The Guardian reports: Countries in the forefront of arming either side in Syria’s civil war have been among the least generous when it comes to dealing with the resulting humanitarian disaster, according to a new Oxfam report.

The aid agency and advocacy group found that Russia and Qatar had committed just 3% of their fair share to the United Nations humanitarian appeal, measuring their contributions as a proportion of national income and wealth.

Russia has long been the Syrian government’s main arms supplier, providing nearly half its imports in 2006-10, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

On Wednesday, Moscow launched a diplomatic assault in defence of the Syrian regime, claiming to have evidence implicating Syrian rebels in the chemical attack in Damascus on 21 August, in which hundreds were killed. Russia’s move once again pits it against the UK, France and the United States, which blamed the attack squarely on Bashar Al Assad.

Meanwhile, Qatar is widely reported to be the main source of finance for weapons for the rebels, particularly jihadist groups.

France, the most vociferous supporter of the opposition in western Europe, has given less than half its fair share, the Oxfam report found.

At the other end of the scale, Kuwait has contributed more than four times its share, while Britain has given more than one and a half times what the agency estimated a proportionate contribution to the UN fund. Saudi Arabia has given nearly twice its share.

Overall, under-payers far outnumber over-payers, especially among rich countries. The US, despite being the biggest contributor in absolute terms, has given 63% of its fair share in relation to national income, Oxfam found. Japan has paid 17% of its fair share and South Korea 2%.

As a result, the £3bn Syrian humanitarian fund launched by the UN in June this year is so far only 44% funded, with days to go before a high-level donor meeting on the sidelines of the UN general assembly next week. [Continue reading…]

Al Jazeera: Fighters linked to al-Qaeda have overrun a Syrian town near the border with Turkey after fighting broke out with units of the anti-government Free Syrian Army, opposition activists say.

Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant on Wednesday stormed the town of Azaz, 5km from the Syrian-Turkish border, and killed at least five FSA members, the activists said, adding 100 people were taken captive.

Reports in the late evening said that fighting was continuing and getting closer to a border crossing at Bab Al Salama, which is controlled by the FSA.

The fighting is the most severe since tensions mounted earlier this year between the rebel factions fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The fighting could pose a dilemma for the Turkish government, which has been allowing fighters to cross into Syria from its territory, but may not be keen to see al-Qaeda so close to its border.

Hans Blix writes: For some weeks the world’s attention has turned from the brutal civil war that continues to rage over much of Syria, and focused instead on the horrible large-scale use of chemical weapons near Damascus – which has now been verified in a report by UN appointed impartial inspectors. After several bewildering political turns, the framework agreed in Geneva by the foreign ministers of the US and Russia may be viable and meet the interest of their own and many other governments – even though it is bitterly denounced by Syrian rebels, who had hoped for strong US military action, and even though there is no consensus on the question of guilt.

Rather than a fast-track, global-police action with the US ignoring the UN security council – and charter – to punish Syria with limited military strikes, we now see Damascus brought on a fast-track to the chemical weapons convention and an accelerated process for those weapons to be declared (within a week), verified by international inspectors and removed from or destroyed in Syria (within the first half of 2014). The executive council of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the security council are, quite properly, to run the process and supervise it.

This “framework” takes the US off a military course that appeared to go against American public opinion, might have been rejected in Congress, and could have led to loss of many lives in Syria and dragged Washington into further armed conflict. Many governments welcomed that, under the framework, the security council is no longer ignored but made the central forum for action and supervision. For Russia, as a permanent council member with a veto, this meant preserved influence. Through the framework, Russia also protected the Syrian government from the loss of military assets that would have been destroyed in punitive strikes. While Moscow reaped praise for preventing armed action, the only price it paid was the destruction of a chemical arsenal that the Syrian government could hardly have used a second time.

What now looks almost like an international “due process” will undoubtedly raise questions. It seems unlikely the Syrian government will seek to obstruct the process and raise a need for enforcement measures, but troublesome practical and political problems will inevitably arise. The reset that has already taken place between the US and Russia in Geneva will be needed to solve such problems. Even more co-operation will be needed between the two, and within the security council, to tackle the much greater challenge of achieving a ceasefire in Syria and a conference to bring about a transitional government.

