U.N. Data on Gas Attack Points to Assad’s Top Forces

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kate Brooks

A view of Damascus, Syria, from Mount Qasioun. A report’s data appeared to show a chemical strike originated on the mountain.

The inspectors, instructed to investigate the attack but not to assign blame, nonetheless listed the precise compass directions of flight for two rocket strikes that appeared to lead back toward the government’s elite redoubt in Damascus, Mount Qasioun, which overlooks and protects neighborhoods and Mr. Assad’s presidential palace and where his Republican Guard and the army’s powerful Fourth Division are entrenched.

“It is the center of gravity of the regime,” said Elias Hanna, a retired general in the Lebanese Army and a lecturer on strategy and geopolitics at the American University of Beirut. “It is the core of the regime.”

In presenting the data concerning two rocket strikes — the significance of which was not commented upon by the United Nations itself — the report provides a stronger indication than the public statements of intelligence services of the United States, France or Britain that the Syrian military not only carried out the attack, but apparently did so brazenly, firing from the same neighborhoods or ridges from which it has been firing high-explosive conventional munitions for much of the war.

Looming over a tense capital and outlying neighborhoods bristling with anger and fear, Mount Qasioun is Damascus’s most prominent military position. It is also a complex inseparably linked to the Assad family’s rule, a network of compounds and positions occupied by elite units led by members of the president’s inner circle and clan.

The units based on the mountain are “as close to the Assad regime as it’s going to get,” said Emile Hokayem, an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Mr. Hokayem added that theories that the chemicals had been launched by a rebel mole seeking to discredit the government were unlikely because of the solidity and tight control of those units.

Mr. Assad’s government and its ally Russia have continued to claim publicly that Syrian rebels were responsible for the attacks, which killed hundreds of people, many of them children, in the most lethal chemical warfare attack in decades. But the United Nations data, if accurate, would undercut that claim and appear to erase some of the remaining ambiguity.

Rebel forces have never penetrated the major military installations of Mount Qasioun. In tactical and technical terms, they would almost certainly have been unable to organize and fire sustained and complex barrages of rockets from that location undetected.

The United Nations’ evidence was gathered through standard measurements and investigative techniques at the places where sarin-filled rockets struck on Aug. 21.

At one impact site, investigators found both the place where the rocket had passed through a “vegetal screen” above a wall just before it hit the ground, and the small impact crater itself.

They noted that “the line linking the crater and the piercing of the vegetal screen can be conclusively established and has a bearing of 35 degrees.”

At another impact area in another section of Damascus, a 330-millimeter rocket landed on what investigators described as “earthy, relatively soft ground, where the shaft/engine of the projectile remained dug in, undisturbed until investigated.”

The rocket’s shaft, the investigators noted, “pointed precisely in a bearing of 285 degrees.”

There the investigators’ public comments about their observations at impact sites essentially stopped, except for a parting explanation that shows how to reach a conclusion that the United Nations itself, in accordance with its mandate, did not say.

These azimuths, or compass bearings, they noted, can be reversed to show the direction from which the rockets had been fired. They point back toward the geographic source of the attack, which investigators on the ground presumably would have been able, with their own eyes, to see high above them in the city. 

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When taken together, the azimuths drawn from different neighborhoods lead back to and intersect at Mount Qasioun — so far an impregnable seat of Mr. Assad’s power — according to independent and separate calculations by both The New York Times and Human Rights Watch.

“Connecting the dots provided by these numbers allows us to see for ourselves where the rockets were likely launched from and who was responsible,” Josh Lyons, a satellite imagery analyst for Human Rights Watch, noted in a statement on Tuesday.

“This isn’t conclusive,” Mr. Lyons added. “But it is highly suggestive.”

The map that Mr. Lyons and Human Rights Watch prepared, and a similar map made by The Times with no consultation or exchange of information, suggested that gas-filled rockets, which sailed over central Damascus and landed in civilian neighborhoods, originated “from the direction of the Republican Guard 104th Brigade,” which occupies a large base on the mountain’s western side.

Depending on the degree of accuracy in the measurements, the flight path for at least one of the rockets could also be read to lead back to the government’s sprawling air base at Mezzeh, near the foot of Mount Qasioun.

A senior American intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the United States, via satellite, had confirmed rocket launches that corroborated the United Nations data and the Human Rights Watch analysis for one of the strikes.

American analysts said that the data for the other strike was less clear, but that the United States had stronger data indicating that another Syrian military installation — an air base — was also involved in the sarin attacks on Aug. 21.

Republican Guard units are responsible for maintaining control of the city and securing the presidential palace.

“When you fire it from such a place, it means that you don’t care if fingers will be pointed to you in some period of time,” General Hanna said.

Brownish by day, Mount Qasioun sparkles at night with the lights of neighborhoods climbing its slopes and, higher up, cafes where in normal times Damascus residents go in the evening to enjoy the view. In the midst of a civil war, Mount Qasioun is now largely off limits because it has become a government-controlled military zone.

On one shoulder of the mountain stands the presidential palace. On another, antennas sprout.

The government’s presence on the high ground includes elements of two brigades of the Republican Guard, a Special Forces headquarters and many artillery or rocket positions from which Syria’s military routinely fires barrages, rebels and city residents say.

Over the past year, shelling from Mount Qasioun has become the capital’s familiar soundtrack. At night, Syrian humanitarian workers say, they can see the streak of projectiles flying from the ridge over the city toward rebel-held neighborhoods and suburbs.

In recent weeks, one group of government supporters protesting the anticipated American strikes gathered on Mount Qasioun, vowing that the attack would happen “over our dead bodies.” But they eventually had to move because the military was firing another barrage from the area, residents said.

General Hanna and other military analysts said the reason for basing the Republican Guard in the area where the rockets appear to have originated is to prevent a military challenge to the government. The force is officially commanded by Mr. Assad’s brother, Maher, gravely wounded in a bombing last year.

The entire mountain has remained the most securely held government area on the outskirts of Damascus. If rebels ever managed to take the area, analysts said, it could spell the fall of the government, but they have yet to threaten it seriously.

Speaking on Tuesday in New York, Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, took pains not to express publicly any conclusions about culpability that could be drawn from the report, noting that assigning blame was explicitly beyond the United Nations’ mandate. The investigators’ mission, Mr. Ban noted, “is to find out facts and whether or not chemical weapons were used; if used, to what extent.”

“It is,” he added, “for others to decide whether to pursue this matter further to determine responsibility and accountability.”

Pressed later about whether he thought those responsible should be referred to the International Criminal Court, Mr. Ban was unequivocal. “The international community is firm and I am firm that any perpetrators who have used these chemical weapons under any circumstances under any pretext must be brought to justice,” he said.