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France
says tests confirm sarin used in Syria
The
French government says tests show the nerve gas sarin has been used
several times during the two-year civil war in Syria.
5
June, 2013
France's
foreign minister Laurent Fabius said laboratory tests in Paris
confirmed usage of the nerve agent, but did not specify where, when
or by whom the it was deployed.
The
White House said more proof was needed, the BBC reports.
A
UN report accuses both sides of abuses, and said it was likely nerve
gas had been used.
Earlier,
a United Nations report said there were reasonable grounds for
believing chemical weapons had been used by both sides.
In
its report, the UN commission of inquiry on Syria said the country's
civil war has reached new levels of brutality and war crimes and
crimes against humanity have become a daily reality.
The
commission has so far been barred from Syria and was forced to rely
on first-hand accounts from the country.
The
report accuses both sides of abuses, but says rebel actions have not
reached the intensity and scale of abuses committed by
government-allied forces.
It
said children have been taken hostage, forced to watch torture and
even take part in beheadings, and others have been killed while
fighting.
Hezbollah
Is Launching An Offensive That Will Profoundly Change The Syrian War
Thousands
of Lebanese Hezbollah militants are amassing around the northern
Syrian city of Aleppo in preparation for an assault on the city,
4
June 2013
Loveday
Morris of The Washington Post reports.The
deployment demonstrates the group’s complete
commitment
to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and may profoundly affect the
26-month conflict.
“The
Aleppo battle has started on a very small scale; we’ve only just
entered the game,” a senior Hezbollah commander told The Post. “We
are going to go after strongholds where they think they are safe.
They are going to fall like dominoes.”
The
commander had been overseeing five units in Qusair, a town near the
Syria-Lebanon on border where Hezbollah has been spearheading a
regime offensive to retake the town
for the last three weeks.
The
increased presence of the militant group, in addition to the arrival
of sophisticated
military technology
such as Iranian surveillance drones and Russian anti-mortar systems,
has helped solidify recent
gains made by forces
loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Hezbollah’s
preparations to attack Aleppo, which
is nowhere near the Lebanon-Syria border, significantly raises the
stakes in the war.
“A
deployment so deep into Syria and in such a crucial place would be a
clear indication that Hezbollah’s role in Syria was never limited
to defensive aims but is geared toward helping Assad score major
victories,” Emile Hokayem, a Middle East-based analyst at the
International Institute for Strategic Studies, told the Post.
Aleppo
is the Syria’s largest city and served as the country’s
commercial hub before the war.
David
Barrett of The Telegraph reports
that the metropolitan population, about three million before the war,
has grown to about 3.5 million since the opposition seized half the
city last July.
Rebels,
primarily al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, have
been administering city services
in areas under their control while a stalemate persists.
The
guerrilla fighters of Hezbollah are training
and advising the growing irregular militias
being deployed by Assad.
At
least 50,000 militiamen — known as Jaysh
al-Sha’bia
i.e. “People’s Army” — are now fighting for Assad, and Iran
aims to increase the force to 100,000 by sending
fighters to a secret base in Iran
for guerrilla combat training.
Last
week Jeffrey White, a defence fellow at The Washington Institute,
wrote
that “Hezbollah’s all-in commitment is perhaps the single most
important development of the war thus far and will profoundly affect
its course.”
Israel,
which has bombed
Syria three times this year
amid suspicions of weapons transfers to Hezbollah, is surely watching
the developments closely.
One
unintended consequence of the Shia group’s increased presence
inside Syria is an unprecedented galvanization of the fractured
opposition.
Hizbollah's
involvement in Syria is like a needle. When injected, it hurts but
stimulates. Syrian rebels never worked together as are now.
15
RETWEETS 13
FAVORITES
To
rebels, whatever unity have achieved in Qusayr so far , is remarkable
, for a spontaneous insurgency.All we pray is keep it like this
6
RETWEETS 2
FAVORITES
Another
immediate implication is increased sectarian tensions in Lebanon,
where Hezbollah one of two major political parties.
“The
presence of Hezbollah units around Aleppo will only deepen the divide
in Lebanon and confirm, in the eyes of its rivals, Hezbollah’s
complete alignment with Assad,” Hokayem told the Post, adding that
it’s now plausible that Hezbollah is and will be utilized anywhere
in the country.
