Image via @Presidency_Sy
The latest round of airstrikes and missiles launches ordered by Theresa May's war cabinet, the Trump administration and President Macron have ended a turbulent week in the Syrian War.
The chemical attack in Douma on 7 April 2017 near Eastern Ghouta is one of three major chemical weapons attacks by the Assad regime which have appalled the international community and led to two instances where the Western powers have launched airstrikes against the Syrian regime to deter the use of chemical warfare.
The other major chemical weapon attacks by the regime occurred in Eastern Ghouta on 21 August 2013 and the other in Khan Shaykhun, Idlib took place on 4 April 2017. Alongside these major attacks, use of the devastating weapons has been prevalent across other parts of the country by regime and opposition forces such as Daesh killing hundreds and wounding thousands.
The first chemical attack on record in Syria was in March 2013 in Ghouta with 17 other locations impacted by chemical weapons including sarin, white phosphorus, chlorine and mustard gas. According to Human Rights Watch, Daesh (also known as Islamic State) used mustard and sulphur agents launching at least three chemical attacks on the Iraqi town of Qayyarah in November 2016 alone while an analysis conducted by IHS Conflict Monitor showed that across Iraq and Syria, the hardline Sunni insurgents have used mustard and sulphur agents over 50 times since 2014.
The use of chemical weapons in Syria's brutal conflict has drawn revulsion from across the international community and the Assad regime has drawn fierce criticism for the deployment of its arsenal multiple times throughout the protracted civil war.
Curbing the development of chemical weapons has been hampered by the secrecy surrounding the WMD programmes of various countries across the region. The 'Lebonisation' of the Syrian conflict has shattered the stability of the Middle East.
To quote Jan Egeland, Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, "the toxic cocktail of indiscriminate war on terror, mutual distrust among ground actors and impunity for war crimes has made the Syrian War the worst collapse of humanitarian law since the genocides of the 1990s."
Out of all the chemical attacks across Syria, the ones which occurred Eastern Ghouta, Khan Shaykhun and Douma are the ones which have gained most notoriety and been most fiercely debated. In Douma, the alleged attack remains under investigation by OPCW. Those fighting and involved in the conflict in Syria and outside the country, whether pro-Assad, pro-rebel, pro-Kurd, pro-Daesh will have an agenda.
Differentiating between journalists, activists, civilians, soldiers and humanitarians has become incredibly blurred in the turbo-charged information age and made worse by the vicious urban violence.
This has been compounded by the fact that most international journalists, humanitarians and activists cannot get into certain areas of the country due to the threat of kidnap, imprisonment and potential death. This has led to problems which must be addressed on both sides of the conflict.
There are brilliant reporters, journalists and humanitarians who have done excellent, spell-binding reporting on the ground in the Syrian Civil War. The likes of James Foley, Patrick Cockburn, Francesca Borri, Janine Di Giovanni, Kim Sengupta, Jeremy Bowen, Quentin Sommerville and beyond have produced dazzling pieces of work on the conflict.
This does not even include the hundreds of Syrian journalists determined to report and catalogue the stories, war crimes and conflicts tearing their own country apart, often at great risk to their lives as they navigate the mukhabarat and rebel factions roaming the country. These voices must not disappear lest impartial, objective reportage on Syria vanish entirely.
The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group fighting to depose Colonel Qaddafi were our heroes in 2011 when they were ridding the country of the dictator. It is highly the UK public would regard the group as such when one of the organisation's fighters, Salman Abedi a British-Libyan civilian turned jihadist, blew himself up in the Manchester Arena killing 22, mainly children. This group, it has been revealed, were given tacit support by Mi5, British intelligence.
Why does this matter in regards to the chemical attacks? Perhaps it doesn't. The Libyan and Syrian wars are different as were those in Iraq, El-Salvador, Gaza, Yemen, Somalia, Mexico, Rwanda and Afghanistan. The Syrian regime based on its stockpile of weaponry, it uses of certain types of chemical weapons (which the rebels do not have) and its historic development of chemical weapons makes it a very certain culprit.
