Victory Through Massacre in Syria
Today marks five years since the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad dropped sarin gas on a contested neighborhood in the Damascus suburbs, killing over 1,400 people in a space of a few minutes. A half-decade later Assad is still president of Syria. His brother Maher al-Assad is still the commander of the Syrian Arab Army’s Fourth Armored Division, which includes the scud and sarin-equipped 155th Missile Brigade. The directors of the institutes responsible for designing and developing the regime’s chemical arsenals still have their jobs, as does everyone in Syria’s “chemical chain of command” who has managed to survive this long.