Syria’s chemcal weapons slated for destruction

Remember Syria’s chemical weapons?  The last of them recently are being over to be destroyed under U.S. supervision.  Reed Richardson noted in The Nation that this represents a huge foreign policy success by the Obama administration in preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

Nine months after entering into joint negotiation with the Russians and Syria’s tyrannical President Bashar al-Assad, the last of that country’s 1,300 tons of declared chemical weapons began a journey to a chemical weapons-eating ship in the Mediterranean for destruction by the US.  This follows the rapid destruction of all of Syria’s chemical munitions last fall.

And while a dozen chemical weapon facilities inside Syria still remain to be destroyed, Ahmet Üzümcü, Director-General of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), was uncharacteristically upbeat about what the US-brokered deal had just accomplished in the middle of the Syrian civil war:

The mission to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons program has been a major undertaking marked by an extraordinary international cooperation.  Never before has an entire arsenal of a category of weapons of mass destruction been removed from a country experiencing a state of internal armed conflict.  And this has been accomplished within very demanding and tight time frames.

via The Nation.

Remember that the justification for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction—a goal that already had been accomplished by international agreement and international inspections.

The successful removal of all of Syria’s chemical weapons stores and munitions has now eliminated a nightmare scenario where extremist groups like ISIS capture them, either by chance or through a full-on successful coup of Assad.

If that seems unlikely, consider that the former scenario almost happened last week, when ISIS insurgents gained control over one of Saddam Hussein’s old chemical weapons complexes at Muthanna in southern Iraq.

Fortunately, post-Desert Storm inspections carried out by UNSCOM—a kind of prototype for the OPCW—had rendered all of these weapons useless years ago, long before Bush invaded.

via The Nation.

One of the favorite sayings of American statesmen is that “all options are on the table.”   Bombing and invasion are not necessarily the only options, the best options or the first options to consider—although, of course, diplomacy is strengthened if there is potential military force behind it.

Whose sarin? The truth is still in dispute

When I first read the accounts of the nerve gas attacks in Syria back in August, my first thought was that this didn’t make any sense.  Why would President Bashar al-Assad, who had been warned by the President Obama that the use of chemical weapons was a “red line” he crossed at his peril, use such weapons to gain a trivial advantage?

My experience of being wrong in the past should have told me that the fact that something doesn’t make sense is no proof at all that somebody wouldn’t do it.  As events unfolded, I realized that it would make even less sense for rebel groups to use sarin as a false flag operation, and I accepted the opinion of Doctors Without Borders and other impartial observers that the Syrian government, with or without Assad’s orders, is responsible for the killing.

A couple of days ago, my out-of-town friend Daniel Brandt e-mailed me a link to an article by Seymour Hersh in the London Review of Books (it had been turned down by the New Yorker and the Washington Post) claiming that President Obama’s charges against Assad were not backed up by U.S. intelligence.

He quoted sources as saying that the Al-Nursa Front, one of the main rebel groups, has the capacity to manufacture sarin.  He quoted other sources as saying that U.S. intelligence services have hidden sensors scattered through Syria that would have warned of a government attack.  The inspection team that went into Syria reached no conclusion about the source of the sarin, and, as Hersh pointed out, the U.S. government’s statements were carefully worded so as not to attribute its claims to the CIA.

Then Jack Clontz, an e-mail pen pal whom I’ve never met in person, sent me links to an article by a blogger named Eliot Higgins.  Based on his Internet research, he has determined that the sarin delivery system was something called Volcano munitions, which only the Syrian government forces are known to have.

Who is more likely to have been responsible for the atrocity?  Higgins asked.  The Syrian government, which is known to have stockpiles of sarin gas and Volcano delivery systems, or the Al-Nusri Front, making home-made weapons in a secret machine shop?

Logically, both Hersh and Higgins could be correct.  Hersh could be right in saying that Barack Obama and John Kerry were ready to commit acts of war based on incomplete information, and Higgins could still be right in saying that all the evidence points to Bashar al-Assad (or maybe some unauthorized person under his command).

I think the full truth is not yet known.  For practical purposes, the issue is moot.  Agreement has been reached for removal of chemical weapons from Syria, and both the Syrian government and the rebel forces have shown they are well able to kill people on a large scale by non-chemical means.

For me the lessons are as follows:

• Beware of confirmation bias.  More than once in my life, I’ve started to look into something, found facts that appeared to confirm what I already thought, and stopped looking.  This almost always proved to be a mistake.
• Beware of privileging secret information.  Seymour Hersh uses confidential sources to provide him with inside information.  Eliot Higgins searches the Internet to find what’s publicly know.  Public information is just as relevant, and usually more reliable, than secret information.  The principle applies to journalists as much as to the CIA and NSA.

The best article I’ve read on the Syrian crisis

If you’re at all interested in the Syrian situation, you should read the article Syria: What Now? by William R. Polk, which is reproduced on James Fallows‘ web log in The Atlantic.

Here are the highlights of what I got out of the article.

