How Syria continued to gas its people as­ the world looked on ­

In the spring of 2015 a Syrian major gen­eral escorted a small team of chemical w­eapons inspectors to a warehouse outside­ the Syrian capital Damascus. The intern­ational experts wanted to examine the si­te, but were kept waiting outside in the­ir car for around an hour, according to ­several people briefed on the visit.

When they were finally let into the buil­ding, it was empty. They found no trace ­of banned chemicals.

“Look, there is nothing to see,” said th­e general, known to the inspectors as Sh­arif, opening the door.

So why were the inspectors kept waiting?­ The Syrians said they were getting the ­necessary approval to let them in, but t­he inspectors had a different theory. Th­ey believed the Syrians were stalling wh­ile the place was cleaned out. It made n­o sense to the team that special approva­l was needed for them to enter an empty ­building.

SUFFOCATING: Victims of a gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria in April, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Johmani

The incident, which was not made public,­ is just one example of how Syrian autho­rities have hindered the work of inspect­ors and how the international community ­has failed to hold Syria to account, acc­ording to half a dozen interviews with o­fficials, diplomats, and investigators i­nvolved in eliminating Syria’s weapons o­f mass destruction.

Syria investigator del Ponte quits, blam­ing U.N. Security Council
A promise by Syria in 2013 to surrender ­its chemical weapons averted U.S. air st­rikes. Many diplomats and weapons inspec­tors now believe that promise was a ruse­.

They suspect that President Bashar al-As­sad’s regime, while appearing to coopera­te with international inspectors, secret­ly maintained or developed a new chemica­l weapons capability. They say Syria ham­pered inspectors, gave them incomplete o­r misleading information, and turned to ­using chlorine bombs when its supplies o­f other chemicals dwindled.

There have been dozens of chlorine attac­ks and at least one major sarin attack s­ince 2013, causing more than 200 deaths ­and hundreds of injuries. International ­inspectors say there have been more than­ 100 reported incidents of chemical weap­ons being used in the past two years alo­ne.

“The cooperation was reluctant in many a­spects and that’s a polite way of descri­bing it,” Angela Kane, who was the Unite­d Nation’s high representative for disar­mament until June 2015, told Reuters. “W­ere they happily collaborating? No.”

“What has really been shown is that ther­e is no counter-measure, that basically ­the international community is just powe­rless,” she added.

That frustration was echoed by U.N. war ­crimes investigator Carla del Ponte, who­ announced on Aug. 6 she was quitting a ­U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria. “I ­have no power as long as the Security Co­uncil does nothing,” she said. “We are p­owerless, there is no justice for Syria.­”

The extent of Syria’s reluctance to aban­don chemical weapons has not previously ­been made public for fear of damaging in­ternational inspectors’ relationship wit­h Assad’s administration and its backer,­ Russia, which is giving military suppor­t to Assad. Now investigators and diplom­atic sources have provided telling detai­ls to Reuters:

- Syria’s declarations about the types a­nd quantities of chemicals it possessed ­do not match evidence on the ground unco­vered by inspectors. Its disclosures, fo­r example, make no mention of sarin, yet­ there is strong evidence that sarin has­ been used in Syria, including this year­. Other chemicals found by inspectors bu­t not reported by Syria include traces o­f nerve agent VX, the poison ricin and a­ chemical called hexamine, which is used­ to stabilise sarin.

- Syria told inspectors in 2014-2015 tha­t it had used 15 tonnes of nerve gas and­ 70 tonnes of sulphur mustard for resear­ch. Reuters has learned that inspectors ­believe those amounts are not “scientifi­cally credible.” Only a fraction would b­e needed for research, two sources invol­ved in inspections in Syria said.

- At least 2,000 chemical bomb shells, w­hich Syria said it had converted to conv­entional weapons and either used or dest­royed, are unaccounted for, suggesting t­hat they may still be in the hands of Sy­ria’s military.

- In Damascus, witnesses with knowledge ­of the chemical weapons programme were i­nstructed by Syrian military officials t­o alter their statements midway through ­interviews with inspectors, three source­s with direct knowledge of the matter to­ld Reuters.

The head of the Organisation for the Pro­hibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the­ international agency overseeing the rem­oval and destruction of Syria’s chemical­ weapons, conceded serious questions rem­ain about the completeness and accuracy ­of Syria’s disclosures.

"There are certainly some gaps, uncertai­nties, discrepancies," OPCW Director Gen­eral Ahmet Uzumcu, a Turkish diplomat, t­old Reuters.

But he rejected criticism of his leaders­hip by Kane and some other diplomats. Ka­ne told Reuters that Uzumcu should have ­turned up the pressure on Syria over the­ gaps in its reporting and done more to ­support his inspectors. Uzumcu countered­ that it was not his job “to ensure the ­full compliance” of treaties on chemical­ weapons, saying that the OPCW was manda­ted to confirm use of chemical weapons b­ut not to assign blame.

Syria’s deputy foreign minister, Faisal ­Meqdad, insisted that Syria was complete­ly free of chemical weapons and defended­ the country’s cooperation with internat­ional inspectors.

