From a British journalist in Syria:
I was chatting yesterday to an old Syrian friend, a journalist who used to be in the country’s special forces and he – quite by chance – said he was embedded with Syrian government troops on the night of 21 August.
These were men of the Fourth Division – in which the President’s brother Maher commands a brigade – and my friend was in the suburb of Moadamiyeh – the site of one of the chemical attacks.
He recalls the tremendous artillery bombardment but saw no evidence of gas being used.
This was one of the areas from which the army was attempting to insert bridgeheads into rebel territory.
What he does remember is the concern of government troops when they saw the first images of gas victims on television – fearing that they themselves would have to fight amid the poisonous fumes.
Frontline Syrian forces do carry gas masks but none was seen wearing any.
“The problem,” my friend said, “is that after Libya there are so many Russian weapons and artillery pieces smuggled into Syria that you don’t know what anybody’s got any more.
Some questions are familiar.
Why use gas when so much more lethal weaponry is being flung at rebel forces across the country?
If the government wanted to use gas, why not employ it north of Aleppo where not a single government soldier or official exists?
Why in Damascus?
And why wasn’t gas used on this scale in the previous two years?
And why employ such a dreadful weapon when the end result is that Syria – by giving up its stocks of chemical weapons – has effectively lost one of its strategic defences against an Israeli invasion?
No wonder, another Syrian friend of mine remarked last night, that the Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem had such a long and shocked face when he made his Moscow announcement.
Wasn’t Israel the real winner in all this?
Most probably Israel is also the winner in Syria’s civil war as its once great neighbour is smashed and pulverised by a conflict which may continue for another two years. Syria was never a wealthy nation, but rebuilding its smashed cities and railways and roads is going to take many years.