• Sarin has been only a minor factor in Syria’s civil war, accounting for 1 percent or less of casualties.  The reason Syria is stockpiling poison gas is to deter attack from other nations, especially Israel.  The government of Israel not only possesses nuclear weapons, but is believed to have a “robust” program of chemical and biological warfare manufacturing and training.
• President Assad would never agree to dismantling of poison gas weapons without a Russian guarantee of protection against attack.  Any dismantling would have be under the supervision of Russian experts.  This would benefit the Syrian government because it would be a deterrent to attack by the United States.
• Overthrow of the Assad government would lead to the balkanization of Syria into its various ethnic and religious groups and likely result in massacres of Syrian Christians and Alawite Muslims.  Such conflicts could spread to Lebanon and other neighboring countries.
• The stability of Syria is a vital national interest to Russia, and not just for reasons of prestige.  One in six citizens of the Russian Federation is Muslim, and the Russian government has been fighting for years against rebels in the majority-Muslim province of Chechnya.  Overthrow of Assad could create a base for supplying the Chechen fighters.

I highly recommend reading the whole thing.

What Putin has to say to Americans about Syria

If I were a Russian, I don’t think I would be a supporter of President Vladimir Putin.  Russia is a country where opponents of the regime die mysteriously, a tightly-knit group of self-described oligarchs control finance and industry and holdovers from the old Soviet Union are entrenched in government.  But I think Putin made a lot of sense his New York Times article about Syria yesterday.

The potential strike by the United States against Syria, despite strong opposition from many countries and major political and religious leaders, including the pope, will result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s borders.  A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilize the Middle East and North Africa.  It could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance.

Vladimir Putin

Syria is not witnessing a battle for democracy, but an armed conflict between government and opposition in a multi-religious country.  There are few champions of democracy in Syria.  But there are more than enough Qaeda fighters and extremists of all stripes battling the government.  The United States State Department has designated Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, fighting with the opposition, as terrorist organizations.  This internal conflict, fueled by foreign weapons supplied to the opposition, is one of the bloodiest in the world.

Mercenaries from Arab countries fighting there, and hundreds of militants from Western countries and even Russia, are an issue of our deep concern. Might they not return to our countries with experience acquired in Syria?  After all, after fighting in Libya, extremists moved on to Mali.  This threatens us all.

He also stated:

It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest?  I doubt it.  Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”

He ended the article with these words:

My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust.  I appreciate this.  I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.”

It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.  There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy.  Their policies differ, too.  We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.

via NYTimes.com.

President Putin, it is true, has his own reasons for not wanting the Syrian government to be overthrown.  Syria has been a Russian client state since the days of the old Soviet Union.  It provides the Russian Federation with its only naval base on the Mediterranean.   It is a potential outlet for a natural gas pipeline from the Caspian Sea region of Russia and Central Asia.

And while the Russian government’s proposal for a turnover of Syrian chemical weapons to an international authority sounds good, it would be impossible to implement while the country is in the middle of a civil war.  After all, the United States promised in 1990 to get rid of our chemical weapons stockpiles by 2012, and has not managed to do so.

But the governments of the United States, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have reasons for supporting the rebels which have more to do with pipeline routes, geopolitical advantage and Sunni-Shiite struggles than with humanitarism.  There is nothing at stake in Syria’s civil war that justifies a U.S. attack on Syria.

The Syrian enigma: Links & comments 9/10/13

When I first heard the charges that the Syrian government had used nerve gas against rebel forces, I disbelieved them.  It didn’t make any sense to me that Bashar al-Assad would do something that was not only wicked but foolish.  Then I gradually became convinced there is something to the charges.  Who else but the Syrian government would have the capability to launch such attacks?

Now I don’t know what to believe.

Letter Detailing Syria’s Case to Congress Has More Verifiable Claims Than U.S. Case to Date by Brad Friedman for the BRAD BLOG (which I have added to my Blogs I Like page)

Mohammed Jihad al-Lahman, Speaker of the Syrian People’s Assembly, wrote a letter to members of the U.S. Congress appealing to them to refrain from attacking his country.

Among other things he offered evidence that the gas attacks were made by the Syrian rebel forces.  He said that Turkish and Iraqi authorities captured rebel forces with nerve gas weapons, that Syria appealed to the United Nations back in March to investigate nerve gas attacks by rebels and that the Syrian government turned over evidence of rebel use of nerve gas to the Russian and Chinese embassies.

All these allegations can easily be checked, and ought to be checked before any congressional vote.

Syria crisis: Obama welcomes Russia’s chemical weapons proposal by Dan Roberts and Julian Borger of The Guardian.

The Russian government called on Syria’s leaders to place their chemical weapons under international control and eventually to destroy them.  Since Syria depends on Russian backing, there is a good chance this will be accepted.

It provides a good opportunity for Barack Obama and John Kerry to climb back off the limb they’ve gotten out on.  I wonder how much the crisis is due to President Obama having said the use of chemical weapons is a “red line”, believing when he said it that the line never would be crossed.

However, if Bashar al-Assad agrees to place Syria’s chemical weapons under international control, some good will have come from President Obama’s threats.   Assuming the agreement is carried out, of course.

