Normalising the use of chemical weapons

The Syrian regime has allegedly used poisonous substances on its people more than 200 times since 2012, but the global powers have been slow in making it accountable for the attacks.

THE scenes have become strangely familiar by now.

The latest videos and pictures, streaming since Saturday from wartorn Syria, show the dead bodies of angel-like children and women, crowded in basements and littering the stairs of shelters.

White foam covers their mouths and noses. They look asleep, but they are dead. There are no external wounds to explain why they are dead, a hallmark of exposure to chemical agents.

Another suspected chemical attack has occurred in Syria.

Bushra is a medical student who has been working nonstop at the site of this latest attack, in Douma, just outside of Syria’s capital, Damascus.

She is working as a nurse, doctor and even surgeon because of the severe shortage of healthcare professionals there.

The main hospital in Douma was bombed by an airstrike the same day as the gas attack. Her small hospital was flooded with injured patients.

All had respiratory symptoms – coughing, wheezing, foaming, vomiting and tearing in their eyes. Some of them were having convulsions. She also felt tightness in her own chest – she did not have proper protective gear.

It is difficult to ascertain which chemical agent was used. A bleachlike smell indicated possible exposure to a choking agent, chlorine, which was used by the Germans during World War I.

But the severity and scale may indicate a new agent or mixed chemical agents. There have been recent reports that the Syrian government has been developing new chemical agents.

Bushra talked about the chaotic scenes of nurses using water hoses to wash petrified children who were screaming or traumatised by what they witnessed. Her under- ground hospital was overwhelmed by the number of victims. She described flaccid children gasping their last breaths.

She cried when recalling how she performed CPR hopelessly on small children, trying to resuscitate them. The worst thing for a doctor is not to be able to save the life of a patient, especially if that patient is a healthy child.

What has happened in Douma is not new in Syria.

A year ago, a similar attack with sarin nerve gas in Khan Sheikhoun in the north led to the deaths of about 100 people, including 33 children.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, with the help of his allies Russia and Iran, has been bombing Douma after the breakdown of negotiations with the rebel group, Jaish al-Islam, which controls the city.

Douma had a population of 500,000 before the crisis. The location is not far from the infamous nerve gas attack in August 2013, when 1,400 people suffocated to death after exposure to sarin gas. The Syrian regime was blamed for the attack.

At that time, President Barack Obama did not follow through on his 2012 warning that there would be consequences if the Syrian government crossed a “red line”.

The red line referred to use of chemical weapons and was meant to prevent Assad from using those internationally prohibited weapons against his people.

Well, the red line was crossed, not one time, but more than 200 times, according to a recent report by the Syrian Network for Human Rights.

The report outlines repeated use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime between December 2012 and February 2018, noting that scores of attacks occurred after a 2013 United Nations resolution required the Syrian government to destroy its full stockpile of chemical weapons.

There has been no accountability. Instead, the use of chemical weapons has been normalised, and the lack of accountability has set a dangerous precedent.

It probably gave the green light to other regimes and dictators to use chemical agents with impunity against their foes.

The nerve agent VX was used to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s half brother in Malaysia in February 2017.

And recently, the nerve agent Novichok was used to poison for- mer Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in southern England – the first time chemical weapons have been used in Europe since World War II.

After each massacre in Syria, the world is apparently caught by surprise. Innocent children die because of a shortage of antidotes, ventilators, oxygen and doctors.

After so many attacks in Syria with chemical agents, the World Health Organization and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which is responsible for enforcement of chemical weapons protocols, still don’t have in place a process to confirm quickly which chemical agent has been used in an attack.

The Security Council meanwhile has been stuck in an impasse on the issue.

According to AFP, UN SecretaryGeneral Antonio Guterres had stressed the need to avoid the situation spiralling out of control, imploring the Council’s five permanent members – the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain – to take action.

Washington and Moscow have been locked in an increasingly tense stand-off on Syria, with US President Donald Trump warning that “missiles will be coming” against the Syrian regime, as Russia scrambled to deflect blame from its ally Assad.

Yesterday, the missiles did come. The US military, with allies UK and France, had struck against Syrian chemical weapons sites to “establish a strong deterrent against the production, spread and use of chemical weapons.”

In response to the Khan Sheikhoun attack in April 2017, the US had fired a few long-range missiles onto the Syrian airfield used by the fighter jets that dropped their loads of nerve gas in that attack.

But it was more of a slap on the wrist to prevent further use of the illegal agents and to affirm the norms of war.

And apparently the message was not heard in Damascus. Whether they will hear the message this time around is to be seen.

For better or worse, Trump can take the lead in bringing an end to the ongoing Syrian genocide that has destabilised US allies in the region and in Europe, and caused a global refugee crisis – especially on the heels of his recent comments about a possible early US withdrawal from Syria that may have emboldened the brutal regime and its allies.

He can do that by pressuring all parties, particularly Russia, to accept political transition away from the current brutal regime.

When asked about what she wants, Bushra said, “Stop the hell raining on us from the skies.”

Bushra wants to finish her medical school training and become a paediatrician.

She and her colleagues are dreaming of a day when all Syrian children are able, once again, to get out from their shelters, play in open-air parks, go to schools built above ground and breathe the air without choking. — Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service