Wasn’t chemical stockpile razed?
There’s a mystery at the heart of an apparent chemical weapons attack in Syria this week: Syria’s government was supposed to have gotten rid of all its chemical weapons in 2014.
A year earlier, President Obama said Syria had crossed a “red line” by using sarin gas near Damascus and Aleppo, killing 100 to 150 people. Rather than take military action, Obama agreed to a Russian deal to dismantle Syria’s chemical weapons program.
The effectiveness of the Obama deal is under new examination.
How are chemical weapons regulated?
The wartime use of chemical weapons was banned by the Geneva Protocol in 1925 after more than 90,000 soldiers were killed during World War I by materials including chlorine and mustard gas.
But nations including the United States and former Soviet Union amassed stockpiles of chemical weapons throughout the 20th century. They largely went unused, with a major exception being the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. That’s about when U.S. officials first reported that Syria had produced its own chemical weapons stockpile.
The signing of the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1993 began a phase of worldwide disarmament. Syria was one of the few nations that didn’t, which raised concerns after the country tipped into civil war in 2011. Investigators have accused the Syrian government and Islamic State of using chemicals in the fight.
The Syrian deal
The deal between the U.S. (an opponent of President Bashar Assad) and Russia (an ally) was struck in September 2013. Under the agreement, Syria gave a manifest of its chemical weapons and facilities to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which moved quickly to decommission the declared facilities and weapons.
By the end of 2014, all of Syria’s declared chemical weapons were destroyed, along with 24 of Syria’s 27 declared production facilities. (The other three have not been destroyed yet because of instability, according to inspector reports.)
Yet some officials were skeptical. In February 2016, James R. Clapper, Obama’s director of national intelligence, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that Syria had not declared its entire chemical weapons program to inspectors. International monitors continued to receive reports of chemical attacks throughout 2016.
On Jan. 12, the U.S. Treasury Department unveiled sanctions against Syrian military, security and research officials accused of being connected to Syria’s chemical weapons program. The recent attack
Tuesday’s attack in the northern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun left at least 70 people dead and hundreds more affected, with many struggling to breathe, according to the World Health Organization, citing medical groups working in Syria. U.S. officials reported seeing fixed-wing Syrian aircraft dropping bombs over the town about the time of the suspected gassing.
U.N. officials called it the largest chemical weapons attack in Syria since 2013. Local emergency rooms were overwhelmed, and some patients were taken to hospitals in southern Turkey, the WHO reported.
Doctors Without Borders, the international aid organization, said it was possible at least two different chemicals were used in the attack — sarin gas and chlorine.