by Reese Erlich
The Al Ghouta victims lived in rebel-controlled areas in towns to the southeast of Damascus. Virtually all the victims were treated in rebel-controlled medical facilities, not government hospitals. The UN inspectors were able to examine the Al Ghouta area in a timely manner. They collected contaminated soil, took medical samples from victims, and located at least some of the munitions used. The United Nations concluded that without doubt victims had been exposed to sarin. The gas was delivered by guided rockets and artillery-fired rockets. The guided rockets, a modified version of an old Soviet Grad, were launched independently. The other munitions, which have tail fins, are fired from artillery but have no independent guidance system.
UN inspectors found five munitions carrying sarin that hit the Al Ghouta area. Each of the two Grads were capable of carrying thirteen gallons of sarin, and three artillery-launched rockets could carry eleven to sixteen gallons each.35 If those figures are correct, and the munitions were filled to capacity, whomever fired the rockets had to either transport the sarin from a sophisticated lab or mix and load fifty-seven to seventy gallons of liquid sarin in battlefield conditions, which is no small task. London-based chemical-weapons expert Dan Kaszeta told me that such a batch of sarin would require a huge amount of “precursor chemicals and produce a significant waste stream.”36 An organized army with proper facilities and trained technicians seemed to be the likely culprit. On the other hand, if UN inspector Sellstrom, as well as professors from MIT and Tesla Labs, are correct on the rocket trajectory, the rockets were fired from areas very near to or under rebel control.
And the political question remains: Why would Assad be stupid enough to launch a major chemical attack just days after UN inspectors entered Damascus? He may be evil, but he's not stupid. Justice Minister Ahmad told me, “When the Syrian army was making progress in Al Ghouta, the terrorists wanted the world to look at another issue, so they used chemicals again.”37
Pro-Syrian government consultant Barakat claimed that rockets filled with sarin were shipped from Libya and that rebels were trained by special American and British units. He couldn't explain how such a large quantity of sarin precursors could have been prepared for battle. His story then became even more bizarre. He alleged that rebels had kidnapped hundreds of children from the progovernment city of Latakia, brought them to Al Ghouta, and then gassed them as part of a massive disinformation campaign.38 Those were the children depicted in the videos.
Joshua Landis, director of the Center of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oklahoma, offered a possible answer as to why the Syrian army used weapons of mass destruction. He told me that the regime was fighting a desperate battle in the suburbs against rebels who had considerable popular support among Sunni residents. Assad didn't have the troops to retake all the towns, so the army used sarin. “It's like sending the US Marines into Japan in 1945. But the United States used atomic weapons.”
He noted that “Syria doesn't operate its military efforts around weapons inspectors. As long as the United States wouldn't invade, he [Assad] could get away with anything.” German intelligence intercepted Syrian radio communication indicating the army had been asking Assad to use chemical weapons for many months. Landis said sarin could have been used to “intimidate people: ‘We're going to incinerate you.’ The generals wanted to do that.”39
Those German intercepts raised speculation in Europe that the military may have used sarin without Assad's knowledge. One German newspaper indicated that brigade and division commanders had been asking permission to use chemical weapons for four and a half months before the Ghouta incident.40 No other sources confirmed this theory, however.
Investigative reporter Gareth Porter offered another explanation. He argued that much less sarin was used than commonly thought. The rebels could have diluted sarin with water. So they would only have had to manufacture as little as fifteen gallons of sarin. Some victims showed symptoms inconsistent with sarin poisoning, possibly caused by tear gas or smoke grenades. Under Porter's theory, extremist rebels didn't have to transport dozens of gallons of sarin from Turkey to Al Ghouta. “The new information suggests a much less lethal attack with munitions that were less effective and perhaps even using much less sarin than was initially assumed,” he wrote.41
So what conclusions can we draw? Both sides quite possibly used sarin. Both sides lied and manipulated evidence. At a minimum, the Obama administration exaggerated its case to justify a military attack on Syria. At worst, the White House fabricated intelligence. Bottom line: no one has yet presented convincing evidence of who perpetrated the horrific Al Ghouta attack. But one thing remains clear: the Al Ghouta massacre changed US policy, and not in the way President Obama intended.