However, as demonstrated in a previous piece, Jaysh al-Islam - heavily involved in the lead-up to the chemical attack - are heroes to some Syrian civilians but villains to others involved (and not all of those who regard the group as hostile are all pro-Assad). The Libyan case demonstrates that while events are happening, how they are assessed in real-time will sometimes be very different from how we analyse them later.
JAYSH AL-ISLAM: 'MODERATE' REBELS?
Extremists groups like Islamic State have utilised the chemicals weapons, however Jaysh al-Islam, at the centre of the recent Douma attack, has been accused of using a mustard agent in the past by Reuters. Despite heavy fighting with Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and Daesh, the self-labelled 'mujaheddin' paramilitary sponsored by the Saudis are not a moderate faction in the Syrian War. Lebanon and Egypt have classified Jaysh al-Islam as a terrorist group and the organisation have been accused of executing POWs.
A particular shocking incident in Eastern Ghouta in October and November 2015 threw the group into disrepute. The incident came after a particularly murderous raid by the regime on Douma's marketplace. The raid, according to Doctors Without Borders, killed at least 70 people and wounded 550 injured. In response to deter further shelling, Jaysh al-Islam paraded men, women and children including several officers and soldiers from the Syrian military in cages.
The majority of them were from the Alawi sect. The video showing this incident was posted to Youtube by the Shaam News Network (a rebel news outlet) showing trucks driving around with men and women in cages. The following text accompanied the video: “Rebels in Ghouta have distributed 100 cages, with each cage containing approximated seven people and the plan is afoot to produce 1,000 cages to distribute in Eastern Ghouta … in different parts of Douma city, particularly in public places and markets that have been attacked in the past by the regime and the Russian air force,”
The 'publicity stunt drew wide criticism both inside and outside of Eastern Ghouta for the use of civilians as human shields' and contradicted the former military commander of the Islamic Front and leader of Jaish al-Islam, Zahran Alloush statement to Western and Arab media outlets that sectarianism did not drive the group’s politics. In an interview, he states: "We believe that the future of Syria after Assad should be governed by a technocratic body which has the skills and the qualifications. We do not believe that Syria should be ruled by sectarian or partisan rule, but by a technocratic body that represents the diversity of the Syrian people." This differs strongly to Alloush's statements to his supporters (published by the Washington Institute) his supporters which demonstrates his overt sectarianism and that the commander was speaking to different audiences in different languages for different purposes. In 2013, Alloush stated:
The term 'rafidha' used by, 'is a reference to Twelver Shiites, the largest of the Shiite sects and...has been used in mainstream Saudi religious discourse as well as education.' It is sectarian language aimed at the Alawi minority and the incarcerating men, women and children in cages was an action which would not endear Jaysh al-Islam to the Alawi minority in Syria. Aside from his Hello Kitty notebook, there was little that was moderate about the former rebel commander.
Alloush was also accused of warlordism as intra-jihadist fighting continued to hamper their efforts to fight the regime and there were even protests against Jaysh Al-Islam. The rebels in Eastern Ghouta and the people living under them were divided. There are parallels to the conduct of the Islamist rebels in Aleppo, where Italian journalist Francesca Borri watched civilians grow weary with both sides and grew angry with foreign fighters and Saudi and Qatari sponsored rebels seize local resources, food and power for themselves.
Alloush was eventually killed in a Russian airstrike on Christmas Day, 2015, and since then intra-jihadist fighting and sectarianism have continued to hamper the group's efforts to overthrow the regime. Differentiating 'moderate' from 'extremist' groups has been hotly debated by mainstream and partisan media. In the district of al-Sheikh Maqsoud, Aleppo, one of Jaysh al-Islam's commanders were purportedly accused of utilising chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians. In a statement, the group stated that “During the clashes, one of the Jaysh al-Islam brigade leaders used [weapons] forbidden in this kind of confrontations...this situation is contrary to the charter of Jaysh al-Islam,”
According to The Daily Beast, 'Jaysh al-Islam later clarified that it was referring to “modified Grad rockets,” not chemical weapons. The chemical weapons allegations and the mistaken claim that Jaysh al-Islam admitted to their use have been circulated widely in Kurdish media' whose civilians were being targeted indiscriminately by conventional weapons, in this case, improvised Hell Canons. “Unfortunately, none of these [videos] is conclusive,” Dan Kaszeta, a former U.S. Army Chemical Corps officer with 25 years of experience in chemical defence issues told the magazine, debunking Jaysh al-Islam's role in the chemical weapon attack.
