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    Syria Chemical Attack: Sinking Deeper Into the Chemical Warfare Abyss
    Syria Chemical Attack: Sinking Deeper Into the Chemical Warfare Abyss
    Syria Chemical Attack: Sinking Deeper Into the Chemical Warfare Abyss
    Ebook133 pages1 hour

    Syria Chemical Attack: Sinking Deeper Into the Chemical Warfare Abyss

    By Journalists of The Independent

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    Syria chemical attack

    Syria chemical attack: Chlorine gas, mustard gas, sarin, and possibly VX ─ chemical warfare agents apparently have been used repeatedly since late 2012 by Bashar al-Assad’s regime and perhaps by Syrian opposition factions, including ISIS, in a spiraling civil war of atrocity upon atrocity. Syrian civilian men, women and children have frequently been the victims of chemical warfare attacks. And, now the Khan Sheikhoun attack. Has Assad finally crossed the “red line”?

    Syrian civil war: On 5 April, one day after the Khan Sheikhoun attack, Padraic Flanagan of the Independent reported, “Even six years of unrelenting horror in Syria could not dull the sense of outrage yesterday after regime aircraft appeared to slaughter more than 100 men, women and children with chemical weapons - and then attack the survivors in another aerial assault. It was one of the worst massacres in a conflict that has claimed the lives of 400,000 Syrians and forced five million to flee their homes.”

    Chemical warfare: Death by small arms fire, high explosives, or incineration are horrible, but death by chemical warfare agents is considered particularly heinous. That in part was why the Geneva Protocol, a treaty prohibiting the use of chemical and biological weapons in armed conflicts, was signed in June 1925. Syria’s president Bashar al- Assad and other factions are clearly ignoring the Geneva Protocol and disregarding condemnation from the international community.

    In Syria Chemical Attack: Sinking Deeper Into the Chemical Warfare Abyss, journalists of the Independent chronicle the use of chemical agents in Syria since 2012, providing a focused collection of insightful reporting on a barbarity that finally may be emerging as a subject of real international outrage.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIndependent Print Limited
    Release dateApr 17, 2017
    ISBN9781633536906
    Syria Chemical Attack: Sinking Deeper Into the Chemical Warfare Abyss

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      Book preview

      Syria Chemical Attack - Journalists of The Independent

      INDEPENDENT SHORT READS

      SYRIA CHEMICAL ATTACK

      SINKING DEEPER INTO THE CHEMICAL WARFARE ABYSS

      :independent_brand_print-02.png

      Mango Media

      Miami

      in collaboration with

      The Independent 

      Copyright © 2017 The Independent Print Limited.

      First edition published by Mango Publishing Group.

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, file transfer, or other electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations included in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses as permitted by copyright law.

      This is a work of non-fiction adapted from articles and content by journalists of The Independent and published with permission.

      For permission requests, please contact the publisher at:

      Mango Publishing Group

      2850 Douglas Road, 3rd Floor

      Coral Gables, FL 33134 USA

      info@mango.bz

      For special orders, quantity sales, course adoptions and corporate sales, please email the publisher at sales@mango.bz. For trade and wholesale sales, please contact Ingram Publisher Services at customer.service@ingramcontent.com or +1.800.509.4887. 

      Front Cover Image: Khamidulin Sergey/Shutterstock.com

      SYRIA CHEMICAL ATTACK Sinking Deeper Into the Chemical Warfare Abyss 

      ISBN: 978-1-63353-690-6

      Printed in the United States of America

      Syria would implode and there would be a bloodbath if President Bashar al-Assad were to go.

      – Peter Ford, Former British ambassador to Syria, April 2017

      Contents 

       Editor’s Note

       Foreword

      Outrage To Humanity

      Future Generations Will Know That We Turned Our Backs

       2012

      Chemical Weapons Never Will Be Used Against The Syrian People

      Syrian Loss Of Control Of Chemical Weapons Sites Could Trigger Western Intervention

