Syria and the chemical weapons taboo

Exploiting the forbidden

Michelle Bentley

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781526104748
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book analyses the Syria crisis and the role of chemical weapons in relation to US foreign policy. The Syrian government's use of such weapons and their subsequent elimination has dominated the US response to the conflict, where these are viewed as particularly horrific arms - a repulsion known as the chemical taboo. On the surface, this would seem to be an appropriate reaction: these are nasty weapons and eradicating them would ostensibly comprise a 'good' move. But this book reveals two new aspects of the taboo that challenge this prevailing view. First, actors use the taboo strategically to advance their own self-interested policy objectives. Second, that applying the taboo to Syria has actually exacerbated the crisis. As such, this book not only provides a timely analysis of Syria, but also a major and original rethink of the chemical taboo, as well as international norms more widely.

1

The chemical weapons taboo

THE ARAB SPRING effectively started on 17 December 2010, when 26-year-old Tunisian street vendor, Tarek al-Tayeb Mohammed Bouazizi, set fire to himself in protest at local government officials and police. Decrying repeated acts of intimidation, insult, bribery, and the unlawful confiscation of his merchandise, Bouazizi demanded to see the local governor to complain. After he was refused an audience he left, reportedly shouting: ‘If you won’t see me, I’ll burn myself.’ He soon returned to the governor’s office, covered his body in petrol, and set himself alight in public view. Despite efforts to save him, he never regained consciousness. He would die from his injuries a month later. Bouazizi’s decision to protest via an act of self-immolation is highly symbolic. Such actions are not permitted within Islam: the Quran forbids not only suicide, but also the body’s destruction by fire. For Bouazizi, and for those who would follow him in similar acts of self-immolation as part of what would become the Arab Spring, this was an extreme form of protest: ‘There is nothing worse they could do to themselves – it is the ultimate despair’ (Darke, 2014: 43).

Bouazizi’s expression of desperate frustration inspired a wave of revolutionary protests, which would not stop at Tunisia. A ‘domino effect’ of popular uprisings spread quickly across the Middle East, reaching countries including Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, and – in March 2011 – Syria. Rebellion in Syria originated as mainly peaceful demonstrations against the antagonistic dictatorship of President Bashar al-Assad. An unexpected politician (his brother Bassel was due to assume power from their father, Hafez al-Assad, but died in a car crash in 1994 leaving Bashar to take the family reins), Bashar was initially heralded as a moderniser. Yet his highly neoliberal and capitalist regime, backed by mass repression and the denial of human rights, soon caused widespread discontent with his leadership. This was the trigger for the protests. The protesters’ initial demands, however, were not as extreme as those experienced in other countries affected by the Arab Spring, in which many protesters had demanded a complete change in government. Instead, protesters called largely for reform as opposed to Assad’s resignation and replacement. Moreover, this was not intended as a violent demand; with the memory of the Lebanon civil war still fresh in people’s minds, there was no desire to risk repeating that. Indeed, it was not the protests themselves that would push Syria into a state of civil conflict, but Assad’s response to them.

Following the main cities of Damascus and Aleppo, demonstrations sprang up all over Syria, including the south-western town of Daraa. The protests here would make headlines after government forces carried out the arrest and torture of 15 children for writing anti-regime graffiti on a school wall. The graffiti started as a standard phrase of the Arab Spring: ‘The people want the fall of the regime.’ But in this case an extra line was added: ‘It’s your turn doctor’ – a reference to Assad’s training as an ophthalmologist. The actions against these children fuelled discontent in the district throughout March and April 2011, to the extent that Assad eventually decided to crush the protest with military might. Regime forces shot into the crowd, an act that only served to intensify the demonstrations further. As part of this, and in addition to the 245 killed in this initial military put-down, the Arab Spring was now to create another martyr in the revolutionary cause. During the Daraa uprising, 13-year-old Hamza Ali al-Khatib became separated from his family, and was later detained, tortured, and murdered in regime custody. His corpse was returned in a body bag: burnt, severely beaten, with three gunshot wounds to the chest, and with mutilated genitals – a warning sign to the protesters of what they risked if they chose to continue. Al-Khatib’s death became a symbol for the Syrian rebellion. It was a connection highlighted by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (in Mohamed, 2011), who said the killing represented the ‘total collapse’ of Assad’s willingness to listen to demands for reform. In terms of why Assad decided to react in such a repressive manner, former British diplomat Henry Hogger (2014: 5) offers this insight:

