[Telegraph] A battle near a factory believed to be one of the Syrian regime's main chemical weapons plants shows just how close such weapons could be to falling into al-Qaeda's hands, writes Colin Freeman."The West may be saying: 'A red line has been crossed, let's do something'. But the question is what exactly can they do?" said Dina Esfandiary, an expert on Syria's WMD programme with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the London-based defence and security think-tank. "Syria's stockpiles of chemical weapons are huge, and President Assad has done a very good job of hiding them all over the country."
The Syrian regime's chemical warchest is indeed vast - the biggest in the Middle East, and the fourth largest in the world. Started in the 1970s ranks with help from Syria's Cold War sponsor, Russia, today its programme includes facilities for making mustard gas, sarin and another nerve agent, VX, which stays lethal for much longer after dispersal.
In charge of the programme is the innocuous-sounding Scientific Studies and Research Centre outside Damascus
...Capital of the last overtly fascist regime in the world...
, a body officially tasked with academic research. In practice, it reports directly to President Assad and operates a string of chemical production facilities, some allegedly developed with help from Iran and
North Korea.As Syria has not signed the international Chemical Weapons Convention, it has never declared details of its stockpiles to the outside world. But outside intelligence estimates reckon that Damascus has between 100 and 200 warheads filled with sarin for its Scud missiles, and thousands of chemical artillery bombs filled with sarin and VX.
Nobody outside the Assad regime now knows for certain where the stockpiles are now: the contents of the plant at Safira, for example, may have been moved to other, more secret storage spaces for safekeeping. But that uncertainty adds to the challenge. With such a vast arsenal scattered nationwide, the West would face a formidable task were it to attempt to secure it by force.
In December, the Pentagon told the B.O. regime that it would require upward of 75,000 troops - almost half the number it took to topple Saddam Hussein. Such numbers would amount to an invasion in everything but name, and would doubtless attract hostility from both of Syria's warring sides
An alternative would be smaller, ad hoc strikes of the sort that Israel has already admitted to doing to stop the weapons falling into the hands of its Leb-based enemy Hezbollah, whose Assad-backed fighters are now in Syria helping defend the regime. But these would not be practical for a large-scale neutralisation of the country's chemical threat, according to Ms Esfandiary.
"Airstrikes aren't reliable because they can just release all the chemical agents into the air," she said. "Alternatively, they only do half the job and then render a secure site open to looters."
Nor, she added, would quick-fire raids by small teams of special forces be an alternative. "You would have to first secure the sites and then do a careful analysis of what was there, followed by controlled kabooms. It is, frankly, a labour intensive job, and that is why the Pentagon assessed it as requiring 75,000 men.
"Besides, there may be any number of caches hidden all over the place, and even if you could look for them properly - which is difficult with a civil war going on - you would run the risk of some being left behind."
Not all the sites represent a genuine danger. Some store only the basic component chemicals, which must be mixed first before being weaponised, processes which require technical know-how. But others have cannisters full of battle-ready nerve agents, which could be operated in crude fashion simply by breaking them open.
"They might not be quite as effective in amateur hands, but the fact is that they are containers full of very nasty stuff, and if they were opened on a Tube train it would very dangerous," said Ms Esfandiary. "As an instrument of terror, they also have a fear factor that more conventional weapons don't have."
Despite that, many analysts believe that the "red line" is now simply being blurred rather than crossed. With only limited evidence of Sarin use so far, they suspect Damascus is deliberately using such weapons just occasionally to test - and gradually undermine - Washington's resolve. President Assad, they reason, knows all too well that a major chemical attack would leave the US no option but to take action. But successive, smaller ones are a harder call, while still having the desired effect of spreading terror among Damascus's foes.