The group are accused of sectarianism and targeting civilians. Speaking to the Daily Beast in 2016 in the wake of the shelling of shelling al-Sheikh Maqsoud Hadeel al-Shalchi, Syria researcher for Human Rights Watch condemned Jaysh al-Islam's actions.
“International law does not just prohibit targeting civilians. It prohibits indiscriminate attacks, those that do not or cannot distinguish between military targets and civilians. This can be when attacks are not directed at a military objective or when the weapons or their particular use are inherently indiscriminate, as in many cases of shelling of populated areas,” she told The Daily Beast.In April 2018, as the world was focused on the horrific images and videos streaming from Douma, The Times published an article written by Hannah Lucinda Smith, 'Islamists sabotaged Douma evacuation'.
The chemical attack the result of a deal, however temporary, gone horribly sour, occurred because Jaysh Al-Islam refused to hand over its heavy weapons before their departure from the city. These weapons, photographed by the Syrian Arab News Agency on 11th April, included a large number of RPGs, missiles and rifles.
At worst, conspiracy theorists have argued that Jaysh al-Islam conducted the attack themselves using chemical weapons in a last-ditch attempt to spark an international intervention. At best the chemical attacks demonstrate the incompetence of Jaysh al-Islam in managing the negotiations with the regime, an act of defiance which cost lives.
The fighters and their families have left for Idlib and their decisions, current and past, have agitated the regime enough to collectively punish the population with bombs, chemical weapons and bullets. Dreadful miscalculations on one side and overextension on the other have led to this particular atrocity and the chemical attack was the catalyst for limited airstrikes.
The Western powers cries of indignation should draw scepticism. The use of cluster bombs and phosphorus should draw equal revulsion. The U.S military utilised the substance in the battle of Fallujah in 2004. While United States is not a signatory to the Protocol III of the 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons, which prohibits its use as an incendiary weapon against civilian populations or in air attacks against enemy forces in civilian areas, its use drew condemnation.
The Iraqi military and U.S-led coalition used it in Mosul during the siege of the city and in September 2016, the Saudi Arabian army, according to The Washington Post and The Independent, appeared to be using phosphorus munitions in its war in Yemen. "Images on pro-Saudi Twitter and Instagram accounts show that Saudi forces are using several systems for firing white phosphorous munitions, including tank rounds, mortars, howitzers and rifle grenades." explains Thomas Gibbons Neff, "It is being used near the Saudi-Yemen border -- in Najran province -- and around the Yemeni capital, Sanaa." The Israelis utilised the weapons in Gaza in the devastating military operation of 2008-2009, 'Cast Lead'. If the Western powers cannot abide by the laws created by the international community, how can they expect its enemies to do the same?
A HORRIFYING REGIME
Chemical weapons aside, the punishment meted out on Douma and Eastern Ghouta by the Assad regime has been truly barbarous. The Sunni enclave has been shelled mercilessly, starved, targeted with chemical weapons, and activists and fighters have been tortured in regime hospitals and prisons. The evidence of President Assad's cruelty, whether he used chemical weapons or not, should not be in doubt. By siege, torture, starvation and brutal bombings, Assad mauled Syria. Chemical weapons only added to the terrors already unleashed by the regime's conventional warfare and counterinsurgency tactics.
Saddam Hussein - armed and funded by the United States, France and Britain in the Iran-Iraq War - blamed the Iranians for the worst chemical attack in history. According to The New York Times, the U.S. State Department, in the immediate aftermath of the chemical attack, also said Iran was partly to blame for the attack. As Joost Hiltermann wrote 'interviews with scores of Kurdish survivors, senior Iraqi defectors and retired U.S. intelligence officers, show (1) that Iraq carried out the attack on Halabja, and (2) that the United States, fully aware it was Iraq, accused Iran, Iraq's enemy in a fierce war, of being partly responsible for the attack. The State Department instructed its diplomats to say that Iran was partly to blame.'
