Two Toxicologists on Saraqib Symptoms

April 24, 2021

I already had this incident of February 4, 2018 covered fairly well in the post The Nonsense Gassing of Militants in Saraqeb - a part of my project Re-Considering the IIT's Nine Unsolved CW Cases. The news is that the findings are in: the OPCW's Investigation and Identification Team found all contrary claim to be nonsense, and that it's "reasonable" to believe that Syria's military did that, and now we're all supposed to believe it. The IIT releases its second report (press release - PDF direct link) just in time for the Conference of State's Parties where Syria was stripped of its rights (Syriana Analysis or Saudi-owned Al-Araby). 

I've been a bit slo to write about this, and now I'm just looking at a couple of aspects. But first a quick review of the chlorine cylinder "impacts." That's an issue I'll have to consider in another post, but I suspect they fell right here from above, and maybe at a very slight angle ... probably after reaching an arc following a steep-angle launch from the surface nearby. The how is unknown but possible, as far as I know, and tricky enough that I have to leave other fakery (hydraulic press, etc. - on-site or off - grass bleaching faked or coincidental, craters made with something else to be explained) or helicopter drop as PHYSICAL possibilities.

Explaining Away the Sarin

Otherwise, there's a lot of strangeness to consider here, like their answer to the illogical sarin-chlorine allegations that were backed up by actual sarin returns. The same would be claimed in Douma in April; sarin and chlorine barrel bombs killed over 180 at activist last count before they reverted to 42, and then just chlorine was found. It seems to me that story was supposed to go somewhere, but it got messed up, presumably in the chaos of total defeat for Islamist forces. And it seems to me Saraqib was supposed to be the illustrative prelude, hence a devious (and essentially impossible) "Assad chemical trick" - sneaking sarin back in under cover of the more boring chlorine. 

IIT report 2 decides: To attack with both sarin and chlorine at once was illogical and improbable, besides poorly-illustrated, as their experts had to admit. So the Identifiers set to correcting the record with no foul called. The sarin was just there in the dirt already. Who knows why. 

There was a separate question of whether normal sarin breakdown products should be found or chlorinated ones. I didn't see that answered here. If they should be chlorinated by the chlorine and aren't, that means they weren't in the attack OR in the soil already, but added later. That would be leading sample contamination - the kind of thing the OPCW thinks it can avoid having rebels videotape their scooping and sealing of samples, while having no clue if anyone had already messed with the site (or seeing clues they decided to ignore?).

The sarin-like symptoms reported would need explained away. Sure, the miosis was never real, at least not for all 11 patients as reported. ("pinpoint or constricted pupils, firmly established by the IIT in two individuals only"). And no foul called for leadingly exaggerating a mismatching symptom. But there were others that seemed odd, and now must be caused by just chlorine. As it happens, the experts agreed - both of them - that it all lined up just fine. 

6.44 Two experts (toxicologists) assessed the FFM Report on Saraqib, photographs, and information provided by witnesses – including medical personnel – on symptoms and treatment of victims involved in the incident of 4 February 2018. The toxicologists, after reviewing relevant medical literature, independently checked each account from witnesses (victims or other eyewitnesses to the symptoms) against the symptoms that could be expected from chlorine exposure. They also considered imagery related to the treatment received by the victims. 

6.45 On the basis of the material provided to them, the two toxicologists reached a shared conclusion, i.e., that the accounts of victims (three of whom were among the first responders) and medical personnel – despite some marginal discrepancies – are consistent with exposure to a toxic gas like chlorine, which is poisonous and classified as a pulmonary irritant. The two toxicologists did not express doubts as to the overall veracity of the accounts. ...

We'll have a look at that, but first at a way these experts were more passively used by the IIT to make a pointless point that misses a much bigger point.

Review: Gas Spread

Next: the toxicologists correctly deduced who should and shouldn't be seriously exposed, without being led there by anyone being identified. Just from the symptoms described by anonymous person X Y or Z, basically, they agreed the ones with the worst reported effects wind up being the same ones who reported being closer to the gas: the event made basic sense, or at least the story was gotten straight. 

"...the victims considered by the expert toxicologists to have symptoms consistent with exposure to irritating gas are those from the shelter, as well as the two first responders. The witnesses deemed to be “unlikely exposed” by the expert toxicologists were either those responders that only assisted in the later transfer of the victims to the Sarmin field hospital or were part of the medical staff (who would have all had much later exposure and were better equipped with protective equipment)."

(otherwise it's three affected "SCD" White Helmets responders). It was initially 6, 8, or 9 men in a shelter, depending on reports, several in camouflage pants, app. all militants claiming to all be civilians. In IIT report 2, it was 7 "individuals" in the shelter effected, plus 3 rescuers, implicitly 2 others from the whole town, one treated at the clinic and one not, out of 12 named individuals who reported experiencing any symptoms. One of them should be this guy:

Manhal Haj Hussein “At about 9 pm, while I was sitting and my family at home, we heard a helicopter approaching the place, and only a few minutes until we started smelling a strange smell inside the house. Then, I fainted, and then the civil defense teams arrived and took me to the hospital...” 

His apparent son, by name - Hasan Manhal Haj Hussein, age 22 - happened to be one of those affected in the fateful shelter, along with an apparent cousin, Dammar Hasan Haj Hussein, 36. The other non-shelter witness at the time was another relative: Ali Hajj Hussein: at "home with his pregnant wife and two children" - heard helicopters, something falling, then screams in the neighborhood. Luckily none of those screaming people needed any medical help, because reportedly just 1 non-shelter person in the town got treatment at what seems to be the only functioning clinic around. 

The other witness I've heard from, speaking later, has a different name, and says his father was one of those in the shelter (apparently being Haithan Amad Kafrtouni, age 53), and was since killed in an airstrike while helping people (not in the course of being an antigovernment militant). There are probably other witnesses out there, but when I was following close, it was 3/3 apparent - and mostly close - relatives with the shelter victims. It seemed a bit like the whole story was some project of a couple local families of some militants nobody else was in on, except a few unrelated militants and the White Helmets always around to help militants. 

The total exclusion of everyone else in this part of town from the story ... not an issue the IIT dwells on, if they even noticed it.

Bleach spots: seem to flow what's downhill there, then gets less discernable, maybe all-over, at the flatter ground. Suggested to me is little wind, leaving topography a serious issue. Mainly there seems to be little of that as well, so it would spread pretty widely, with a general trend wherever the breeze was headed. That may be north - that first flow probably isn't ALL downhill. 

"Crater 3" (top middle, black) may be a new crater, or an old one used as a burn pit more recently? Under the same breeze? Burning anything related to the chlorine cylinder 1 mysteriously found next to it? If so, wind that way, NNW, stronger than it seemed, and similar to the seen flow (so topography mattered less, it pooled up less, less likely to meander so far east as to flood that shelter (blue w/star).

As for wind, IIT hears from more credible sources than the OPCW has usually employed (mainly predictive model websites), or at least it sounds better: "The IIT established the meteorological situation in the area in the evening of 4 February 2018 through  concurring witness statements and other sources of information, including official reports received from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and its specialised meteorological centres" - in whatever mix. They got wind: "light, towards a northerly direction." - sounding rounded-off but likely about right. 

That makes the shelter seem like a reasonable place the gas would drift to - among quite a few other places. As they map likely areas of varying concentration, with estimated likelihood of severe symptoms, the shelter is a 40-50% likelihood by this. But it sounds like everyone there got really sick. (also note how red 50% zone's NE corner cuts off to avoid some likely inhabited buildings)

Annotated by me: excluded areas, at least judging by reports. They are mostly in the outer zone,  only 10% likely. But there are quite a few places where it's estimated 40% of the decent number living there should experience severe symptoms. A few less places than should be are in the red zone of 50%. Between them, IIT hears of two people with symptoms in all of that exempted space.

For the claims and the IIT's conclusions to reflect truth on this point almost requires the following: 

- a family shelter by 2 other home of the same family (which is possible enough - they'd probably be in the two houses immediately west and the upstairs part of the one with shelter: 3 buildings) ...

- ... with some mostly younger men in camo pants and non-relatives together in the shelter, everyone with children and pregnant women sitting upstairs in regular homes. 

- with almost no breeze, and a perfect topographical trough running not-so-straight to that block of 3 buildings and nowhere else (and that doesn't seems so absurd either, in itself, though images suggest that last part may be a bit uphill. To be decided, perhaps.)

- otherwise some other fluke had it all shift east at the road and then fuzz out to effect no one beyond that, or 

- a lot of other people were effected but never treated, never heard from or reported.

But the IIT were left at mild north wind and no special sub-trends, so a spread all over was likely. That's after they consulted experts on topography - not to find that magical trough, as they say, but to see if the terrain might explain the unusual symptoms reported. 

6.47 Although overall the symptoms of the victims are consistent with chlorine exposure, the IIT nonetheless proceeded to request from specialists the topographic analysis of the area, so that geographical and artificial features could be considered when assessing the accounts of witnesses and the likelihood of a chemical attack in an area with those characteristics. 

No, the topography doesn't change the symptoms of chlorine exposure, whether it make you black out or act goofy. Actual gas volume, release rate, wind, topography, all of that just affects concentrations of a gas that does nothing but burn. It is NOT and never was and never will be a nerve agent or anything like that. It doesn't mutate and do new things. It doesn't behave differently in one country vs. another or because the ground is so perfectly flat.

