/ world today news/ The US struck Syria in response to the alleged chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun. But was this crime really committed by Assad? Or is it the work of jihadist rebels aiming precisely at US intervention in Syria?
The suspected chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun earlier this week killed more than 80 people. And so far the death of these people is the only proven fact. Damascus and Moscow reject Western accusations that the Assad regime is to blame for the attack. But who would have an interest in the crime? This question is asked in every crime film. We ask ourselves the same thing now. “Only the armed rebel groups are aware of such an attack with chemical weapons. They are facing the wall and de facto have no chance of resisting the Assad regime with military means,” Günter Meyer, head of the Center for the Study of the Arabic Language, told DV. world in Mainz. The political scientist recalls that in 2012, Barack Obama threatened that the US would intervene if the Assad regime used combat poisons. And this threat, according to Meyer, sounds like an “invitation to the opponents of the Syrian president to use chemical weapons so that Assad will be blamed.”
The fact that the armed opposition in Syria is capable of carrying out chemical attacks was described in detail as early as 2014 in a publication by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in the “London Review of Books”. He cited a 2013 DIA document. According to this document, al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria – the al-Nusra Front – possesses the nerve gas sarin. In his article, Hirsch tries to prove that the August 2013 chemical weapons attack in Ghouta (a suburb of Damascus) attributed to Assad was actually the work of the rebels. According to the investigative journalist, their goal was to involve the US administration in the war against Assad.
Middle East expert Michael Lueders describes in his just-released book “Those Who Reap Storms” how at the end of August 2013, the head of the US Secret Service, James Clapper, dissuaded the president from issuing an order to launch Tomahawk cruise missiles against Syria. Clapper convinced Obama of Assad’s innocence after showing him the analysis of sarin samples seized from Ghouta. According to the analysis carried out by a British chemical laboratory, the composition of the sarin found there differed from the sarin of the Syrian army. After all, the chemical attack in question in Ghouta was carried out at the exact time when American chemical weapons inspectors were in the country. “By the way, they were invited by Assad,” emphasizes expert Günter Mayer. In March 2013, a chemical attack was also carried out north of Aleppo, in which Syrian army soldiers were also killed. Mayer claimed that Assad wanted to find those responsible for the attack with the help of US inspectors. “It is madness to expect that the regime will carry out such an attack at the exact time when there is an American commission in the country,” believes the Middle East expert.
Doubts about Assad’s involvement in the 2013 chemical attack were also expressed by former UN chemical weapons inspector Richard Lloyd, as well as MIT professor Theodore Postel. In early 2014, the two American scientists published a report claiming that the rockets loaded with poison gas in Ghouta could only have been fired from rebel-held areas, and that their range was a maximum of 2.5 kilometers.
At the time of the Ghouta attack, Syria still possessed 600 tons of chemicals to make sarin and mustard gas. According to Günter Meyer, these stockpiles served “as a kind of counterweight to Israel’s nuclear weapons.” “According to calculations, Israel currently possesses about 200 nuclear warheads. Chemical warfare agents are called the “atomic weapon” of the little man,” says the expert from Mainz. In August 2014, the US announced the complete destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal. It is possible, however, that some of the hard-to-monitor areas of hostilities still have them.
And the chemical weapons of the al-Nusra Front, which is written about in the report of the US military secret service DIA, announced by the investigative journalist Seymour Hirsch? Nothing is known about them. “And because of this, the group that broke away from Al-Qaeda is the most significant rebel group in the northern province of Idlib,” emphasizes Günter Meyer in a conversation with DV. “The al-Nusra Front, now under a different name, has united with other extremist jihadist groups in Idlib and is currently the most powerful Islamist group in the region. This means that al-Qaeda, represented by the al-Nusra Front, has the de facto say in the countryside,” he says.
There is no doubt that Bashar al-Assad does not choose the means to maintain his rule. But on the other hand, why does the dictator need to turn the international community against him? And at a time when she is gradually getting used to the idea that he can stay in power as the Syrian president. Fair question, right? And before reacting hastily, this question must be given a plausible answer.
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Matthias von Hein’s analysis was published in Deutsche Welle
Damascus / Syria
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