SyriaDisarming Syria of chemical weapons exceedingly difficult, lengthy, uncertain process: experts

The Russian proposal concerning Syria’s chemical weapons is attractive: international inspectors will make a detailed account of Syria’s vast chemical stocks and take control of them; the weapons will be destroyed; and Syria will join the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Experts say, however, that it may well be a deceiving attraction because it will be exceedingly difficult to implement and reliably monitor.

As the cases of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea show, if a government is bent on acquiring, or keeping, unconventional weapons, it can do so if it is willing to cheat, lie, mislead, and obfuscate even if it is a member to a treaty which prohibits the illicit activities in which the government engages, and if its facilities are under international inspections.

We should also note the case of Israel’s nuclear weapons program in the 1960s: American inspectors regularly visited the nuclear reactor in Dimona between 1964 and 1969, but Israeli scientists, using fake reactor control panels which exhibited fake information and other ruses, managed to built a workable nuclear weapon by May 1967.

Experts note that the difficulties in monitoring Iran’s, North Korea’s, Iraq’s, and Israel’s program were there even though the monitoring efforts were not conducted during an all-consuming civil war in those countries.

“I’m very concerned about the fine print,” Amy Smithson, an expert on chemical weapons at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California, told the New York Times. “It’s a gargantuan task for the inspectors to mothball production, install padlocks, inventory the bulk agent as well as the munitions. Then a lot of it has to be destroyed — in a war zone.”

“What I’m saying is, ‘Beware of this deal,’ ” Smithson added. “It’s deceptively attractive.”

The Times quotes other experts who note that reaching an agreement in principle to disarm Syria of chemical weapons is one thing, but that the details of enforcement are themselves complex and uncertain.

First, Syria must come clean by revealing everything it has – and has done – regarding chemical weapons: research, development, production, production facilities, weaponization, stocks, etc. Experts note that discussions about what should a country declare and what it should not are complicated by the fact that some of the systems used for building and delivering chemical weapons are dual-use – they can be used for other weapons or for civilian purposes.