Assad’s chemical crimes

Assad’s chemical crimes

April 27, 2017
Men stand near dead bodies, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria. — Reuters
Men stand near dead bodies, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria. — Reuters

The French government says its scientists have proved without doubt that at the beginning of this month, some 90 people in Khan Sheikhoun were poisoned by the deadly chemical sarin manufactured in a Syrian government laboratory.

In his decisive response three days later, President Donald Trump ordered the firing of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Shayrat air base near Homs. The attack devastated the airfield, taking out aircraft, hardened hangars, fuel and logistics storage, ammunition bunkers and the air defense and radar systems. At a stroke some 20 percent of the Assad regime’s air force was destroyed.

It was an awesome and huge response to Bashar Assad’s awesome and huge lie that his country had not used chemical weapons, had indeed in 2013 handed them all over in response to the demand of the United Nations following the murderous chemical weapons attack on a Damascus suburb which slaughtered at least 1,300 people, including scores of women and children. When news first broke of the new chemical attack at Khan Sheikhoun, the Assad regime insisted that one of their conventional weapons had hit a building where rebels had been storing chemicals that they had captured from the Damascus government. It quickly became apparent that this fabrication was unlikely to convince anyone since if the regime had handed over all its chemical weapons three years ago, then what were these stocks of sarin that the rebels had allegedly captured?

Why had Assad’s people not mentioned that they had lost some of their deadly arsenal when international inspectors were collecting their chemical stockpiles in 2013? The next attempt to deny his hideous crime was to pretend that the rebels themselves have been manufacturing sarin and a bomb had hit their laboratory. But the French have proved conclusively that the sarin had been produced by a synthesizing process that was actually developed by the Damascus government’s Scientific Studies and Research Center. Yet there is an odd consequence of the international fury at the Assad’s regime’s continuing depraved use of chemical agents, which are of course banned under international law. The Damascus government has been murdering its own people for six years, with bullets, bombs and shells. But by highlighting the horror of a chemical attack, which slaughters surreptitiously and leaves no obvious trace of injury on the bodies of the dead, the massacre of Assad’s fellow citizens with conventional weaponry seems less disgusting, less reprehensible.

The truth is that everything this vile regime has done as it seeks desperately to cling to power with the help of the Russians, the Iranians and the internationally-designated Lebanese terrorists of Hezbollah, is a homicidal outrage. There are no gradations in the viciousness deployed against rebel communities. It is all odious and completely unacceptable.

Had it not been for the weak and vacillating President Barack Obama, the international community would have moved years ago to end the carnage in Syria. Trump’s resolute response raised a cheer around the world. But then he made it clear that his devastating cruise missile raid was a one-off. It was a warning that the butcher Assad should not use chemical weapons again. But the clear inference was that the dictator was cleared to carry on with dropping barrel bombs and massacring his people with conventional explosives. This message is insanely wrong. Trump should threaten to destroy the rest of Assad’s air force unless he immediately and sincerely seeks peace with his people.


April 27, 2017
HIGHLIGHTS