History may take a while to reach an authoritative verdict: but the best guess is perhaps a mixture of a rather weak and impressionable personality, tough advice from those with most to lose from any dilution of the status quo – in other words the ruling elite including the Assads and their in-laws – and a sense of destiny, not uncommon among absolute rulers, equating survival of the dynasty with the safe-guarding of the nation.

Assad’s aggressive response captured the world’s attention. Syria’s political positioning in the international community made the threat of violent unrest here especially disturbing. While all the nations involved in the uprising were of course important in respect of the political situation, international actors were more than aware that Syria has long been a lynchpin of Middle Eastern politics. As a state, it plays into a variety of controversial relationships and regional networking. Crisis here would involve, and, necessarily, has involved, numerous other states with which Syria has critical ties, not least where these have tended to be actors that are not exactly popular with the US – Russia, Iran, and the organisation Hezbollah included. Russia has long supported the Assad regime. This is a relationship that has undermined the possibility of conflict resolution within the framework of the United Nations (UN) due to Russia’s Security Council veto, and, by association, that of China. Russian President Vladimir Putin has authorised the use of the veto to prevent even the international condemnation of the Syrian government, let alone any active measure against it. As well as a political relationship, this is also a heavily military one. Russia is one of the biggest suppliers of weaponry to Syria, and many of the armaments used by the government during the crisis have been identified as coming from Russian sources. Iran also maintains extremely strong links with the regime, ever since Syria’s support for Tehran during the Iran–Iraq War and not least due to the extent that both states oppose Israel and the American endorsement it enjoys. The continued dispute over the Golan Heights and Iran’s massive provision of arms to Syria has ensured the relationship, specifically in terms of Iran’s significant interest in the continuation of the Assad regime. Syria has also constituted a key link in Iran’s smuggling of arms to Hezbollah – an agreement that has seen Hezbollah become involved in the crisis in a bid to safeguard the regime. As such, it was clear from the moment the Syrian protests turned violent that a civil conflict would have implications far beyond the state itself. Syria has never just been about Syria, but what the destabilisation of the Assad regime would mean for other interested parties and their international position. It was also a situation that would intensify East–West relations, where this occurred against a backdrop of US interests in these ‘proxy’ countries. Within this wider context, Dmtri Trenin (2012), Director of the Carnegie Endowment Moscow Center, describes the case as one of global order:

Syria is not primarily about Middle Eastern geopolitics, Cold War-era alliances, arms sales – or even special interests … Syria – much like yesterday’s Libya, Iraq or Yugoslavia – is primarily about the world order. It’s about who decides; who decides whether to use military force; who decides the actors for use of that force; and who decides under what rules, conditions, and oversight military force is to be used.

