A fighter with the rebel Free Syrian Army in the remains of a government building Wednesday in Aleppo.
Hamid Khatib/Reuters
Hwaida Saad contributed reporting.
Published: October 2, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/
DAMASCUS, Syria — After weeks of threats and negotiations over Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile, an advance team of international weapons inspectors has begun to take the first steps toward dismantling the arsenal. Early indications suggest that they are in for a long, hard slog.
On Tuesday, the day they arrived, for example, a mortar shell crashed down near the Four Seasons Hotel, where most United Nations agencies have headquarters and where inspectors have stayed in the past, underscoring the way danger penetrates even the most secure areas of the capital, Damascus.
A hotel security guard, still looking stunned hours later, held out two pieces of shrapnel he had pocketed, a reminder of the level of difficulty and danger that the team faces during even routine business, let alone in carrying out a complicated technical operation in the midst of a civil war.
There is no outward indication that the Syrian government intends to disrupt the process; indeed, Syrian officials are portraying the deal as a victory that will cement their hold on power. But rebel groups have given no such assurances, and logistics will be further complicated by shifting battle lines and the fact that a third of the weapons sites are in areas outside the government’s control.
Syrians on the street showed little interest in the process, instead placing their hopes — if tentative — in planned peace talks in Geneva. Whether they support or oppose the government or consider themselves neutral, most seem to agree that dismantling chemical weapons is beside the point in a war that has killed well over 100,000 people, the vast majority by conventional arms.
The advance team gave few new details on Wednesday about its plans and expectations, instead working quietly behind the scenes to arrange its first steps. United Nations officials said in a statement on Tuesday that the team, 19 inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and 14 United Nations staff members, traveled over land from Beirut, Lebanon, facilitated by the Syrian government, “without any incidents.”
The inspectors expect to spend the coming days focused on “verifying information provided by the Syrian authorities and the initial planning phase of helping the country destroy its chemical weapons production facilities.” The group aims to complete this by Nov. 1, the statement said.
But officials from other United Nations agencies with experience in Syria outlined in recent interviews the sometimes insuperable obstacles they faced in carrying out the ostensibly less controversial task of delivering food, medical supplies and other relief services to needy Syrians across the country.
The officials say that while they and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent have been able to regularly reach many contested areas, in some places with growing food shortages they have routinely been blocked by either the government or the rebel groups, or both.
Hopes had been high last week that a United Nations convoy would reach the embattled rebel-held suburb of Moadhamiya for the first time in months, after an initial green light from some government agencies. But the trip did not materialize, United Nations officials said, after the government said military operations were continuing in the area.
The United Nations has also struggled to reach government-held parts of Aleppo, because the route from Damascus passes through areas controlled by myriad rebel groups. Many times, officials say, the convoys have been allowed through by a series of rebel factions, only to be stopped or looted by one farther along the road.
A pro-government Syrian journalist said he was shocked to learn that a number of chemical weapons facilities were in rebel-held areas. That, he said, may well mean that the dismantling process could easily take well over the yearlong timetable that has been proposed, and could require international forces to guard the inspectors and any weapons or materials that have to be moved.
That could draw international forces into direct conflict with rebel groups, something the journalist said could achieve a government goal: convincing the world that extremist groups among the rebels were the common enemy.
“There will eventually be a confrontation,” he said. “The idea of terrorism in Syria has been flowing in the media for a long time, but there was never a sense of direct threat to the West. It is there, yet in the long term, still for the West it is ‘the enemy of our enemy.' ” But, he added, “when you get to a point of actually confronting it, things change.”
For their part, some rebel groups have issued statements saying that they will not cooperate with a process in which they say the teams will come under fire from pro-government fighters, but the government will blame the rebels.
Politically, the Syrian government has been nonchalant about the inspectors’ arrival, saying they were welcome. Fayssal Mekdad, the deputy foreign minister, said in a recent interview that the government was ready to give up the weapons because “you cannot use them” for what he called moral reasons.
Mr. Mekdad strongly denied that the government was responsible for theAugust attack that killed hundredsnear Damascus, as the United States and its allies say, in the episode that prompted the first threats of an American military strike and then the chemical weapons deal.
Members of the Syrian military put a different spin on giving up the weapons, according to a retired military officer, Syrian journalists and others here. Those people said that military officers had called the arms outdated and of little use other than as a psychological counterpoint to Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal. The officers contended that the government’s ally Russia would provide it with better weapons to counterbalance Israel.
Meanwhile, the sounds of outgoing heavy artillery could be heard in Damascus as the government continued to attack rebel-held suburbs.
In recent days, Syrians described, as they routinely do, a new reality in which the simplest tasks of daily life have become complicated.
The parents of a bride dressed in a glittering dress in a Damascus restaurant said they were not publicizing wedding photographs, as wealthy residents normally do, for fear of attracting attention. A former opposition activist said she could no longer deliver food to people in the suburbs because of the threat of arrest and violence. A drive across town that once took 20 minutes now takes an hour or more because of checkpoints.
All those challenges mean the weapons inspectors might take years to complete their task, one resident said, adding, “Twenty weapons inspectors will prevent the Americans from striking. They cannot strike while they are here. The regime is happy.”
A government supporter in the coastal province of Latakia echoed those sentiments. “The government is very wise,” the supporter said. “They gave up these weapons which we do not need anyway, for the sake of peace for the Syrian people.”
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