Phil Sands and Suha Maayeh
March 5, 2014
Updated: March 6, 2014 13:53:00
BEIRUT AND AMMAN //
International military commanders based in Jordan were on the brink of ordering air strikes against a "strategic weapons" by Apps Hat" id="_GPLITA_10" href="http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/siege-of-syrian-arms-depot-exposes-chemical-weapons-fears#">store in southern Syria, according to accounts of a dramatic incident last week.With rebels closing in on the fortified bunker at the Tal Al Jabiyeh military complex in south-western Deraa, military and intelligence
officers from the US, by Apps Hat" id="_GPLITA_9" href="http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/siege-of-syrian-arms-depot-exposes-chemical-weapons-fears#">Europe and Arab states who staff a clandestine operations room in Amman, scrambled to make sure the weapons inside did not fall into the hands of Al Qaeda-affiliated rebels.The precise nature of the munitions in the facility remains unclear, with officials in the Military Operations Command (MOC) in Jordan, said to have consistently referred to them as "strategic weapons". A defector previously based on the compound informed by Apps Hat" id="_GPLITA_4" href="http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/siege-of-syrian-arms-depot-exposes-chemical-weapons-fears#">officials that a high security bunker on Tal Al Jabiyeh contained the nerve gas sarin.
Syria has one of the world's largest chemical weapons programmes and by Apps Hat" id="_GPLITA_7" href="http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/siege-of-syrian-arms-depot-exposes-chemical-weapons-fears#">nerve agents have already been used in the three year civil war, with hundreds of civilians killed in a complex by Apps Hat" id="_GPLITA_5" href="http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/siege-of-syrian-arms-depot-exposes-chemical-weapons-fears#">attack on rebel-held suburbs of Damascus last summer.
While
a UN investigation strongly indicated regime forces were responsible
for that attack, the prospect of those weapons falling into the hands of
Islamists militants has been a persistent worry for by Apps Hat" id="_GPLITA_6" href="http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/siege-of-syrian-arms-depot-exposes-chemical-weapons-fears#">the international community, as the Syrian state crumbles.In
a tense four-hour period on Tuesday night last week, rebels involved in
the assault - including Jabhat Al Nusra - were warned by officials in
the command centre that Israeli jets were on standby to bomb a bunker on
which they were advancing, less than 8km from the border with Israel.Accounts
of the event were given by three different sources, familiar with the
situation around Tal Al Jabiyeh and with the workings of the
international command centre. Jordan denies the existence of the international operations command centre ,
which monitors the Syria conflict and oversees the distribution of
weapons and funding to allied rebel units fighting against forces loyal
to Mr Al Assad. None of the Western or Arab states that have
intelligence and military staff working at the MOC has publicly
acknowledged it, but the centre's existence has become an open secret.The
night of Tuesday, February 25, appears to have been one of the command
centre's most fraught periods, as a sense of panic set in at the
prospect of an Al Qaeda faction getting its hands on the weapons
stockpile.The command centre has not intervened in this way when
other regime storage facilities in Deraa province have been overrun, and
has been content to let the rebels share out any weapons they capture.This
time, however, as fighting around the Tal Al Jabiyeh facility raged and
the prospect of it falling into rebel hands came closer to reality, the
command centre bluntly demanded guarantees from rebel forces that they
hand over to it any weapons stored in a white, reinforced concrete
bunker with thick metal, electrically operated shutters blocking its
east facing entrance.Rebels were told if they failed to give that
guarantee, an Israeli airstrike would immediately be called in on the
area to destroy the entire compound and everything in it.This
ultimatum was passed on, through an intermediary, to Jabhat Al Nusra's
emir in Deraa province. The Nusra leader agreed to leave weapons in the
bunker alone, as did all of the other rebel units in the area.In the early hours on Wednesday, February 26, four hours after the first call, rebels were contacted by Apps Hat" id="_GPLITA_3" href="http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/siege-of-syrian-arms-depot-exposes-chemical-weapons-fears#">again by the Amman command centre and told to expect an "international operation" directed at the weapons bunker.
With the rebels pushing to take control of the Tal Al Jabiyeh, the operations room immediately by Apps Hat" id="_GPLITA_0" href="http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/siege-of-syrian-arms-depot-exposes-chemical-weapons-fears#">halted all weapons supplies to the assaulting forces, apparently in a successful effort to delay their advance on the bunker.
Without supplies, the rebels were forced to consolidate their positions around the base and not seek to break in.
Over
the following 48 hours, regime units were reinforced, shoring up their
defences and, by Saturday, they had pushed back against the rebels.The immediate crisis involving a rebel-take over of the base was averted as the assault ground to a halt.
Details
each of the three sources gave of the account accurately matched, and
included information they asked not to be made public which strongly
supported their accounts. The sources also asked that their identities
not be revealed. The situation at Tal Al Jabiyeh remains fragile
with the complex still surrounded by an alliance of at least nine rebel
units, including Al Nusra, the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, and Ahrar Al
Sham, part of the Islamic Front. Others are more closely aligned to the
operations room, and have received training from US military forces in
Jordan. Notions the Tal Al Jabiyeh facility contained more than
run-of-the-mill weapons were underscored on Monday, when leading local
figures from besieged opposition areas, including Nawa, met the regime's
governor of Deraa province, Mohammad Khaled Al Hanous to ask that food
supplies to be allowed in.Accounts of that meeting have Mr Al
Hanous saying that, if opposition forces came close to taking Tal Al
Jabiyeh, regime units would obliterate Nawa, a town once home to 95,000
people - now down to about 30,000 and currently ringed by government
troops. "Tal Al Jabiyeh is a red line, the Americans, Israelis
and Arabs will never get it, if you try, Nawa will be wiped out," Mr Al
Hanous was described as saying by a resident of Deraa province.Last
Tuesday's sudden flurry of activity suggested the sensitive nature of
the weapons facility had caught the command centre by surprise. Rebels it supports routinely give advance knowledge of their operational plans, and request weapons to carry out attacks.
The
assault on Tal Al Jabiyeh had begun on Monday, not with the aim of
taking the weapons bunker, but, rather, to strike regime units that have
carried out damaging attacks against rebels.Since last Tuesday's
events, the operations centre had held emergency meetings on the
situation in Tal Al Jabiyeh, according to one of the sources.Weapons
supplies have still not resumed to rebel units in the area, which
suggests the opposition's international backers do not want the attack
on Tal Al Jabiyeh to proceed.Under a UN-brokered deal to
decommission its chemical weapons programme, Syria has submitted a
declaration to the OPCW in which it is supposed to have detailed all
associated facilities, although Western diplomats have cautioned it may
have sought to hide supplies.The contents of that declaration have not been made public.
Attempts to contact the OPCW about the Tal Al Jabiyeh complex were unsuccessful.
Rebels
said the base contained an off-limits warehouse, with an unusually high
level of security, even compared to ballistic missiles bases elsewhere
in the country."It was a very high security bunker, no one was
allowed near it, not even senior officers it had a tighter security
system than other military facilities," said a rebel officer who had
been on the base before the Syrian uprising began in nearby Deraa in
March 2011. "We don't know what's in there but it seems to be
something important, a strategic weapon of some kind, perhaps missiles,
perhaps chemicals or biological agents," he said.Rebels in southern Syria backed by the operations room, launched a new offensive last month , intended to put more pressure on Mr Al Assad to negotiate, following failed peace talks in Geneva.
psands@thenational.ae
↧