In early September 2013, the United States was preparing to wage war on Syria using public-relations techniques perfected in Iraq and Libya. First, exaggerate the threat. The White House claimed the Syrian army had murdered over 1,400 civilians. Second, claim that secret US intelligence, which can't be made public, showed that the Syrian regime is responsible for monumental war crimes. Third, claim the US military action will be limited in scope while secretly hoping it will topple the regime.
In the days following Al Ghouta, the administration stepped up arms supplies to the rebels. Arms promised back in April suddenly began to arrive.42 The aim was to give General Salim Idris more arms and supplies to coordinate attacks when the United States bombed. The White House started a campaign to rustle up international support. The United States sought support from the United Kingdom, a trusted ally in previous military adventures. Conservative Party prime minister David Cameron called members of Parliament back from vacation to vote on a possible Syria attack. Much to his surprise, Parliament voted against any military intervention, which reflected widespread British opposition to yet another Middle East war. The British people well remembered the lies spread by Labor Party prime minister Tony Blair in the run-up to the Iraq War.
The British parliamentary vote represented a huge setback for Obama, leaving France as his only major European backer. Only ten years before, the White House had attacked France for not supporting the Iraq invasion, calling their leaders “surrender monkeys.” Now Secretary of State John Kerry proclaimed France as our oldest ally.43 The Obama administration sought support from the Arab League, which had supported the Western attack on Libya. Not a single member of the league would openly support the United States.
The White House then tried to rally popular support at home. But a Reuters/IPSOS poll taken just a few days after the Al Ghouta massacre, when public opinion should have tilted in the president's favor, showed 60 percent of Americans opposing a UN-sanctioned attack on Syria and only 9 percent backing unilateral US action.44 With mounting pressure at home, Obama agreed to allow Congress to vote on the issue. Strange political alliances developed. Centrist Democrats who had opposed the Iraq War joined mainstream Republicans in Obama's support. Progressive Democrats joined Libertarian and ultra-right-wing Republicans in opposition. Some of these same Republicans who had vocally supported President George W. Bush's wars suddenly became concerned about unnecessary foreign entanglements. Had Obama actually submitted a war resolution to the House of Representatives, he would likely have lost the vote.
Republican leaders promoted the narrative that Obama had been weak and indecisive. They argued that Obama had bumbled along from the beginning with no real Syria policy. He refused to adequately arm the rebels. He vacillated. He drew a red line at the use of chemical weapons but then wimped out when Assad used sarin in Khan Al Asal.
In reality, Obama had a Syria policy—it just didn't work. The CIA began working with Syria exiles very early but was unable to find or create credible, pro-US rebel groups despite strenuous efforts. The United States formed two different civilian coalitions, backed the Free Syrian Army, and then tried to broaden the FSA by creating a thirty-man directorate called the Supreme Military Council.
As for Obama's “red line,” he faced a rather trou
blesome problem. A month after the Khan Al Asal attack, the White House announced that chemical weapons had been used. Intelligence agencies concluded that the Assad regime was responsible, but only “with varying degrees of confidence.”45 That's intel-speak for “We're not sure.” We now know that at least some intelligence officers suspected that al-Nusra or ISIS used sarin in Khan Al Asal. The United States couldn't very well go to war based on a chemical attack perpetrated by the rebels. Neither could it reveal the rebel role, lest it weaken the entire anti-Assad campaign.
So Obama waited, which the Republicans interpreted as dithering. The White House insisted on more definitive proof and ultimately didn't attack that spring. When Obama did announce plans for war, he faced an unprecedented defeat, in part engineered by Republicans.
