CHEMICAL WARFARE IN SYRIA WHO AND WHY?

Médecins Sans Frontiers (MSF), which is above partisanship as well as devoted to saving lives, has reported that the hospitals, it supports in Damascus, have treated thousands of victims for neurotoxicity. Their reports say that the symptoms are a result of the presence of Sarin gas.

A former British Army chemical weapons expert says that the scale of the attack, the numbers affected and the consistency of symptoms observed on videos provided to world media by opposition websites is a staggering enterprise.

Delayed Reaction
Sarin gas kills and disappears quickly. If the Syrian Army didn’t launch this attack and it was the fault of the rebels, then why didn’t the Syrian regime allow, indeed encourage, the UN inspectors to go to the site? What’s more, immediately after the alleged chemical weapons attack, the Syrian Army launched an offensive and heavily shelled the area.

So if it’s reasonable to assume that this attack was carried out by an artillery unit of the Syrian Army, the puzzling question is ‘why?’

Chemical warfare, forbidden by international law, is a desperate measure. A prime example of this level of desperation was demonstrated by Saddam Hussein who, in 1979, ordered the use of poison gas against Iranian forces.

The Assad regime was not desperate. Over the past few weeks, the regime has launched a major offensive, reclaiming Homs back from rebel control, pressing forward towards Aleppo as well as having overrun other important positions held by rebel forces. It is true that the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and a number of other opposition groups staged a brief counterattack over running Alawi villages in Latakia, the Assad family’s district of origin, but those villages were quickly recaptured by the regime. Furthermore, the strong support the rebels garnered in the West and the Arab world has been neutralized. This wavering support is in part due to the growing presence of Salafi-jihadist groups associating themselves with al-Qaeda. At the very least it’s due to reports of the opposition fighting as Islamists rather than Syrian nationalist forces.

Dwindling Support
This issue has become more apparent in recent months with the increasing number of Salafi-jihadists streaming into rebel parts of Syria from Egypt and other Arab states.

Recently in Amman, a three-day conference was organized by the Royal Aal al-Bayt Academy for Islamic Thought. King Abdullah II took the opportunity to speak to participants. Now, until recently, Jordan has discreetly provided support for some of the rebel forces, particularly defectors from the Syrian Army which is good for the rebels and better than having jihadist, extreme Sunni sectarians or warlord types.

 The speech was a surprise due to the level of uncertainty, rather than enthusiasm, it highlighted for the rebel cause. The King stressed that religious scholars must sit down together and do everything to end the sectarian-motivated conflict with a negotiated settlement.

That speech must have made headlines throughout the Arab world or at the very least resonated in the chambers of al-Assad’s power. And yet, the next day the Sarin gas attack took place. Go figure.

Suddenly and predictably, President Obama is now hinting at some sort of military response. US warships equipped with missiles are streaming towards Syrian shores and Britain, France and Turkey have also indicated rethinking the issue of involvement and partaking in some sort of military action.

The distancing from the rebel cause that has been so obviously apparent among columnists and think tank analysts has become more serious. This is in part due to the actions of a militant Islamist group who sent a suicide bomber into a Damascus mosque to kill Sheikh Muhammed Said al-Buti. Al-Buti was a leading member of the Syrian Ulema and professor of Islamic Studies at Damascus University. He was well-known for his Sufi perspective.

From the beginning, al-Buti opposed the rebellion revolution precisely because he feared it would generate the sort of terrorism that would, in time, take his life along with about 40 others in the mosque. The feeling of ambivalence towards the rebellion since the murder of al-Buti was reinforced when an Islamic council in the rebel head portion of Aleppo outlawed the croissant as anti-Islamic. This is because it was allegedly created by Viennese bakers to celebrate the failure of the first Ottoman siege of Vienna some five, or so, centuries ago. This is so absurd and frightening.

Again, with the global public opinion shifting away from the rebel cause why did the Syrian regime carry this attack? In the heat and anger of war, which transcends political insight, it is possible that a rogue officer might have ordered the attack.