Russia balks at French plan for U.N. Security Council resolution on Syrian chemical arms by the Washington Post [added later]

It turns out that the Russian government would “welcome” the Syrian government handing over its chemical arms to an international authority, but aren’t offering to take responsibility for implementing this and wouldn’t support a threat of military action if they didn’t comply.  So less has changed than I thought.

How U.S. Grand Strategy in Syria Led to the Idea of Missile Strikes by Juan Cole for Informed Comment.

Juan Cole, a Middle East historian, wrote that there are two factions among the Syrian rebels—radical Sunni Muslims linked to Al Qaeda in the north of Syria, backed by Turkey and Qatar, and another less radical faction in the south of Syria backed by Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United States.

According to Cole, the purpose of the planned U.S. attack is to weaken the Syrian forces on the southern front and help the rebel faction favored by the United States.

Can You Pass the Qatar Quiz? by Jeffrey Rudolph for Informed Comment.

How did the tiny Persian Gulf nation of Qatar come to play such a big part in Middle East power politics?  This guest post on Informed Comment helps to explain.

What can the U.S. usefully do in Syria?

President Obama is asking Congress for authority to bomb Syria, but he said he has no intention of invading Syria.  Bombing will result in the deaths of some Syrians and some damage to Syria’s war-making capability, but it will not threaten the power of President Bashar al-Assad.  In fact it will strengthen his power, by turning the Syrian people and Arab people generally more against the United States than they already are.

What then can you about President Assad?  We don’t know his role, if any, in the gas attacks.  Maybe he ordered them.  Maybe his brother or some other element of the Syrian army ordered them.  Maybe a pro-government or anti-government militia carried them out.  Maybe the gas attacks were a deception operation by the Saudi or some other foreign government.

If there is proof that he ordered the nerve gas attacks, then we should bring a criminal case at the Hague.  There is a precedent for trying heads of state for crimes against humanity.  He could be tried in his absence.  Admittedly, Assad could not be brought to justice unless he was captured outside his country or his regime was overthrown, but these limitations are not nothing.  Of course all this is contingent on Assad actually being guilty of ordering the gassing of civilians, which at present is not at all certain.

What then can we do to help the Syrians?  Writer Charles Stross had a thought.

Nerve agents like Sarin aren’t black magic; they’re close relatives of organophosphate insecticides.  Medical treatments exist.  In particular there’s a gizmo called a NAAK, or Nerve Agent Antidote Kit. The drugs it relies on (neostigmine, atropine, and diazepam) are all more than fifty years old and dirt cheap; they won’t save someone who has inhaled a high lethal dose, but they’ll stabilize someone who’s been exposed, hopefully for long enough to get them decontaminated and rush them to a hospital for long-term treatment.  Mass Sarin attacks are survivable with prompt first aid and hospital support.

We should be distributing gas masks, field decontamination showers, NAAK kits, and medical resources to everyone in the conflict zones.  Government, civilian, rebels, it doesn’t matter.  By doing so we would be providing aid that was (a) life-saving (b) cheap, and (c) put a thumb on the side of the balance in favor of whoever isn’t using nerve gas. We’d also be breaking with the traditional pattern of western involvement in the region, which is to break shit and kill people, mostly innocent civilians who were trying to keep their heads down.  It wouldn’t fix our bloody-handed reputation, but it’d be a good start.

via Charlie’s Diary.

The other thing we Americans could do is to provide help and asylum for refugees, especially Christian refugees.  Syria, like Egypt, was a Christian country before it was a Muslim county, and still has a large Christian minority.  They will inevitably become the scapegoat for anything done by the supposedly Christian United States.

Did Syria use illegal poison gas weapons?

Map by The Independent

[Added 9/17/13]  The United Nations report indicates that the Syrian military used sarin gas on civilians.  Click on UN Report Conclusive: Sarin Gas Was Used On a Large Scale, Linked to Syrian Regime for a summary by Juan Cole for Informed Comment.

If I were a dictator trying to put down a rebellion, and the world’s most heavily-armed superpower told me that the one thing that would unleash their attack on me is the use of poison gas, I don’t think I would use poison gas.

And if I did use poison gas, I would use it in a decisive way, that would end the rebellion once and for all.  So I have been skeptical about charges that the Syrian government used poison gas against rebel forces.  But a report by Doctors Without Borders / Medecins Sans Frontieres provides strong circumstantial evidence that thousands of people have symptoms of being victims of poison gas.  [New Scientist magazine published a similar report.  Added 8/30/13.]

I don’t think the rebel forces could have been the ones to use poison gas.  It would have been virtually impossible to cover up.  So while it still doesn’t make sense to me that the Syrian government would use poison gas, my experience of life tells me that people sometimes do things that don’t make sense.

Juan Cole, on his Informed Comment web log, suggested a reason why the Syrian government might have used gas and thought they could get away with it. Or maybe there is some other explanation.  I don’t know.  Neither do Joe Biden or John Kerry.

If gassing of civilians really is the main issue, the best thing is to wait for the report of the UN inspectors in Syria.