Fawaz Gerges writes: Although we do not have independent information as to whether Bashar al-Assad’s regime fired chemical weapons on the eastern suburbs of Damascus and killed hundreds of civilians, as the opposition claims, the burden of proof, morally and legally, lies squarely on the shoulders of the Syrian president.

If the regime’s counter-claims of denial are to be believed, Assad must convince the Syrian people and the world. He can do this by allowing the United Nations inspectors access to the rebel-held Damascus suburb of Ghouta, where this apparent massacre occurred. A 20-strong UN team is already in Damascus, investigating three other incidents of alleged chemical weapons attacks said to have taken place six months ago.

The UN, together with scores of nations, has called on Assad to grant permission to its inspectors and allow them to conduct a “thorough, impartial and prompt investigation”. Assad’s prompt agreement would not only show his sincerity about addressing the serious and urgent concerns of the international community, but could also forestall western military strikes. His refusal could prompt such a strike.

If proven, and given the scale of the atrocity, the “red line” established by US president Barack Obama about the use of chemical weapons has surely been crossed. Pressure is mounting on Obama at home. Some US lawmakers immediately renewed calls for the administration to intervene more decisively in the Syrian conflict.

France has already threatened to retaliate militarily against Syria after a UN security council statement failed to agree to call for UN inspectors to investigate. French foreign minister Laurent Fabius said: “If it is proven, France’s position is that there must be a reaction, a reaction that could take the form of a reaction with force.”

It is therefore in Assad’s interests – and it is his responsibility – to co-operate with the UN inspectors. [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: Few people sleep early in Damascus, even in times of war. So when shells started to crunch into the east of the capital at around 2am on Wednesday, Um Hassan and her four children were wide awake, bracing for familiar sounds of bombs falling on buildings and the empty road below.

Soon, though, loudspeakers in the neighbourhood, some attached to mosque minarets, started blaring terrifying warnings – telling residents to leave their houses and flee.

“We were in a panic to take the children and run out of Zemalka to any nearby villages,” said Um Hassan of her area in the east Ghouta district of the capital. “People who were sleeping in their homes died in their beds because they could not feel the effects of the attack.”

Headaches and nausea quickly overcame the family as they scrambled though blackened streets towards the family car, a violent cacophony of shelling all around and the air filling with a strange, noxious odour.

“I still feel sick and drowsy with all the smoke I have breathed,” she said 36 hours after the attack, which killed hundreds of people, wounded many more, and sparked outrage around the world.

“As we were trying to [leave], I could see people coming out of their homes but they would fall down. We tried to help some of them but they died before we got them to the hospital.”

The attack seemed relentless, according to Um Hassan and other victims and first responders contacted by the Guardian via Skype onThursday. The Syrian government has acknowledged that its military launched a large operation in eastern Ghouta in the early hours of Thursday, but has vehemently denied the use of chemical weapons. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: The longer chemical weapons inspectors wait in a Damascus luxury hotel for permission to drive up the road to the site of what appears to be the worst poison gas attack in a quarter century, the less likely they will be able to get to the bottom of it.

The poisoning deaths of many hundreds of people took place only three days after a team of U.N. chemical weapons experts arrived in Syria. But their limited mandate means the inspectors have so far been powerless to go to the scene, a short drive from where they are staying.

“We’re being exterminated with poison gas while they drink their coffee and sit inside their hotels,” said Bara Abdelrahman, an activist in one of the Damascus suburbs where rebels say government rockets brought the poison gas that killed hundreds of people before dawn on Wednesday.

The Syrian government denies it was behind the mass killing, the deadliest incident of any kind in Syria’s two-and-a-half year civil war and the worst apparent chemical weapons attack since Saddam Hussein gassed thousands of Iraqi Kurds in 1988.

The United Nations has asked President Bashar al-Assad’s government for access to the scene, and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said it should be investigated “without delay”.

Former weapons investigators say every hour matters.

“The longer it takes, the easier it is for anybody who has used it to try to cover up,” said Demetrius Perricos, who headed the U.N.’s team of weapons inspectors in Iraq in the 2000s.

“The more you cover up, the more time it takes afterwards to uncover it. So time is definitely not something that you want to take, you don’t want to do it slowly,” Perricos told Reuters.

Chemical weapons experts say there is little doubt that it was exposure to poison gas of some kind that killed the hundreds of victims, although exactly what chemicals were used could not be determined from just looking at images.

