Pay very close attention to the fact that Russia and Bashar Assad’s regime are preventing international inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, or OPCW, from accessing the site of a chemical attack in Douma, Syria, on April 7.
Assad was responsible for that attack, which cost the lives of around 70 people and led to retaliatory U.S., British, and French strikes last Saturday morning.
But while Assad and the Russians say that the OPCW inspectors cannot access Douma for security reasons, their excuse is patently false. After all, the regime now controls Douma in its entirety and is taking friendly foreign journalists to locales nearby. The regime also controls the highway and air corridors between Damascus, where the inspectors are being held, and Douma, which is less than 10 miles away.
So why haven’t the OPCW inspectors been escorted to the site? Because Russia wants to hide the truth.
While Sarin or Chlorine — which the British, U.S., and French governments assess with high confidence that Assad employed in the attack — are exceptionally likely to have naturally dissipated from the environment by now, bomb fragments or gas canisters might yet be found by inspectors. And if the Syrian regime also employed V-series nerve agents in the attack, remnants of those agents might still persist in the environment.
All these reasons give the Syrians cause to keep the inspectors away.
Unfortunately, OPCW access to witnesses or victim bodies is impractical. That’s because the Syrians and Russians will have ensured anyone the OPCW accesses shows no signs of contact with chemical weapons.
Remember, we’ve been down this road with Russia before. Following the July 2014 downing of the MH-17 passenger airliner over Ukraine, Russian intelligence services obstructed access to the debris field for over a week. They did so in order to remove impact evidence that showed the aircraft was brought down by a Russian Buk missile platform.
In turn, whatever the motivation to obstruct inspector access to Douma, it must not stand.
President Trump should demand immediate inspector access to the site and point to the fact that the Russians have previously asserted that they trust the OPCW. At the same time, where possible, Trump should provide U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley with any intelligence findings that show Assad or Russian efforts to conceal evidence. That would allow for a “don’t wait for the translation” moment at the U.N. that further embarrasses Russian President Vladimir Putin in the run up to the World Cup this summer.
If nothing else, Assad and Putin must not be allowed to hide what they have done.
