Russian stockpile with chemical artillery shells. Test kits help to rule out the presence of vapors in the air
from any leaking weapons. This stockpile has been in the process of being destroyed since May 2009.
Bringing Syria's chemical weapons under international control and eventually destroying them might be just a dream. But trying to do so is certainly better than lobbing a few hundred million dollars worth of cruise missiles into Syria with no intention of destroying those chemical munitions or of doing much beyond creating yet another opportunity for imminent or future blowback.
But the logistics would be complex. Getting Syria to add itself to 189 nations that have ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993 is the easy part. Indeed, President Bashar al-Assad could sign and the Syrian People's Council could ratify without delay if they wished, leaving only six nations outside the purview of the CWC. However, finding and securing Syria's chemical warfare agents is another matter. That would require significant numbers of those boots on the ground that the United States has, with the exception of a short-lived hemming and hawing by Secretary of State John Kerry, said it wants nothing to do with.
Inspecting and supervising the destruction of chemical weapons falls to the inter-governmental Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons at The Hague. OPCW has carried out some 5,000 inspections so far, including some in Syria this past spring, and states on its website that, as of July 31, "57,740, or 81.10%, of the world's declared stockpile of 71,196 metric tonnes of chemical agent have been verifiably destroyed."
That's impressive. But the two nations with the largest stockpiles of such weapons, Russia and United States, which have been verifiably destroying their chemical weapons for two decades, are far from completing their work.
At one time the United States had at least 30,000 tons of chemical munitions, including stocks of sarin nerve gas that is said to be Syria's main agent of choice. While the largest U.S. operation for destroying chemical agents at Deseret, Utah, is now closed and 90 percent of those warfare agents eliminated, two facilities are being built—in Pueblo, Colorado, and Richmond, Kentucky—to get rid of the rest. They are not slated to begin their work until 2015 and 2020 respectively. It will thus be at least 40 years after the signing of the CWC before all U.S. stocks are destroyed at an estimated cost of $35 billion. Delays and cost overruns are true for the Russians as well.
The amount of chemical munitions and raw chemical agents Syria has is unknown. Carlo Angerer and Tracy Connor of NBC News have written that the French government says Syria has 1,000 tons of such agents.
They also declare, presumably basing their claims on the same French sources, that the chemical munitions are stored in five locations in Syria. But, they write, these are moved around frequently. One can only assume, therefore, that they could be just about anywhere.
Would Assad, who first hinted publicly in 2009 that Syrian had a chemical weapons program, keep some sites secret? Moammar Gaddafi of Libya did. In 2004, as part of its cooperation with the United States in the war on terror, Libya declared what was supposed to be all its chemical weapons sites. But in November 2011, a month after Gaddafi was extrajudicially executed, the provisional government declared a previously secret cache of hundreds of munitions containing mustard gas. In February last year, it declared some more of the same. Those munitions are still being destroyed, but it's slow going.
Please read below the fold for more analysis on supervising Syria's chemical weapons.
Even going to sites the Syrian government identified as containing chemical weapons would be dangerous amid the continuing war. OPCW inspectors checking into the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attacks near Damascus came under sniper fire. But assuming the government were to cooperate fully, and the international teams could be effectively protected, the really hard part would begin:
Dozens of new facilities for destroying the weapons would have to be built from scratch or brought into the country from the U.S., and completing the job would potentially take a decade or more. The work itself would need to be done by specially-trained military personnel or contractors. Guess which country has most of those troops and civilian experts? If you said the U.S., you'd be right.
"This isn't simply burning the leaves in your backyard," said Mike Kuhlman, the chief scientist for national security at Battelle, a company that has been involved in chemical weapons disposal work at several sites in the U.S. "It's not something you do overnight, it's not easy, and it's not cheap."
As long as the war continues, destroying those chemical munitions is probably impossible. Do you burn or neutralize them in place? Do you build central facilities and transport the munitions amid the shooting? Do you transport them to facilities outside Syria? Every choice has its adherents, but nobody sees any of them as anywhere near ideal.
And then there's another matter. Syria isn't the only Middle Eastern nation that hasn't signed or ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention. Egypt hasn't, and it has in the past used chemical weapons. Israel has signed but not ratified. And, just as it has neither admitted nor denied having a nuclear arsenal that everybody knows it has had for decades, Israel is tight-lipped about its putative chemical munitions.
Matthew M. Aid reports on a secret Central Intelligence Agency file:
The 1983 CIA estimate reveals that U.S. intelligence first became aware of Israeli chemical weapons-testing activities in the early 1970s, when intelligence sources reported the existence of chemical weapons test grids, which are specially instrumented testing grounds used to measure the range and effectiveness of different chemical agents, particularly nerve agents, in simulated situations and in varying climatic conditions. It is almost certain that these testing grids were located in the arid and sparsely populated Negev Desert, in southern Israel.
But the CIA assessment suggests that the Israelis accelerated their research and development work on chemical weapons following the end of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. According to the report, U.S. intelligence detected "possible tests" of Israeli chemical weapons in January 1976, which, again, almost certainly took place somewhere in the Negev Desert. [...]
t is possible that at some point over the past 30 years the Israelis may have disposed of their stockpile of mustard gas and nerve agents. These weapons need constant maintenance, they require massive amounts of security, and the cost for the upkeep of this stockpile must be extraordinarily high. Still, the Israeli government has a well-known penchant for preserving any asset thought to be needed for the defense of the state of Israel, regardless of the cost or possible diplomatic ramifications.
In the days ahead, if the proposal to get the Assad regime to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention and put its chemical munitions under international supervision comes to fruition despite the immense diplomatic and practical obstacles standing in the way, there is likely to be pressure from Russia and much of the rest of the world on the few nations besides Syria that have not signed or ratified the convention, including Israel. The United States cannot, if it expects to claim the moral high ground in this matter, give Israel as pass.