air Force base at Adana, Turkey.
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By the
time the case came to trial, however, the Turkish government did not prosecute the men for possessing sarin. There's no public record on why prosecutors didn't pursue the chemical-weapons issue.

In another incident in late May, Iraqi authorities arrested five alleged members of ISI, also known as al-Qaeda in Iraq, for building two labs to manufacture sarin and mustard gas. At a press conference, the police displayed lab equipment and weapons.
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ISI had close ties with al-Nusra at the time and was also carrying out its own activities inside Syria.

US intelligence likely knew about the al-Nusra/ISI chemical-weapons capability. F. Michael Maloof wrote that he was given a classified document from the army's National Ground Intelligence Center. “The document says sarin from al-Qaeda in Iraq made its way into Turkey and that while some was seized, more could have been used in an attack last March on civilians and Syrian military soldiers in Aleppo [Khan Al Asal].”
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Maloof is a former security-policy analyst in the office of the secretary of defense and a writer for the right-wing website
WorldNetDaily
. He's a controversial character, having been associated with the Bush-era neocons and stripped of his security clearance.
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But his right-wing contacts may well have supplied highly pertinent information.

Maloof wrote that the ISI had made a “bench-scale” form of sarin, that is, a small, homemade batch. He wrote, “Turkish security forces discovered a two-kilogram cylinder with sarin gas while searching homes of Syrian militants from the al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra Front following their initial detention.”
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Seymour Hersh also reported that US intelligence agencies knew of the rebels' chemical-weapons capabilities.
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Already by late May 2013, the CIA had briefed the Obama administration on al-Nusra and its work with sarin and had sent alarming reports that another Sunni fundamentalist group active in Syria, al-Qaeda in Iraq (ISI), also understood the science of producing sarin. At the time, al-Nusra was operating in areas close to Damascus, including eastern Ghouta. An intelligence document issued in midsummer dealt extensively with Ziyaad Tariq Ahmed, a chemical-weapons expert formerly of the Iraqi military who was said to have moved into Syria and
to be operating in eastern Ghouta. The consultant (Hersh's unnamed source) told me that Tariq had been identified “as an al-Nusra guy with a track record of making mustard gas in Iraq and someone who is implicated in making and using sarin.” He is regarded as a high-profile target by the American military.
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Weapons expert Eliot Higgins believed the Syrian army was responsible for the Al Ghouta attack, but the rebels may have used limited amounts of sarin in Khan Al Asal. The opposition “could have acquired small amounts of sarin,” he wrote. “The regime recently stated that they had lost some [sarin] from Aleppo Airport…. The Khan Al Asal attack is different to the others, as it could be concluded that the opposition is responsible.” He concluded with a warning. “If the opposition is responsible for Khan Al Asal, then we all need to be on our guard, because if the opposition has sarin, so does AQ [al-Qaeda] and ISIS, and this would now be a global threat which we all need to be resilient against.”
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So it appears that al-Qaeda-affiliated rebels had the expertise and capability to carry out small-scale chemical attacks. In Khan Al Asal they may well have deployed sarin against the Syrian army and its supporters. The Syrians charge there was another, virtually unknown chemical-weapons attack in May 2013. Dr. Bassam Barakat described a sarin attack on an army checkpoint near the Scientific Studies and Research Center in Damascus, an area near Hamish Hospital. Barakat said a rebel mortar shell packed with sarin hit dozens of Syrian soldiers. Twenty died and one hundred were injured, according to Barakat.
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Syrian minister of justice Najm al-Ahmad confirmed the attack. “The soldiers died of suffocation,” he told me.
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He and Barakat argued that the Syrian army wouldn't use chemical gas against its own soldiers, and therefore the rebels had to be responsible. The incident was briefly reported on Syrian TV at the time but not mentioned further. I asked both men why such a horrific attack was not more widely publicized by the Syrian government. After all, an attack of such magnitude against government soldiers would point suspicion directly at the rebels. As far
as I can tell, the incident was never reported to the United Nations and certainly wasn't included in the inspector's reports.

I became curious about one detail. The dead and injured soldiers were found at a checkpoint near the Scientific and Research Center, reportedly one of the top labs for creating sarin and other chemical weapons. Could an accident have happened at the center, causing the death and injuries? Of course, Syrian authorities deny it.

The United Nations reported on another sarin incident in Jobar, a town outside Damascus, on August 24, 2013, three days after the Al Ghouta attack. Because the UN inspectors were already in Damascus, they were able to conduct a firsthand investigation. According to the final UN report, ten soldiers were clearing an area when an improvised explosive device detonated, “releasing a very badly smelling gas.” The United Nations took blood samples, and one of the soldiers tested positive for sarin.

The United Nations reported a total of seven alleged chemical-weapons incidents. Inspectors were unable to collect enough data in some cases. Incidents included attacks on both rebel and progovernment areas. In one incident, a fifty-two-year-old woman living in a rebel area was taken to Turkey and later died. An autopsy by UN and Turkish doctors indicated she had been exposed to sarin. So what does this mixed record of likely responsibility mean for the massive attack on Al Ghouta?

