Middle East & Africa | Syria’s chemical weapons

The other red line

The prospect of al-Qaeda getting chemical weapons is drawing closer

FOR all the agonising in Western capitals about whether to channel weapons to “moderate” rebel militias in Syria and the renewed attempts to find a diplomatic solution to the civil war, one issue above all others is dominating the thinking of military planners, intelligence agencies and their political masters: the increasing danger of the regime’s vast stock of chemical weapons getting into the hands of groups with links to al-Qaeda.

When reports surfaced last month about possible use of sarin, a nerve agent, by regime forces, supposedly crossing a red line drawn earlier by Barack Obama, the White House was keen to play the incidents down. If the use was small-scale and limited, of course it was deplorable and warranted rigorous investigation. It was not just that the evidence of what exactly had happened was regarded as insufficiently robust to prompt a response, but that the president’s red line (at least as far as it applied to forces loyal to President Bashar Assad) was really only supposed to relate to large-scale and systematic deployment of the terror weapons, which was still deemed unlikely and could anyway be deterred. A BBC report on May 16th that lethal chemical devices had been dropped by a helicopter on civilians near Aleppo seemed to confirm this red-line crossing, but still on a small scale.

By contrast, Mr Obama’s other red line—the passing of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) into the hands of jihadist terrorists—is, according to intelligence sources, in real and possibly imminent danger of being breached. According to these sources, the past few weeks has seen a flurry of nervous activity that could result in intervention of some kind but which is also giving new urgency to diplomatic efforts to end the conflict. However great Vladimir Putin’s distaste for doing anything to help the West over Syria, the Russian president should in theory be no keener on seeing chemical weapons in jihadist hands than Mr Obama.

Though the regime is believed to have tried desperately to consolidate its stocks of chemical weapons in areas it still controls, it has so much of the stuff—around 1,000 tonnes of mustard gas, sarin and the even more lethal VX held at about 12 sites—that in the chaos engulfing the country some will almost inevitably fall into rebel hands sooner rather than later unless something is done. Indeed, Jabhat al-Nusra, the most powerful rebel faction and the one with closest links to al-Qaeda, reportedly came very close to capturing a stockpile near Aleppo earlier this year. A senior NATO official argues that, whereas it is premature to talk about al-Qaeda getting hold of chemical weapons, conditions on the ground make it increasingly likely.

Some analysts question the value of Syria’s chemical weapons to terrorists, because skilled technicians are needed to mix the components into a deadly concoction, and the canisters containing it are designed to be fired from artillery and rockets. In other words, they were intended for military use and not for the clandestine portability that terrorists favour. But al-Qaeda has always said it would use chemical weapons against Western targets if it had them, and regime defectors could well provide the expertise to turn them into effective terrorist weapons.

Attempting to close down the chemical-weapon threat is seen as qualitatively different from other kinds of intervention. Some of Mr Obama’s closest advisers, probably including Mr Kerry, want to send weapons to boost the Supreme Military Command’s leader, General Salim Idriss. The idea of establishing a no-fly zone and a safe haven for rebels is still on the table, despite claims to the contrary. But the aim of taking action to remove the chemical-warfare threat would be neither to tilt the balance in the civil war nor to aid one rebel faction over another. Rather, it is seen as something the international community, almost without exception, could support.

On one level, it would be similar to the action that Israel has taken in the past week or so to prevent consignments of sophisticated weaponry being sent to Hizbullah, the Shia party-cum-militia that controls southern Lebanon. Israel maintains that it has no intention of getting involved in the Syrian civil war, but says it must act for its own security to prevent its sworn enemy getting potentially game-changing weapons: advanced aerial defence systems, specifically the Russian SA-17; accurate surface-to-surface missiles, especially the Fateh-110, an Iranian solid-fuelled missile with a range of 200km; and the Russian Yakhont, a cruise missile with a range of 300km (186 miles). Israel’s view is that although it must probably deal alone with the threat of such missiles being passed to terrorists, it is for other powers to prevent the same thing happening in the case of Syria’s WMD.

In the absence of UN authorisation to remove those weapons, which would require the acquiescence of Russia and China, no good options are available. Under any plausible scenario, seizing or destroying the chemical weapons would almost certainly require boots on the ground (though not a full-scale invasion) as well as air strikes that could risk spreading some of the poison. Confidence that every site containing the weapons would be quickly found would also not be high.

But the feeling is growing that time is running out. The longer the delay in tackling the problem, the greater the risk of failure. For Mr Obama, who likes to weigh every possibility before taking action, the stakes could not be higher. But as a senior NATO official puts it: “The light has gone on. We can’t not deal with it.”

This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline "The other red line"

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