It is welcome that the US now seems fully aware that Iran is central to this challenge, and that dialogue with Tehran – and not only threats – are needed. In comments made before the final deal was struck, President Obama made clear that Iran will have a place at the conference about peace in Syria. He cautioned Iran that its getting closer to a nuclear weapon is a far larger issue to the US than Syrian chemical weapons, and warned Tehran it should not conclude that the readiness to strike against it was gone. However, Obama also signalled that the deal reached in Geneva showed there is a potential to resolve these issues diplomatically. One would hope this potential will soon be explored. It could improve the atmosphere. [Continue reading…]

An interview between Dennis Kucinich and Bashar al-Assad took place yesterday (?) and according to Damascus is due to be broadcast this evening. As Kucinich and Assad spoke to each other in English, hopefully there weren’t any problems in translation as happened two years ago when some of Kucinich’s statements were subject to “mistranslations” when published in English by the Syrian Arab News Agency. At that time, Fox News reported:

It’s unclear exactly which statements he claims were taken out of context. It’s also unclear how a mistranslation could have occurred since Kucinich speaks English and the article was written in English.

But that was before Kucinich became a Fox contributor. Maybe Fox gave him a crash course on how to speak English in Syria before this week’s visit.

It looks like — at least from Assad’s perspective — the interview went well:

#President al-Assad gives an #interview to American Fox News channel, to be broadcasted on 01:00 am – Damascus. pic.twitter.com/gVHjyIpPMA

— Syrian Presidency (@Presidency_Sy) September 18, 2013

C.J. Chivers reports: Details buried in the United Nations report on the Syrian chemical weapons attack point directly at elite military formations loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, some of the strongest findings to date that suggest the government gassed its own people.

The inspectors, instructed to investigate the attack but not to assign blame, nonetheless listed the precise compass directions of flight for two rocket strikes that appeared to lead back toward the government’s elite redoubt in Damascus, Mount Qasioun, which overlooks and protects neighborhoods and Mr. Assad’s presidential palace and where his Republican Guard and the army’s powerful Fourth Division are entrenched.

“It is the center of gravity of the regime,” said Elias Hanna, a retired general in the Lebanese Army and a lecturer on strategy and geopolitics at the American University of Beirut. “It is the core of the regime.”

In presenting the data concerning two rocket strikes — the significance of which was not commented upon by the United Nations itself — the report provides a stronger indication than the public statements of intelligence services of the United States, France or Britain that the Syrian military not only carried out the attack, but apparently did so brazenly, firing from the same neighborhoods or ridges from which it has been firing high-explosive conventional munitions for much of the war.

Looming over a tense capital and outlying neighborhoods bristling with anger and fear, Mount Qasioun is Damascus’s most prominent military position. It is also a complex inseparably linked to the Assad family’s rule, a network of compounds and positions occupied by elite units led by members of the president’s inner circle and clan.

The units based on the mountain are “as close to the Assad regime as it’s going to get,” said Emile Hokayem, an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Mr. Hokayem added that theories that the chemicals had been launched by a rebel mole seeking to discredit the government were unlikely because of the solidity and tight control of those units. [Continue reading…]

Human Rights Watch: The UN inspectors investigating the chemical weapons attack on two suburbs in Damascus last month weren’t supposed to point the finger at the party responsible for the killings. But even so, the Sellstrom report revealed key details of the attack that strongly suggest the government is to blame, and may even help identify the location from which the Sarin-filled rockets that killed hundreds of people on August 21 were fired.

In appendix 5 of their report, after describing the size and structure of two rocket delivery systems used, they go one step further and actually reveal the direction some of the rockets likely came from. Using standard field investigative techniques examining the debris field and impact area where the rockets struck, the report provides precise azimuths, or angular measurements, that allow us to work out the actual trajectory of the rockets.

“Impact site number 1 (Moadamiya) and impact site number 4 (Ein Tarma),” the inspectors wrote, “provide sufficient evidence to determine, with a sufficient degree of accuracy, the likely trajectory of the projectiles.” They go on to say that 3 of the rockets they inspected had bearings of 34 and 35 degrees for 2 of the rockets that landed in Moadamiya, and 285 degrees for 1 of the rockets that landed in Ein Tarma.

