What the OPCW’s latest report really tells us about chemical warfare in Syria

NEW YORK — The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ Investigation and Identification Team (OPCW-IIT) has delivered a report to the UN Security Council, blaming the Assad regime for two Sarin attacks and one chlorine attack in al-Lataminah Syria, in March of 2017. The report itself is a landmark moment for investigators seeking accountability for crimes against humanity in the Syrian conflict. It is only the second OPCW report on Syria to name a perpetrator, after the OPCW’s previous investigation into the sarin attack at Khan Sheikhoun, which was conducted in partnership with the United Nations via the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM).

Where most of the OPCW’s previous efforts were only given a mandate to report whether or not prohibited weapons had been used – and not to apportion blame – the IIT was created to do exactly that. Free from these constraints of having to carefully word its findings to avoid explicitly, or implicitly naming the perpetrators of individual incidents, the newly-empowered IIT report contains startling details about how the attacks were actually conducted, including the names of specific military installations and aircraft that were used. Correlating evidence from flight data, aircraft spotters, satellite photos, analysis of weapons fragments, eyewitness testimony and chemical analysis of biological and environmental samples. Taken together as a whole, this report offers something nearly unprecedented — a detailed and non-partisan, fact-based account of a war crime in a conflict where nearly everything is politicized.

The report doesn’t mince words. It is definitive in its finding that in the three separate incidents it investigated, “that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the Syrian Arab Republic used chemical weapons.” The OPCW-IIT assigned direct culpability to the military hierarchy of Assad’s army, but stopped short of saying exactly who gave the order to use chemical weapons. “Orders for chemical attacks were issued directly by the Commander in Chief of the Syrian Arab Armed Forces, though he may have delegated such authority,” the report states.

The Syrian regime has rejected the accusation and denounced the report saying it was “aimed at falsifying truths and accusing the Syrian government.” Its supporters have repeatedly argued that it would be counterintuitive to use chemical weapons at the risk of provoking the international community. However, the al-Lataminah report gives us insight into why the Assad regime has done so on multiple occasions. The issue of chemical weapons – which humanity has collectively agreed are too destructive, even for use in war – has become heavily politicized, the subject of massive state-run disinformation campaigns aimed at discrediting rescue workers and doctors who have responded to high-profile chemical weapons attacks in the past.

But the incidents that this new report examines are different. The al-Lataminah attacks – which sickened dozens, but resulted in no fatalities – were overshadowed days later by the sarin attacks in the Idlib town of Khan Sheikhoun, which killed more than 80 civilians on April 4th, 2017. They became a major political flashpoint, provoking international condemnation and resulted in US cruise missile strikes against the regime’s Shayrat Airbase, and remain a point of bitter contention between the US and Assad’s Russian allies, with the latter accusing the Syrian opposition of staging the incident, and US allies blaming the Assad regime.

Similarly, an April 2018 chlorine attack in Douma, which killed over 40 civilians and provoked another round of US-led airstrikes, has been the subject of an intense Russian-led disinformation campaign aimed at discrediting evidence and intimidating witnesses.

The OPCW’s 2019 report into the 2018 Douma chlorine attacks did not name a perpetrator – because it wasn’t given the mandate to – but it did offer damning evidence that molecular chlorine had been dropped from the air – a conclusion that strongly implied the regime’s culpability without stating it definitively. Despite this, the Douma report came under scrutiny in 2019 when two ex-OPCW employees claimed to have evidence pointing away from regime culpability, suggesting molecular chlorine had not been used and that munitions found at the scene had been planted there manually. Independent experts challenged the whistleblowers’ assertions, and the OPCW vehemently denied the allegations, pointing out that both men were only involved in the early phase of the Douma investigation, played peripheral roles, and lacked access to sufficient investigative materials to challenge the conclusions of the 2019 report.

Later in 2019, Wikileaks released internal OPCW emails, as well as an unpublished early draft of the Douma report. The leaks indicated that one of the groups of its toxicologists felt after observing video of the victims’ bodies that some bodies displayed symptoms inconsistent with chlorine poisoning, notably foaming at the mouth.

Again, outside experts debunked those attempts to discredit the investigation, pointing to visual evidence from a 2005 industrial chlorine accident in Huainan, China, as well as accounts from chlorine attacks during World War One, indicating that such symptoms can indeed be caused by chlorine. The leaks also contradicted claims made by the whistleblowers about their roles within the organization and the nature of the evidence regarding chlorine use.