Symptoms Review

So ... the consulted experts found the symptoms to be "consistent with exposure to ... a pulmonary irritant" like chlorine. But worthy of note:

6.46 The toxicologists added that symptoms described in three out of 11 victims could also be consistent with exposure to a substance other than chlorine, such as organophosphates. 

(emphasis in original) But those 3 could just as likely be was from chlorine alone. And that's what it wound up being, since the sarin at the site was ... just already there, not freshly deployed.   

The toxicologists are right that chlorine is a pulmonary irritant, and that it's not anything else. From my readings into the subject, it turns to acid (hydrochloric and hypochlorous) on contact with water, and thus damages tissue (low-grade: "irritation"). This becomes especially problematic in the eyes and airways. It may separately limit oxygen absorption into the blood, but otherwise, it has no significant additional effects, neurological or otherwise. 

And yet the experts declare that the following symptoms all fits that bill, which I challenge with some notes.

---

symptom reported        -        chlorine sign?         -        (notes, sarin compatibility)

Shortness of breath, coughing, wheezing - YES    -    (when breathing burns, the body auto-limits it (? I just reasoned that out) - chlorine may also block absorption of O2, and causes some actual damage to lung tissue, limiting function - protective mucous is produced, needs coughed out, later on can lead to suffocation. - With sarin, impurities may have a similar caustic effect, but breathing is more paralyzed than painful, more varied fluids are produced needing coughed out, yet coughing is less likely (same reason - breathing and coughing take muscle coordination, which tends to fail under bad sarin intoxication) 

Eye irritation    -    YES  -  (direct effect, corrosive tissue damage - but the impure sarin used in Syria also burns the eyes, FWIW) 

Nausea         - NO - (vomiting is often listed as a chlorine sign, but it's secondary - look it up - severe coughing can cause retching, thence vomiting, but not usually a feeling of nausea, and especially not a sudden one - sarin does that. The G and E is SLUDGE: gastrointestinal distress, emesis (vomiting, maybe a paralyzed, infantile form of it). And it comes on instantly. Several say as they approached the bomb craters, they felt "sick" swiftly enough to note it worsening with each step. Chlorine would best be described as burning worse with each step closer, and further out too, so they probably wouldn't BE walking closer, but rather away)

Excessive secretions - NO - (eyes will water to rinse out the acid, but no one calls that excessive, and usually would say "tears," not "secretions." - Sarin can or will make secretions pour out every pore, gland, and orifice. SLUDGE syndrome.)

loss of consciousness (LoC) (sudden) - NO (contrary to popular belief, chlorine has no relation to chloroform and what that does. * This JUST BURNS. That complicates breathing, as noted. The lower O2 levels usually take time to develop, but then will cause headache, fatigue, perhaps blackout, and death. It won't be remotely instant like people describe)

* they have same "chlor" surname, but that's not how name changes work in chemical marriages. Just kidding. 

Headache (if sudden) - NO - (chlorine: secondary to hypoxia, which takes a while to develop, usually - sarin: like most signs, headache comes on suddenly)

Dizziness     - NO - (AFAIK this should be like headache, fatigue, LoC - secondary and later on, in a severe case)

Miosis         - NO - (claimed for all 11 patients, IIT decides two have it, although chlorine doesn't cause it - it's the classic outward sign of sarin exposure everyone knows to look for)

"Leg weakness" (if sudden) - NO  - (chlorine: well into a severe cases with lowering oxygen levels, fatigue appears, often noted specifically in the legs (which they're using, to escape, because they did NOT just black out) - sarin: not a specific sign I know of, but could go with general paralysis, mild form, similar fatigue issues that appear much quicker) 

"Relaxed legs" - NO - (body parts not working right is not a chlorine thing - for sarin it is, but the paralysis tends to be rigid and trembling, not "relaxed.")

Altered mental state - NO - (if anything people sharpen up with the crisis of chlorine and do logical things like seek fresh air. - "two other patients presented with moderate signs and symptoms, displaying an altered mental state that required them to be assisted." One is seen on video laying down waving his hand in the air like he's conducting a symphony. - sarin paralyzes - complex movements like that become difficult, not optional and not involuntary.)

other:

"5.22 ... No secondary exposure was reported." - YES - (no secondary exposure with chlorine past a minor itch, perhaps - whereas it would be likely with sarin)

"5.36 No biomedical samples were taken." - ?? - (no point with chlorine, but with sarin, you'll want that proof. It was claimed, but maybe not "with a high degree of confidence." They didn't collect any samples to test their claims.)

"strange odor" - NO - (chlorine smells like bleach or other cleaning products, which isn't odd or strange to most people. Someone might say that anyway, but here 2+ describe it that way, and also say they passed out right away. Impure sarin: "foul" and "strange" are the most common words used for the smell. But quite a few chemicals out there will have similar smells from similar impurities)

---

The IIT seems to be hitting rock bottom for experts here. Lucky for them, they weren't named, and their reputations won't be harmed. Unlucky for the people of Syria: they'll be trusted by many because the OPCW's IIT trusted them. Their shoddy work is already helping prolong the punishment of Syrians, apparently just for having a government our leaders don't like.

My Amateur View

There was probably no sarin exposure; despite some consistent signs, others conflict. The bleached grass and cylinders still suggest to me chlorine was released. Chlorine exposure with these militants seems pretty possible, despite the lack of visible red eyes (I haven't seen any that I recall, but I missed some evidence and got rusty). But if so, it clearly is not the whole story. 

It definitely doesn't sound like BZ/Agent 15 either (altered mental state, relaxed legs sounds good, secretions definitely not a fit, and we'd see dilated pupils, neither reported nor seen (that I've seen). That's almost my whole list of things I could say. I don't have any guess as to the relevant agent(s) except for: chosen, as part of this public deception.

Which isn't to say sarin wasn't used; it supposedly turned up in tests and now has to be awkwardly explained away. I'd say it was just used more like a movie prop - sprinkled or sprayed at the site of the chlorine cylinder "impacts." 

Basic gist of the conspiracy I theorize, starting from impact: they claim sarin-chlorine bomb attack, get some local militants poisoned with probably something else, unknown, have the medics fill in the key sarin details like miosis - get their few trusted witnesses on record, plant the sarin at the scene, carefully sample from the scene and document that to prove no tampering, get the sarin confirmed - then let someone else try to make sense of that mess later on.

Whose Hexamine?

Adam Larson aka Caustic Logic

April 20/21, 2021

(kind of rough - edits 4/23, adds 4/24)

This is largely simmered down from a previous post and is less complete, but includes new points and thoughts, and I hope added readability.

The Hexamine Shell-Game, Recap

So as luck would have it, in their response to peaceful protests in 2011, President Assad and his brainwashed minions walked into one self-made trap after another, vis-a-vis international human rights norms. They started with shooting protesters and castrating young boys, and quickly turned to sectarian massacres - Alawite Shabiha death cult hacking up Sunni families in their homes and leaving their bodies for the freedom fighters to document, like in Taldou, Al-Houla. By late 2012 Assad and his Shabiha were convincing people less and less that they were truly behind those crimes. People like Channel 4's Alex Thomson were starting to air doubts and to pass on competing claims that Jabhat al-Nusra and their ilk were behind these heinous crimes (See Aqrab, Haswiyeh, both in December, 2012). 

So as luck would have it, Assad decided it was better to kill in ways only he could - barrel bombs, any thing from the air, chemical weapons, especially sarin. Enough with the swords and hatchets. Shocking, yes, but too ambiguous. 

As luck would have it yet again Assad's forces used a very unusual and distinctive method of producing sarin, one extra-sure to be traced back to them. And so Assad freely used it over and over, even against his own troops several times. As far as we know (?) no other state uses hexamine (copy-pasting hexamethylenetetramine) in its production of Sarin, past or present. Yet Syria does, even now, long after claiming to surrender its program. And the Sarin that keeps turning up there has Hexamine, so it must be theirs, not any from any other state nor from any terrorist lab.

Or so we've heard. (Sarcasm mode off for the moment. )

As far as I can tell, here's how we came to hear that:

Nov 24, 2013: CW expert Jean Pascal Zanders lists the chemical precursors Syria had just declared to the OPCW: Under category heading "Sarin" are listed three compounds: hexamine, isopropanol and hydrogen fluoride. Explained, maybe: "[…] The EOI’s list of compounds consists mainly of chemicals that play a role in the startup of the development or production of chemical warfare agents or are intermediate-stage precursors. I have grouped them according to the type of warfare agent in a separate table. […]" 

By what method those were grouped under sarin is unclear. Hexamine shouldn't normally belong (see Kaszeta, below). My guess: it had turned up in the sarin being used in Syria, and Zanders wanted that to be made by Syria's recipe, so he decided on this recipe and then listed the ingredients accordingly.

As declared to OPCW, per the actual REQUEST FOR EXPRESSION OF INTEREST (EOI) of 20 November 2013 (PDF), hexamine and isopropanol are listed under "organic chemicals" while hydrogen fluoride is listed separately under "inorganic chemicals." The "type of warfare agent" each was related to production of must be explained somewhere else. Until I see otherwise, I'm sticking with my guess that Zanders just wanted it that way.

