In my earlier article - Whodunnit in Syria – I claimed that there’s little dispute that a chemical agent was used in an Aug. 21st
attack outside of Damascus – and probably on a smaller scale before
that – but there is a reasonable doubt if the Assad regime used sarin
gas in this operation. Since then new
aspects what happened are emerging and when there is some perspective
about diplomatic solution it is also important to note for future
developing that the roles of actors are changing in operation theatre. While these newest developments are shaping the future in Syria it is in my opinion still important to study Aug. 21st attack as it might help to plan further actions – and alliances.
The UN Report made on 13th Sep 2013 on the alleged use of chemical weapons in the Ghouta area of Damascus on Aug. 21st , 2013 has clarified many issues but left the key questions unanswered: who committed the attack and who are the victims?The UN report does not confirm anything other than chemical weapons were used. More interesting is an other report made by a Syria-based human rights group ISTEAMS. This later report has also been submitted to UN and it clarifies a bit the core question – Whodunnit?
UN report
“To
launch a chemical weapons attack in Damascus on the very day that a
United Nations chemical-weapons inspection team arrives in Damascususing an out-of-date missile in an ancient launchermust be a new definition of madness.” (George Galloway in British parliament on Syria late August)
The
UN report tells that CW and sarin gas was used in Damascus 21. Aug.
2013 – and that's it, practically none has claimed the opposite. The
report does not tell who were implementing or ordering gas attack nor answering the basic question of "to whose benefit?". However the critical analysis of UN report makes clear that the narrative "only the Syrian regime could have carried out the attacks” will
not hold. I would like to highlight following points which cast a
reasonable doubt against mentioned one-sided (US) approach. As source I have used mainly Land Destroyer Report by Tony Cartalucci.
1.
Chemical weapons were delivered with munitions not used by rebels:
these particularly larger diameter rockets (140mm and 330mm) have not
been seen in the hands of terrorists operating within and along Syria's
borders, however rockets similar in construction and operation, but smaller, most certainly in the hands of the militants. According
to UN chemical weapons inspectors, unguided 140 mm rockets were used in
the attacks. The UN inspectors suggested that Soviet BM-14-17 (MLRS)
rocket launchers were used. However, Syria long ago removed those
systems from its arsenal, and the army does not use them. They were
replaced by modern Soviet 122 mm “Grad” (MLRS BM-21) and Chinese 107 mm
Type 63 light rocket launchers. Syria may have also used 220 mm
Soviet-made Hurricane rocket launchers (MLRS 9P140). (Source: The New Eastern Outlook/NEO http://journal-neo.org/2013/09/20/rus-siriya-himicheskaya-ataka-ili-provokatsiya/ )
The
Washington Post contends that somehow these larger rockets require
"technology" the militants have no access to. This is categorically
false. A rocket is launched from a simple tube, and the only additional
technology terrorists may have required for the larger rockets would
have been a truck to mount them on. For an armed front fielding stolen tanks,
finding trucks to mount large metal tubes upon would seem a rather
elementary task - especially to carry out a staged attack that would
justify foreign intervention and salvage their faltering offensive. That
the same rocket used in Damascus has now been seen launched from
makeshift flatbeds and not olive green military rocket launchers, along
with answering the basic question of "to whose benefit?" and considering
that militants are confirmed to have US training in handling of
chemical weapons - all at the very least tear down the narrative that
"only the Syrian regime" could have carried out the attacks. So
how did the obsolete MLRS BM-14-17 systems get there? Perhaps they came
with the rockets supplied by external opposition supporters who had
previously obtained those sorts of weapons from the Soviet Union. As an
alternative explanation, one cannot exclude the possibility that the
opposition captured the munitions from Syrian weapons depots that might
have held them.