“Clearly, something has killed a lot of people,” says Dan Kaszeta, a former U.S. Army chemical officer and Department of Homeland Security expert now a private consultant. “We’re not going to know what until someone gets a sample.”

Stephen Johnson, a former British Army officer specializing in chemical, biological and nuclear warfare and now visiting fellow at Cranfield University’s forensic unit, said it was also “staggeringly effective if it is a chemical attack, which implies more than a casual rocket or two.”

Reuters also reports: Talk, notably from France and Britain, of a forceful foreign response remains unlikely to be translated into rapid, concerted action given division between the West and Russia at Wednesday’s U.N. Security Council meeting, and caution from Washington on Thursday.

Moscow has said rebels may have released gas to discredit Assad and urged him to agree to a U.N. inspection. On Wednesday, Russian objections to Western pressure on Syria saw the Security Council merely call in vague terms for “clarity” – a position increasingly frustrated Syrian rebels described as “shameful”.

The State Department said senior U.S. and Russian diplomats would meet in The Hague next Wednesday to discuss ending Syria’s civil war, in what would be the first such meeting since allegations of the chemical attack.

A senior State Department official said chemical weapons would also be discussed at the meeting. The meeting had previously been announced, but no date had been released.

On Thursday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Syria must let the U.N. team already in Damascus investigate “without delay”. He said he would send a top U.N. disarmament official, Angela Kane, to lobby the Syrian government in person.

Ban said he expected a swift, positive answer.

Obama has directed U.S. intelligence agencies to urgently help establish what caused the deaths, a State Department spokeswoman said while acknowledging it may be difficult given that the United States does not have diplomatic relations with Syria.

“At this time, right now, we are unable to conclusively determine CW (chemical weapons) use,” the State Department’s Jen Psaki told reporters. “We are doing everything possible in our power to nail down the facts,” she added.

Another U.S. official said intelligence agencies were not given a deadline and would take the time needed to “reach a conclusion with confidence.”

Don’t expect that determination to take place any time soon. The Obama administration is still trying to figure out whether a military coup took place in Egypt and if that determination is a challenge then coming to a conclusion about the use of chemical weapons in Damascus can be assumed to be well nigh impossible.

But let’s indulge the conspiracy theorists and assume that Assad has been the victim of a false flag operation. If that was the case, why would he now place a single obstacle in the way of those who could establish his innocence? Why would he ignore the advice of his loyal ally, Russia, which is to let the inspectors do their work?

The fact is, if there was some compelling evidence that this attack could be blamed on Jabhat al-Nusra or some other rebel group, there would be discreet sighs of relief in many Western capitals.

EA WorldView provides a transcript of the doctor speaking in the video above:

You call these terrorists? These are children. Four or six missiles hit Zamalka. Look. I promise you that in one other hospital there are 155 dead.

Look at them! Children. Women. “Did you try to rescue them”? No, they were killed immediately. I swear to you some families were killed entirely. Mom, Dad, kids, and grandparents killed as they lay sleeping in their homes. We just brought down from three buildings entire families killed in their sleep. You will see in a bit. We will issue names for everyone. So far we have confirmed 400-500 martyrs [deaths], even 600. That number is climbing and we have wounded people who are almost martyrs.

I swear by God. When will this Government come and give a verdict on this? When will they act like a Government? When will traitor Bashar [President Assad] own up? God curse him and his parents.

Where is [United Nations envoy Lakhdar] Brahimi? [Former UN envoy] Annan, you talk of rights of children and people. Where are you? Come and see these children now! Don’t talk on TV. Just come and see. Come! God help us…

Look at this child. Look! We don’t know who his parents are. They’re just numbers now.

EA Worldview reports that at least 1,360 people were killed in Damascus suburbs in what are believed to have been chemical attacks: In the days leading up to the August 21 attack, insurgents launched a series of attacks on regime positions in Abbasyeen, Damascus.

On Monday and Tuesday, footage showed insurgents from the Islamist Liwa Fustat al-Muslimeen targeting the regime’s Civil Defense Office in Abbasyeen — including with Croatian M79-Osa anti-tank weapons.

On Tuesday, State media reported that the attacks caused eight civilian deaths in the Damascus neighborhoods of Abbasyeen and Al Zablatani, with a shell hitting the Al Abbasyeen Stadium.

