The Wound of the Chemical Massacre Did Not Heal
by Salam al Saadi, a writer and journalist based in Canada. He is currently studying a PHD in Political Science at the University of Toronto.
The struggle for Justice in Syria: The 8th Anniversary of Assad’s Chemical Massacre
August 21 marks the eighth anniversary of the horrific chemical attack, with the nerve agent sarin, by the Assad regime on Eastern Ghouta of Damascus. The devastating attack killed more than 1,500 Syrians, making it the deadliest such attack since Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons in Halabja against Iraqi Kurds in 1988. The attack demonstrated what Syrians have long known and experienced regarding the totalitarian nature of the Syrian regime and the lengths to which it would go to retain power. The attack also revealed the actual position of the United States and its policy on Syria, which has been another obstacle to both political change and accountability.
On the “logic” of using chemical weapons
While many countries directly accused the Syrian regime, the latter denied the attack occurred, accusing the US of falsifying events in Syria to justify an intervention, before shifting to blaming the opposition. This position aligns with Russia and a popular leftist narrative that refused to believe, despite mounting evidence, that the regime is responsible. Why Bashar al-Assad would use chemical weapons when he well knows that it will spark a harsh international response? To a certain leftist core of activist, academics, and journalists, the attack seemed unnecessary and irrational from a cost-benefits calculation viewpoint.
The debate showed the huge gap between what the world knows about the Syrian regime and the lived experience of the Syrians under its rule. The attack on Ghouta was not the first. The regime had used chemical weapons on several small-scale occasions before and avoided strong international response. This time the international response was confined to sending an investigatory committee, which was already working in Damascus when the largest Ghouta attack occurred. The regime can live with such a bureaucratic procedure.
The fact that such observers continuously ignore is that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons in 336 occasions throughout the course of the Syrian revolution. All attacks were subsequent to Barack Obama’s infamous “red line” announcement in August 2012. In addition, the report found that the Syrian regime has consistently prioritized striking population centres over rebel positions on the frontlines. This means that chemical weapons were part of the Assad regime’s strategy of collective punishment. After the use of sarin gas in the Ghouta attack, the regime decided to shift to using improvised chlorine munitions. These are easy and cheap to procure in significant quantities without specialized knowledge. In addition, being less lethal that sarin, it was less likely that it could prompt a strong international response.
Assad’s strategy did not depend on winning the hearts and minds of the population living in rebel-held areas by offering settlements or providing public services. Rather, it was bent on making their lives unbearable through the daily bombing of hospitals, schools, bakeries, markets, and residential neighborhoods. This prevented any form of governance or stability in areas outside its control. Troop shortages and the loss of land to the opposition further made barrel bombs and chemical weapons the pillars of a strategy of subjugation. They allow the regime to maintain or establish a presence in those areas it had lost. Devastating destruction by barrel bombs and suffocation by chemical weapons seemed the only way to establish “sovereignty” over the liberated areas.
This level of violence and extermination, then, seems totally “rational.” Yassin al-Haj Saleh once pointed out that the political prisoner is not an exception in Syria, but rather the rule. In this sense, the Ghouta chemical massacre is not an irrational exception. It is neither a mistake or a reckless behaviour. Instead, it represents a necessary and generalized form of violence that is also a mode of governance, shaping Syrians’ political subjectivities and defining their perceptions about the terms of rule and their relations with the regime and with one another.
The US and the international community
WWI witnessed the death of about one hundred thousand people as a result of the use of poisonous gas, and in the aftermath the prohibition of chemical weapons was established as a strong international norm. This remained the case even during WWII, the largest, deadliest war in history. Yet, holding the Syrian regime accountable remains elusive, which highlights, in contrast to the prevailing perception, the level of immunity that the Syrian regime has enjoyed.
At first, the violation of the international norm against chemical weapons use seemed like a turning point that might end the passivity of the US policy on Syria. That policy was justified by Russia’s protection of the Syrian regime in the UN Security Council. However, the chemical attack exposed the fragility of that pretext. The US prepared to carry out a unilateral military strike without the authorization of the Security Council and regardless of Russia’s position.
Thus, it became clear that the main reason behind the US passivity was not its inability to protect the massacred population, but its unwillingness to change the Syrian regime. The possibility of a sudden collapse of the Assad regime, in light of its chemical arsenal and secured borders with Israel, was the main concern of the US administration and thus, preventing this scenario was one of its main goals in Syria. In August 2013, the United States found itself in a dilemma. On the one hand, a small-scale military attack will be interpreted as a sign of weakness from the world’s superpower. On the other hand, Obama seemed certain that the Assad regime was so weak that a strong strike proportional to the violation of an established international norm could bring the regime down in few days.
Ultimately, the US solved that predicament by signing an agreement with Russia and legitimizing it in the Security Council’s Resolution 2118, which included the elimination of Syria’s chemical weapon stockpiles, in exchange for avoiding the military strike.
A Turning Point
Instead of intervening to protect Syrian civilians — by maintaining a no-fly zone over Syria, or disabling the Syrian Air Force which killed tens of thousands of Syrians in the opposition held-areas, causing forced displacement and the refugee crisis — the world decided to send a message to Assad and his Syrians victims that there is no real prospect for accountability.
The U.S approach claimed that protecting the “state” prevents catastrophic consequences, including “terrorism” and high human casualties. However, that strategy of containment and the disregard for justice under the pretext of avoiding chaos and terrorism have resulted in the highest level of chaos, terrorism, and death in the recent history of the region.
The Russian-American deal ensured the continuation of the Assad genocide machine. It blocked all paths of change, providing the most fertile environment for the growth of militant jihadist movements, most infamously ISIS, which emerged in 2014. The disintegration of the Syrian opposition, the declining power of the armed opposition, and lack of prospects and hope of stopping the massacres pushed the marginalized rural population towards ISIS and similar movements.
The struggle for Justice
Achieving justice through the international community and its mechanisms seems farfetched. While the OPCW formed a fact-finding mission in 2013, unconscionably, it was not authorized to identify the perpetrator, which undermined the prospect for accountability. Russia and China, in turn, have blocked concreate steps towards accountability following the creation of a new committee set up by the United Nations in 2015. This deadlock contributed to the Trump administration’s military strike in 2017, in response to a new chemical attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun. That strike was so modest, however, that Assad’s warplanes took off from the Shayrat base, the target of the US strike, the following day to deliberately target and massacre Syrian civilians.
With the prospect of international paths to achieving justice blocked, survivors of the chemical attacks and families of the victims are working in cooperation with Syrian human rights organizations to file criminal cases in European courts against many officials in the Assad regime. This despite attempts by Russia and the Syrian regime to destroy the evidence pointing to the use of chemical weapons and to intimidate the witnesses and the medical staff. They regularly receive threats of assassination as well as threats of either arresting or kidnaping their families who remain in regime-held areas. Nonetheless, many courageous Syrians remain committed to gathering evidence and testimonies about the chemical massacre. They dream of a landmark moment for justice.