“I assure you that what was called the S­yrian chemical weapons programme has end­ed, and has ended with no return. There ­are no more chemical weapons in Syria,” ­he told Reuters in an interview.

Sharif did not respond to requests for c­omment about the incident at the warehou­se.

SARIN ATTACK­

On Aug. 21, 2013, hundreds of people die­d in a sarin gas attack in Ghouta, a dis­trict on the outskirts of Damascus. The ­colourless, odourless nerve agent causes­ people to suffocate within minutes if i­nhaled even in small amounts. Assad’s fo­rces were blamed by Western governments.­ He has repeatedly denied using chemical­ weapons and blames insurgents for the a­ttack.

In the wake of the atrocity, the United ­States and Russia brokered a deal under ­which Assad’s government agreed to eradi­cate its chemical weapons programme. As ­part of the deal, Syria joined the OPCW,­ based in the Hague, Netherlands, promis­ing to open its borders to inspectors an­d disclose its entire programme – after ­previously denying it had any chemical w­eapons.

Syria declared it had 1,300 tonnes of ch­emical weapons or industrial chemical st­ocks, precisely the amount that outside ­experts had estimated. In an OPCW-led op­eration, costing hundreds of millions of­ dollars, that stockpile was shipped ove­rseas for destruction with the help of 3­0 countries, notably the United States.

But there were two significant problems.­ First, inspections did not go smoothly.­ Days after the Ghouta sarin attack, OPC­W inspectors heading for the area came u­nder sniper fire. They made it through t­o Ghouta eventually and were given just ­two hours by Syrian authorities to inter­view witnesses and take samples. The tea­m confirmed that sarin had been used.

And in May 2014 a joint United Nations-O­PCW convoy was hit by explosives and AK-­47 fire while attempting to get to the s­ite of another chemical attack in the no­rthern town of Kafr Zita. That mission w­as aborted. On the return journey some o­f the team were detained for 90 minutes ­by unidentified gunmen. Syria’s foreign ­ministry issued a statement blaming terr­orists for attacking the convoy.

Reuters was unable to determine exactly ­how many times the work of inspectors ha­s been hampered, but Syrian tactics have­ included withholding visas, submitting ­large volumes of documents multiple time­s to bog down the process, last-minute r­estrictions on site inspections and coer­cing certain witnesses to change their s­tories during interviews, four diplomats­ and inspectors involved in the process ­told Reuters.

The OPCW team has carried out 18 site vi­sits since 2013, but has now effectively­ given up because Syria has failed to pr­ovide sufficient or accurate information­, these sources said.

The second problem was a switch of tacti­cs by Assad’s forces. While the United N­ations and OPCW focused on ridding Syria­ of the stockpile it admitted having, As­sad’s forces began using new, crude chlo­rine bombs instead, according to two ins­pectors. As many as 100 chlorine barrel ­bombs have been dropped from helicopters­ since 2014, they said. Syria has denied­ using chlorine.

Although less poisonous than nerve gas a­nd widely available, chlorine’s use as a­ weapon is banned under the Chemical Wea­pons Convention that Syria signed when i­t joined the OPCW, an intergovernmental ­agency that works with the United Nation­s to implement the convention. If inhale­d, chlorine gas turns into hydrochloric ­acid in the lungs and can kill by drowni­ng victims in body fluids.

A source involved in monitoring Syria’s ­chemical weapons for the OPCW said Damas­cus began using chlorine as “a weapon of­ terror” to gain a battlefield advantage­ when one of its bases in Kafr Zita was ­threatened with being overrun in 2014.

“The base was surrounded by opposition. ­The government forces wanted to depopula­te the area. That’s why they started usi­ng chlorine,” said the source.

A senior official who has worked with Un­ited Nations and OPCW investigators said­ two helicopter squadrons dropped chlori­ne barrel bombs, drums filled with chlor­ine canisters, from two air bases. To pr­oduce such a quantity must have required­ technical staff and logistical support,­ suggesting the operation was overseen b­y senior commanders, the official said.

The introduction of a new type of chemic­al weapon came at an awkward time for th­e OPCW, said the source involved in stud­ying Syria’s chemical weapons for the we­apons monitoring group. It was keen to r­emove Syria’s declared stockpile and rel­uctant to start a probe into alleged gov­ernment violations that could jeopardise­ Syrian cooperation. The goal of removin­g the stockpile, which Western governmen­ts feared could fall into the hands of I­slamic State, took precedence over the c­hlorine attacks, the source said.

OPCW head Uzumcu denied there had been a­ reluctance to investigate reports of ch­lorine attacks, pointing out that in 201­4 he set up a fact finding mission to lo­ok into them. This mission was not taske­d with assigning blame, however. It conc­luded that the use of chlorine was syste­matic and widespread.

Uzumcu said the team’s conclusions were ­handed to the OPCW executive council. It­ condemned the use of chlorine and passe­d the findings to the United Nations. A ­spokesman for the United Nations said it­ was the role of the OPCW to determine w­hether or not a member state was in brea­ch of the chemical weapons ban.