2. The sarin was fired from a regime-controlled area: The report concludes that the shells came from the northwest of the targeted neighborhood – from area which
was and is controlled by Syrian regime forces and is awfully close to a
Syrian military base. If the shells had been fired by Syrian rebels,
they likely would have come from the rebel-held southeast. However the "limitations" the UN team itself put on the credibility of their findings. On page 18 of the report (22 of the .pdf), the UN states [emphasis added]:
”The
time necessary to conduct a detailed survey of both locations as well
as take samples was very limited. The sites have been well travelled by
other individuals both before and during the investigation. Fragments
and other possible evidence have clearly been handled/moved prior to the
arrival of the investigation team.”
It
should also be noted that militants still controlled the area after the
alleged attack and up to and including during the investigation by UN
personnel. So possible tampering
or planting of evidence would have been carried out by "opposition"
members - and surely the Syrian government would not point rockets in
directions that would implicate themselves.
3. Chemical analysis suggests sarin likely came from controlled supply, butany
staged attack would also need to utilize stabilized chemical weapons
and personnel trained in their use. From stockpiles looted in Libya, to
chemical arms covertly transferred from the US, UK, or Israel, through
Saudi Arabia or Qatar, there is no short supply of possible sources.
Regarding "rebels" lacking the necessary training to handle chemical
weapons - US policy has seen to it that not only did they receive the
necessary training, but Western defense contractors specializing in
chemical warfare are reported to be on the ground with militants inside Syria. CNN reported in their 2012 article, that: ”The
United States and some European allies are using defense contractors to
train Syrian rebels on how to secure chemical weapons stockpiles in
Syria, a senior U.S. official and several senior diplomats told CNN
Sunday.”
4.
Cyrillic characters on the sides of the shells: Terrorists operating
inside of Syria also possess rifles and even tanks of Russian origin -
stolen or acquired through a large network of illicit arms constructed by NATO and its regional allies to perpetuate the conflict. (Source and more in Land Destroyer Report )A
label found on a warhead. Mikhail Barabanov, an expert with the Russian
Centre for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies commented
that this label matches those on missiles produced in 1967 in
Novosibirsk (Russia). One might justifiably wonder why the Syrian Army
would launch a 46-year-old missile when it holds abundant stockpiles of
far more reliable modern weapons. It is also worth noting that the
production of chemical weapons in Syria began in the 1990s, when
chemical facilities were built near Damascus, in Homs, Hama, and Aleppo.
Thus, those missiles, filled with chemical agents, should be dated
accordingly or later. If
the date of a missile’s production does not match the production date
for its chemical agent, it stands to reason that the warhead was filled
in an underground laboratory or was even homemade.(Source Voltairenet )
5. A
closer look at the charts shows a massive discrepancy in lab results
from east and west Ghouta. There is not a single environmental sample in
Moadamiyah ( west Ghouta)
that tested positive for Sarin. Yet it is in Moadamiyah where alleged
victims of a CW attack tested highest for Sarin exposure. Sothere is
stark discrepancy between human and environmental test results in
Moadamiyah. Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, former commander of the British
military’s chemical defense regiment and CEO at CW specialists,
SecureBio Ltd notes:
“I
think that it is strange that the environmental and human samples don’t
match up. This could be because there have been lots of people
trampling through the area and moving things. Unless the patients were
brought in from other areas. There doesn’t seem another plausible
explanation.”
All
the patients were pre-selected by Ghouta doctors and opposition groups
for presentation to the UN teams. Although the highest rate of
Sarin-exposure was found in Moadamiyah “survivors,” the UN team found no
traces of Sarin on the 140mm rocket identified as the source of the
alleged CW attack – or in its immediate environment.
The
discrepancies in the story of the Ghouta CW attacks are vast. Casualty
figures range from a more modest 300+ to the more dramatic 1,400+
figures touted by western governments. The UN investigators were not
able to confirm any of these numbers – they only saw 80 survivors and
tested only 36 of these. They saw none of the dead – neither in graves
nor in morgues. (Source: Questions Plague UN Report on Syria – “Saudi Intelligence Behind the Attacks…” by Sharmine Narwani and Radwan Mortada )
The
US intelligence community selected or nominated 13 videos that the
Obama Administration used in their case against the Syrian government.