Just a few weeks later, the same idea gained traction. Dan Kaszeta is a CW expert, or a former US Secret Service man who knows such experts, a lot about CRBN response, other relevant bits and pieces, and mainly - like Zanders - he knows the right thing to say, politically, so he gets to be a touted "expert" rather than "propagandist." He wrote via Higgins/Brown Moses Dec. 14, 2013: "I consider the presence of hexamine both in the field samples and in the official stockpile of the Syrian government to be very damning evidence of government culpability in the Ghouta attacks." He assumes it's being added to Syria's binary sarin. FWIW the volcano rockets used in Ghouta were not binary, and there was never any evidence they were.

"It would have been informative if the UN and OPCW had explained why they considered hexamethylenetetramine (‘hexamine’)" as relevant to declare and have destroyed. Again, they didn't clarify by listing it under "Sarin," as was just suggested. To his credit, Kaszeta doesn't cite Zanders' list as if it mattered, and instead replicates that inexplicable listing with his own brand of detective work.  

"I do not think that hexamine’s normal uses ... do not [sic] merit its inclusion as a chemical of concern by the OPCW." He does not think it does not belong (other than by a manufactured mystery he'll solve). And indeed it probably does belong in a more normal way. As WhoGhouta would soon remind this supposed CW expert, heaxmine is the traditional stabilizer for sulfur mustard (mustard gas), which was a Syrian program of interest. That will corrode metal canisters badly, but it was found long ago a bit of hexamine added - maybe to scavenge the excess acids? - helped it have a longer shelf life. Thus "hexamine is not a smoking gun." 

So Kaszeta ignored or was unaware of the most logical reason hexamine would be included, then decide on a useful alternate reason that let him blame the government for these sarin attacks. He found it quite a unique thing they did there in Syria: "7 weeks of research on this subject reveal no public domain evidence of hexamine being used in this way in other Sarin programs."  Just the one. IF the one, and he was pretty sure. 

And the New York Times couldn't miss the chance for a big story on December 18: Experts say hexamine may be the smoking gun, citing Kaszeta's faux deduction that let Higgins have a promotional scoop along the way, probably a couple of "oh yeah, sure" experts with intel backgrounds agreeing. I don't have a subscription.

June 2014: UN mission head Ake Sellstrom is said to agree Hexamine was used in Syria's sarin program: "It is in their formula, it is their acid scavenger." Audio is said to prove he said that, without any contradictory qualifiers, and so case closed. Dan Kaszeta says so.

Back to Zanders, August, 2014: "Analysis of their contents by the OPCW confirmed sarin as their payload. Moreover, the filling displayed all the characteristics of sarin as produced by the Syrian government, the principal telltale sign being the presence of hexamine.” The cylinders in question: tested in June, 2014, after they were "allegedly" used against SAA troops in Jobar on 8/24/13, almost a year earlier. That happened, as we now realize, about 400 meters from the probable - and opposition-controlled - firing spot for the sarin rockets that hit East Ghouta on 8/21/13. 

It seems hexamine turned up in all that stuff; the sarin in E. Ghouta would show hexamine, just like the stuff used against troops and civilians in Khan al-Assal in March, and just as would the stuff released on these SAA conscripts in Jobar. Zanders explained in a comment at the same post "The hexamine presence was confirmed in several discussions I have had over the past two months with people closely following the Syria dossier, including government officials, diplomats and scientists." Assad must have gassed his own troops, or faked all of that, or whatever. Trusted officials and the type of "scientists" tipping off this Zanders character say so. Or so says Zanders.

In 2017 the UN-OPCW Joint Investigative Mechanism would add a wrinkle - besides hexamine, two specific impurities they say were found in the actual DF Syria had declared and also in the Khan Sheikhoun attack, at least. 

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-crisis-chemicalweapons-exclusiv-idUSKBN1FJ0MG

https://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2020/03/a-sarin-blame-shell-game-hexamine-to.html

It's likely that too is a non-specific a clue, because those impurities are very common, or because the terrorists were given Syria's DF, or a reverse-engineered version of it, based on samples stolen years ago and handed to a foreign intelligence agency. For example, as Joby Warrick recently informed us - sometime before 2001, CIA double-agent "Ayman" handed over what sounds like completed liquid sarin produced by the Syrian CW program he worked for. Interesting details: 

"His laboratories would make a form of binary sarin: two stable liquids that could be stored separately and blended only at the last minute. One of the two liquids was ordinary isopropyl alcohol. The other, a toxic brew called DF, contained all the other ingredients, including an exclusive additive — which Ayman helped discover — that helped ensure that the sarin lost none of its potency during the short interval between the mixing and the arrival at the target." 

Someone will say that additive was hexamine, but I doubt that - unless the additive part was added by his handlers years after Ayman's death by firing squad for treason.

2018's information offensive didn't expand much apparently expanded on the chemical matches. The previous findings for Hexamine and the two DF impurities were repeated as valid, but no clearer reason to implicate Syria's military alone was given. Importantly, it seems (?) the whole impurities package  was expanded laterally - the usual "attack a had the same sarin as attack b" - existing appearances of blame tapped into to cover for any shortage of relevant evidence. redone in the light of matching "signatures" (plural - not just hexamine, but still including it)

Anthony Deutsch, Reuters, 1/29/18: “We compared Khan Sheikhoun, Khan al-Assal, Ghouta,” said one source who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the findings. “There were signatures in all three of them that matched.” Eliot Higgins echoed the sentiment in June 2018: "The presence of hexamine at every confirmed Sarin attack shows the hexamine is part of the Syrian government’s manufacturing process" The fact that it's being used is all the proof we need. Well, that plus the seemingly knee-jerk and often absurd findings of government guilt in case after case. 

What if Hexamine Meant Something Else?

As I've said before, even if hexamine really was part of Damascus' sarin formula, that’s more like a recipe than a fingerprint. Fingers can even be cut off, but it's easier yet for others to copy the recipe, or have their own that’s just similar. 

Absolute proof that opposition forces had sarin still seems lacking, but it's quite likely they did. And among all those who'd acknowledge the possibility, none of them could tell you how it was made, what it did and didn’t have in it, or how it compares to the stuff being used. It's still quite possible they did have sarin, and it used hexamine and DF with those same impurities, because it's the exact stuff used, in every single case.

In his Brown Moses piece, Dan Kaszeta acknowledged that it was possible for terrorists to have come up with a formula for sarin involving hexamine. However, "the likelihood of both a Syrian government research and development program AND a non-state actor both coming up with the same innovation seems negligible to me." Since he had just faux deduced the former, he had no choice but to caps-lock AND and then reject the latter. Obviously we're not repeating that stunt here. 

I don't always believe what Seymour Hersh's intelligence sources say, but when I do ... for his LRB article "Whose Sarin?" this one sounds quite credible in telling him: 

"An intelligence document issued in mid-summer dealt extensively with Ziyaad Tariq Ahmed, a chemical weapons expert formerly of the Iraqi military, who was said to have moved into Syria and to be operating in Eastern Ghouta. The consultant told me that Tariq had been identified ‘as an al-Nusra guy with a track record of making mustard gas in Iraq and someone who is implicated in making and using sarin’. He is regarded as a high-profile target by the American military."

From his record making mustard gas, Ahmed would know about hexamine’s stabilizing properties, and might make an unusual choice to use it in his sarin. An odd new sarin appears – not exclusively but mainly in E. Ghouta – by Mid-March 2013 at latest, and it uses hexamine. US intel heard the terrorist Ahmaf was making it right there in E. Ghouta by summer at the latest. They heard he was doing it for Al-Nusra Front, who could distribute it nationwide and further if they wanted. No one knows what it would look like, and someone’s sarin kept turning up and getting Damascus in deeper and deeper trouble. The link to Syria's stocks remains far from proven, and still the only clear thing hexamine links to is to many, most, or all of the disputed sarin incidents over the years. 

Ahmed was a "high-profile target" for the U.S. in Iraq, but didn't get killed there, was operating in Syria, and like every foreign-backed militant there, was off-limits for Syrian government forces, as far as Washington had a say. And he might have been the one person central to getting that "red line" crossed. 

Helpers would be involved, of course, in terrorist groups and western governments, the media, etc. At right: a Jabhat al-Nusra "policeman," Northern Syria, April 21, 2013 with one of the exact, specific, unknown grenades otherwise said to be Syrian military make, filled with hexamine sarin and reportedly ... dropped from regime helicopters ... in cinderblocks ... that emit white smoke and also glow as they fall ... and then burst into piles of white powder and plastic bag scraps on impact. See here.

Why use hexamine? Just knowing about it from prior use is no great reason to reach for it in a sarin recipe. It's impossible to say, but from what I know, here's one possibility: As I gather, hexamine is an amine, one of the kind of impurities that lend the unusual characteristics to the sarin used in Syria: a yellowish color, corrosive properties (burns the eyes and airways), and an odor most often described as "foul" and "strange" - like rotting corpses but different, hard to place. I imagine it's a bit synaesthetic - a smell that's almost a different sensation. Soldiers in the August 24 attack described, per the UN report, "a foul and strange odour" and "a badly smelling gas."

