The need to expose chemical attacks in Syria

Shannon Ebrahim is Independent Media's Group Foreign Editor

Shannon Ebrahim is Independent Media's Group Foreign Editor

Published Dec 11, 2016

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The Syrian government is just as guilty as IS of using chemical weapons against its own people, writes Shannon Ebrahim.

President Barack Obama’s famous red line on the use of chemical weapons in Syria has proven nothing but a damp squib. The world’s collective conscience was appeased by UN resolution 2118 of 2013 which called for a framework for the elimination of Syria’s chemical weapons, but the reality is that 80 percent of all chemical attacks in Syria occurred after the resolution.

Without YouTube videos of Syrian children writhing in pain and frothing at the mouth, there is little that the world says or does about the ongoing chemical attacks launched by the Syrian government and Islamic State on civilian neighbourhoods. But the suffering is just the same, if not worse.

It took two years for the Joint Investigative Mechanism to determine who was responsible for the use of chemical weapons in two Syrian towns in 2014, the report only being issued on August 30. Chlorine had been used in an attack on Telmns in 2014, as well as in Srmin. Sulphur mustard had been used in Mare in Aleppo the same year. The report proved the involvement of both IS and the Syrian government in at least three incidents.

If it took two years for investigators to identify the perpetrators of just three attacks, to investigate all reported incidents in Syria - and there are many - would take decades.

Sulphur mustard or mustard gas was first used in World War I, and at the time even gas masks offered little protection. It is a powerful chemical and blistering agent that causes severe burning of the skin, eyes, and respiratory tract. Mustard gas strips away the mucous membranes and some victims remain blind. The damage it causes to the DNA in human cells results in the victims being at great risk of cancer.

Chlorine gas, on the other hand, is known as the “choking agent” and inhalation causes difficulty in breathing, chest pains, coughing, eye irritation and death. Exposure to the gas is a particularly traumatic experience.

The reason that chlorine gas has been used in attacks on various provinces in Syria is due to the fact that the agent was not included in the list of substances that were designated to be destroyed, following the implementation of UN resolution 2118.

Without having destroyed chlorine or mustard gas supplies in Syria, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) announced in January this year the end of the destruction process of Syria’s chemical arsenal.

With mustard and chlorine gas being continually used as the only chemical weapon of choice to the protagonists in this war, the civilian population is suffering immensely, particularly in non-government-controlled areas where medical facilities are not able to respond to a chemical agent attack.

This is due to an inability to procure specific antidotes or protective equipment from the government or non-government organisations.

Following the chemical attack that targeted the Damascus countryside in August 2013, the lack of proper measures to deal with the attack led to large numbers of injuries and deaths due to secondary contamination among victims, medical personnel and rescue teams.

The fallout from such attacks has been tracked and monitored by the International Union of Medical Relief and Care Organisations (UOSSM) that provides free medical aid to all Syrians and operates 12 hospitals and supports 120 clinics in Syria. Dr Houssam Alnahas of UOSSM has developed response protocols and manuals in the case of chemical attacks, and warned against the ongoing dangers these attacks pose to the civilian population.

In besieged Aleppo, civilians were targeted in the last few months with five chemical strikes, and on September 6 an attack left 128 injured, including 37 children. As recently as November 20 an entire family suffocated to death - the parents and all four children.

Chemical weapons attacks in Syria clearly pose a real and present danger of lethal proportions. Despite the creation by 25 medical relief organisations of the Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Task Force to improve public awareness and responses, it has not had the co-operation of government agencies or official institutions to support the criminal documentation processes.

This could be due to the fact that the Syrian government is just as guilty as IS of using chemical weapons against its own people.

It is time for the international media to start shining a spotlight on these atrocities. It was after the media frenzy which showed video footage of the human impact of the chemical attack on the Damascus countryside in 2013 that the Obama administration and the UN Security Council decided to act.

* Ebrahim is Group Foreign Editor.

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