In the 13th century, “Europe’s first alchemist,” Roger Bacon, brought to Europe expertise obtained from the Arabs — the heirs of antiquity. Seven centuries later, Great Britain pioneered the use of chemical weapons in the Middle East when General Allenby used cylinders containing asphyxiating gas in a battle against the Turks in 1917. The second incident was the use of chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein in March 1988 against the Kurdish town of Halabja. Who was the third culprit, in the recent chemical attack near Damascus?
In Russia, people do not believe it was Bashar al-Assad — and certainly not because they think he’s a nice guy. First, the use of chemical weapons is senseless from a military point of view: You can kill a lot more people with aircraft and tanks; moreover, in the two historical examples given, chemical weapons did not lead to victory for those who used them. Second, they would be like suicide to a regime waging a fierce war for survival. Russia’s official version, expressed by Vladimir Putin: The chemical attack was a provocation by extremists — the same people who recently committed the brutal massacre of Christians in the Christian holy city of Maaloula, one of only two places in the world where the locals speak the language of Christ, Aramaic. They may have been assisted by regional players who want to bring to power in Syria radicals from Jabhat al-Nusra and others like them. Incidentally, the example of the adherents of Aum Shinrikyo in Japan, who used sarin and VX gases, showed us that it is not hard to prepare homemade chemical weapons.