{"id":179,"date":"2013-10-31T16:44:49","date_gmt":"2013-10-31T16:44:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/?p=179"},"modified":"2013-10-31T16:44:49","modified_gmt":"2013-10-31T16:44:49","slug":"syrian-cw-funtional-destruction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/?p=179","title":{"rendered":"Syrian CW – “Funtional Destruction”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The OPCW-UN inspectors for Syria have \u201c<\/strong>completed the functional destruction of critical equipment for all of its declared chemical weapons production facilities and mixing\/filling plants, rendering them inoperable.\u201d\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

This is seven weeks after President Obama, in a dramatic prime time address to the nation announced that he was seeking Congressional concurrence for a circumscribed military attack on Syria intended to \u201cdegrade and deter.\u201d\u00a0 The turn of events is striking.<\/p>\n

(I am setting aside the potential that Syria may have concealed some CW capacity because in any case would be greatly reduced even if it is not zero.)<\/p>\n

How is it that a country that built up a large chemical weapons capacity to offset Israel\u2019s nuclear capability suddenly in a matter of a few weeks, gives it up?<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0 Maybe CW just wasn\u2019t that useful.\u00a0 Bashir al-Assad is clearly fighting for the survival of his regime.\u00a0 Deterring Israel is not his biggest problem.\u00a0 CW has not proved to be very effective in a civil war.\u00a0 It brings down the wrath of the international community and is not very effective, even to break the morale of the opposition.\u00a0 There are lots of other ways of killing people with \u201cconventional\u201d weapons.<\/p>\n

It is also the case that Bashir al-Assad needs international standing and only the Russians are doing much to support him\u2014and they seem to have made the case to him that his case would be materially improved if he gave up CW.\u00a0 Lavrov certainly would not have suggested the idea of UN inspectors handling the Syrian CW case if he was not convinced that Syria would deliver and not do anything \u201cstupid.\u201d<\/p>\n

What exactly did OPCW destroy?<\/strong>\u00a0 They won\u2019t say.\u00a0 Unlike the Iraq case where destruction was detailed in reports to the UN Security Council, OPCW inspectors have made public no information about the specifics of what they destroyed.<\/p>\n

Reportedly Syria has asked to retain some facilities that can be used in civil chemical industry.\u00a0 Maybe that\u2019s a good idea, maybe not.<\/p>\n

We do not know what specific munitions have been declared or destroyed<\/strong>.\u00a0 Did they destroy Scud missiles or just the warheads?<\/p>\n

Did the Syrians declare munitions of the type that were used in the August 21 attack that was investigated by the separate UN team?\u00a0 <\/strong>\u00a0(I understand they did not.)\u00a0 There are many details that would provide more confidence to the Security Council than the OPCW is revealing.\u00a0 I suspect that when the UN Coordinator, Sigrid Kaag becomes more familiar with her brief, she may wish to provide more fulsome data to the Security Council\u2026whether this is standard OPCW practice or not.\u00a0 Syria is a special case, as the special resolution by the Security Council mandating this process (just last September 27th<\/sup>) makes clear.\u00a0 It is not like the average party to the CWC.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the achievement of the OPCW-UN team is remarkable.\u00a0 One of the last remaining states with CW has now been removed from the list.\u00a0 Remaining are Egypt, North Korea, South Sudan, and Angola.\u00a0 (Israel and Burma have signed but not ratified the CWC convention.)\u00a0 Egypt is now more prominent for its position.\u00a0 If there weren\u2019t so many other difficulties in and around Egypt, it might be expected to follow suit.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What is likely to become more evident is that CW in the hands of non-state actors will be a problem.<\/strong>\u00a0 In Iraq after the removal of Saddam and during the insurgency, there were attempts by various actors to use rudimentary CW.<\/p>\n

Moreover, it is still not clear that insurgents did not use CW in Syria.\u00a0 The evidence points to Damascus for the major cases of use, but that does not mean the rebels have not indulged in CW as well<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

This risk of non-state actors using CW underlines the value in getting the Syrian materials off the table.\u00a0 This is a positive, if unplanned or predicted outcome.\u00a0 Still, there are plenty of ways of killing people, and the prospects for an early end to the killing in and around Syria doesn\u2019t seem any closer.<\/p>\n

Finally, there remains the task of getting rid of the chemical agents and precursors.\u00a0 These are extremely important and dangerous.\u00a0 It remains to be agreed if they will be removed quickly from Syria to a country that can safely render them harmless.\u00a0 Norway was a prime candidate but declined.\u00a0 Apparently still mulling over the task are others including Belgium and Albania (not as odd as it sounds\u2026its not far and they have had the experience of getting rid of their own CW inventory when they acceded to the CWC).<\/p>\n

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The OPCW-UN inspectors for Syria have \u201ccompleted the functional destruction of critical equipment for all of its declared chemical weapons production facilities and mixing\/filling plants, rendering them inoperable.\u201d\u00a0 This is seven weeks after President Obama, in a dramatic prime time … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12,19,74],"tags":[31,8,17,30],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":181,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions\/181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}