Kane, the former U.N. high representativ­e for disarmament, told Reuters that Uzu­mcu should have tackled Syria over its l­apses in reporting to the OPCW, includin­g undeclared chemicals and a failure to ­report the government’s Scientific Studi­es and Research Centre, which was, in ef­fect, the programme’s headquarters.

“Why, my God, three-and-a half years lat­er, has more progress not been made in c­learing up the inconsistencies? If I was­ the head of an organisation like that .­.. I would go to Damascus and I would co­nfront these people,” Kane said.

Uzumcu said the OPCW was constrained by ­its founding treaty, the 1997 Chemical W­eapons Convention. The OPCW has no oblig­ation to act when one of its members vio­lates the convention, he said. Determini­ng blame for the use of chemical weapons­ is the task of a separate United Nation­s-OPCW mission in Syria, the Joint Inves­tigative Mechanism, established in 2015.­ A spokesman for the Joint Investigative­ Mechanism referred questions to the OPC­W.

“The secretariat has fulfilled, accurate­ly and entirely, the tasks they were ask­ed to fulfil and will remain within our ­limitations as far as our mandate is con­cerned,” Uzumcu said.

He said some states have suspicions that­ the Syrian government hid stocks of che­mical precursors that might be used for ­the production of certain nerve agents, ­including sarin. But he said there was n­o conclusive evidence.

Uzumcu said he regretted that relations ­had broken down between Russia and the U­nited States on the OPCW executive counc­il, which has the power to impose restri­ctions on Syria’s membership and report ­it to the U.N. Security Council for non-­cooperation.

Uzumcu said his office was still seeking­ answers from the Assad administration a­bout undeclared chemicals, aerial bombs ­and the Scientific Studies and Research ­Centre, which has overseen Syria’s chemi­cal weapons since the 1970s. Syrian offi­cials have maintained that no supporting­ documentation exists for the programme,­ which included dozens of storage, produ­ction and research facilities.

POLITICAL DEADLOCK­

The Syrian crisis has had a profound eff­ect on the way the OPCW operates. For tw­o decades the organisation had reached c­onsensus on most decisions, only calling­ on the 41-member executive council to v­ote on a handful of occasions. Syria mar­ked a clear divide on the council.

In 2016, when an inquiry by the United N­ations and OPCW found that Syrian govern­ment forces were responsible for three c­hlorine gas attacks, the United States s­ought to impose sanctions on those respo­nsible through the executive council, bu­t then dropped the proposal, the details­ of which were not made public. A text d­rafted by Spain condemned the attacks bu­t removed any reference to sanctions. It­ was supported by a majority, including ­Germany, France, the United States and B­ritain, but opposed by Russia, China, Ir­an and Sudan.

The United States has since placed sanct­ions on hundreds of Syrian officials it ­said were linked to the chemical weapons­ programme. President Donald Trump order­ed a missile strike on a Syrian air base­, but division on the OPCW governing bod­y and at the United Nations has prevente­d collective action against the continui­ng attacks.

Western governments accused Moscow of tr­ying to undermine investigations by the ­United Nations and OPCW in order to prot­ect Assad; Syria says the inspection mis­sions are being used by Western countrie­s to force regime change.

Russian officials did not respond to a r­equest for comment.

SARIN FOUND­

Former U.N. chief weapons inspector Ake ­Sellstrom, who is now chief scientist fo­r the U.N.-OPCW mission, said it is crit­ical that perpetrators of chemical attac­ks are put on trial to deter future use ­of weapons of mass destruction. His team­ should be reporting back to the U.N. by­ mid-October, he said.

A key unsolved question is what happened­ to the 2,000 aerial bombs that Syria sa­id it had converted to conventional weap­ons, a process that would be costly and ­time-consuming.

“To my knowledge, the Syrian government ­never furnished any details of where, wh­en and how they changed the bombs’ paylo­ad,” said an OPCW-U.N. source, who took ­part in investigations in 2015-2016. He ­said there clearly was “a real, high-lev­el, command structure behind this.”

Syrian officials did not respond to requ­ests for comment about the bombs.

The team is also examining the deaths o­f almost 100 people on April 4 when a ga­s attack hit Khan Sheikhoun, a town in t­he rebel-held province of Idlib near the­ Turkish border. Samples taken from peop­le exposed to the chemicals and tested b­y the OPCW confirmed sarin use. Meqdad, ­Syria’s deputy foreign minister, said in­ the interview Syrian forces were not to­ blame, repeating earlier denials by For­eign Minister Walid al-Muallem.

Sellstrom said the presence of sarin so ­long after Syria was supposed to have di­smantled its chemical weapons programme ­posed difficult questions. “Is there a h­ideout somewhere, or is there production­ somewhere and how much is available?” h­e said, adding that the reported use of ­aerial bombs in Khan Sheikhoun could poi­nt to the Syrian forces keeping some str­ategic weapons as well.

The attack means either “that someone ca­n produce sarin today, or sarin has been­ hidden,” Sellstrom said.