The smell aspect always struck me as interesting from a psychological standpoint. I've read somewhere survivors describing the paralysis, loss of sight, and suffocation of severe sarin exposure as feeling like the angel of death is crushing you. If one's goal is to terrorize with the stuff, making it burn and smell like disgusting death might just be a desirable effect. This Ziyaad Tariq Ahmed - or whoever makes this stuff - might even be proud of his innovation and give it a cool nickname like "stench of death." 

A Brief History of DUUHHHH (and strange, foul smells)

Sarcasm back on for a recap of what all "Assad" has done with this unique hexamine sarin.

* The same hexamine sarin first appears, that we know of, at Khan al-Assal, Aleppo 3/19/13 – 1 soldier and 19 civilians killed - gov reports terrorist sarin attack, demands a probe. (smell: some say chlorine-like, others said sulfur-like) 

* Same 3/19/13: Oppo. reports sarin attack in Ateibah, killing 5 men, a baby (a foul smell) - abortively reports a CW attack in Homs as well, and oppo. says regime hit themselves in Khan al-Assal, with a fighter jet or a scud missile  (reliable accounts differ), missing the nearest rebel target by over 1km, maybe on purpose. Alleged: coordinated regime CW attacks in Damascus, Aleppo, and Homs.

* April-May-June, Syria's request: Western powers tack on opposition allegations incl. Ateibah that need investigated just as badly, slow the process digging for as many as possible - dismiss sarin claims re: Khan al-Assal (eg SSG's clear findings a sarin simulant was used), play them up in other cases

* 4/29/19 sarin grenade attack, Saraqeb (“It was a horrible, suffocating smell.") One woman dies in the ambulance en route to Turkey, with a super-fatal dose that should have killed in minutes - no one else comes close to dying.

* "rebels" re-take Khan al-Assal in June, precluding investigation there (agreement on which was nearly achieved at the time), massacre captive soldiers, possibly witnesses, steal the sarin samples there (? SyGov later unable to produce samples to OPCW)

* US intel has sarin samples from an attack somewhere sent in, supposed match w/government stocks/hexamine/etc. found (?). Chain of custody, whatever, UN investigations eventually decided the Khan al-Assal attack used sarin with the same impurities as in other attacks. Reasonable cause to believe the Syrian government attacked their own troops and civilians - in a mostly Shi'ite village just being re-populated after a brief occupation by sectarian "rebels" 

* 8/18/13: UN-OPCW inspectors finally arrive - again, originally on Syrian invitation - to investigate Khan al-Assal, plus Ateibah, and a Dec. 23, 2012 incident in Homs city thought to involve sarin - 1st reports differed 180 on miosis & atropine, pointing to sarin OR incapacitant BZ - some reported it was "pungent-smelling" - rockets and bombs are cited, but so are "canisters" or "grenades" maybe lobbed from a regime car that drove by the "street battles" - 1 "FSA" fighter and 6 civilian men rep. killed by the gas - the day after 7 SAA troops re. killed by a yellow gas (no smell rep) down in Daraya.) 

http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2017/02/what-happened-in-homs-december-23-2012.html

http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2017/11/what-happened-december-6-and-22-2012-in.html

* Assad allegedly distracts them using the same sarin to kill hundreds right next door (smell: "something like vinegar and rotten eggs" or "like cooking gas" (if propane is meant, then that will be Ethyl Mercaptan: "Most people describe the smell as either rotten eggs or rotten cabbage")) – eventually helping prove he did Khan al-Assal too, hitting his own troops  

* Obviously on Aug. 24, gas his own troops again and hand the proof over again 

* and adding he did this again on Aug. 25 in Daraya, soldiers and sarin handed over just to be ignored in the rush to attack Syria (smell: "foul," "bizarre"). Another CW attack on SAA troops in E. Ghouta, on August 22, didn't seem as likely to be sarin-related.

* Then Assad paused in sarin use after the red line threat failed to materialize; after trying so hard to get bombed out of power with these brazen attacks and false-flag failures, he suddenly wanted to appear as if he’d handed it all over?

* 2014-2017: Assad resorts to killing - implausibly - with small air-dropped cylinders of chlorine gas that had bizarre and mutable properties 

* He quietly sarin-attacks his own soldiers again at least in Daraya, Feb. 2015, OPCW confirmed – just out of old habit – no one cared. (smell: "like burning nylon") 

* Likely did the same back on 8/29/2014 in Jobar - twice in a day, incapacitating soldiers in both cases, leading to capture and execution for many in the 4PM incident - reportedly just 2 of the 15 soldiers involved escaped back to base. At least as I read it. Anyone else? The UN-OPCW heard from the two survivors of the 4PM incident, and 20 survivors of the later 6PM incident, but sadly had to dismiss the reports of the day's singular "incident" based on the 2 "discrepant" stories they heard (one or both must be made up) and so so "The FFM was not able to identify a cohesive narrative" - let alone a credible or true one. 

And as the Fact-Finding Mission knew from its facts in Syria "the smell of sarin is most frequently described as a sweet smell of apple or pear" - just like reported over and over by both sides in all these sarin incident. WHEREAS the soldiers described something way different: "a particular odour which some compared to the smell of dead animals or corpses and others reported as similar to rotten eggs. Still others reported that they had never experienced anything similar before and couldn’t compare the smell to anything." 

Some others who maybe couldn't compare it to anything tried anyway, and came up with "chlorine," as some did at Khan al-Assal. Another sign it's all made up! Except at Khan al-Assal it turned out to be sarin. Still, fresh and fruity was the correct answer! At least on that occasion. 

The FFM did allow that soldiers in whichever version might be true MIGHT have been exposed, briefly, a little bit, to "some type of non-persistent, airborne irritant secondary to the surface impact of two launched objects." If they blacked out and got captured and killed just because of some basic irritant, that's their problem. No one's getting "held to account" over pansy stuff like that. And besides, it was probably all made up. Right? No realistic detail or anything.

* 2017: then Assad breaks out more of the same sarin in April, 2017, alongside chlorine in confusing combinations but with a uniquely Russian or uniquely Syrian binary sarin bomb, to kill some 80-100 civilians in Khan Sheikhoun, and a few in some preceding test incidents mostly in Al-Lataminah, maybe just to see if Trump had a more relevant "red line" kind of deal - he did. The miles-long plume of sarin fog coating town from at least two points quite far from the one identified sarin crater ... reportedly "it smelled like rotten food" "a foul smell ... a strange smell. I can’t put my finger on it." a "really disgusting odor," a "stench." Others reported a chlorine smell, and many say chlorine, or chlorine and sarin were used. One Lataminah sarin incident on 3-30 had clear reports of no smell, and another one went completely unmentioned, until after it was noticed that bizarre contradictions in another one almost required such an event - then it was oh yeah, the 3/24/17 sarin attack, we forgot about that. (and as Andrew alerts me, 3/24 even has an even-more forgotten 2nd CW attaack later in the day to explain other oddities)

- Actually everyone forgets because ISIS, but Assad also killed something like 100+ in an ISIS place (Uqrabiyat, Hama) with sarin in December 2016. Seriously, it seems no one remembers that. I barely do. Smell: "Some also said that there was a strong odor, although they could not describe it, while others said that they could not detect any." Statements were made. No one wanted to come bail out ISIS. I don't think OPCW ever did an investigation.  HRW did include it in a report, in some detail.

* Last confirmed sarin: 4/4/17. No more in the following entries:

* Pause, then Nov. 2017 Harasta, next to Douma: in grenades or artillery shells, used Against: Ahrar al-Sham fighters, civilians - no deaths - symptoms: miosis, spasms, weakness, loss of consciousness, "excessive salivation," breathing problems, red eyes, "restlessness" - secondary contamination - reported as organophosphate, not sarin, because there was "a stench that does not exist in Sarin gas." This seems to be what US SecDef Mattis referred to  in Feb. 2018, saying he didn't see good evidence for sarin use recently (since Khan Sheikhoun, 4/4/17). 

http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2018/03/alleged-cw-attack-in-harasta-nov-18-2017.html

* Saraqeb, 2/4/18 just after Mattis clarified that, Assad attacks with chlorine-sarin cylinders, later corrected by the IIT to just-chlorine with new, sarin-like symptoms reported and/or experienced, and some random background sarin complicating tests - (activists initially reporting a sarin-chlorine attack must be confused, IIT decided in correcting them, as that makes no sense) - it effected (as IIT confirmed) just 12 confirmed people: 8 people (militants pretending to be civilians, IIT doesn't specify) in a shelter, 3 "SCD" White Helmets sent to help them, one other person in the whole town, likely one of three we've heard from affirming the attack - all seemingly close relatives of the affected militants. 

https://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-nonsense-gassing-of-militants-in.html

* Assad was smart enough to wait a year plus three days after Khan Sheikhoun before before he did that kind of big sarin massacre again in a non-ISIS rebel place: in Douma, the last and lost "rebel" bastion threatening Damascus, sarin and chlorine cylinders killed some 180+ civilians, leading to swift US-led military strikes - then when sarin couldn't appear for whatever reason, the chlorine alone just killed 42+, which itself is astounding. How the other 140 actually died: never explained. I guess they just didn't? Some insiders who should know say 187 were in fact killed, and they still seem to think it was sarin. 

https://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2019/04/douma-chemical-massacre-187-killed.html

* And Assad's brilliant sarin strategy is laid bare. Right?

