Source of Picture: lima charlie news
Nearly nine years have passed since the chemical weapons attack on the city of Marea, in the Aleppo countryside of northern Syria.
According to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), mustard gas was used in the attack, and the organization determined that ISIS was responsible for the assault. However, the exact sources of the chemical weapons in ISIS’s possession at the time remain unclear.
Nidal Shikhani, the Director General of the Chemical Violations Documentation Centre in Syria (CVDCS), stated in an interview with The New Arab that ISIS was in a difficult position during the period of the attack, facing intense bombing campaigns from the international coalition (led by the United States) and conflicts with the Free Syrian Army and other factions. While there was a possibility that ISIS could have manufactured the chemicals, Sheikhani emphasized that the more likely scenario was that the group obtained the chemical agents through external sources. He noted that ISIS’s manufacturing capabilities for missiles were limited, and the newly manufactured missiles found at the attack site were traced back to Syria’s Defense Factories Industry.
According to Shikhani, ISIS’s use of chemical weapons in Marea on August 21, 2015, may have been intended to cover up the regime’s use of chemical weapons in the Eastern Ghouta massacre in 2013. He suggested that ISIS used mustard gas as a strategic tool to displace the residents of Marea, mirroring the tactics of the Syrian regime, which also employed chemical weapons in military operations against various Syrian towns and areas.
Muhammad al-Mustafa, a political researcher, argued that ISIS, lacking the infrastructure and expertise to produce mustard gas in a short period, likely obtained the chemical weapons from other parties. Al-Mustafa pointed to Iranian militias or the Syrian regime as probable suppliers. He further stated that if ISIS had the ability to produce such weapons, they would have used them in other areas, such as in their battles against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) or in Sinjar, Iraq, but this was not the case.
Al-Mustafa suggested that ISIS may have received chemical weapons from either the Syrian regime or its security services to obscure the regime’s own use of chemical weapons. “The use of these weapons by ISIS helps to shift suspicion away from the regime, which has employed chemical weapons multiple times across Syria,” he explained.
Mustafa Bakour, a defector from the Syrian regime’s military, dismissed the idea that ISIS could have produced chemical weapons, citing the need for sophisticated laboratories, equipment, and expertise resources that none of the factions in Syria had access to during the war. He speculated that ISIS likely obtained the chemicals from Iraqi military stockpiles in Mosul or from Syrian army warehouses in Raqqa, Deir El-Zor, or the northern countryside of Aleppo. Bakour also suggested that the Syrian regime may have deliberately allowed ISIS access to its chemical weapons, knowing that the group was focused on fighting other factions, such as the Free Syrian Army.
Smuggling Routes and Delivery Methods
Throughout its time in Syria, ISIS obtained weapons through smuggling routes operated with the help of the Syrian regime. A field source told The New Arab that areas such as Bir al-Qasab and Reef in Suwayda province in southern Syria were key smuggling points for weapons into ISIS-controlled territories. These operations, which took place between 2014 and 2015, were overseen by Syrian army officers. Among the materials smuggled was sarin gas.
The OPCW’s Investigation and Identification Team (IIT), in its fourth report released on February 22, 2024, found “reasonable grounds” to believe that ISIS used mustard gas in its attack on Marea. The IIT concluded that the chemical weapons were deployed by artillery from areas controlled by ISIS, as no other entity possessed the necessary capabilities to carry out such an attack. The IIT also linked the use of chemical weapons to the ISIS executive branch, specifically identifying individuals from ISIS’s Diwan al-Jund and Military Development and Industrialization Committee as responsible for the chemical weapons program.
Source: alaraby
chemical_attack chemical_attack_syria chemical_weapons FFM ICC IIT ISIL ISIS justice_on_hold MAREA Mustard opcw opcw_ffm syria syria_chemical_attack