The administration did manage to make lemonade from a batch of very sour Syrian lemons. Secretary of State John Kerry made an offhanded remark at a press conference in London. When asked what Assad could do to stop the looming US attack, Kerry replied, “He could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week—turn it over, all of it, without delay, and allow the full and total accounting…. But he isn't about to do it, and it can't be done.”46
The Russians, who had previously discussed that idea with the United States, seized the moment to propose a compromise. They pressured the Assad regime to give up its chemical weapons in return for the White House agreeing not to bomb. Until that moment, the Syrian regime had never officially acknowledged that it even had chemical weapons. Both sides quickly drew up protocols for destroying the chemicals, and the process began amid very difficult wartime conditions.
The United States insisted that all of Syria's chemical weapons be destroyed by mid-2014, an extremely short deadline, particularly since the United States had delayed the destruction of its own chemical stockpiles for years. Under terms of the Chemical Weapons Convention, the United States had agreed to destroy its Cold War–era stockpiles of deadly chemicals by 2012. But in 2013, the United States still had some three thousand tons of sarin, VX, and mustard gas in violation of the convention.47 Washington unilaterally extended the deadline to destroy the chemicals, indicating it would cost some $35 billion and couldn't be completed until 2023 at the earliest.48
The Obama administration hailed Syria's agreement to destroy its chemical stocks as a major breakthrough. But the failure to bomb Syria was criticized by both conservative and ultraconservative rebels. In their view, Washington not only failed to provide adequate weapons, it now had a vested interest in keeping Assad in power, at least until he destroyed the chemical weapons.
In the months leading up to the Al Ghouta attack, the Syrian army had been on the offensive, seeking to turn the tide militarily. Nowhere was that more clear than in Qusayr, a small, dusty town located south of Homs and only a few miles from the Lebanese border. In antiquity, it was the site of the world's largest known chariot battle—between the Egyptians and the Hittites. The town would soon become famous for yet another battle.
Qusayr had become important to both the rebels and the Syrian army because of its strategic location. Rebels smuggled men and arms into Syria from nearby Lebanon. Al-Nusra and other rebel groups had taken power in Qusayr and nearby towns. The army fought to take them back throughout the spring of 2013. Fighting continued for months with the rebels sandbagging apartments and digging deep tunnels under buildings. The Syrian government bolstered its forces with an estimated 1,200 elite troops from its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah.49
After weeks of house-to-house fighting, in June the Syrian army and Hezbollah retook Qusayr in what they described as a turning point in the war. A Hezbollah leader told me the fighting was intense. “The Qusayr battle was very difficult,” Hezbollah spokesperson Haj Ghassan admitted during an interview in the eastern Lebanese city of Hermel, just a few miles from Qusayr. “The rebels had built many tunnels and had a lot of reinforcements.”50
But Qusayr was a pyrrhic victory. Residents had fled. The fierce fighting had destroyed the entire downtown area. Interviewed just one day after the victory, Ghassan admitted the high cost of the win. “It's almost the complete destruction of Qusayr caused by both sides,” said Ghassan. Whenever Syrian soldiers came under fire from rebels, he said, they retaliated with tanks and heavy weapons. “The Syrian army destroyed any place that shots came from. Now the Syrian government has to rebuild.” The Assad regime boasted that the Qusayr victory would lead quickly to the retaking of Aleppo, Homs, and other important cities. Six months later, those cities remained partially under rebel control, as they had been in June. Qusayr turned out to be just one more battle in a very long war. Another battle turned out to be even more significant, but not for the reasons you might suspect.
With its concrete buildings and rutted streets, Raqqa was the somewhat threadbare capital of the Raqqa Governate in north-central Syria. Before the civil war, its population was about 240,000, but an estimated 800,000 refugees fled there from other areas of the country. In March 2013, a coalition of rebel groups from the Free Syrian Army, Ahrar al-Sham, al-Nusra, and ISIS took control of the city and created a rebel administration. It was the first time rebels had captured a regional capital—a huge defeat for the government. Raqqa residents strongly opposed the Assad regime. At first they welcomed the rebel coalition. One American reporter visited Raqqa in March and noted, “The city was ruled by a coalition of militias, and it was possible to move around as a woman without a headscarf. I met with an Alawite nurse who worked alongside Sunni peers.”51
Conservative and ultraconservative Islamist groups predominated from the beginning. They had a reputation of incorruptibility and military prowess. Ahrar al-Sham, in particular, included many members from Idlib Governate just a few miles away. The rebels faced many difficult problems governing a large city devastated by civil war. The local economy was in shambles. Farmers were short of seed, and fertilizer from Turkey was very expensive. Some civil servants continued to receive their government salaries; others were not paid for months. The lack of government salaries remained an important issue because the government was a major employer. The government withdrew its troops but continued to bomb civilian areas with missiles and barrel bombs. Dropped from helicopters, those bombs—oil drums filled with shrapnel and explosives—were particularly devastating on civilians.