The regime is not just under increased pressure in Damascus. Elsewhere in Syria, it has faced insurgent gains in key areas — including an insurgent offensive in Assad’s home province of Latakia, insurgent victories in Daraa in the south and in Deir Ez Zor, where insurgents have taken, and so far held, key neighborhoods in the city. In response, the regime has launched counter-offensives, characterized by airstrikes and artillery shelling. However these counter-offensives, together with ongoing in fighting in Homs — where the regime has invested considerable firepower to try to regain control — have spread Assad’s forces thin.

In the days leading up to the attack, insurgents based in Jobar — one of the Damascus suburbs hit in in Wednesday’s attacks and in the ongoing Damascus offensive — launched an assault, including with Croatian anti-tank missiles, at regime positions in Damascus.

Increasingly under pressure, and facing increased attacks on its positions in Damascus and elsewhere, the Assad regime decided to gamble on a major offensive to regain control of the Damascus suburbs. It gambled that the international community would not respond with intervention, and that the attacks would buy him enough time and weaken the Damascus suburbs to such a degree that Syrian forces could carry out a ferocious and swift offensive across multiple targets.

Wednesday’s attack can also be seen as an escalation of another tactic that Assad has employed against insurgent-held areas — that of “terror bombing“, i.e. the use of a ferocious, highly destructive attacks against civilian populations to create terror and fear, in the hope that this will weaken insurgent strongholds. [Continue reading…]

Foreign Policy reports: U.S. intelligence officials and outside experts are looking into claims of a new and massive chemical weapons attack that’s left hundreds dead. From the limited evidence they’ve seen so far, those reports appear to be accurate. And that would make the strike on the East Ghouta region, just east of Damascus, the biggest chemical weapons attack in decades.

The early analysis is based on preliminary reports, photography and video evidence, and conclusions are prone to change if and when direct access to the victims is granted. Over the past nine months, the Syrian opposition has alleged dozens of times that the Assad regime has attacked them with nerve agents. Only a handful of those accusations have been confirmed; several have fallen away under close scrutiny. But Wednesday’s strike, which local opposition groups say killed an estimated 1,300 people, may be different.

“No doubt it’s a chemical release of some variety — and a military release of some variety,” said Gwyn Winfield, the editor of CRBNe World, the trade journal of the unconventional weapons community.

While the Obama administration says it has conclusive proof that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons in the recent past, the White House has been reluctant to take major action in response to those relatively small-scale attacks. (“As long as they keep body count at a certain level, we won’t do anything,” an American intelligence official told Foreign Policy earlier this week.) But this attack appears to be anything but small-scale. If allegations about this latest attack prove to be accurate, the strike could be the moment when the Assad regime finally crossed the international community’s “red line,” and triggered outside invention in the civil war that has killed over a hundred thousand people. [Continue reading…]

Someone posted a comment here earlier today saying: “It looks like a fake would look too! It is a simulation filmed to fool the gullible, or rather to provide ‘evidence’ for the warmongering/Zionists and others who interfere and arm terrorists.” And I dare say there are some others who share a similar sentiment — and perhaps also believe the Holocaust was a “fake.”

But none of these folks should worry themselves. It really doesn’t matter how many people die in Syria — there is zero chance that the U.S. and the West will intervene.

Do you really think that an administration that is unclear about whether a military coup just took place in Egypt is about to become more deeply engaged in Syria?

The U.S. and its allies — even if they would never dare admit as much — are profoundly grateful for repeatedly having had their hands tied by Russia and China at the UN. Today turned out to be no different than any other.

Reuters reports: The U.N. Security Council said it was necessary to clarify an alleged chemical weapons attack in Damascus suburbs on Wednesday but stopped short of demanding a probe by U.N. investigators currently in Syria.

“There is a strong concern among council members about the allegations and a general sense that there must be clarity on what happened and the situation must be followed closely,” Argentina’s U.N. ambassador, Maria Cristina Perceval, told reporters after a closed-door emergency meeting of the council.

The United States, Britain and France are among around 35 countries that called for chief U.N. investigator Ake Sellstrom, whose team is currently in Syria, to investigate the incident as soon as possible.

U.N. diplomats, however, said Russia and China opposed language that would have demanded a U.N. probe.

