UN inspectors' repot on gas attack points to Assad’s elite military units

Mount Qasioun is a military and intelligence complex intimately connected to the Assad family’s rule, a network of compounds and positions occupied by elite units commanded by members of the president’s inner circle and clan.

The units based on the mountain are “as close to the Assad regime as it’s going to get,” Emile Hokayem, an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told the Times. Hokayem added that theories that the chemicals had been launched by a rebel mole seeking to discredit the government were unlikely because of the solidity and tight control of those units.

Experts say that Russia’s and Syria’s dissimulation efforts concerning the 21 August attack notwithstanding, the UN team’s report has removed whatever ambiguity remained about the responsibility for the attack, if there ever was any ambiguity.

These experts note that rebel forces have never penetrated the major military installations of Mount Qasioun, installations from which the attack was launched, and that the rebels would almost certainly have been unable to organize, coordinate, and fire sustained and complex barrages of rockets from that location undetected.

When taken together, the azimuths, or compass bearings, drawn from rockets found in different neighborhoods lead back to and intersect at Mount Qasioun, the impregnable seat of Assad’s power, according to independent and separate calculations by both the New York Times and Human Rights Watch.

“Connecting the dots provided by these numbers allows us to see for ourselves where the rockets were likely launched from and who was responsible,” Josh Lyons, a satellite imagery analyst for Human Rights Watch, noted in a statement on Tuesday.

“This isn’t conclusive,” Lyons added. “But it is highly suggestive.”

The Times notes that the map Lyons and Human Rights Watch prepared, and a similar map made by the Times with no consultation or exchange of information, suggested that gas-filled rockets originated “from the direction of the Republican Guard 104th Brigade,” which occupies a large base on the mountain’s western side.

The flight path for at least one of the rockets could also indicate that it came from the government’s sprawling air base at Mezzeh, near the foot of Mount Qasioun.

A senior American intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that U.S. satellite intelligence had confirmed rocket launches that corroborated the UN data and the Human Rights Watch analysis for one of the strikes.

“When you fire it from such a place [Mount Qasioun’s regime-related military bases], it means that you don’t care if fingers will be pointed to you in some period of time,” General Hanna said.

Speaking on Tuesday in New York, Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, was careful not to express publicly any conclusions about culpability that could be drawn from the report, noting that assigning blame was explicitly beyond the UN’s mandate. The investigators’ mission, Ban noted, “is to find out facts and whether or not chemical weapons were used; if used, to what extent.”

“It is,” he added, “for others to decide whether to pursue this matter further to determine responsibility and accountability.”