The hypocrisy of the Western leaders in regards to their conduct to in Syria and how it hushed up Saddam's crimes are clear. However, it did not come without cost. Saddam returned to haunt Western policymakers in the 1990s and 2000s, destabilised the Middle East and the Iraq War (launched to dislodge Saddam) has scarred the notion of liberal interventionism. Russians policymakers will come to regret supporting Bashar's clique in the short-term and long-term.
Saddam Hussein made terrible decisions, including making the decision to invade Iran in 1980 and then invaded Kuwait in 1991 so it wouldn't go so far to presume that 'just because a poison gas attack at this stage (the stage of victory in Eastern Ghouta) would be an extremely stupid thing for the Syrian government to do, (it) does not mean that they did not do it.'
Given the brutal record of the Russian military under President Putin in Chechnya, it seems highly probable that like Washington in the 1980s, the Kremlin is spreading disinformation to protect a client and in-turn their assets in Syria. Neither the United States nor Russia top-brass is in this fight primarily for human rights, nor are regional actors such as Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran.
THE AIRSTRIKES: STRONG RHETORIC, LIMITED ACTION
The United Kingdom, France, the United States and Israel's airstrikes have risked open confrontation with the Russian military, Iran, Hizbullah and the Syrian regime based upon murky motives and hampered by the fog of war. With disinformation rampant, partisan politics evident and propaganda everywhere, decision making becomes more difficult.
The airstrikes and missiles which hit Damascus and Homs and the regime's remaining chemical facilities will have little effect on the outcome of the war unless British, American and French soldiers, not including special forces already deployed, invade Syria and Russia and Iran abandon its ally. That scenario, for now, is highly unlikely as President Trump will not want to risk an international conflict with Russia and ignite a war with Iran nor will Tehran and Moscow wish to relinquish their grip on Syria where they have emerged as bloodied victors.
Previous interventions in the Middle East have haunted policymakers and politicians. As Mark Leonard's wrote in Reuters in 2014, 'in today’s world, “exceptions have become the rule.” The foreign policy order has been exhausted by Kosovo, Iraq and Crimea.' Major Western interventions in Libya and Yemen sent the countries into meltdown as was the case with Iraq in 2003. NATO support for the Libyan rebels against Qaddafi and its military support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen have decimated both countries. Libya is in anarchy.
Yemen is starving and in Afghanistan, seventy per cent of the country is, according to a BBC study published in January, controlled by the Taliban, who were initially ejected from power by the Northern Alliance and an international coalition spearheaded by the United States in 2001. The West's military engagement with the Greater Middle East is a well-recorded disaster and the Russians and Chinese have been fast to exploit this to their own advantage and to pursue their own agendas.
Each conflict has its own nuances and context. The Syrian regime has been ultra-violent, killing far more than Qaddafi in Libya, the Saudi-coalition in Yemen and several times over the amount of Israelis have killed Palestinians in a century-old conflict.
The misery inflicted by the Israelis, Saudis, and pro-Qaddafi loyalists pale in comparison to the terror unleashed by President Al-Asad. Nonetheless, journalists, academics, analysts and international audiences across the spectrum (not just the far-left and far-right) have highlighted the flawed narratives promoted by the French, British, Israeli, Saudi, Turkish and American governments and other Gulf monarchies in their pursuit of regime change. Like their counterparts, the Iranians, Hizbullah, Russians, anti-Western, and pro-regime loyalists have been spreading propaganda and flawed narratives in pursuit of deterring Western-led involvement.
The situation is dangerous but not critical yet. Israel, Iran, Lebanon and Syria's historical rivalries have fused with the Syrian War, the latter of which has created new conflicts, reopened old tensions and enflamed regional rivalries - particularly the Cold War between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
This has created a dangerous situation, particularly in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict and Israeli-Iranian proxy conflict. In parallel to this, the United States and Russia are rubbing shoulders, posturing, engaged in a war of words and their proxies are fighting each other.
President Trump understands little about the dynamics of the region, nor did the last Republican candidate and president George W. Bush. The appointments of Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State and John Bolton as National Security Adviser have created causes for concern in the context of Middle Eastern politics.