If Bashar al-Assad ever thought that Barack Obama believed in such a thing as a “red line” — a line that must not be crossed — he probably also had a hunch that as the President of Syria he had more power to define such a line than would an American president who invariably prizes pragmatism above principle.

The following article appeared in Foreign Policy just two days before today’s reports of hundreds of deaths in Damascus from chemical weapons attacks. An American intelligence official is quoted, saying: “As long as they keep body count at a certain level, we won’t do anything.”

Has Assad once again demonstrated that the only definite attribute Obama’s red line possesses is that it is permanently open to redefinition?

Noah Shachtman and Colum Lynch write: All of the major players in Syria — and all of their major backers — now agree that chemical weapons have been used during the civil war there. But the mysteries surrounding a string of alleged nerve gas assaults over the spring have, in some ways, only grown thicker. The motivations and tactics behind the unconventional strikes continue to puzzle U.S. intelligence analysts. And the arrival in Damascus of United Nations weapons inspectors holds little promise of solving the riddles.

Independent tests of environmental samples by both Russian and American spy services indicate that the deadly nerve agent sarin was used during a March 19 battle in Khan al-Assal, for example. Beyond that basic fact, there’s little agreement. The Russians blame the Syrian rebels for launching that unconventional strike on the Aleppo suburb, while the Americans say it was a case of chemical friendly fire.

U.S. intelligence officials tell Foreign Policy that they’re continuing to investigate claims of new chemical weapon attacks in Syria, including an alleged strike earlier this month in the town of Adra that left men foaming at the mouth and dogs twitching in the street. They’re continuing to see supplies shuffled around some of Syria’s biggest chemical weapons arsenals, such as the notorious Khan Abu Shamat depot.

But the number of reports of unconventional attacks has dropped sharply since early June, these same officials say. That’s right around the time when forces loyal to dictator Bashar al-Assad took over the strategic town of Qusair and gained the upper hand in Syria’s horrific civil war. The decline provides to American spy services another indication that it was Assad’s forces who launched the chemical attacks; there’s little need to gas people when you’re winning.

There was a time when such determinations appeared to hold geopolitical significance. The Obama administration repeatedly called the use of chemical weapons a “red line.” But that line has now been crossed repeatedly, with little consequence. And that’s led U.S. intelligence officials to confront another question: How massive would the chemical strike have to be in order to prompt America and its allies to intervene in Syria in a major way?

“As long as they keep body count at a certain level, we won’t do anything,” an American intelligence official admits. [Continue reading…]

Haroon Siddique, at The Guardian, reports: My colleague Ian Sample, has been speaking to chemical weapons experts who say the videos appear to show signs of poisoning but doubt whether there will be an opportunity to independently verify what happened and also questioned the timing of the alleged attacks.

One chemical weapons inspector who is not in Syria told the Guardian:

I very much doubt the team will be given access to the site. The whole inspection has been delayed for weeks and months already over the formalities of visiting each site.

That could change if the pressure becomes so huge for the Syrian government that they have to let them in, but if an attack has happened as appears that would be a PR catastrophe. With an incident of this size, the team will try to talk to the Syrians. If the government thinks this hasn’t happened, the inspectors can say they should want proof, so why not give them access.

Unconfirmed videos of the aftermath of the attack show dead children and adults, and others with a range of symptoms, including constricted pupils, difficulty breathing, foaming at the mouth, and shaking or fits. These are consistent with a sarin attack, but are not enough to confirm that a nerve agent was responsible.

Ralph Trapp, an expert on chemical and biological weapons, said:

It is possible a gas was involved, but the images I’ve seen were not clear enough to see other symptoms beyond difficulty in breathing and suffocation. It certainly looks like some sort of poisoning.

Many symptoms can be caused by other substances, and chemical weapons inspectors will need to rule these out. Missiles can strike chemical stores, realising poisonous gases like chlorine, which is used to sterilise water. Shells that carry sarin can also carry fuel-air explosives, which can cause people to suffocate. The munition produces a huge cloud of fuel that is ignited to produce a blast and suck huge amounts of oxygen out of the air.

Though the videos are almost impossible to verify, Trapp said the footage shows what a chemical weapons attack on a civilian area would look like.

This is one of the first videos I’ve seen from Syria where the numbers start to make sense. If you have a gas attack you would expect large numbers of people, children and adults, to be affected, particularly if it’s in a built up area.

