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Syria has a mature chemical weapons program, begun in the 1970s, incorporating nerve agents, such as sarin, which have completed the weaponization cycle. Future activity will likely focus on CW infrastructure enhancements for agent production and storage, as well as possible research and development of advanced nerve agents. Munitions available for CW agent delivery likely include aerial bombs as well as SCUD missile warheads. Syria has not signed the CWC and is unlikely to do so in the near future.
Syria has been producing chemical warfare agents and munitions since the mid-1980's. While the Syrian program was "quite closely held," former CIA Director William Webster told a Congressional panel in 1989 that the CIA had determined foreign assistance was of "critical importance in allowing Syria to develop its chemical warfare capability. West European firms were instrumental in supplying the required precursor chemicals and equipment. Without the provision of these key elements, Damascus would not have been able to produce chemical weapons".
In addition to mustard gas, Syria is known to be manufacturing nerve gas agents, and can pack CW agents into a wide variety of munitions, including ballistic missiles. Israeli intelligence analysts believe that Syria is actively seeking to manufacture VX agents, which are several magnitudes more powerful than other nerve agents. Syria's current CW stockpiles have been estimated at "several thousand aerial bombs, filled mostly with sarin," and between 50 to 100 ballistic missile warheads.
Syria first acquired CW artillery shells as a "gift" from Egypt just prior to the 1973 war. Shortly thereafter, Syria purchased defensive chemical warfare gear from the USSR and from Czechoslovakia. However, the Soviets are said to have consistently refused to provide manufacturing processes or assistance in building CW facilities in Syria.
Israeli intelligence analysts have expressed their concern with the rapidity and ease with which the Syrians have been able to obtain the know-how to produce VX nerve gas. Secretly assisted by Russian chemical experts, the Syrian military research and development and industrial complex known as the Scientific Studies and Research Center had little trouble getting the required expertise, technology and materials from Russian sources.
General Anatoly Kuntsevich, Russian President Yeltsin's personal adviser on chemical disarmament and Russia's highest official authority on the subject, was dismissed from his position for suspicion of smuggling nerve gas precursors to Syria in early 1995.
General Kuntsevich admitted in an interview in 1998 with the New York Jewish weekly The Forward that shipments to Syria of small amounts of nerve gas components had indeed taken place. According to him, however, these shipments were only intended for "research purposes" and had been authorized by the Russian government under previously undisclosed terms of a treaty with Syria. The materials shipped to Syria were intended for the production of the Soviet/Russian version of the VX nerve agent - code-named Substance 33 or V-gas. Such a deal might have been made in the early '90s or late '80s during a visit to Syria by the then-commander of the Russian Chemical Corps, General Pikalov.
Syria's principle suppliers of CBW production technology were large chemical brokerage houses in Holland, Switzerland, France, Austria and Germany, including many of the same companies that were supplying Iraq.
At least one German company, Schott Glasswerke, has been subjected to an official inquiry, for its delivery of glass-lined reactor vessels, sarin precursors and production equipment to a suspected Syrian poison gas plant. And one French source suggests that the United States may have supplied Syria with precursors and CW production equipment prior to 1986, at a time when Syria was subjected to international sanctions for its attempt to plant a bomb on an El Al plane in London.
Syria has remained far more discreet in its purchasing patterns than either Iran, Iraq, or Libya. As one senior intelligence analyst explained, Syria considers chemical and biological weapons as "strategic" systems, meaning they are intended more as a deterrent than for recurrent, tactical use on the battlefield. Instead of producing large quantities of CBW agents, Syria is seeking to develop a smaller but high quality arsenal, which it can deliver accurately against military targets.
France has played the key role in building up Syria's very well developed pharmaceuticals industry. With the active encouragement of the French embassy in Damascus and French government export credits, the biggest names in the French pharmaceuticals industry flocked to Damascus in the 1980s. Many of them opened branch offices and built production facilities in Syria, to make French pharmaceuticals under license. As a result, the French increased their share from 13.11% of Syria's pharmaceuticals imports in 1982 to 23% by 1986. This was all the more unusual since Syria was expanding its domestic production and therefore importing less during this same period.
The French government screens exports to determine whether goods proposed for sale to Syria, Iran, Libya (and other countries) merit review because of proliferation concerns. While France has been applying the guidelines of the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the Missile Technology Control Regime for several years, she only began applying controls on production equipment that could go into a chemical weapons plant in early 1992. "Only in the past six months has there been a universal will to impose this type of controls," a senior French foreign ministry official said in May 1992. "Before then, CW production equipment was freely available."
Like Britain and Italy, France has been unwilling to impose unilateral export controls on CW production equipment without an internationally-accepted control regime, so French companies could not accuse the government of putting them at a disadvantage on lucrative Third World markets. The Australia Group, which oversees the control of CW precursors, only finalized a list of production equipment that should also be subjected to international controls in late 1991. It was only adopted (after stiff opposition from France and Great Britain) in June 1992.
"Every day I sign off on export licenses," another senior French licensing official present at the same forum said, "and I wonder whether I have not just signed my resignation. In the area of chemical weapons manufacturing equipment, it is totally impossible to distinguish between civilian and military end-use," he admitted. "The equipment is strictly identical."
France only began to computerize export licensing records in 1990. As this report goes to press, it appears that the hemorrhage of French technology has been enormous.
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