John Bolton, part of the Project for the New American Century, has been a staunch advocate of regime change in Iran and North Korea and had no regrets over the deposing of Saddam Hussein, an act which led to deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of American soldiers, plunged the country into civil war and deeply polarised U.S politics.
Furthermore, Bolton published a deeply troubling article calling for the creation of 'Sunnistan' in eastern Syria and north-western Iraq. Not only does it highlight Bolton's utter lack of knowledge about the Middle East, if not the Islamic world, but his words also echo those of François Georges-Picot and Mark Sykes who carved the Middle East into artificial statelets, a result which tampered with the delicate tribal, ethnic, religious, national and cultural balances of the region already suffering under the Ottomans.
Reverting to and maintaining the crumbling status quo of pro-Western dictators and monarchs will not work in the new Middle East and reanimating a zombified Middle Eastern policy will not cure the Middle East's current ills nor will it prevent the region's Thirty Years' War from getting worse.
To the contrary, it will fan the flames of conflict with many, including the Israelis, adamant that the United States and European allies are getting Islamic State and the conflicts in the region wrong. “If Assad wins,” one IDF official in the Golan Heights told Bryan Bender for Politico Magazine, “we will have Hezbollah on two borders, not one. If I can be frank, the radical axis headed by Iran is riskier than the global jihad one. It is much more knowledgeable, stronger, with a bigger arsenal.”
Nevertheless, despite the ominous predicament and alarmist assessments by analysts and policymakers, it does not mean the regional war is inevitable. Careful diplomacy and "rules of the game" must be (re)established including military deterrents to prevent such a confrontation from occurring and safeguarding the interests of Israel and Iran. All the countries involved, including international powers, have little to gain from an international war from breaking out in the Middle East.
Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands - military and civilians - would perish if an $18 billion plus arms race reaches a potential devastating climax and if Syria, Russia and the United States' war of words and involvement in the conflict goes wrong. Airstrikes may reestablish the 'red-line', deter future use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime and spare the West's blushes for not acting sooner to solve the conflict but ultimately this limited action will not end the Syrian War.
The consequences of the proliferation of chemical weapons are profound. In a region of collapsed states, civil wars and revolution where borders are porous and unstable, the spread of poisonous stockpiles present grave security concerns for global and regional intelligence networks and significant headaches for policymakers aiming to curb the use of such weapons.
The ever-growing strength of non-state actors, the emergence of insurgents, militias and terrorist organisations such as Daesh and their ability to mutate compounds this threat, and the inability of superpowers and bodies such as the United Nations to enforce international law and punish ally and foe alike for utilising chemical, biological and banned conventional weapons of war have normalised the exception.
President Assad did not set the precedent for chemical warfare in the Middle East. The red-line was first crossed by Nasser in the 1960s, tested by "Mad Dog" Qaddafi and crossed repeatedly by Saddam which the administrations of President Reagan, President Bush and CIA were willing to turn a blind eye to in the pursuit of containing Iran in the 1980s and early 1990s. All instances are a scandal of astonishing proportions and the continued use of chemical weapons in Syria should frighten the world.
The Syrian regime has killed hundreds of thousands of its own civilians with conventional weapons. However, whether a small percentage were killed with chemical weapons should not matter. The recent airstrikes on Syria must reset the standards lost in the multigenerational conflict consuming the Middle East.
This was lost when Nasser and Saddam used them with impunity in the 1960s and 1980s. Reestablishing a so-called 'red-line' and the fierce scrutiny of chemical and nuclear weapons (in the case of North Korea) are currently under is a blessing for the international community. The abhorrent nature of these weapons and the capacity of the horrors they could potentially unleash a level of military conflict so barbaric it is scarcely imaginable to the majority of us.
Certain weapons, their use and, most importantly, their development must be universally condemned. Whatever the truth of the chemical weapons saga in the Syrian War, that the Israelis, Libyans, Syrians, Egyptians, Iraqis and Iranians even began developing them should be of serious concern to the international community. The use of chemical weapons in the Middle East is as much a failure of politics in the region over the last century as it is a failure of humanity and regulating the laws of war. The Syrian people are bearing the brunt of these catastrophic failures.