Greg Koblentz, member of the Center’s Scientists Working Group of Chemical and Biological Threats, wrote an op-ed in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists about the Syrian chemical weapons arsenal.
The fate of chemical weapons that remain unaccounted for in Syria more than a year after the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad can no longer be treated as a low priority—an issue of interest only to arms control wonks. Disturbing reports that Assad loyalists are reorganizing and rearming mean that the danger of chemical weapons being used yet again in Syria is growing. The international response so far has been to channel resources to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the international organization charged with implementing the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) that bans chemical weapons. Supporting the OPCW is necessary, but not sufficient. For the OPCW to be effective, it needs a capable partner in Damascus. The new Syrian government is taking its commitments under the chemical weapons treaty seriously, but it has significant gaps in its capacity that limit its effectiveness. Locating, securing, and destroying leftover chemical weapons and ensuring accountability for chemical crimes committed by the Assad regime requires providing assistance directly to the new Syrian government. The road to Syria’s chemical disarmament and compliance with the chemical weapons treaty runs through Damascus, not the OPCW headquarters in The Hague.
When the Assad regime fell in December 2024, it left unanswered a long list of questions about the size, scope, and status of Syria’s chemical weapons program, which had once been the largest in the Middle East. The OPCW’s litany of 19 outstanding issues included “large quantities of potentially undeclared and/or unverified chemical warfare agents and chemical munitions.” Chemical weapons that have not been fully and properly accounted for in Syria include 300 metric tons of the blister agent sulfur mustard, tens of tons of precursors for nerve agents such as sarin, and hundreds to thousands of chemical munitions that could be used to deliver these agents. A single improvised rocket filled with sarin could cause hundreds of casualties. Granted, these agents and munitions are now quite old and may have degraded significantly with improper storage, but that cannot be taken for granted. UN weapons inspectors recovered highly potent sulfur mustard in Iraq that had been stored for more than 12 years, the same amount of time Syria may have been hiding its own stockpile of that agent. Even less potent chemical weapons could still cause significant harm and have a terrorizing effect on a population that has already been traumatized by more than a decade of brutal conflict. The sarin used by Aum Shinrikyo in the Tokyo subway system in 1995 was only 35 percent pure, but that was enough to kill a dozen people and injure thousands. Read more