It was job of US intelligence to examine and authenticate these videos
however it seems that they made sloppy or even worse purpose-orientated
job. ISTEAMS - a Syria-based human rights group working in conjunction
with the International Institute for Peace, Justice and Human Rights –
got its motivation to study case further as follows:
“From
the moment when some families of abducted children contacted us to
inform us that they recognized the children among those who are
presented in the videos as victims of the Chemical Attacks of East
Ghouta, we decided to examine the videos thoroughly.
ISTEAMS found some conflicts between videos and reality on the ground as well between videos and conclusions made from them. That analysis was later expanded on by a report from ISTEAMS, In this thorough report numerous discrepancies and inconsistencies in the footage are documented.
The
ISTEAMS report raises many troubling questions about the scenes in the
Ghouta videos. Were the victims of the attack local children? If so, why
were they there after these areas had been largely abandoned? Where are
their parents? An answer to threse questions might be found from videos
posted by the Mujahedeen Press Office to YouTube just six days before
the attack confirming that the terrorists had kidnapped hundreds of
women and children from the rural villages of Alawite stronghold
Lattakia to use as bargaining chips in the conflict. Were these kidnap
victims moved to Ghouta to be killed in the chemical weapons attack? Is
this why so many children were there in these largely-vacated areas, and
why so few parents appear on video mourning their children? If
true, are evidence of the most disgraceful war crimes imaginable and
the most cold-blooded manipulations of evidence to suit an agenda.
“Contrary
to the claims of the Free Syrian Army and the Western services, the
only identified victims of the Ghouta massacre are those belonging to
families that support the Syrian government. In the videos, the
individuals that show outrage against the ‘crimes of Bashar el-Assad’
are in reality their killers.”
The
report documents through eyewitness testimony and video evidence that
the affected areas had been largely abandoned by local residents in the
days prior to the attack. Yet in the footage of the aftermath, there are
large numbers of child victims who are portrayed. There exists very
little footage of parents with their children, and what little footage
exists portrays some of the parents apparently “discovering” their
children on multiple occasions in different locations. Other footage
shows the same children arranged in different formations in
geographically distant neighborhoods. The report concludes that the
footage was carefully stage managed to create the greatest emotional
impact on foreign audiences. These videos were then used by the Obama
administration to convince the Senate of their case for military
intervention.
Conclusion: What the study [ISTEAMS report] does
is logically point out through its observations that there is empirical
evidence that the sample of videos that the US Intelligence Community
has analyzed and nominated as authentic footage has been stage-managed.
Some discrepancies and inconsistencies in the videos that the Obama Administration used in their case against the Syrian government:
The
revelations implicate the entire intelligence apparatus of the United
States and discredit it in the same tradition as the intelligence about
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There are serious flaws in the US
Intelligence Community that equate to either a lack of professionalism
or/and its outright subordination to Washington’s political agendas that
involve false analyses. The US intelligence community has been put to shame by the dedication and determination of a lone Christian nun. Her – and ISTEAMS - modest study of the videos of the Syrian chemical attack shows they were productions involving staged bodies. ISTEAMS
submitted this report to the United Nations and as it is now published
so everybody else can study the report and make their own conclusions.