But the main threat to residents didn't come from the army. ISIS believed it was an Islamic state, not merely a powerful rebel group. In Raqqa and other northern cities, it proclaimed itself as the sole government, implementing a harsh version of Shariah law. It publicly beheaded three Alawites in the Raqqa central square. It forced women to wear the hijab, gender segregated the public schools, and banned smoking. Christians fled the city in fear, and churches were ransacked.52
Within two months, ISIS launched military assaults against fellow rebels for not following strict Islamic law. On August 14, ISIS blew up a car bomb in front of the headquarters of a rival rebel group, killing and wounding civilians. ISIS jailed and tortured rebels who disagreed with its policies. By monopolizing power, ISIS alienated Raqqa residents, who then held marches and rallies against them. A number of civil-society activists became ISIS victims.
Father Paolo Dall'Oglio is an Italian Jesuit priest who had lived in Syria for over thirty years. He was well known and respected for frequently participating in intrareligious events. He fasted during Ramadan out of respect for Islam. Unlike some other Christian leaders, Father Paolo opposed the Assad regime and supported the rebels. He spoke at a civil-society rally in Raqqa. On July 29, 2013, he entered ISIS headquarters in Raqqa in an effort to stop the internecine fighting and to find out the whereabouts of kidnapped activists and journalists. Father Paolo was not seen again after that meeting. Many months later, he remained missing, apparently one more ISIS victim.53
Anger at ISIS swelled so much that by the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014, a new ad hoc alliance of Islamist groups fought back agains
t ISIS. For a time they drove ISIS out of Raqqa, but ISIS eventually regained control. Meanwhile, civil-society activists attempted to maintain the gains made after the Assad troops fled. Raqqa was home to civil-society organizations providing emergency relief supplies and small economic programs. Other groups worked to organize teachers, students, and cultural workers.54
Rebels fought among themselves in other parts of the country as well. The Western-backed Supreme Military Council (SMC) didn't fare well. On December 6, 2013, the Islamic Front overran the SMC headquarters and warehouses, which were chock-full of US-provided armaments and supplies. SMC leader General Idris was reportedly forced to flee to Turkey from his headquarters in Atmeh, just a few miles inside Syria from the Turkish border. Stolen items included forty pickup trucks, buses, fifty thousand military rations, office and communications equipment, assault rifles, and even tanks. An SMC commander told the New York Times that the Islamic Front “stole everything in the headquarters.”55
Later, Idris claimed it was all a big misunderstanding. He had asked for Islamic Front assistance because ISIS was going to overrun the headquarters. He also claimed to have been in Turkey the whole time.56 It was never clear, however, if the depot was really threatened by ISIS or if that was an Islamic Front ruse. In any case, the front looted the buildings and never returned the supplies, causing a huge embarrassment for the United States and rebel ally Idris.
In response, the US State Department announced suspension of nonlethal aid to rebels operating near the Turkish border, but the aid resumed within a few months. There was no announcement of halting the CIA's lethal aid. On February 16, 2014, the SMC commanders held a secret meeting, sacked Idris without prior notice, then replaced him with Brigadier General Abdul-Ilah al-Bashir, considered by the United States to be a “moderate.”57 The SMC didn't even bother to notify General Bashir until after the fact. “I swear to God, no one was in touch with me,” Bashir told the New York Times.58