Right
on cue, a
security source told al-Arabiya
that one person was killed and 21 wounded in Lebanon’s second city
of Tripoli on Sunday night when pro- and anti-Assad Alawite and Sunni
residents clashed.
This article does make one fair point - that Syria armed itself with chemical weapons under Bashar's father as a defence against Israel
Syria's chemical weapons program was built to counter Israel
4
June, 2013
Syria,
defeated by Israel in three wars and afraid its arch enemy had gained
a nuclear arsenal, began in earnest to build a covert chemical
weapons program three decades ago, aided by its neighbors, allies and
European chemical wholesalers.
Damascus
lacked the technology and scientific capacity to set up a program on
its own, but with backing from foreign allies it amassed what is
believed to be one of the deadliest stockpiles of nerve agent in the
world, Western military experts said.
"Syria
was quite heavily reliant on outside help at the outset of its
chemical weapons program, but the understanding now is that they have
a domestic chemical weapons production capability," said Amy
Smithson of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in
Washington, an expert on nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
As
Syria's civil war enters its third year with 80,000 dead, chemical
weapons are reported to have been used by the government of President
Bashar al-Assad, and there are also fears they could fall into the
hands of militants seeking to destabilize the region.
As
a result of the wars of 1967, 1973 and 1982, Syria sought to counter
Israel's military superiority.
Non-conventional
weapons have already been used in the region. The late Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons such as mustard gas
and other nerve agents during the 1980s, including the killing of
5,000 Kurds in
Halabja, during the war with Iran.
Syria's
ally Iran is accused by the West of seeking to develop an atomic
bomb, which it denies, while Israel refuses to confirm or deny
whether it has nuclear weapons.
"Syria
had to have something to stack up against Israel," Smithson told
Reuters.
United
Nations human rights investigators said on Tuesday they had
"reasonable grounds" to believe that limited amounts of
chemical weapons had been used in Syria. They had received
allegations that government forces and rebels had used the banned
weapons, but most testimony related to their use by the government.
Syria
is one of only seven countries not to have joined the 1997 Chemical
Weapons Convention, which commits members to completely destroying
their stockpiles.
Syria
does not generally comment on its chemical weapons, but in July last
year it acknowledged for the first time that it had them. Foreign
Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi told a news conference the army
would not use chemical weapons to crush the rebels but could use them
against foreign forces.
LOSING
CONTROL
While
it is relatively easy to produce small amounts of chemicals, scaling
up to megaton quantities of precursors needed for weapons of mass
destruction requires long-term, industrial-grade processing
facilities with advanced equipment.
The
first technology and delivery systems were most probably obtained
from the Soviet Union and pre-revolution Egypt, military experts
believe, while chemical precursors came from European companies.
To
boost its own capabilities, Damascus set up the Scientific Studies
and Research Centre (SSRC), an agency with a civilian figure head
that was run by military intelligence.
It
is "the best-equipped research center in Syria, possessing
better technical capacity and equipment than the four Syrian
universities," the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a leading
non-proliferation group, wrote last month.
The
SSRC, attacked by rebels earlier this year, oversees chemical weapons
facilities in Dumayr, Khan Abou, Shamat, and Firaqlus, according to
the U.S. Center for Strategic and International Studies. It set up
facilities for blister agent, sarin, mustard and VX nerve gas, the
Center said.
The
agency is now headed by one of Assad's top advisers, national
security chief Ali Mamlouk, said Brigadier General Mustafa al Sheikh,
a Syrian army defector.
"The
man overseeing the chemical weapons in general is Ali Mamlouk, but
effective control of the weapons is becoming fragmented,"
Sheikh, who served for almost two decades in chemical weapons units,
told Reuters from an undisclosed location in northern Syria. "Assad
himself has lost overall command and control."
Mamlouk,
on a list of Syrians targeted by EU sanctions since 2011, was
promoted last year to head national security after its chief was
killed in a bombing in Damascus. Considered to be a member of Assad's
inner circle, Mamlouk is one of two Syrian officers indicted last
August in Beirut for allegedly plotting to incite sectarian violence
in Lebanon. Efforts to reach Mamlouk for comment were unsuccessful.
Sheikh
said the arsenal is now in the hands of chemical weapons-trained
loyalists of Assad's Alawite clan, a Shi'ite offshoot sect, and is
being used for limited attacks that have killed dozens of rebels.