Add 4/24: thanks to "Gumby JD" (tweet) another twist in that strategy: 

To believe a defected CW program expert Abdel Salam Abdul Razaq*, Syria's program made sarin that was pure, colorless, odorless - no hexamine, clearly. It evaporates quickly, he says. And so they used it regularly, by December 2012 (Times of Israel - and it's not clear who error it was to call mustard gas a nreve agent). But (news to me) the fingerprint hexamine evaporate much slower, so in mixture, it makes the sarin  more likely to be found and verified (Kane via BBC). That's the stuff Assad allegedly used in 2013, to cross Obama's red line, with inspectors right there. He allegedly delayed them, and bombed the area to "erase the evidence." But he couldn't just stick with his old formula?  

* (who would later join the US-backed moderate Noureddine AL-Zenki group, Al-Qaeda allies, child beheaders and app. users of CW with Abdulrazaq their designated denier of that)

Do Videos Show Liwa Al-Islam Launching the 2013 Ghouta Sarin Attack?

Ghouta Chemical Massacre(s)

by Adam Larson (ka Caustic Logic), March 15/16, 2021

updates 3/20, 4/18...

Note: This post is fairly complete AND readable at long last, but may be rough in spots, and all-told pretty long. See the summary, and the article can be skimmed for specifics of interest. Considering the importance of it, this will have to stay open to revisions and updates at least.

Summary: What follows is, in my mind, a near-certain case that the dubious 2013 "Liwa al-Islam volcano videos" (as I'll call them) show the same rockets used in the August 21 alleged sarin attack, fired at the same angle from the same place as that attack, on or close to August 21, which they said it was. The videos either show the attack or a very thorough re-enactment of it. 

Though limited, the video has enough scenery details to provide a remarkable match with a certain field - well-inside opposition territory - that is almost exactly indicated by the best-yet analysis of seven related rocket impacts; the estimated trajectories cross most reliably as close as 15 meters from this field.  And right where the launcher would have been if the videos were filmed there, the grass in this field is burned shortly before aerial views of August 23. 

This likely identifies the exact firing spot, and confirms the videos as extremely relevant all at once. Again, this spot is firmly within opposition-held territory, although it is close to the front lines at the time. Furthermore, as already established, it's very near a reported incident just 3 days later also involving alleged opposition use of sarin.

---

The Basic Firing Area

Since the days after the 2013 Ghouta attack stunned the world, many firing locations have been proposed for the reported 12 sarin-filled rockets deployed. Some efforts were based on reading the physical evidence that tended to point close to due north or, sometimes, in a northwest direction. Pointing north to rebel turf was taken as a best reading to factor in when, in 2017, "Rootclaim’s algorithm concluded overwhelmingly that the opposition was the most likely culprit." That was the finding of the excellent "Who Attacked Ghouta" blog, and several others. But these were mostly summary exercises or based on reading just one confusing impact scene extrapolated to the rest. 

About a year ago, I wrapped up some re-analysis of rocket impacts and trajectory estimates relating to the attack, using some amateur skills I had acquired in the interim. It's only a little bit fancy, mainly taking persistence - in this case off-and-on persistence over a few years. Following some work with Michael Kobs, Chris Kabusk, Qoppa999 and others, I left that for the time in good shape, with every impact that could be placed done so and an angle of fire estimated. 

Michael drafted a PDF summarizing our findings quite well, at least at an introductory level, with ample illustration to get the main ideas and, by and large, to get convinced. 

* https://www.docdroid.net/t7cVSc6/ghouta-chemical-attack-locations-angles-pdf 

* ACLOS alt. posting, added 3/20: File:Ghouta chemical attack - Locations Angles.pdf - A Closer Look On Syria (shoutwiki.com)

Some of it via my own notes was assembled here. This work is crucial and deserves even better summation than what's available. But for the moment we need to leave it there, and here summarize the significant parts and the newer findings. More than ever, it seems we've been on the right track, and now perhaps we've gotten to its end. As the truth often does, it seems to open onto other truths, to be related in this article. 

This summary graphic from Michael's report shows trajectory estimates for five "volcano" rockets claimed as part of the attack. 

Documented impacts across the Zamalka and Ain Tarma districts were mapped following careful geolocation (including by others but verified, and original work). The damage was carefully assessed from many images leading to a range of angle/trajectory estimates meant to be definitive, including all reasonable wiggle-room, and with varying centers of greatest likelihood not shown here. This is traced back 2 kilometers (the approximate maximum range of these rockets) to mark all the area it might have flown over. All of the paths show some kind of northwest origin. 

Another located impact has consistent angle but seemed like a different weapon (it may be worth re-including in future versions), and one more alleged volcano impact (UN-OPCW's site 5) has been placed and roughly estimated since this image. So as many as 7 analyzed impacts fit this same pattern.

The firing spot for each rocket should be somewhere within its triangular path, more likely near the far/wide end, or perhaps further out is possible (range calculations are sill debated, and I don't have my own estimate). But any single firing spot for all five would be somewhere in the intersection of all their triangles. Other details include how some range intersections (notably purple) makes any further than 2km in general unlikely. 

I made this based on the above just now: black outline starts where all 5 intersect and ends where just 2 of them do, with colored lines marking where each path estimate ends at 2km out. For what it's worth, middles usually work best, and near the green and blue lines is the most likely band to look in.

Also note the red and narrow triangle above is centered on an extra-clear reading of 316° +/- 2, from the UN-OPCW's site 4. Still, I decided to use 315 early on, after seeing or reading it at both 314 and 316, and also because it's nicely rounded off for simpler math and graphics - exactly 45° north of due west, or perfect northwest. It's still an estimate, the difference is tiny and here, it seems, makes my lines a tiny bit better. Anyway, the spot is more likely to be found along the red triangle's centerline, or maybe a bit west of that, and the whole span is possible. For it to be outside the red is also possible, but I would bet against it.

We'll come back to that area in a little more detail below. But first, I left off last February with a mapping using 315°, marking that line's end at 2km, and then drawing a coffin-shaped box (hexagon - it seemed like a good shape, where widest = most likely) around it. This stretches to almost a 2.25km max, a longer possible area further in range, and I added a bit of extra possibility in an outer gray hexagon. Note that this covers a bit more to the west than Michael's does centered on 316. At the outer end, the bus station's parking lot is a bit less indicated.

Areas of control in this map are per Higgins, Charles Wood, others, and reflects the situation on August 24. On the 21st, Tohme checkpoint was government held (unless someone fudged that timeline), but the northern triangle with AFV's probably wasn't. However, the rest of this - including all the areas of importance here - was probably the same as shown on the 21st. So my trajectory crossover "coffin" includes some of each side's territory.

And I left it off last year noting, as shown on that map and as explained at the same link, how the middle of that zone is just ~400 meters from an alleged incident about 2.5 days after the sarin attack, in which "opposition forces" reportedly fired two sarin-filled mortar shells at soldiers of the Syrian Arab Army (shells shown at right - one didn't work). At least four were badly affected, but none of them died. The SAA says it found a weapons facility in the immediate area after they cleared it, with more of the sarin-filled shells used. OPCW-certified labs confirmed sarin in the shells, and in the blood of one soldier (a month later - more presumably had it before the signs faded), but they did not confirm the whole narrative connecting them.

Now, within that black-bound area are some spots I shaded white. These are open fields suitable for rocket firing. I suppose some smaller spaces in there could work, and a parking lot at the bust station perhaps. One field stood out initially, along the middle eastern edge. Sometime before August 23, it was largely burnt, if in a general way many fields are, especially brown fields like this, and driven around on, besides taking some apparent artillery hits and having the fence breached for access. The southern half seems extra-burnt, and seems to die off and stay gray from then on, or is filled over with gravel. This still seems like a possible fit, but as I'll explain, another spot nearby proved far more compelling in its relevance.

Some Whodunnit Basics

At right is "volcano" rocket #165, one of those blamed for the sarin attack, but removed from its unclear original impact. These were first and most notably researched by Eliot Higgins (later Bellingcat founder, "Brown Moses" blog at the time). He first called them UMLACA (for Unknown Munition ...), later found they were called Volcano by the Syrian military, and has called them that since.

The volcano was a nearly unknown weapons at the time, and and looked improvised and thus likely militant-made. But Syria has to improvise too. Aside from many others, Higgins and "Sasa Wawa" at the "Who Attacked Ghouta?" blog agreed the government or one of its allies probably improvised the volcano and had so far used them mainly, if not exclusively. I don't dispute that general consensus at all. But like Sasa Wawa, I can't endorse Higgin's acceptance they have a sarin version as well, plainly marked with red instead of black numbering. The more reliable evidence only supports their use as conventional or fuel-air explosives.

I think both Higgins and "Wawa" have acknowledged it's entirely possible these can be seized, whoever made them. Both sides are known to take and even re-use each others weapons as a matter of course. Sasa Wawa did more than acknowledge it here, and over here learned of a nearby UMLACA staging ground at Qadam station was overrun by opposition fighters in January, 2013, possibly stealing some units then, for example.

