The UN report also noted a couple of inconsistencies in the evidence that was collected at the time in Damascus, inconsistencies that have not been explained so far by any party involved. The death toll of the Ghouta events is also open for debate, with the casualties varying between 287 victims (according to French intelligence), 355 (according to the NGO "Médecins sans Frontières"), 502 (according to the "Syrian Observatory for Human Rights") and 1702 (according to the "Free Syrian Army").

What happened back then is still open to a certain level of conjecture. Western intelligence agencies and NGOs quickly condemned a Syrian military operation using a nerve agent (sarin) against insurgents and civilian populations in the South Eastern suburbs of Damascus. A special investigation by the UN however refrained from specifically designating which party could have launched the attack and an independent review by the MIT even alleged the rockets used to deliver the deadly payload could only have been launched – if at all – from rebel controlled areas.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which had already supervised the destruction of the Syrian arsenal of chemical and biological weapons in 2013-2014, is now going to launch an inquiry into this supposed breach of international law. We will see what conclusions the OPCW can draw from its analysis on the ground. Most likely, nothing conclusive will surface and no smoking gun will turn up … What is more interesting about this story is that it emerged two years exactly after the Eastern Ghouta events of August 2013, which almost triggered an Western intervention in the Syrian civil war.

While US Central Command has been very careful in its reaction to the recent news about prohibited weapons being used against the Kurds, with its spokesman Col. Ryder stating that "we really don't know what if anything may have been used", major news outlets – the LA Times, the Wall Street Journal and Fox News to name but a few - were very quick to pick up that story, often adding as an explanation that the chemical agent must have come from Bashar al-Assad's allegedly destroyed stockpile of WMDs.

In the last few days, a flow of media reports surfaced claiming that the "Islamic State" had launched chemical attacks against Kurdish fighters in Northern Iraq, using shells containing mustard gas. Even if the news of the alleged use of such weapons by al-Baghdadi's troops seems absolutely possible, there must be something about the month of August, chemical attacks and the Middle-East ... Two years ago, almost to this day, news of another terrible attack almost triggered Western intervention in the Syrian quagmire. Unknown to most however, August 2013 in Eastern Damascus was not the first and only instance in which a large scale and deadly attack using a chemical agent may have happened in the post-2003 madhouse the Middle-East has turned into.

US reactions and President Obama's "red line"

On August 26th 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry put the number of victims at exactly 1429, one more version of casualties and an unverified one at the time. Furthermore, the Secretary of State used photographs during his presentation that were later traced back to mass funerals in Iraq in 2003 and not Damascus in 2013. Washington's stance and posture with regard to Syria was further undermined by the President himself, when he de facto retracted an earlier statement about the now famous "red line" that would trigger US intervention.

In hindsight, one can only be relieved that the President did not want to get entangled into another Middle-Eastern quagmire and that sanity prevailed in the end, thanks – to a certain degree – to some pretty clearly worded opinions by senior US military. The fact remains that the President's credibility was seriously undermined at the time, but this may be one of those cases where the upside of such a development far outweighs the downside …

In the weeks and days following the Damascus events of 2013, very few questions were asked as to the insurgents' ability to produce and deliver the chemical agents of which traces were found by the UN inspection team. At the time, most Western officials simply denied the possibility of any such scenario: the insurgents didn't have the capabilities to deliver, let alone produce or get their hands on such weapons.

Those who begged to differ were just ignored and very little credit was given to a couple of reports serious enough to call for some in-depth investigation. A thin trail of evidence leading to Iraq in particularly was mostly ignored.

Selective finger pointing

Now, almost two years later to the day, we are suddenly confronted with the prospect of ISIS Jihadis having used another chemical agent, admittedly one much less sophisticated than the still controversial sarin allegedly used in Syria, against Western backed Peshmerga fighters in Northern Iraq.

The contrast in public and media reaction to these news is quite startling. While the possibility of Jihadi insurgents as suspects had been dismissed out of hand in the case of Eastern Ghouta in 2013, it is now already portrayed as gospel, even though US officials seem much less inclined to draw quick conclusions, unlike two years ago.

As such, the credibility of statements alleging the use of chemical or nerve agents by Al Qaeda or ISIS affiliated groups in the Middle-East shouldn't come as a surprise: there has been a trail of evidence that can be traced back to the early days of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, suggesting insurgents consistently tried to either get their hands on what was possibly left of former stockpiles of such weapons in Iraq, or enrol chemical and biological engineers with the know-how to produce them.

Following the bread crumbs

More recently also, a small number of reports were published, warning – again – of attempts by Jihadi groups to acquire chemical weapons that Libya's Gaddafi had secretly stashed in desert compounds in the Centre and South of his country.

All these elements represent pieces of one and the the same puzzle, one that "Al Qaeda in Iraq" and now the "Islamic State" have been trying to put together for a number of years. The fact they mostly failed– for reasons we shall get into – doesn't mean they haven't managed to stage actual attacks, the latest one against the Kurds being only "small fry" in comparison to what they have or might have managed to do in other instances.

The only thing that stands out as inconsistent about Jihadi attempts to use chemical weapons is the West's attitude towards such a scenario in the case of Eastern Ghouta, where Syrian insurgents were mostly sponsored by groups close to either Al Qaeda or ISIS. However, even if that attack was to be attributed in the end to the insurgents (a quite distant and most unlikely prospect), chances are, the body count would not stand out as the most deadly attack of that sort perpetrated by these groups.

Unknown to most, another chemical attack may have happened way earlier than 2013, with an uncontested casualty figure of around one thousand victims. At least, that is the official death toll of the events that occured in Baghdad, on August 31st 2005 (August again …). Both US military and Iraqi officials avoided any public statements about this affair, making sure even the medical staff and survivors were not given an opportunity to come forward and give their own account of what they had witnessed.

August 2005: a look into the rear-view mirror

Ten years later, it is impossible to carry out scientific analysis that could definitely confirm evidence and intelligence that surfaced before and after the Baghdad incident. No tissue samples were taken from the victims. No pieces of clothing were sent in for lab analysis and the whole story was buried under a wealth of rather unconvincing official statements trying to explain the highest death toll ever recorded in Baghdad in a single day since the US invasion.

What may have happened on that fateful day, how it came about and in what context it took place shall be the subject of the next part in this piece. The most surprising aspect is not the possibility of a chemical attack having taken place, but rather the fact that it didn't come out of the blue, and was the result of months of specific efforts and operational planning by "Al Qaeda in Iraq".

Following this trail of bread crumbs, starting with the early days of "Operation Iraqi Freedom", the investigations carried out by the "Iraq Survey Group" (which led to the so-called "Duelfer Report"), connecting the dots between a series of attacks against US forces in Iraq, both in 2004 and later in 2006, and following up on Al Qaeda's (or rather Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's) attempts at staging a large scale chemical attack in the Middle-East, might not only shed a different light on the perception we have of the Damascus events of 2013, but also highlight the potential there is for more of the same and reveal our general blindness as to the Jihadis willingness to use any means possible, whether that is crowdsourcing recruits through the use of social media or possibly launching chemical attacks against urban areas.



Part 2 (to follow): What happened in Baghdad on August 31st 2005 ?