Assad’s reign of violence escalated throughout the country as tensions grew throughout 2011. Mary Kaldor (2013: 151) has gone so far as to designate this a form of ‘scorched earth’ policy in order to encapsulate not just the mass killing of civilians, but also the physical destruction of rebel-held towns, housing, and infrastructure. In a similar vein, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC, 2015: 4) reported that ‘Victims have often described the Government’s strategy as that of “tansheef al bakhar”, or draining the sea to kill the fish.’ Admittedly, Assad would offer minimal reforms during the early stages of the crisis in an attempt to placate the strengthening opposition – such as revoking the controversial 1963 Emergency Law (which had vastly curtailed personal freedoms and permitted detention without trial), extending Syrian citizenship to the Kurdish minority, and also replacing the now highly controversial Daraa governor. Yet this was a classic case of too little, too late. And, as John McHugo (2014: 224) says, the way in which these deals were aimed at specific groups as opposed to widespread change indicates that they were merely ‘signs of a government trying to buy popularity rather than reforms’. The sincerity of this is also questioned by Assad’s continuation of his strategy to contain protests by violent means, despite condemnation of it. Some regime force members were so appalled that they opposed the plan and refused to comply – and were then shot themselves for failing to carry out orders. In November, Syria was suspended from the Arab League because of the aggressive nature of the regime’s response. Assad’s labelling of protesters as ‘terrorists’ did not help the situation; nor did the considerable increase in international sanctions now being placed on the state. In addition, vast numbers of refugees had started to flee violent hotspots and, if they could, the country. This caused mass destabilisation and humanitarian issues. In short, Syria was spiralling into civil trauma.

In July 2011, deserting regime officers formed the Free Syrian Army as an official opposition to the Assad regime (many had made the decision to desert explicitly because of Assad’s contentious orders to open fire on protesters). A few months later, the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) was established in Istanbul as an attempt to draw together those who opposed Assad into a coherent body. The success of this was limited, and the wider National Coalition for Syrian and Opposition Forces – commonly known as the Syrian National Coalition – would later supersede the SNC in 2012, although this too had mixed results due to internal divisions. Yet, while the opposition would continue, and remains today, as a highly fractured and internally discordant concept – to the extent that it is still impossible to realistically speak of one united opposition – this was the sign that the battle lines were now being drawn. The official mobilisation of an opposition was a key step in the escalation of the crisis. It was at this time that the International Committee of the Red Cross officially confirmed that Syria was engaged in a civil conflict. Syria was now at war, one that would bring with it many more brutal and horrific acts of violent aggression. For example, in August 2012 the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, a body established by the UNHRC, reported that:

The commission found reasonable grounds to believe that Government forces … had committed the crimes against humanity of murder and of torture, war crimes and gross violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, including unlawful killing, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, sexual violence, indiscriminate attacks, pillaging and destruction of property. (In Blake and Mahmud, 2013: 247–8)

At the time of writing, the UN (2015a) had placed its most recent estimate of the crisis’s fatality rate at 220,000 killed and one million wounded, with no sign of the casualties abating. As UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon (in UN, 2013a), had said two years earlier of Syria: ‘After nearly two years, we no longer count days in hours, but in bodies.’ In addition, the UN estimated that approximately 11 million people had been displaced, internally and externally. These statistics, however, were insufficient to involve the US in the conflict – at least not in terms of intervention. Nor was the fact that Syria had been recognised as having reached the expectations of ‘manifestly failing to protect their populations’ at the heart of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) strategy (Farer, 2013: 131; Gallagher, 2014). Assad had clearly violated the terms of this international expectation, under which interventionist activity could theoretically be justified. Yet despite the sheer horror characterising the conflict, it was not until Assad had used chemical weapons that the US would begin to start talking seriously about its involvement. Specifically, on 21 August 2013 Assad launched a major chemical attack on Ghouta, a Damascus suburb, which killed approximately 1,400 people.

The history of Syria’s acquisition and possession of chemical arms is shrouded in secrecy. Yet the decision to obtain these weapons is generally accepted as a response to Israel and an attempt to counter this enemy’s conventional and/or nuclear superiority (Diab, 1997: 104; USDOD, 1997; Friedman, 2012: 402). Syria first acquired the weapons when Egypt supplied a relatively small number of chemical arms prior to the 1973 Yom Kippur War (Tucker, 2006: 227). From here, Syria began to extend its capability and develop its own programme throughout the 1970s and 1980s, not least in reaction to several military defeats by Israel and later the collapse of its patron, the Soviet Union (Nitkitin et al., 2013: 4). At this stage, it was not viewed as an intrinsically offensive programme, but as the construction of a credible deterrence against Israel. In a situation where a Syrian nuclear deterrent was unfeasible, chemical weapons constituted the ‘next best’ option. Yet this was more a show of military strength than a weapon of actual use. Indeed, just a few years before the programme started, Syria had signed the 1925 Geneva Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating Poisonous or of Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare. Consequently, during the programme’s development, Syria had officially renounced first use of chemical warfare. Syria would not, however, join the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) when it opened for signature in 1993, a move that would have committed the state to the elimination of its chemical stockpiles. Yet Assad would later accede to the agreement in September 2013 as part of international negotiations surrounding the civil crisis.