Similar issues apply to the sarin inside those rockets (or just later found on them?). It's understood the Syrian military had the capability to field the deadly nerve agent. There's little to no evidence anyone has stolen their materials, but there's a fair amount about the insurgents making their own sarin. This is often claimed as definitely beyond the reach of terrorist groups, except of course for in Japan 25 years ago. And with nothing reliable about the different formulas used by either side, save for the debatable hexamine connection, it's hard to be sure the yellow, caustic, foul-smelling 60/40 mix of sarin and impurities that keeps turning up comes from a high-end government-funded program or a terrorist lab, as the Syrians and Russians have been saying all along. The August 24 incident mentioned above is just one of several examples where SAA soldiers or allied forces are the targets of sometimes deadly sarin attacks, dating back to December 22, 2012.

Areas of control also can be pierced, but it's less likely, and an attack coming from one's "controlled area" as they say is a better indicator of guilt. The UN-OPCW investigation, Higgins, and many others have found or indicated a great many Syrian military installations the attack likely came from, every one seeming to serve as effective proof. And now we have trajectories that converge mainly on opposition turf, but a bit on the government side, and near a crossing either side could use. And whoever chose to attack from this close to the front line might be trying to implicate the other side (false-flag - an almost ancient concept), raising the motive to cross right over. I don't suspect anyone did, but it still seems possible.

In short; 

- the claimed allegiances of an attacker, the weapons used, and the involvement of sarin are all quite inconclusive as clues 

- while area of attack staging isn't certain, it still seems the best indicator of the lot 

- all of it should be considered in the fullest context possible.

Are the Liwa Videos Real Evidence?

I never expected to make much of the "Liwa al-Islam volcano videos" of contested relevance. These appeared online in mid-September, 2013, with an original description / explanation from the previously unknown source (as passed on by Higgins at his Brown Moses Blog):

"September 15. Kurdish Peshmerga killed three Syrian terrorists on border. They found cell phone in pocket. Night bombing video there. Terrorists on video wear gas masks. Video was shot August 21. One terrorist name it Storm operation."

The videos were allegedly made by fighters of Liwa al-Islam (LaI or LI = Brigade of Islam - not banner, thanks Qoppa), a Saudi-backed sectarian gang based in Douma. It was founded and led  by Zahran Alloush ('til his killing by Syria in December, 2015), the charismatic and ruthless son of an exiled preacher harbored in Saudi Arabia. Alloush's Liwa al-Islam had brutalized their way into general charge of all Eastern Ghouta by August of 2013, co-opting other militias and allying with Al-Qaeda franchise Jabhat al-Nusra and others. They would soon after form a larger coalition Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam) that would continue to rule over E. Ghouta or at least Douma up until April, 2018, and would be central in forging a nationwide "Islamic Front" thereafter.

Following the video release, Higgins passed on and seemed to agree with a statement of denial issued by Liwa al-Islam, via the alternate Syrian government in Turkey, SNC/ETILAF, but by now "The page does not exist." See then: Liwa al-Islam Brigade Issues a Statement in Response to Fabricated Videos - The Syrian Observer, dated Sept. 20, 2013. Their public face explained, in part, "Those videos were not published on our official channels. They are thus forged and completely fake." Well that's a pretty narrow definition of fake, allowing for easy dismissal of any leaked information, for example.

"Only the Assad regime has chemical weapons in Syria," they continued. "Assad admitted to that by agreeing to turn over his stockpile of chemical weapons to the international community." He agreed to this while blaming terrorists for every gas attack so far = "admitting" only he has CWs. Finally: "The UN team report, moreover, confirmed the rockets used in the attacks on August 21st were launched from regime-controlled areas." Actually what the UN-OPCW did is falsely finger Syria for the Ghouta attack without even explicitly saying it. The refutation of that terrible (error?) was a major inspiration for the better analysis that led us right into Liwa-controlled territory, as related up top. So that's a big fail.

2 rocket shafts, flag (video 2)

Higgins noted the men in the video "are shown to launch the same unusual munitions ... used in the August 21st sarin attack," the UMLACA/volcano he had just made some waves for tracing to Syria's military. In fact the men claim it is August 21 as they use these same rockets, which on camera they call "Ababeel." That translates as "flock of birds," possibly in reference to god-sent birds that chase off invaders in pre-Islamic mythology (Wikipedia). It's apt; Pakistan makes a missile with that name (Wikipedia). But there's no mention of sarin or anything similar, and they claim they're targeting "Assad's Shabiha" or "Assad's dogs" (meaning troops?) in Jobar and then in Qaboun with these volcanos - not the civilians in Zamalka and Ain Tarma Liwa al-Islam claimed to protect.

It's hard to make much of a direct view, so the summaries and analysis should suffice. But for reference, here are the actual videos - all still available so far on Youtube.

Brown Moses copies with better color and quality, but sideways as filmed

1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNuBPG_naa8 - unrelated (?) firing of a D-30 cannon, but wearing gas masks

2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beGNN6QtAgs - volcano firing - the one my frames are from (but using Liss Nup's posting) - I though it shows one firing repeated, but others say that 2 rockets.

3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdN1LacobzA - volcano firing - extremely similar but different scene (even the truck flag is different) - illuminated, it seems to be the same area they used in part 2

Next, gamma-enhanced and rotated copies by Liss Nup. See right for the relevance: some original sharpness and color is lost, but much is gained. The proportions or aspect ratio also look different. Liss Nup seems to win only on visibility in the shadows, which is a very helpful win.

"1 of 3" contains "parts" 1-3, all combined, sideways, including part 1 of unclear relevance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KhtkwJsTy4

part 2 rotated - volcano firing - the one my frames are from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9Ztl0bm7u8

part 3 rotated - different volcano firing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2QbEuRhgY4

No one disputed the bulk of the basics, but there's wide disagreement on what to make of this evidence. These men are seen firing two or maybe three of these weapons believed (by Higgins for one) to be exclusively used by government forces at the time. That would mean these are government-allied forces engaged in a false-flag conspiracy, probably using non-chemical rockets for show, and filming just about anywhere they control. He points to several valid issues to support such a theory, like the whole floodlit scene, the too-obvious and yet incorrect flag displays, the apparent bragging of something they shouldn't want to brag of, showing off a weapon they shouldn't have, etc.

Of course they didn't mean to release it, ostensibly; it was intercepted after a firefight. Also, naturally, Higgins found "Kurdish sources deny any knowledge of finding the videos."

Another twist take a moment to get. <revised 3/20> They call the operation "Reeh Sarar."Reeh translates clearly to wind, but sarar is trickier. Most translate it as "cold" or "destructive" or - combined, reeh sarar = storm. In the Koran, the meaning of the phrase is usually rendered destructive wind, and they're probably referring to that. But sarar itself (صارار) seems sound-related. Google-translated: "squeaky." I hear it's also a verb (to make a shrill or sharp sound). I suppose in context, "shrieking" would be the best direct translation  (Amin25 agrees - to make a terrifying sound). Ababeel - god-sent birds that destroy - they might shriek, or fly on a shrieking wind, as from a rocket's engine. comment below suggests the volcano does this more than usual, so maybe the name has a noise-related double-meaning, and I'll keep "shrieking" for those who aren't Koranic scholars.<end 3/20 rev>

Anyway, as Higgins noted, the operation name matches a "Reeh Sarar chemical battalion" mentioned in a previous video from Dec. 2012 by a masked terrorist threatening Syria's Alawites. He gassed two rabbits to death as illustration, using Turkish-made chemicals, in what observers suspected was Turkish territory. (Whatever was used, it doesn't seem to be sarin.) The video was then uploaded to brand new and disposable YouTube and LiveLeak accounts. Pro-Assad fakers were suspected. (ACLOS) 

And as Higgins notes the September videos were, in the same manner, "uploaded to brand new YouTube and LiveLeak accounts." And further, both instances involve Turkish border/Kurdish themes, consistent with being anonymous forgeries from a common source - pro-Assad fakers, many would assume.

But Higgins tried a bit too hard to cast doubt in spots. For instance, he mused "It's also rather odd it's so dark when August 21st was a full moon, and there's no lights in the city visible." The latter is relevant as city light will tend to drown out the moon's glow, especially with some older camera phones. It won't do that as totally and specifically as a giant flood light set up right next to you would do, but ... it's another possible-wink-certain sign of Assad fakery to his gullible readers (like this one, certain the videos are from some other night). In fact I suspect it was full moon or near it; note how the video goes pitch black for us as he walks across the field, yet by sound, he walks evenly - no halting or stumbling in the dark. He can see okay, because of ample natural light for his fine-tuned human retinas, regardless of how the camera deals with it.

Everyone realizes some of the problems with this evidence, but it keeps seeming possibly relevant to some people like myself. But despite being perhaps the most direct proof imaginable rubbed right in our faces, they never seemed of much use as evidence, as in to convince people. Especially as I realized how near the frontlines the firing spot must be, it seemed whoever did it was hoping to implicate the other side. And if these are the people who did it, who are they dressed as, claiming to be, displaying so many flags of?

Open-minded as I am, zero layers of deception still seems faintly possible; the men are who they say, just acting odd as they do this unusual task, maybe speaking in some code or maybe not even realizing the significance of their part in this operation. But in many ways this does look like a sloppy attempt to impersonate some Islamists - a one-layer deception, a simple false-flag conspiracy theory. That's fine. Some note the lackluster takbeering ("Allahu Akbar" chant). Nine times they're ordered to do it in one video, and repeat with muted enthusiasm. They do this 14 times in another video, as Qoppa999 counted in the recent Twitter discussion, surmising "the only good explanation is they're not used to the rebel Takbeer," specifically because they're SAA troops putting on an act. 