      Chemical Threat

      Syria Moving Its Chemical Threat

      Chemical Weapons Never To Be Used Against Syrians

      Chemical Weapon Fears Force Russia-Us Talks

      Chemical Weapons Were Used On Homs

       2013

      Crossing The Red Line

      New Chemical Weapons Fears

      Crossing The Red Line

      Syria And Sarin

      Catalogue Of Chemical Weapons Atrocities

      Spy Chiefs Warn Of Chemical Weapons Risks

      Ghouta Sarin Attack

      Evidence Indicates Syria Gased Its Own People

      Un Inspectors Under Sniper Fire As They Visit Gas Attack Site

      Chemical Atrocity Evidence Fails To Convince

      British Company Export Of Nerve Gas Chemicals To Syria

      Obama’s Syria Hopes Were Always To End In Tragedy

      Clear And Convincing Evidence Chemical Weapon Used In Ghouta Attack

      Chemical Attack The Damning Evidence

      Ghouta: Key Findings

      West Backs Down On Demand For Threat Of War

      How Russia Became Syria’s Deterrent

      Risky Taking On Syria’s Chemical Arsenal

      Sarin

      Vx Nerve Agent

      Mustard Gas

      Syria’s Track Record With Chemical Weapons

       2014

      Hihacked By The Jihadists

      Revolution Devours The Most Humane

      Assad’s Letter To America

       2015

      Land Of Apocalyptic Violence

      How Syria Lost Its Humanity

      Isis May Have Used Mustard Gas In Syrian Town

       2016

      The New Syria Normal

      Chemical Attacks Continue After Dismantling

      Qmenas Chlorine Chemical Weapons Attack

      Reporting On Sarin Attacks Can Be Lethal

       2017

      A New Low

      Absolutely Heinous

      Little Choice But To Strike Assad’s Brutal Regime

      American Foreign Policy—Little Has Changed

      Air Strikes Won’t End The War

      Us Attack Did Not Reduce Assad’s Military Capability

      Assad Crossed The Line

       Afterword

      No End In Sight

      Us Signals Role In Regime Change, Maybe

       EDITOR’S NOTE

      ________________________________________________________ 

      Chlorine gas, mustard gas, sarin, and possibly VX—chemical warfare agents apparently have been used repeatedly since late 2012 by Bashar al-Assad’s regime and perhaps by Syrian opposition factions, including ISIS, in a spiraling civil war of atrocity upon atrocity. Syrian civilian men, women and children have frequently been the victims of chemical attacks. And, now the Khan Sheikhoun attack. Has Assad finally crossed the red line?

      On 6 April, two days after the Khan Sheikhoun attack, Robert Fox of the Evening Standard reported, even the Russians don’t seem to believe their official excuses for the chemical attacks that have taken scores of civilian lives in Khan Sheikhoun in Syria’s Idlib province. Eyewitnesses report barrels with chemical gases falling from the sky. The Russians say bombs hit a rebel factory preparing their own chemical weapons. This is implausible for several reasons—chemical weaponry is notoriously difficult to prepare and manage. Assad forces have used chemical weapons several times since August 2013, when artillery fired chemical-carrying rockets at Ghouta, a rebel enclave on the outskirts of Damascus. British intelligence assessed that about 350 people died from the effects of sarin. This time, according to medical assessments from the ground, Syrian forces may have used sarin and chlorine gas. There have been reports that the Assad regime has used chlorine several times since it agreed to give up the use of chemical weapons and hand over stocks to the Russians in 2013.

      Death by small arms fire, high explosives, or incineration are horrible, but death by chemical warfare agents is considered particularly heinous. That in part was why the Geneva Protocol, a treaty prohibiting the use of chemical and biological weapons in armed conflicts, was signed in June 1925. Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad and other factions are clearly ignoring the Geneva Protocol and disregarding condemnation from the international community.

      In Syria Chemical Attack, journalists of the Independent chronicle the use of chemical agents in Syria since 2012, providing a focused collection of insightful reporting on a barbarity that finally may be emerging as a subject of real international outrage and action.

       FOREWORD

      OUTRAGE TO HUMANITY

      ________________________________________________________ 

      Wednesday, 5 April 2017

      FUTURE GENERATIONS WILL KNOW THAT WE TURNED OUR BACKS

      It takes a lot to make me angry, these days. As a news journalist, you try to establish professional distance between yourself and a story, to take a wider perspective, even if you then step closer again to help bring out the human tales.

      Hacks never become immune to the suffering of others - you’re beholden to consider it every day, lest you fail to handle issues with the sensitivity they deserve. That’s true across newspapers and media outlets. But you put up psychological defences. You cannot wring your hands over every daily tragedy and still function.

      Yesterday, 4 April 2017, was different. The images coming out of Syria, the war crimes committed against people as they slept, simply because they live in a rebel-held town, are an outrage to humanity, to any shred of common decency we share.

      When ambulance crews arrived at the scene, families were choking to death in the street. Relief groups at one point stopped counting the victims, because there were too many.

      Our collective inaction shames us: future generations will know that we turned our backs, despite having evidence of chemical weapon atrocities broadcast to our homes, offices and handsets.

      At The Independent, we try not to sanitise the news. If you’re a regular reader, you know that. Today, perhaps you will take my word for it, when I tell you of the horror perpetrated in Syria - the photographs we received of piles of dead children, toddlers gasping for life as medics tried to save them. Those doctors were themselves later attacked as they treated the injured and dying, an affront to the global principle of medical neutrality.

      Chemical weapons disproportionately punish civilians, especially children and the old. The Assad government has dropped chlorine on its people with impunity, and in a single attack in Damascus in 2013 killed hundreds with rockets containing Sarin. Assad has not won the war, but it is difficult to see him now losing it, beyond the further disintegration of Syria as a functioning state.

      This new war crime prompts heated rhetoric and absolutely no action. The international failure to enforce the ban on chemical warfare sets an appalling precedent.

      Oliver Duff

       2012

      CHEMICAL WEAPONS NEVER WILL BE USED AGAINST THE SYRIAN PEOPLE

      ________________________________________________________ 

      Friday, 1 June 2012

      SYRIAN LOSS OF CONTROL OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS SITES COULD TRIGGER WESTERN INTERVENTION

      Despite the outrage at last weekend’s Houla massacre, likely perpetrated by government forces and allied militiamen, military intervention in Syria remains unlikely.

      Russia will not authorise even a UN arms embargo, let alone intervention. Syria’s rebels look hopelessly divided and weak. And the rise of suicide bombings in Syrian cities has heightened fears for the safety of any intervention force.

      The massacre, in other words, is not a game-changer. But what would be? There are least three potential triggers for Western involvement in a Syrian campaign.

      First, Syria’s large chemical weapons stockpile could be a flashpoint. Syria possesses hundreds of tons of VX, Sarin and mustard gas, much of it located close to restive areas.

      Any sign that the Syrian government was at risk of losing control of these sites would set off alarm bells. Israel fears such weapons could fall into the hands of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, and has hinted

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