The Al Ghouta victims lived in rebel-controlled areas in towns to the southeast of Damascus. Virtually all the victims were treated in rebel-controlled medical facilities, not government hospitals. The UN inspectors were able to examine the Al Ghouta area in a timely manner. They collected contaminated soil, took medical samples from victims, and located at least some of the munitions used. The United Nations concluded that without doubt victims had been exposed to sarin. The gas was delivered by guided rockets and artillery-fired rockets. The guided rockets, a modified version of an old Soviet Grad, were launched independently. The other munitions, which have tail fins, are fired from artillery but have no independent guidance system.

UN inspectors found five munitions carrying sarin that hit the Al Ghouta area. Each of the two Grads were capable of carrying thirteen
gallons of sarin, and three artillery-launched rockets could carry eleven to sixteen gallons each.
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If those figures are correct, and the munitions were filled to capacity, whomever fired the rockets had to either transport the sarin from a sophisticated lab or mix and load fifty-seven to seventy gallons of liquid sarin in battlefield conditions, which is no small task. London-based chemical-weapons expert Dan Kaszeta told me that such a batch of sarin would require a huge amount of “precursor chemicals and produce a significant waste stream.”
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An organized army with proper facilities and trained technicians seemed to be the likely culprit. On the other hand, if UN inspector Sellstrom, as well as professors from MIT and Tesla Labs, are correct on the rocket trajectory, the rockets were fired from areas very near to or under rebel control.

And the political question remains: Why would Assad be stupid enough to launch a major chemical attack just days after UN inspectors entered Damascus? He may be evil, but he's not stupid. Justice Minister Ahmad told me, “When the Syrian army was making progress in Al Ghouta, the terrorists wanted the world to look at another issue, so they used chemicals again.”
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Pro-Syrian government consultant Barakat claimed that rockets filled with sarin were shipped from Libya and that rebels were trained by special American and British units. He couldn't explain how such a large quantity of sarin precursors could have been prepared for battle. His story then became even more bizarre. He alleged that rebels had kidnapped hundreds of children from the progovernment city of Latakia, brought them to Al Ghouta, and then gassed them as part of a massive disinformation campaign.
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Those were the children depicted in the videos.

Joshua Landis, director of the Center of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oklahoma, offered a possible answer as to why the Syrian army used weapons of mass destruction. He told me that the regime was fighting a desperate battle in the suburbs against rebels who had considerable popular support among Sunni residents. Assad didn't have the troops to retake all the towns, so the army used sarin. “It's like sending the US Marines into Japan in 1945. But the United States used atomic weapons.”

He noted that “Syria doesn't operate its military efforts around weapons inspectors. As long as the United States wouldn't invade, he [Assad] could get away with anything.” German intelligence intercepted Syrian radio communication indicating the army had been asking Assad to use chemical weapons for many months. Landis said sarin could have been used to “intimidate people: ‘We're going to incinerate you.' The generals wanted to do that.”
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Those German intercepts raised speculation in Europe that the military may have used sarin without Assad's knowledge. One German newspaper indicated that brigade and division commanders had been asking permission to use chemical weapons for four and a half months before the Ghouta incident.
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No other sources confirmed this theory, however.

Investigative reporter Gareth Porter offered another explanation. He argued that much less sarin was used than commonly thought. The rebels could have diluted sarin with water. So they would only have had to manufacture as little as fifteen gallons of sarin. Some victims showed symptoms inconsistent with sarin poisoning, possibly caused by tear gas or smoke grenades. Under Porter's theory, extremist rebels didn't have to transport dozens of gallons of sarin from Turkey to Al Ghouta. “The new information suggests a much less lethal attack with munitions that were less effective and perhaps even using much less sarin than was initially assumed,” he wrote.
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So what conclusions can we draw? Both sides quite possibly used sarin. Both sides lied and manipulated evidence. At a minimum, the Obama administration exaggerated its case to justify a military attack on Syria. At worst, the White House fabricated intelligence. Bottom line: no one has yet presented convincing evidence of who perpetrated the horrific Al Ghouta attack. But one thing remains clear: the Al Ghouta massacre changed US policy, and not in the way President Obama intended.

In early September 2013, the United States was preparing to wage war on Syria using public-relations techniques perfected in Iraq and
Libya. First, exaggerate the threat. The White House claimed the Syrian army had murdered over 1,400 civilians. Second, claim that secret US intelligence, which can't be made public, showed that the Syrian regime is responsible for monumental war crimes. Third, claim the US military action will be limited in scope while secretly hoping it will topple the regime.

In the days following Al Ghouta, the administration stepped up arms supplies to the rebels. Arms promised back in April suddenly began to arrive.
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The aim was to give General Salim Idris more arms and supplies to coordinate attacks when the United States bombed. The White House started a campaign to rustle up international support. The United States sought support from the United Kingdom, a trusted ally in previous military adventures. Conservative Party prime minister David Cameron called members of Parliament back from vacation to vote on a possible Syria attack. Much to his surprise, Parliament voted against any military intervention, which reflected widespread British opposition to yet another Middle East war. The British people well remembered the lies spread by Labor Party prime minister Tony Blair in the run-up to the Iraq War.

The British parliamentary vote represented a huge setback for Obama, leaving France as his only major European backer. Only ten years before, the White House had attacked France for not supporting the Iraq invasion, calling their leaders “surrender monkeys.” Now Secretary of State John Kerry proclaimed France as our oldest ally.
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The Obama administration sought support from the Arab League, which had supported the Western attack on Libya. Not a single member of the league would openly support the United States.