But then used to it or not, if you were trying to mimic someone's well-known style, wouldn't you actually try? How much practice should it take? And as Saar Wilf said "I don’t think we can seriously hypothesize how people about to gas 1000 people for a noble cause would execute the takbir. It’s an extreme situation and nothing can be claimed to be weird." Or at least, not by what little we know about just who they are and what they were truly up to. 

I still don't have a confident feel for what's normal (especially in gas masks), but it seems quite possibly it was deliberately sloppy, because the Islamists were impersonating someone poorly impersonating them. If the missteps are notably obvious, that adds to this possibility. Qoppa999 finds it "in your face obvious," comparing to exuberant Jabhat al-Nusra fighters and White Helmets famously caught celebrating the fall of Idlib together. But then maybe these Islamists could have impersonated themselves better, but they didn't want to risk the fakery going unnoticed, and so they made it clumsy and undeniable. Plus maybe they wanted to poke fun at Assadists' intelligence, conviction, or acting skills along the way.

If one can imagine a single layer of deception here by pro-Assad elements, they'll need to consider the findings below and ponder how they might have pulled it off well inside opposition turf. Two layers of deception is surely possible and, odd as it might sound, some solid evidence almost eliminates every other possibility. It's what I always suspected, but I never saw the value of arguing it - until now.

Would they do that? 

Considering the kind of criminal activity Liwa / Jaish al-Islam has over the years admitted to, denied, and sometimes admitted while denying, I'd say they have an unusually brazen style. (I wrote a list of examples, but moved to the conclusion so we can continue with the core analysis. It's worth review for anyone stuck on these questions.) I've long sensed a pride in their ability to deceive infidels and manipulate them against each other, and to not even have to hide it, maybe because they had God's clear blessing to cleanse Syria. From them, such a dual deception makes a fair amount of sense.

But even with that relevant style note, it still seems weird for them to fake someone faking them and then let use see that, so I say: Sure, they might well do that - or quite likely not. I couldn't and really shouldn't say, so let's get back to giving the primary evidence more room to unfold. Perhaps that will narrow down what makes the most sense.

Looking For ...

So maybe the videos do contain real clues. There didn't seem to be much of the visual kind, but more than realized, and it turns out a lot can be made of the bit there is. I guess the recent discussion on Twitter started March 1 with this tweets asking some questions that were never answered, so Higgins and promoter Ahmad helped inspire this, aside from these lone contributions to the discussion:

 

I named Michael Kobs as helping identify a different basic firing spot, which happens to be even nearer to a different CW facility. He started revisiting that, quickly bringing in the LI videos for comparison. Actually I brought it up first but in passing, then he brought in visuals that made it stick. It makes sense as a next step; in an area that small, a match for the videos might be found or ruled out. Soon "Liss Nup" - who did the 2013 video enhancement - and others including Charles Wood, HRI Mark, Qoppa999, Stephen McIntyre, Amin25 and now Rootclaim founder Saar Wilf, have joined in (or in support of) another re-analysis and attempted geolocation of those videos - limited though it has to be.

The footage is so dark we can't see anything half the time, even enhanced. So clearly we have no mountain or minarets visible in the distance to help verify the location, nor even a sunlight angle to clarify basic directions. We only have vague nearby details that are fairly similar place-to-place and are sometimes hard to match with images taken from miles above. Higgins on our efforts: "Oh god, good luck to them if they want to try figuring out that one with satellite imagery, I hope they enjoy chasing their tales, pun intended." (on chasing tales in Ghouta, and Eliot ... to be covered in another blog post soon)

Looking around Jobar or Qaboun for a possible fit is likely to be futile, and had been so far. In fact hardly anyone has really tried before, past looking for open fields in one direction or another. But now we have such a good trajectory reading we're down to the equivalent of a few city blocks to check for something that really should be in there, and close to the middle of it.  

Realizing now that we always did have enough details to bother with the exercise, Michael and I (mainly and in that order), found the likely match pretty easily. Even with a newly-expanded view, I say we can't be absolutely certain any spot is or isn't a total fit, so let's settle for degrees of consistency and see if it reaches eyebrow-raising levels.

Available light: a floodlight situated near the launcher has replaced the dimmer but more even moonlight we might expect, only allowing a few things to be seen well. Then the rocket's initial detonation and glowing exhaust trail light the scene up more broadly for a few moments. We see the launcher center stage, a heavy truck with crane (its dangling hook glints in the light for a frame or two, but is otherwise invisible), a pole that seems fixed at a slight distance, not connected to the launcher. Three distinct trees are clearly visible in video 2, but not in video 3, where the light is angled differently. 

Top view above is from video 3. Bottom view here is actually spliced from pre and post-firing frames in video 2 to try and show truck relation to the visible trees in a single, clear frame, Below, the whole scene as lit during ignition (at more stages than needed, sorry) and just after takeoff

Here's a coding of visible features to look for (or for signs of) in the aerial imagery. 

The three sizable trees catching the floodlight, from l-r or n-s here: 1) a really wide one, 2) a smaller one, and 3) a bigger one of less clear shape. Mostly smaller but unclear other trees on another line (90° tried below), or maybe on a continuing curve; from the always-visible 3 at right and reading to the left, there is a general sense of shrinkage, as with a single row running north. But that would have shrunk more than this, and dropped to total shadow well before the left side of the frame. To be so visible and close to the glow, these trees are aligned kind of east-west here, as they appear. 

Beige lines indicates wide paths (paved? gravel? earth?) that parallels the trees both ways, and/or as shadows suggest, a raised level or mound the trees are planted on. This would catch the light all around as we see.

The view is from some light, paved surface (visibly it could be gravel, but not audibly). Distance from launcher: Michael checked and found "The cameraman walks 44 steps from the launcher to the canopy. For a usual man we get a distance of about 22m." That will be approximate. Where he ends up, there's a visible loop in the camera's upper right field of view (unclear but foreground, blends with one of the trees in some frames, marked brown above). This suggests ... something here it hangs from. And the cameraman should be seeking shelter, which takes ... something.  Finally, something low, indistinct but with some reflectivity, may be fixed around the (corner?) where it goes darker gets a pink circle.

This tiny model was made after the likely spot was found and partly based on it - hence the unusually sweet line-up to follow. But I did try to just use what was visible and known prior to that, as if we'd used this model to guide our search for the spot. This reference scene is set from 135°/315° trajectory as found from impact 4 (rounded off the same way I already did to good effect), estimating 45° outgoing fire, and for simple drawing (all 90° lines from there, or regular e-w orientation). So besides the scale and proportions of the scene, its compass orientation may differ, but not by a whole lot. If this were an Aug. 21 firing video, the line of 3 big trees will run roughly to the north, etc.

The cameraman is looking out over some scrub and apparent tall grass. Though it looks pretty barren in most views, some grass is seen and heard during the walk, and the heads and upper stalks are illuminated at rocket ignition as they catch the glare of that temporary fireball. And that happens twice in video 2, I guess, and again in video 3. So add to the list: any grass you find at the right spot will likely be burnt on the eastern half of the field, perhaps worst right by its tree #1. And from the visible and audible clues, a lot of soil and various-sized rocks were kicked up and came back down. The effect of that may be visible from above. Finally, the truck and launcher won't be there in satellite views, of course. The blue pole might be invisible from being narrow, or being part of the launcher assembly (?), but it or its shadow is worth looking for.

Distance out: range considerations better handled by others, like Charles Wood, who notes the angle of fire in the videos seems slightly higher than the optimal 45°. Michael agrees, finding 46. This shortens the lateral distance the rocket will fly, but also shows it will be close to optimal distance, so the firing spot is probably just a bit less than 2 kilometers out, and no closer than that. That's about where we would have looked anyway based on how the compass angles intersected. 

Finding it?

In my red-green map at top, I have the black coffin with white-shaded areas inside it. Michael Kobs had his own look at the different spots, after a more detailed assessment of their intersections. He noted general areas worth checking, shaded red on the map below. I'm not sure which ones he meant, but let's take it broadly. The government-held bus station parking lot is red, out of range as shown but maybe within range, as explained. The red line nicking it relates to a reported impact that may not exist, tested for inclusion at 2.5 km - not very relevant. Plus that's a bit far especially for the yellow and purple paths (just over 2.4km out  for the latter). Then there's a large L-shaped red area divided in 2 parts, which I guess he meant. This is all in opposition turf. https://twitter.com/MichaKobs/status/1367400169730412545

Next he tried using details in the Liwa al-Islam volcano videos to see if they turned up, starting with requiring field, trees, pavement (so not the bus station). To start, compass directions can't be told from the video, but the interest is in a possible match with the Aug. 21 launches, with rocket fire to the SE. So if it's relevant, the scene will have the lot south of the field, the main 3 trees to the east, etc. 