Connecting the dots provided by these numbers allows us to see for ourselves where the rockets were likely launched from and who was responsible.

The two attack locations are located 16 kilometers apart, but when mapping these trajectories, the presumed flight paths of the rockets converge on a well-known military base of the Republican Guard 104th Brigade, situated only a few kilometers north of downtown Damascus and within firing range of the neighborhoods attacked by chemical weapons.

According to declassified reference guides, the 140mm artillery rocket used on impact site number 1 (Moadamiya) has a minimum range of 3.8 kilometers and a maximum range of 9.8 kilometers. The Republican Guard 104th Brigade is approximately 9.5 km from the base. While we don’t know the firing range for the 330mm rocket that hit impact site number 4, the area is only 9.6km away from the base, well within range of most rocket systems. [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: Now we know. On the morning of 21 August, as the air above Damascus cooled, rockets filled with the nerve agent sarin fell on rebel-held suburbs of the Syrian capital and left scores of men, women and children dead or injured. UN inspectors had been in the country for three days, on a mission to investigate allegations of earlier atrocities. They quickly changed tack. They brokered a temporary ceasefire with the regime and the rebels and made straight for Ghouta. Video reports from the area showed hospital staff overwhelmed and desperate.

Never before had UN inspectors worked under such pressure and in the midst of a war zone. The small team, headed by the Swedish chemical weapons expert Åke Sellström, was threatened with harm. Their convoy was shot at. But their 41-page report was completed in record time.

Sarin was that breed of accident that scientists come to regret. Its inventors worked on insecticides made from organophosphate compounds at the notorious IG Farben chemical company in Nazi Germany. In 1938, they hit on substance 146, a formula that caused massive disruption to the nervous system. The chemical name was isopropyl methylfluorophosphate, but the company renamed it sarin to honour the chemists behind the discovery – Schrader, Ambros, Ritter and Van der Linde – according to Benjamin Garrett’s 2009 book The A to Z of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Warfare. The chemical they created had the grim distinction of being many times more lethal than cyanide.

Substance 146 is not hard to make, but it is hard to make without killing yourself. There are more than a dozen recipes that lead to sarin, but all require technical knowhow, proper lab equipment and a serious regard for safety procedures. One major component is isopropanol, more commonly known as rubbing alcohol. Another is made by mixing methylphosphonyl dichloride with hydrogen or sodium fluoride. But methylphosphonyl dichloride is not easy to come by. Under the Chemical Weapons Convention it is listed as a schedule 1 substance, making it one of the most restricted chemicals in existence. [Continue reading…]

Rami G Khouri writes: The Moscow-Washington tango that resulted in the Syrian chemical weapons agreement was a first-class diplomatic show that will be analyzed by political scientists and pretzel makers for a generation. As always in successful diplomacy, every actor in the spectacle claims victory and national strategic benefits. The complexity of the cause-and-effect debate is what interests the pretzel makers, whose own fine handiwork defies the attempts of rational people to determine with precision where the pretzel starts and where it ends.

The Russian-American agreement on Syria begs analysis and any possible credible answers on three important questions. The first is for academics and historians because it is unlikely to receive a definitive answer: What role did the American threat of the use of force against Syria play in pushing the parties to an agreement?

Arguments on both sides of this question reflect existing ideological positions on issues such as the degree of coherence in U.S. policy in the Middle East and the efficacy and ethics of Washington’s proclivity to use military force unilaterally and at will anywhere in the world. This is a fascinating and important debate because the U.S. will threaten or use force again and again – as President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry both repeated several times in recent days while explaining their policies toward Syria and Iran.

The second key issue to examine now is how the agreement will impact the internal fighting in Syria, and the condition of Syria and Syrians.

I expect fighting to continue unabated across the country, and increase in places, as both sides seek to show that they gained from the accord – while their respective external supporters in the United States, Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia will continue to feed them money and guns. Any drop in American aid to rebels will be compensated for by increased Arab Gulf aid.

The third and most important political question that the U.S.-Russia agreement raises is about its likely implications for a set of critical relationships revolving around a central actor in this wider drama–Iran. In the short run two dynamics matter here: American and Russian relations with Iran, and Iranian-Saudi Arabian relations. [Continue reading…]