The Witnesses: Syrian activists who took the YouTube videos paid with their lives

[BainsBane]

The images flooded in only hours after the Aug. 21 chemical attack in Damascus's eastern suburbs. And they soon reached the very highest rungs of the U.S. government: "As a father, I can't get the image out of my head of a man who held up his dead child, wailing while chaos swirled around him," said Secretary of State John Kerry in his impassioned Aug. 26 speech. "[T]he images of entire families dead in their beds without a drop of blood or even a visible wound; bodies contorting in spasms; human suffering that we can never ignore or forget." . . .

The local activists who filmed these videos, then, have accomplished what years of hectoring from the official Syrian opposition have been unable to do -- bring the world to the brink of military intervention against Bashar al-Assad's regime. The conflict's steadily mounting death toll -- now at over 100,000, and climbing rapidly -- failed to spur international action; the images of dead children lined up in neat rows following the attack, however, appeared to have served as a gut punch to the world's conscience. And the sense of outrage may be so great that it will propel the United States into war.

The amateur Syrian videographers' accomplishment, however, came at a high cost.

Activist Razan Zaitouneh, who runs the Violations Documentation Center in Syria, tells FP that her team sped to the Damascus suburb of Zamalka immediately after a chemical weapons attack was reported there on Aug. 21. The media staff of Zamalka's local coordination committee, which is responsible for filming videos in the area and uploading them to the world, also sped to the scene. According to Zaitouneh, all but one of them paid with their lives. . . .


The videos quickly removed any doubt for U.S. intelligence analysts that chemical weapons were used in the Aug. 21 attack. They showed children with constricted pupils who were twitching and having trouble breathing -- classic signs of exposure to sarin gas. They also showed the remnants of the rockets reportedly used to deliver the gas, which were largely intact. If they had delivered conventional explosive munitions, more of the rocket would have been destroyed on impact.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/08/29/youtube_syria

[NYC_SKP]

1. Recommended.

[SunSeeker]

2. Horrific. nt

[BlueMTexpat]

3. Razan Zaitouneh has some impeccable

credentials. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razan_Zaitouneh

There seems to be no question that chemical weapons were used. But these courageous witnesses all arrived after the fact.

But the question of attribution is still up for grabs, IMO.

Cui bono? is still a VERY good question.

[Igel]

4. "Cui bono?" is only good for producing hypotheses.

It sucks for much more.

If I do something it's probably because I think it'll help me. I might be wrong.

Assad could have approved the weapons attack because he thought it would provide a short-term help. So it would help him. Even if he miscalculated.

Some commander might have thought it would help him on the ground and he'd worry about Assad's wrath later. Even if he was wrong and it hurt more than it helped.

Some commander might be working for the rebels. They've claimed loyal supporters among Assad's military ranks. He might have thought he could kill some anti-secularist Islamists and produce a mess for Assad that would help the "good" rebels. That would help his cause. He might be right.

Perhaps the rebels pulled it off themselves and the rockets that allegedly delivered the sarin (if that's what it was) were irrelevant, delivering standard payloads. Islamists are willing to sacrifice themselves at times; why not sacrifice others for the cause?

Perceived self-interest matters. Hard to look at things objectively and ask "cui bono?" on those grounds.

[BlueMTexpat]

5. True.

And right now, all we have are hypotheses instead of facts.

One fact: Syria has neither signed nor ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention (http://www.opcw.org/chemical-weapons-convention/). It is one of only five states that have not done so. http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/cwcsig One of those five is Egypt, which, together with Israel, has - at least until recently - received the bulk of US foreign assistance. Israel has signed the Convention but has not ratified it.

Still, in the light of the near universal long-term censure and condemnation the head of any regime would receive for using chemical weapons, especially against his own people (note that much as chemical weapons are abominable and any use of them criminally reprehensible, the CWC had not entered into force when Saddam Hussein used them in the 1980s; still, those actions were foremost among those that made him generally loathed even among his fellow dictators), I find it highly unlikely that Assad thought that using them would provide any short-term benefit whatsoever. So that argues for either a "rogue" military commander or a rebel faction with support from outside Syria.

Unless, of course, Assad has become completely insane. That also is not beyond the realm of possibility.