Increasingly Implausible

"Syria likely has one of the largest and most sophisticated chemical weapons programs in the world. Should Syria devolve into full-blown civil war, the security of its WMD should be of profound concern, as sectarian insurgents and Islamist terrorist groups may stand poised to seize chemical and perhaps even biological weapons." Charles Blair, Federation of American Scientists

"If Syria collapses into chaos or the army splits between Assad's fellow Alawites and the majority Sunnis, a key question will be the fate of these chemical weapons and their delivery systems. Terrorist groups, such as Assad's friends, Hezbollah and Hamas, would love to get sarin warheads." Bruce Riedel, Brookings Institution

"The question is when, not if. And the big question is what is going to come the day after. The immediate concern is the huge stockpiles of chemicals, biologicals, strategic capabilities, that are still going into Syria. I don't know who is going to own those the day after." Major General Amir Eshel, Israel armed forces planning chief

We knew that Libya had stockpiled chemical weapons. There was concern expressed that those deadly chemicals, unguarded, left within corroding metal containers, would be looted by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, by other terrorist militias, and used to create further mayhem throughout the world. But here in an equally volatile, viciously brutal insurrection and regime pay-back is Syria, with a far more dangerous, far greater stockpile of chemical weapons of mass destruction.

The weapons caches that had been amassed in Iraq by its tyrant, Saddam Hussein, were handily looted of over 330 tonnes of military-grade high explosives. Despite the presence of over 200,000 coalition troops having entered the country, having dispatched Saddam and his military, and being in control of the situation. But 'control of the situation' is a problem, as testified by that successful looting. Those high-grade explosives came in very handy, used in IEDs.

Areas of the world that are by their very nature socially and politically unstable, are most certainly unsuited to having such weapons, but it is the wealthy, industrialized countries of the world that welcome them as clients. And then, those countries go to war with the very unstable regimes that they have armed, just as Britain did with Libya, after selling it huge amounts of munitions.

A country like Pakistan, with its unstable, parochial, paranoid politics, a potently violent threat to its neighbours, India and Afghanistan another case in point. Pakistan, like India, is a nuclear-owning nation, with a well-stocked arsenal of nuclear weapons.

The better to threaten its neighbours with. The better to ensure that no Western nations either singly or in combination would like to take it on militarily. The better to ensure that those sane, Western nations both nuclear-possessing and not, remain deeply concerned with maintaining friendly relations with Pakistan, with assuaging its tender feelings, with persuading it toward sanity.

Now, attention has turned to imploding Syria, where government troops have gone on an armed rampage through heavily populated cities with resident opponents to the current Alawite regime. Incidents of torture, rape, mass slaughter, incessant shelling of highly-populated centres auger ill for the future of such a divided country. There are chemical weapons production facilities located throughout this country with its now-fragile government.

President al-Assad speaks repeatedly of terrorists, of al-Qaeda lurking in the background of the protest movement, not necessarily part of it, though there may be infiltrations, but lingering in the shadows, prepared to strike when the time is right. What then, of the hundreds of tonnes of chemical weapons, the chemical warheads, along with Scud B and C ballistic missiles, and conventional artillery shells?

"The situation in Syria is unprecedented. Never before has a WMD-armed country fallen into civil war", according to Charles Blair of the Federation of American Scientists in a recent report for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. And here is food for further thought, courtesy of Mr. Blair:

"The best possible outcome, in terms of controlling Syria's enormous WMD arsenal, would be for Assad to maintain power. But such an outcome seems increasingly implausible."

A puzzle within a conundrum within a wicked dilemma.