In stark contrast to the war of words around the Douma and Khan Sheikhoun attacks, the al-Lataminah attacks, covered in the new report, have gone comparatively unnoticed by the international community and major media outlets.

From outside Syria, casual observers could easily see chemical weapons attacks as isolated incidents that don't fit into a broader strategy, and backers of the Assad regime have indeed questioned why chemical weapons would only be used in such controversial and high-profile cases. But incidents like the one at al-Lataminah demonstrate that such attacks do not occur in a vacuum – they are deliberate and relatively common, going unnoticed when they don’t cause massive casualties. Previous independent studies have also indicated that chemical weapons like Chlorine have been used over 300 times throughout the course of the war, a conclusion that is backed up by a large amount of visual evidence, including images of what appears to be chlorine gas being used in Aleppo. Despite focusing on only three incidents, the latest report is ground-breaking for carrying the seal of approval of the internationally recognized OPCW.

The OPCW-IIT report says this: “At approximately 6:00 on 24 March 2017, an Su-22 military airplane belonging to the 50th Brigade of the 22nd Air Division of the Syrian Arab Air Force, departing from Shayrat airbase, dropped an M4000 aerial bomb containing sarin in southern Ltamenah, affecting at least 16 persons.” The next day, a helicopter of the Syrian Arab Air Force, departing from Hama airbase, dropped a cylinder on the Ltamenah hospital. The cylinder broke into the hospital through its roof, ruptured, and released chlorine, affecting at least 30 persons.” In a third incident, on 30 March 2017, “an Su-22 military airplane belonging to the 50th Brigade of the 22nd Air Division of the Syrian Arab Air Force, departing from Shayrat airbase, dropped an M4000 aerial bomb containing sarin in southern Ltamenah, affecting at least 60 persons,” the report states.

In the past, the Assad regime has contested the source of the chemical agents used in attacks being investigated. This time, a clear link was drawn between the Sarin used in al-Lataminah and the stockpiles of the Syrian regime. The chemical profile of the sarin used in Lataminah on 24 March 2017 “strongly correlates” to the chemical profile expected for sarin “that is manufactured via routes, as well as by using precursors and raw materials, pursued by the Syrian Arab Republic in its sarin programme.”

The OPCW-IIT analyzed the potential strategy behind the incidents, pointing out that al-Lataminah was a contested area which had been heavily fortified by the opposition and bombarded extensively by conventional munitions. According to the report “an extensive tunnel system of a length of up to 800 metres existed in the area, with the main cluster of entrances covering approximately 230 metres in the area where the Ltamenah hospital was also located.”

In other words, the Al-Lataminah chemical weapons attacks all occurred in areas where the regime was already trying to eliminate rebel fortifications with conventional weapons. “In this context, the IIT considered the military value of the areas threatened by the armed groups’ advance: a military expert advising the IIT noted the use of chemical weapons in this area would not be inconsistent with a strategy aimed at inflicting terror on both civilians and combatants, at eliminating infrastructure such as the medical facilities required to continue fighting.” It’s noteworthy that the strategy of using Chemical Weapons to try and break opposition defenses and fortifications suggested by the IIT strongly correlates with the circumstances surrounding the 2018 Douma Chlorine attack, which occurred as the Syrian military was making a final push to drive the opposition out of underground fortifications they had built in the besieged neighborhood.

The OPCW-IIT also weighed Syrian regime accusations that the incidents had been staged, but said it “did not receive, nor was otherwise able to obtain, any material that would substantiate them.”

The international community now has as much proof as it will ever need that prohibited chemical weapons have been used, and that it was Bashar al-Assad’s military that used them. Yet still, it is unlikely to take action, or to deter the Assad regime from further chemical attacks. The challenge is now on the regime’s international backers, who have frequently relied on crude propaganda and intimidation methods to sweep crimes against humanity under the rug.

The bar of proving war crimes has now been set so high by the international community that minor disputes are seized upon and spun into an exculpation of the perpetrators. But in this case, the details are harder to dispute, and correlate with a pattern of behavior from the Assad regime that many have been pointing out all along. At the very least, the al-Lataminah report serves as a key part of the historical record, chronicling the devastating effect of chemical weapons in the nearly decade-long Syrian Civil War.

Hopefully, it will serve as evidence for those who still hold out hope for justice.

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