The United Nations Security Council held an urgent consultation meeting to hear a briefing on what various eyewitness accounts reported to be a major chemical weapons attack that took place in the suburbs of Damascus, Syria during the morning of August 21st. The Security Council listened, but took no effective action.
The briefing was held behind closed doors, but accounts of the attack that have been publicly reported are devastating. According to initial descriptions and videos, hundreds of civilians, including children, were killed after rockets armed with deadly chemical agents were fired at targets in rebel held areas.
The following is a report by the Syrian American Medical Society posted to its Facebook page, translated from one of the field doctors. It describes the horrors they claimed occurred as a result of this most recent chemical attack:
- “Over 1100 killed in the chemical weapon attack this morning in Damascus suburbs
- One of the worst attacks in the recent history
- 50% of victims are children and women
- Numbers of victims are increasing
- Field hospitals exhausted all available oxygen and needed medications
- Whole families suffocated and died at their homes”
Jan Eliasson, the UN Deputy Secretary General who provided the closed door briefing to the Security Council, told reporters after the briefing that an immediate investigation of the allegations was required. A letter signed by at least 35 member states requested Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to undertake such an investigation.
A team of UN chemical weapons experts, led by Dr. Åke Sellström, is already in Syria preparing to investigate three earlier alleged incidences of chemical weapons use. It could extend its investigation to include the latest allegations if the Syrian government agrees and security conditions allow entry to the affected site. However, even if Dr. Sellström’s team can gain access to the site of the latest alleged chemical weapons attack, its mandate is limited to verifying that a chemical attack did in fact take place, not to determine who was responsible.
After two hours of deliberations, this month’s president of the Security Council, Argentina’s Ambassador María Cristina Perceval, came out to address reporters. “I can say there is a strong concern among Council members about the allegations and a general sense that there must be clarity on what happened and that the situation has to be followed carefully,” she said. “All Council members agree that any use of chemical weapons by any side, under any circumstances, is a violation of international law. The members of the Security Council also welcomed the determination of the Secretary General to ensure a thorough, impartial and prompt investigation.”
Notably, the Security Council did not explicitly expand the mandate of Dr. Sellström’s team to determine accountability for what happened or state unequivocally that the team should add the site of the latest alleged attack to its investigation. Indeed, the Security Council could not agree to any detailed press statement on the tragedy, which requires unanimous consent by all 15 members of the Council. Instead it punted with bland platitudes.
As reported by Inner City Press, based on a not-for-attribution comment by a Council member’s representative, "two Permanent members" said they needed to check with their capitals on the draft press statement, "which would have taken 24 hours, so we just did the summary." Could those two members have been Russia and China, which have blocked previous attempts at Security Council resolutions on Syria because they viewed the resolutions as too one-sided against the Syrian government? Most likely, but nobody coming out of the meeting would say. It is rumored that Russia and China reportedly blocked a formal resolution, possibly because of insistence by the United States that it include condemnation of the Assad regime and calls for regime change rather than focus solely on the chemical attack itself and a call for a thorough investigation. In any event, once again, differences among the permanent members of the Security Council have prevented any real action.
Syrian opposition members are blaming the Assad regime for the attack, a charge being picked up in Western capitals. The United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary William Hague apparently already reached a conclusion as to whom was responsible before an investigation has even begun, stating that “I hope this will wake up some who have supported the Assad regime to realise its murderous and barbaric nature.”
Syria's Information Minister branded the charge a “disillusioned and fabricated one whose objective is to deviate and mislead” the UN mission. Russia, not surprisingly, backed up its Syrian ally. Its foreign ministry spokesman in Moscow said that the release of chemical gas after UN inspectors arrived in Syria to begin their already planned investigation of earlier incidents suggested that it was a rebel “provocation” to discredit the Assad regime.
Some impartial observers have expressed skepticism about the timing of the attack. BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner, for example, asked rhetorically: “Why would the Assad government, which has recently been retaking ground from the rebels, carry out a chemical attack while UN weapons inspectors are in the country?”
Charles Lister, an analyst at IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center, told the Jerusalem Post: “Logically, it would make little sense for the Syrian government to employ chemical agents at such a time, particularly given the relatively close proximity of the targeted towns (to the UN team).”
Was the latest attack staged by Islamists opposing the Assad regime in order to suck the United States and its allies into more direct military intervention against a common enemy, which the Islamists would then exploit as they are doing today in Libya? Or is Assad trying to demoralize the opposition into final submission by showing a willingness to unleash horrific attacks?
Instead of political posturing, all members of the Security Council should keep an open mind and back an immediate onsite investigation for as long as it takes to find out who really was culpable and why. Then a case against the suspected perpetrators should be referred to the International Criminal Court without delay.