In terms of what Assad was giving up under the terms of his new CWC membership, there is no solid evidence that Syria had become independent as a chemical weapons state; that is, it was not capable of running a self-sufficient programme (USDNI, 2011: 7). Technological capacity was still extremely limited, particularly relating to the construction of precursors – chemical compounds that assist in the reaction process to produce further compounds suitable for weaponisation. Yet this should not detract from Syria’s success in building up considerable stockpiles, largely thanks to its extensive international network of suppliers. Support has come from a variety of sources – especially Russia and Iran, but also countries such as Egypt and North Korea (Shobam, 2005: 99). Syria has also benefited from a number of Chinese and Western private companies who were prepared to supply the country with chemical arms-related equipment, including the precursors that have proved so problematic (Lele, 2011: 753; Strategic Comments, 2012: 1). (These transactions had been alleged for some time, but were confirmed and made public during the famous Wikileaks publications.) Indeed, prior to accession to the CWC, Syria was named the fourth largest chemical weapons state globally and the biggest in the Middle East (Strategic Comments, 2012: 1). These stockpiles contain(ed) agents such as mustard gas, sarin, VX nerve agent, and unweaponised ricin. They also contain chlorine, which Assad has used in chemical attacks carried out even now, long past the CWC arms destruction deadline.

It is within this context that chemical weapons use was constructed as a starting pistol for US foreign policy in respect of Syria. It was made clear that any employment by Assad would constitute an intolerable and illegitimate act, one that would necessarily bring about a shift in the US position towards the crisis. But why chemical weapons? In a conflict characterised by appalling examples of conventional violence, why should chemical arms constitute the deciding factor? Why was this specific form of aggression insufferable when other acts of brutality – manifest in the extensive and repeated massacre of rebels and civilians – had proved insufficient to drive an interventionist foreign policy? True, there were important reasons associated with this, such as the threat of Syria’s chemical weapons falling into enemy hands, not least Iran and Hezbollah. Even prior to the civil war, this had been cited as a key concern by US foreign policy-makers. There was also political anxiety regarding possible transference to, or forced acquisition by, terrorist organisations (US Cong., 2012a: 33). These risks, combined with the potential destabilisation of Syria and the subsequent loss of government control over chemical stockpiles that this may instigate, pushed chemical weapons up the foreign policy agenda. And yet, this is still insufficient to explain why it was a more important reason for involvement than mass-scale conventional deaths at the hands of the Assad regime. The reason lies within the chemical weapons taboo: the idea that chemical armaments are inherently stigmatised. The taboo is held up as a powerful normative pressure within IR – especially as an explanation for Syria where, while conventional violence has been largely ignored in preference to other political concerns (including Obama’s desire to avoid becoming embroiled within a complex and contentious civil conflict), chemical weapons use could not be overlooked. It was a step too far.

The taboo

Taboos are what you are not supposed to do. They exist as socially constructed expectations that actors should not engage in, permit, and in some cases even acknowledge certain behaviours that have been deemed prohibitively unacceptable. To quote Hutton Webster (1942: 13, 17), taboos are ‘prohibitions observed as customs’; ‘an imperative thou-shalt-not in the presence of the danger apprehended’. They are the intrinsic ‘don’ts’ of society, where these are typically attached to the hypothetical or actual violation of some moral, ethical, and/or social measure – a measure that is obliged to be respected a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 The chemical weapons taboo
• Part I A strategic taboo
• Part II A failed taboo
• References
• Index