THE HAGUE: The head of the world’s chemical weapons watchdog on Monday defended a report into an alleged chlorine attack in Syria, despite allegations of a cover-up by a whistleblower.
Wikileaks published an email from a member of the team that investigated the attack in the town of Douma in April 2018, which accused the body of altering the original findings of investigators to make evidence of a chemical attack seem more conclusive.
Russia and its allies have seized on the email and an earlier document which both question the conclusion by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in March 2019 that chlorine was used in Douma.
The row added to tensions at the OPCW’s annual meeting in The Hague over a new team that will shortly name culprits for attacks in Syria for the first time.
“It is in the nature of any thorough inquiry for individuals in a team to express subjective views,” OPCW Director General Fernando Arias told member countries.
“While some of these diverse views continue to circulate in some public discussion forums, I would like to reiterate that I stand by the independent, professional conclusion” of the probe.
First responders said 40 people were killed in Douma.
Britain, France and the United States unleashed missile attacks on suspected chemical weapons facilities run by President Bashar Assad’s regime after the attack.
Russia and Syria have alleged that the incident was staged to provide a pretext for Western military action.
The leaked email by an investigator going by the alias “Alex” and quoted by Wikileaks expresses the “gravest concern,” saying the OPCW report “misrepresents the facts” and contains “unintended bias.”
The email, written in 2018, says the OPCW report changed the language on the levels of chlorine allegedly found compared to what investigators originally wrote, to make it appear that the presence of the chemical was more conclusive than it was.
It also focuses on whether or not the chemical came from barrels found at the scene, and whether those barrels had been dropped from the air — which would indicate Assad’s forces — or placed manually there — which would indicate it was staged by Syrian rebels.
The OPCW earlier this year launched an internal investigation into the leak of another document by a member of the Douma team raising similar concerns.
Syria agreed to hand over its chemical arsenal in 2013 to avoid US and French air strikes in retaliation for a suspected sarin attack that killed 1,400 people in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta.
But the OPCW says there have been further attacks since then.
Despite opposition from Syria and its allies, OPCW states voted in 2018 to give the organization new powers to pin blame on culprits for the use of toxic arms.
Details of the Douma incident have been passed to a new team set up to name the perpetrators, Arias said.
Moscow and its allies are now threatening to block next year’s OPCW budget if it includes funding for the team, which could effectively shut down the watchdog.
China’s ambassador to the OPCW Xu Hong said the new identification team risked turning the watchdog into a “political tool.”
OPCW chief Arias however said it was a “key responsibility of the conference to ensure that the organization has a budget in order for it to operate next year.”
Western nations believe the budget will pass with a large majority, as it did last year.
Tensions have also been high since four Russian spies were expelled from the Netherlands in 2018 for allegedly trying to hack into the OPCW’s computers.
Russia and the West may however reach agreement on the thorny issue of whether to extend the list of banned chemical weapons for the first time to include new “novichoks” — the Soviet-era nerve agent used in the 2018 Salisbury attacks.
London blamed Moscow for the poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter.
The OPCW won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013 and says it has eliminated 97 percent of the world’s chemical weapons.
Chemical warfare watchdog hits back at Syria report doubts
Chemical warfare watchdog hits back at Syria report doubts
- Wikileaks published an email from a member of the team that investigated the attack in the town of Douma in April 2018
Related
Sudan’s war robs 8 million children of 500 days’ education
- British NGO Save the Children says many teachers are leaving their jobs due to unpaid salaries
PORT SUDAN: Almost three years of war in Sudan have left more than 8 million children out of education for nearly 500 days, the NGO Save the Children said on Thursday, highlighting one of the world’s longest school closures.
“More than 8 million children — nearly half of the 17 million of school age — have gone approximately 484 days without setting foot in a classroom,” the children’s rights organization said in a statement.
Sudan has been ravaged by a power struggle between the army and the Rapid Support Forces since April 2023.
This is “one of the longest school closures in the world,” the British NGO said.“Many schools are closed, others have been damaged by the conflict, or are being used as shelters” for the more than 7 million displaced people across the country, it added. North Darfur in western Sudan is the country’s hardest-hit state: Only 3 percent of its more than 1,100 schools are still functioning.
In October, the RSF seized the city of El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, and the last of Darfur’s five capitals to remain outside their control.
West Darfur, West Kordofan, and South Darfur follow with 27 percent, 15 percent, and 13 percent of their schools operating, respectively, according to the statement.
The NGO added that many teachers in Sudanese schools were leaving their jobs due to unpaid salaries.
“We risk condemning an entire generation to a future defined by conflict,” without urgent investment, said the NGO’s chief executive, Inger Ashing.
The conflict, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives, has triggered the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” according to the UN.
On Sunday, UN Human Rights commissioner Volker Turk condemned the increasing number of attacks against “essential civilian infrastructure” in Sudan, including hospitals, markets, and schools.
He also expressed alarm at “the arming of civilians and the recruitment of children.”
The UN has repeatedly expressed concern about the “lost generation” in Sudan.
Even as war rages in the southern Kordofan region, Prime Minister Kamil Idris has announced that the government will return to Khartoum after operating from the Red Sea city of Port Sudan, some 700 km away, for nearly three years.
Main roads have been cleared, and cranes now punctuate the skyline of a capital scarred by the war. Since then, officials have toured reconstruction sites daily, promising a swift return to normal life.
Government headquarters, including the general secretariat and Cabinet offices, have been refurbished. But many ministries remain abandoned, their walls pockmarked by bullets.
More than a third of Khartoum’s 9 million residents fled when the RSF seized the city in 2023.
Over a million have returned since the army retook the city.
A jungle of weeds fills the courtyard of the Finance Ministry in central Khartoum, where the government says it plans a gradual return after nearly three years of war.
Abandoned cars, shattered glass, and broken furniture lie beneath vines climbing the red-brick facades, built in the British colonial style that shaped the city’s early 20th-century layout.
“The grounds haven’t been cleared of mines,” a guard warns at the ruined complex, located in an area still classified as “red” or highly dangerous by the UN Mine Action Service, or UNMAS.
The central bank is a blackened shell, its windows blown out. Its management announced this week that operations in Khartoum State would resume, according to the official news agency SUNA.
At a ruined crossroads nearby, a tea seller has reclaimed her usual spot beneath a large tree.
Halima Ishaq, 52, fled south when the fighting began in April 2023 and came back just two weeks ago.
“Business is not good. The neighborhood is still empty,” the mother of five said,
Near the city’s ministries, workers clear debris from a gutted bank.
“Everything must be finished in four months,” said the site manager.
Optimism is also on display at the Grand Hotel, which once hosted Queen Elizabeth II.
Management hopes to welcome guests again by mid-February.