Some other related random excerpts about the Syrian CW case:
- An
indictment from the Adana Public Prosecutor’s Office has declared that
anti-Assad gangs are known to be producing chemical weapons inside of
Turkey.Prosecution
attorney presented the court with a 132-page document which contained
prosecution attorney’s gathered evidence of the suspects’ links to
terrorist groups in Syria including al-Nusra Front and al-Qaeda-linked
Islamic States on Iraq and Levant (Ahrar al-Sham).On May 28 Turkish
security forces found a 2-kg cylinder with sarin gas after searching the
homes of terrorists from the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front who were
previously detained. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQYCat55dgc&w=640&h=360]
The
recent findings on the chemical weapons attack of Aug. 21 on the
outskirts of Damascus, Syria, was “indeed a self-inflicted attack” by
the Syrian opposition to provoke U.S. and military intervention in
Syria. An
Italian former journalist Domenico Quirico and a Belgian researcher
Pierre Piccinin who were recently freed from their al-Nusra captives say
they overheard their captors talking about their involvement in a
deadly chemical attack “last month,” which would have been the Aug. 21, 2013 chemical weapons attack in Damascus. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkc2ZtPvc8o&w=640&h=360]
The
sarin nerve gas used in the Allepo attack, sources say, had been
prepared by former Iraqi Military Industries Brig. Gen. Adnan
al-Dulaimi. It then was supplied to Baath-affiliated foreign fighters of
the Sunni and Saudi Arabian-backed al-Nusra Front in Aleppo, with
Turkey’s cooperation, through the Turkish town of Antakya in Hatay
Province.
- Currently a UN team of CW inspectors are in Syria and
investigating three chemical weapons attacks alleged to have happened
after the 21 August attack in Damascus that left hundreds dead and
sparked a threat of US military action.The UN said its team, led by Ake
Sellstrom, arrived in Syria for its second visit on 25 September and it
is working on a "comprehensive report" that it expects to have finished
by late October. The UN listed the alleged attacks, which all took
place this year, as Khan al-Assal on 19 March; Sheikh Maqsoud on 13
April; Saraqeb on 29 April; Ghouta on 21 August; Bahhariya on 22 August;
Jobar on 24 August and Ashrafieh Sahnaya on 25 August. Damascus pushed
for the investigation of the three post-21 August incidents, accusing
"militants" of using chemical gas against the army in Bahhariya, Jobar
and Ashrafieh Sahnaya.
- And a short background video about use of CW in Syria: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzLVfdrQRsY&w=640&h=360]
Consequences
September
25 is the date of dramatic turn of events in Syria. The consequences
may affect the way the situation unfolds further on. The plans to stage a
provocation and get the West involved in the conflict had failed, so
the opposition threw away the democratic veil and showed its real face.
Thirteen most combat capable groups severed ties with the National
Syrian Coalition and the Free Syrian Army to form an Islamic alliance of
their own. Jabhat-al-Nusra, an Al Qaeda affiliated group, is the core
element of the new coalition. Liwa al-Tawhid, Liwa al-Islam and Suqur
Al-Sham and a number of smaller groups joined the new alliance.
There
is no other way to preserve any influence for secular opposition but to
reach a reasonable compromise with Bashar Assad within the framework of
Geneva peace process. More in my recent article Demolition Of CW Stockpiles Is Only Contributory Factor In The Syria War
Related articles
“The main conclusion is that the type of sarin used in that [Aleppo, March 2013] incident
was homemade. We also have evidence to assert that the type of sarin
used on August 21 was the same, only of higher concentration.” Russian FM Sergey Lavrov
While Iran nuke talks heat up in Geneva (Nov. 2013) and demolition of Syria's CW stockpiles has already started one question related to WMD has kept out from headlines namely intelligence reporting that nuclear weapons made in Pakistan on behalf of Saudi Arabia are now sitting ready for delivery to Saudi Arabia. While the world has worried about the nuclear program of Iran – and possible Israeli air-strike to stop it – a new nuclear power can be reality in few weeks. 
In general it is not widely known that Saudi Arabia has a nuclear weapons program. From
an official and public standpoint, Saudi Arabia has been an opponent of
nuclear weapons in the Middle East, having signed the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty. Saudi Arabia has denied manufacturing the
nuclear weapons under its peaceful civilian nuclear program, the country
has allegedly allotted financial funds for its nuclear program, and as
well received scientific assistance from various counties, including
United States and Pakistan. (Read more e.g. in Wiki)
