Syria: Defending Global Treaties

Last Tuesday, a team of international disarmament experts was reported to have arrived in Syria to begin work on dismantling the country’s stockpile of chemical weapons. That followed a historic resolution of the United Nations to that effect after a dangerous muscle flexing by two super powers, the United States of America and Russia over whether or not, Syria used banned chemical weapons on its citizenry on August 21, this year.
The experts from the Netherlands-based Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) arrived Damascus through land routes from Lebanon following reports of intense fighting between troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and the rebel, Free Syrian Army (FSA) around the airport in Damascus.
The team’s mission is at the instance of the United Nations whose General Assembly recently endorsed a rare joint agreement by the United States and Russia for the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile.
The terms of the deal actually required Damascus to declare its stock of chemical weapons, agree to their destruction, sign the International Chemical Weapons Convention and promise not to produce any more of such weapons.
Syria is said to possess a chemical weapons arsenal that includes more than 1,000 tonnes of sarin, mustard and VX gases, among other banned chemicals stored at different locations across the country.
Last month, the Assad administration submitted to the OPCW a list of its chemical weapons sites, as was required by the US-Russia deal that has now forced it to accede to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Perhap, one more thing left is for the mediating countries to use their influence to also make the “rebels” to cease fire to enable the experts access sites under their control if the whole exercise is to succeed.
UN chemical arms monitors had filed an interim report last month confirming claims that the nerve agent, sarin, was used in the August 21 attack on the outskirts of Damascus that killed 1,400 f people most of them civilians. The report did not, however, identify any culprit since that was not part of the team’s mandate.
The task ahead of the OPCW inspectors is by no means easy, this being the first time they would be asked to destroy a country’s chemical weapons in the middle of a war. Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem had said that seven out of the 19 chemical weapons sites declared by Damascus last month are in combat zones.
Indeed, the sudden turn of events in the Syrian crisis is seen as a welcome development. The US, Russia and other countries are hoping to build on the rare consensus achieved over the chemical weapons issue, to push for peace talks in Geneva. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has already proposed a date in mid-November for such discussions.
The US must be commended first and foremost for being responsible enough to act in defence of a global treaty that prohibits the development and use of chemical weapons. This is because if the free world fails to act in the face of such breach, other nations would be emboldened and the world would be doomed.
The world also owes a lot of gratitude to the Americans for being able to apply restraint after declaring the intention to launch air strike on Syria. That strike, though justified, would have compromised more than anyone could imagine. In fact, it would have been nothing short of a pyrrhic victory which would have done few any good.
The Tide also commends Russia and even Iran for their respective roles in making the Assad regime to accept to act in a way that has changed the face of the crisis. Indeed, we expect more of this kind of cooperation between Washington and Moscow so that some countries don’t hide under any diplomatic understating with either of them to be recluse, irresponsible and insensitive to global checks on weapons of destruction among other universally adopted treaties.
In the same vein, we condemn regimes that sill fancy the development of banned chemical and nuclear weapons, as the use of such arsenals will not win wars but rather serve to exterminate even the user.
The civilized world must be more vigilant at all times and be committed to the enforcement of global treaties aimed at making the world a better place for all.