By Adnan Khan

On the sixth anniversary of the uprising in Syria and a day after the US representative to the United Nations announced that the US is no longer prioritising the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.[1] Information continues to trickle out of the latest chemical weapons attack by the al-Assad regime. Speaking to Middle East Eye from Idlib, Ibrahim al-Seweid, 26, said he arrived at the attack site at about 11am, on Tuesday 4 April, about three hours after the initial strike. “I found bodies scattered all over the area. The local hospital wasn’t prepared for the number of dead. They hit a residential area, the vast majority of the casualties were civilian. And it was clear it was some sort of chemical attack – the way the victims looked, and there was foam on their faces. he said.”[2] The chemical weapons attack took place on the town of Khan Sheikhun in Idlib, northwestern Syria. Despite Bashar’s use of chemical weapons, it will not alter the strategic landscape across Syria.

The al-Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons has now occurred so many times it has become a regular feature of the battle for Syria. The deadliest attacks were the Ghouta attack in the suburbs of Damascus in August 2013 achaten-suisse.com and the Khan al-Assal attack in the suburbs of Aleppo in March 2013. Several other attacks have been also taken place, the UN mission found the use of the nerve agent sarin in the case of Khan Al-Asal (19 March 2013), Saraqib (29 April 2013), Ghouta (21 August 2013), Jobar (24 August 2013) and Ashrafiyat Sahnaya (25 August 2013). In August 2016, a confidential United Nations report explicitly blamed the Syrian military of Bashar al-Assad for dropping chemical weapons on the towns of Talmenes in April 2014 and Sarmin in March 2015.[3] Syria is not a sig­na­tory to either the Chem­i­cal Weapons Con­ven­tion (CWC) or the Com­pre­hen­sive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). As a result, Syria began devel­op­ing chem­i­cal weapons in the 1970’s and made seri­ous efforts to acquire and main­tain an arse­nal of such weapons. Its For­eign Min­istry spokesman, Jihad Makdissi, at a news con­fer­ence shown live on Syr­ian national tele­vi­sion on July 2012, con­firmed Syria’s pos­ses­sion of chem­i­cal weapons.[4]

Prior to the uprising Syria report­edly man­u­fac­tured Sarin, Tabun, VX, and mus­tard gas types of chem­i­cal weapons. West­ern non-proliferation experts iden­ti­fied 5 pro­duc­tion and stor­age facil­i­ties at Cerin, Hama, Homs, Latakia and Palmyra and one sus­pected weapons base at Al Safir.[5] Inde­pen­dent assess­ments indi­cated that Syr­ian pro­duc­tion was a mere few hun­dred tons of chem­i­cal agent per year and its stock­piles prior to inter­na­tional export con­trols were likely to have been long exhausted.[6] This is due to Syria’s inabil­ity to inter­nally pro­duce many of the nec­es­sary pre­cur­sors to cre­ate chem­i­cal weapons and its depen­dence upon import­ing them; a fact that was doc­u­mented by the CIA and seen in declas­si­fied acqui­si­tion report to US Con­gress. As mil­i­tary com­man­ders learned dur­ing World War I and the Iran-Iraq war, chem­i­cal agents are volatile, quick to vapor­ize, and tend to dis­si­pate quickly. There­fore, it will be chal­leng­ing for the regime to amass enough quan­ti­ties of chem­i­cal agents to cause sig­nif­i­cant dam­age in a real-world setting.

In all the cases of chemical weapons use by the regime they were mainly used against civilian targets and not against the rebel groups. They were used in urban areas where significant populations reside in close proximity. The nature of the upris­ing in Syria is that it took place all over the coun­try. Many of the rebel groups did not have fixed posi­tions such as military bases or large stocks of weapons. As a result chemical weapons in this context would have little impact on the groups, using artillery to dis­perse chem­i­cal agents have had lit­tle impact as they are dis­persed around the coun­try. Al-Assad is fight­ing an uncon­ven­tional rather than con­ven­tional force that uses asym­met­ric tac­tics, which is hard to tar­get through a mis­sile or the use of uncon­ven­tional weapons with­out self-annihilation. In Syria there are too many rebel units to tar­get. This is why the rebels have never needed to match the regime’s forces’ num­bers or fire­power because they compelled the regime to across the country.

[pullquote align=”right” color=”” class=”” cite=”” link=””]But Chem­i­cal weapons are a weapon of mass fear rather than mass destruc­tion and as their previous use by the regime has shown they have done little to alter the strategic picture[/pullquote]

As the US ambassador gave Bashar the green light it would appear he has resorted to this type of attack. Recent rebel offensives in Hama and elsewhere in Syria have challenged the forces of Bashar al-Assad, despite the victory in Aleppo back in December 2016 and it would appear the chemical attack took place in this context. But Chem­i­cal weapons are a weapon of mass fear rather than mass destruc­tion and as their previous use by the regime has shown they have done little to alter the strategic picture. It still remains the fact that Bashar cannot defeat the rebels and it is Iran and Russia who are still doing the heavy lifting to keep him in power. The political cover necessary is being provided by the US and the regional countries are playing their role and pursuing their narrow interests as the ummah is slaughtered in Syria.

After six years of war Bashar should really know better that even the use of chemical weapons has done little to the masses that arose to overthrow him. The selective outrage demonstrated by the Western Media and Government’s only confirms that some lives matter more to them than others. The surrounding Muslim regimes hold the largest share of culpability for failing to come to the aid of the people, but instead they have pursued their own narrow interests.

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39450570

[2] http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/gas-attack-kills-18-syrias-idlib-observatory-1708105490

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/world/middleeast/syria-used-chlorine-in-bombs-against-civilians-report-says.html

[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/24/world/middleeast/chemical-weapons-wont-be-used-in-rebellion-syria-says.html

[5] http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/syria/cw.htm

[6] ibid