Scott Lucas reports: Only hours after the mass killing of civilians in airstrikes by the Assad regime — possibly using chemical weapons — news has broken that the US military has ruled out American intervention, even of a limited nature, in Syria.

In a letter sent on Monday to Congressman Eliot Engel, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, said the American military is capable of taking out the Syrian air force and shifting the balance of the civil war.

However, Dempsey argued that the approach would plunge the US into another war in the Arab world and offer no strategy for peace, given the fragmented opposition to the Assad regime:

Syria today is not about choosing between two sides but rather about choosing one among many sides. It is my belief that the side we choose must be ready to promote their interests and ours when the balance shifts in their favor. Today, they are not.

Dempsey, who was recently in Israel for discussions, said Syria’s war was “tragic and complex”:

It is a deeply rooted, long-term conflict among multiple factions, and violent struggles for power will continue after Assad’s rule ends. We should evaluate the effectiveness of limited military options in this context.

Dempsey said that US should concentrate on increased humanitarian assistance to bolster a “moderate” opposition as “the best framework for an effective US strategy toward Syria”.

Robin Yassin-Kassab describes his recent trip into liberated Syria: At first the strangest sensation was the normality of the surroundings. A hot and breezy afternoon ran past the windows – stubbled wheat fields, rocky outcrops, smooth-topped tells. But the villages seemed much poorer here, some of their roads gnarled up by tanks. In one hamlet, the Jabhat al-Nusra logo was printed on the walls. Our secular hosts explained that the Islamist group, designated a terrorist organisation by the UK and US, had liberated this stretch of land.

We diverted to avoid al-Fu’aa, a Shia village still held by the regime, and drove on towards Taftanaz, where the scale of the damage wrought by shelling and aerial bombardment became terribly apparent. We passed streets of crumpled buildings, long banks of debris, shopfront shutters buckled by the vacuum bombs that suck in and ignite the air to create fireballs.

White paint on the walls warned: “Watch out – Taftanaz airfield ahead!” The airfield was liberated in January after two months of siege. The resistance lost many men here – the burnt and cratered fields around offer no cover whatsoever. Now ruined tanks and lopsided helicopters rest inside the perimeter, and Free Army militia sit guard at the entrance.

Next we drove into Saraqeb, a city of significant size, again notable for its war damage, and victim of a chemical attack in April. We stopped in the busy centre so one of us could vomit into roadside rubbish, while the others (one an uncovered woman) entered a cafe to eat haytalya, a local speciality. Jabhat al-Nusra runs a sharia court here. Its black flag flies atop the famous TV mast. Nevertheless, nobody looked twice at our friend’s unveiled hair. Saraqeb felt not like the Taliban’s Afghanistan but like Syria minus the regime: socially conservative but largely tolerant of difference.

The media image of the liberated areas suggests the regime has been replaced by heavy-handed militias. At least in Idlib province (Aleppo has suffered much more from thuggery, corruption and Islamist fanaticism, a fact much lamented by the activists and fighters I spoke to), it is not like that at all. No checkpoint stopped us. The men with guns were locals and were considered protectors, not oppressors.

Many men have fought. They fight for a while, then take time off to visit their families in the camps or to harvest the fields (those that haven’t been burned). Most have no political aim other than defending themselves by ending the regime. Some are Islamists, usually moderate and democratic.

One such is Abu Abdullah who, before his leg injury, fought with the rebel group Liwa al-Islam in Douma in the Damascus suburbs. He shocked me with his statement: “We aren’t fighting for freedom, but for Islam.” But the follow-up was more reassuring. “Europe,” he said, “is implementing Islam without being aware of it. It educates its people, it respects their rights, there’s one law for all.”

He doesn’t fight for “freedom” because to him the word means people doing anything they like, regardless of the rights of others. His vision of an Islamic state is one compatible with democracy; it wouldn’t enforce dress codes or ideological allegiances because (he quotes the Quran) “there is no compulsion in religion”.

As for the foreign fighters, Abu Abdullah, like everybody I spoke to, views them with disdain. Syria has enough men, he told me. Syria needs weapons, not men. Foreigners only cause problems. They increase the sectarian element, as Assad and Iran want. They ruin the revolution’s reputation. In any case, most of them aren’t fighting but resting, waiting for “the next stage”. [Continue reading…]