SyriaSyria’s chemical weapons stocks will not be attacked

Military analysts say Syrian president Bashar Assad will emerge with Syria’s chemical arsenal intact if the United States executes a limited airstrike. The United States contemplates a punitive strike in response to Syria’s use of chemical weapons against Sunni civilians on 21 August – and on about a dozen earlier occasions.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the U.S. attack, if it comes, is not likely to include the depots where the chemical weapons are stored because such an attack may release deadly gases which would cover the neighboring areas with toxic clouds, potentially creating a human and environmental disaster.

Thomas Henriksen, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution who studies insurgencies, rogue states, and defense affairs, told the Times that making a preemptive strike on Assad’s chemical arsenal, which Damascus has built up over forty years, would probably backfire strategically “in this kind of highly propagandized, politicized war.” Any civilians killed by the accidental release of toxic fumes from the bombings would be displayed by the Syrian government as evidence of the perfidy of the United States and its allies, he said.

Striking aggressively to eliminate weapons to prevent their future use is a gamble which will not pay off if civilian casualties are inflicted, said Henriksen. “Even if you think in the long term that it is a good thing to eliminate these weapons, if it blows up and lots of innocent people are killed, no one is going to think about what might have happened later,” he said. “All anyone will care about is what has happened in the current time.”

Syria used to keep its chemical weapons in about fifty storage sites, but over the past two years has moved all of its chemical munitions to six or seven sites located in regime-controlled areas of the country.

Safely dismantling or deactivating Syria’s chemical weapons would require a ground invasion, which the Obama administration says is not part of the limited punitive strike

UC Berkeley political science professor Steven Weber told the Times that taking out Syria’s chemical weapons would be too daunting and dangerous a mission. Weber, an expert in international security and defense issues, said that “There is always a risk of unintended dispersal of chemical agents in a missile strike. To do that reasonably safely, you would have to know exactly what is stored at the site, where the people are in the area, what the winds are like. Otherwise you run the risk of creating toxic plumes that would kill people; and you probably can’t get to all of them, so it may not make sense to bother taking out only some of them unless you can ensure that any collateral damage is really low.”

In a report prepared last year, the Pentagon estimated that it would take tens of thousands of American troops to secure Syria’s chemical munitions while the war was still raging, because these troops will have to protect themselves. There are many unknowns which would hamper the success of an air or ground strike, including obtaining the correct information on possible targets,, overcoming  Syria’s air defense systems, and having enough time to destroy the thousands of chemical weapons and  guard them.

Since the United States is not planning to attack Syria’s chemical weapons depots, there are military analysts who doubt the effectiveness of the planned punitive strike, noting that such strikes may be more symbolic than strategic in nature.