"Most
of the chemical weapons have been transported to Alawite areas in
Latakia and near the coast, where the regime has the capability to
fire them using fairly accurate medium range surface-to-surface
missiles," Sheikh said.
Some
chemical munitions remain in bases around Damascus, and have been
deployed with artillery shells. "It is a matter of time before
fairly large warheads are used," he said.
A
U.S. official, asked about Sheikh's comments, told Reuters: "This
is one concerning scenario we're taking a close look at."
Reports
of use of chemical weapons in the battlefield have become more
frequent in recent weeks. A U.N. team of inspectors has been denied
access and has been unable to verify the claims.
ILLEGAL
SUPPLIERS
The
bulk of chemical and biological weapons production technology came
from "large chemical brokerage houses in Holland, Switzerland,
France, Austria and Germany," said Globalsecurity, a security
information provider.
In
the early 1980s, Syria mostly imported French pharmaceuticals, some
of them so-called "dual use" chemicals, which could also be
used for chemical weapons, it said.
A
wide range of industrial chemicals with legal applications, such as
in agriculture, are also precursors for chemical weapons. The most
important precursors for sarin, the nerve agent believed to have been
used in recent fighting in Syria, are methylphosphonyl difluoride and
isopropanol.
None
of the reports cited named specific companies as suppliers. Syria has
said it intended to use the chemicals for agriculture.
Securing
raw chemicals on the international market became more difficult in
1985, when suspect sales were restricted by the Australia Group, a
40-nation body that seeks to curb chemical or biological weapons
through export controls.
Some
experts say Damascus obtained supplies from Russia and Iran instead,
but Syria may also have turned to a network of illegal traders using
front companies to sell to Iran and Iraq.
Former
Russian general Anatoly Kuntsevich was suspected of smuggling
precursor chemicals to VX gas to Syria, according to Globalsecurity.
He died in 2002.
While
questions remain about the origins of Syria's chemical weapons
stockpile, an evaluation by the U.S. government in March leaves
little doubt about the threat it poses.
"Syria's
overall chemical weapons program is large, complex, and
geographically dispersed, with sites for storage, production, and
preparation," the Director of National Intelligence wrote.
It
"has the potential to inflict mass casualties, and we assess
that an increasingly beleaguered regime, having found its escalation
of violence through conventional means inadequate, might be prepared
to use chemical weapons against the Syrian people."
North
Korea sends officers to aid Assad?
Opposition
reports claim that North Korean officers are being sent to Aleppo to
aid Bashar al-Assad
3
June, 2013
In
another bizarre twist to Syria's tragic civil war, opposition forces
are now claiming that officers from the North Korean army are aiding
the fight against the rebels in an effort to bolster Bashar al-Assad.
According
to a "Syrian human rights center", a few of Assad's
civilian militia fighters revealed the presence of the North Korean
officers in the war zones.
The
Syrian regime has long-claimed that among the rebels fighting it
across the country there are many fighters from overseas, sent by
"Syria's enemies" such as Saudi Arabia, Israel and the
United States of America.
But
Assad also no longer denies the use of foreign fighters himself, with
the recent revelation that Lebanese, Hezbollah forces and even
Iranian forces are assisting Assad. It has also been reported that
Russian arms are being used by Syria's regime, with Putin's
government apparently keen to supply more.
The
North Korean twist however lends a new element to the conflict,
further entrenching the Western allies of the US, Europe, Israel and
Great Britain against the so-called 'axis of evil' in Iran, Syria and
North Korea assisted by Russia.
Director
of a Syrian human rights center, Rami Abed A-Rachman, said that the
number of North Korean officers in Syria is unknown, although there
are definitely between 11 and 15 Arabic speaking North Korean
officers in Aleppo.
A-Rachman,
whose organisation releases daily reports on the fighting in Syria
since the civil war broke out more than two years ago, said that "the
North Korean officers are spread throughout many fronts, including
the Syrian Defense Ministry factories southeast of Aleppo and in the
regime's forces centers in Aleppo." He claimed that they do not
take part in the actual fighting, yet provide the Assad army with
logistic support and construct operational plans. "They also
supervise the regime's artillery in the region," he said.
North
Korea is widely believed to have assisted Syria in developing a now
destroyed nuclear reactor in 2007.
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