Inside that L-shaped area, the upper part had had earlier grabbed my attention. It's no match for the volcano videos, but for the D-30 cannon video, perhaps. But in the bottom 2/3 of that Michael found 2 spots that might fit for the rocket launches, circled in red here, as first compared to some video frames:

As he mused "these videos could well have been filmed in the possible launch area." I could see it right away. The site on the left has a small gray lot, trees in a row perpendicular to lot edge, more in a parallel row to the north, light paths or strips all along, and rather lush grass between. The field on the right has a paved lot that might fit, but too few trees in the wrong pattern. Another spot he noted nearby to the south is similar to the right one, but even less compelling (pavement less certain, too big and too many trees in no pattern). If anyone else can find a better match in or even close to our intersection area, let me know. So far just one even seems to merit a closer look. 

33°31'57.08"N, 36°20'28.73"E

Google Earth's satellite imagery for 2013 has a wide gap between Feb. 20 and August 23, so it only means so much that a burned patch across the eastern half of the grass has appeared in those 6 months. It looks to be pretty recent though, dead and gray into 2014, while at what would be 2 days after, it's a mix of gray, black and brown.

Below are some historical and enhanced views I did early on, with sloppy labeling (may be replaced),  focusing on a corner marked in yellow that might show the churned earth. But that corner isn't suggested otherwise. The launcher would have been more in the middle of the burned patch, just north of that yellow-marked zone (where it's redder next to the big tree?). 

Features line-up: the paved area matches, as most would, and it's aligned right with the trees. The three biggest ones are in the same size array (a wide #1, smaller #2, bigger #3). More but smaller trees to the north, in a tight row running to the west, and all of them are set on two long mounds or low earthen walls. With dense trees, that would make this field unusually shielded from view except of the buildings to the south - another consistent clue. Further, Michael thinks the blurry loop may be linked to the entrance of a canopy-looking structure that appears here. Its entrance would provide shelter, and is about 25m from where the launcher seems to be (green here - later aerial view). Note if this were sort of an oversized carport, it seems about the right size to house the truck used, even with the launcher loaded. Is that how far it had to drive?

Modeling the Spot

Then the awesome Michael modeled the area in 3-D, albeit a quick job for now, populated with items from the video. This is not authoritative, but at least helpful in testing the correlation between the site and the video footage. Trees were sketched in for size, height not established, just guessed for now. A taller nearby building that might be visible is modeled in, to find it would probably be off-frame or, given the low light, in frame but too dark to see. (and it's not clear how many lit windows to expect if so) The scene gets quite dark with automatic lighting turned off. Under a full moon, it wouldn't look like that, except to the dim-sighted camera, which is what matters here. Tall building: see very faint dit of dark brown behind the truck - just off frame most of the time. https://twitter.com/MichaKobs/status/1369944883188924418/

Comparing the model to the video, emphasis on tree pattern.

The three trees line up nicely for shape and spacing: wide-small-big, just like on video. This is a very good sign we have the same place. The northern line of trees first came out looking much shorter, due to quick sketching, and quickly-estimated sizes for all of them. A more thorough modeling with solid tree sizing based on 8/23 imagery might be worth the effort I'd contribute to. Missing mounds under the trees added at my request, a bit higher than suggested, raising the trees to line up better, while still being too small (pending request: shorter mound, and the same under the eastern row).

How many trees in the north row? Not fully clear, but shadows in the Feb. view suggest, as I count, at least 16. Michael inserted 14 trees, stopping a bit short of my last one - I counted one more, and defer, assign numbers here. His spacing is like mine but better. Counting from right, #5 and #7 are out of line in a way you can see in the model, for reference. Only #1 would be partly blocked from view, and however many to the west would be left off-frame. We should see about ten trees in this field of view (?), and it's hard to be sure, but that seems about what the video shows = tree size & spacing here are pretty consistent. The vertical size issue is evident here - to be addressed as possible with more analysis. (I plan to compile enhanced frames for a clearer picture of trees in the videos - next time including from video 3)  

The tenacious Mr. Kobs had placed a red ball to mark, at my request, where we see a mound from above. He found it seems to line up with the pole instead of the blob I circled in pink (so pole set in mound, pole invisible from above, mound unclear in video?). The pink-circled blob doesn't have a clear match from aerial views, but it's a small issue. It could be remnants of a (chicken coop?) once there. Two white blobs appear there in February, one quite close to trees 5 and 6. It could also be the man with the launcher's controls hunched over a bit too close, or not even an object - maybe a light to the north seen between trees. The red ball may have served its purpose.

And again, this spot has the pavement, the possible canopy structure there, and ~20-25m of tall grass between him and where the launcher would be. That's an uncanny match. I would never say we've found our spot somewhere in Damascus or even in Jobar based on such a similarity. But add that this is found almost exactly where the rocket trajectories best cross, 1.9km out from impact 4, on a bearing of 314.4° as I measure it - 0.6° off from the best angle I used. If I had ended 315 at 1.9km, we'd be 15m from this spot (red circle). Up top I suggested on or just west of the red path's centerline near the 2 km end mark for blue and green would be a most likely spot. That also points right here to within a few meters. 

The hardest rocket path to correlate is the purple one, ending in a shallow impact with the bottom of a courtyard wall near "Zamalka ghost house". This spot is about 120 meters past its 2km mark. I think we can still see 2.12 as a likely enough range. If not, maybe that one was launched from another spot. 

And add that the grass at this spot gets burnt on its corresponding eastern half shortly before August 23. Michael may be overstating what's still the salient point here: "it is a 1:1000000 coincidence that we find any fitting point right where we analyzed the search for the launch spot." Not just where broadly, but where it was centered - exactly where it would be if we were totally awesome, and not anywhere else. 

Conclusion

So we have a roughly perfect match for those rocket launch videos, including launch angles. It was found right at the intersection of the most and best trajectory estimates - not 100% in itself, but finally pinned down because it also matches those murky videos - also not 100%, but finally pinned down because we know the rockets came from around there, and it so lines up with that freshly-singed field. Is that circular? Well, I say it's the virtuous kind, not the vicious one. Truth is truth because it's true.

There are still a few possibilities for what this means, or would mean. Obviously we might be seeing the same Volcano rocket launches of August 21 it all lines up with; maybe just the 2 or 3 launches were filmed in this style and the rest just fired normally off-camera, with more genuine takbeering. It's possible this was staged later, but by people replicating the original attack so well they likely put another volcano within meters of one of those we've seen.

And then there are the possibilities as to WHO that is. If someone in this exact field launched at least 2 volcano rockets the night of Aug. 20/21, seeming like poor impersonations of Liwa al-Islam fighters, they did operate freely in an area run by that group. And the attack that did serve their agenda best. Some clues of their thinking in these days - the final passage from Liwa's statement denying the videos

Sept. 20, 2013 Liwa al-Islam Brigade Issues a Statement in Response to Fabricated Videos - The Syrian Observer

Liwa al-Islam pledges to continue the fight to rid the country of the filthy terrorist regime. We will not be weakened by videos faked by those who have the blood of innocent people on their hands and those who used chemical weapons against innocent civilians. We will continue the fight until we bring the criminals to justice. Liwa al-Islam emphasizes that any political solution that does not involve accountability for crimes against the Syrian people is completely unacceptable. The world has forgotten all crimes by the Assad regime and focused only on the use of chemical weapons. When the international community makes a deal with Assad to eliminate his stockpile of chemical weapons and then hands him a certificate of good conduct, which puts him in a position to freely continue killing with other means, it becomes a partner in Assad’s murderous crimes.

The "red line" stuff left them feeling only this could make "the international community" come bomb his enemies. But after the most extreme possible example was made real ... they failed to do so. September 12, 2013: The U.S. and Russia began talks on Moscow's plan for Syria to surrender its chemical weapons rather than face ongoing threats of military action. Treachery. And after all that effort, all those people killed. September 15: maybe since no NATO air force is coming, "Kurdish Peshmerga killed three Syrian terrorists on border," supposedly, and these videos appear, allowing the bitter Sept. 20 comments above. Then on the 24th, in another westward middle finger, Alloush forged a new Islamic Front including Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front (Greaves) - but then launched a different Jaish al-Islam coalition excluding al-Nusra five days later, on Sept. 29 (ACLOS) which then made itself the center of a nationwide Islamic Front (IF) soon after, which formally also excluded al-Nusra Front, and with Zahran Alloush as their head of military operations.

Now we realize the men are more than likely in this identified field in Jobar as they fire. Liwa al-Islam claims they're regime-allied imposters, so they must have snuck in. HRI Mark has a view of the area as seen from an observation post on the SAA side, in an ANNA video from August 29. After a quick try at lining things up with his map, I added some labels for at least a basic idea (below). With all those windows looking down, would you want to drive in there, set up and launch some (12?) noisy rockets while Takbeering 10x each time, and then try to get back out?  And they must have escaped, to retain the footage and then release it just too late to complicate the blame and threats of war directed at them over the stunt. (again, Russian plan over airstrikes agreed 9/12 - video "found" 9/15)

Update 3/20: the initial geolocation was wrong, starting from the wrong obervation point. But Chris Kabusk nailed it. Without making and marking a new map, I find the abandoned vehicle marked yellow lines up perfectly with the impact site, back apparently near the mosque and taller building to the left of the red arrow.

And further, in this bizzarro world scenario, Liwa al-Islam never did mention these infiltrators in their turf, let alone catch or stop them, insisting on government areas being proven, like Bellingcat or Human Rights Watch do. This despite how Zahran Alloush almost seems to have known the imposters were coming well in advance, with his "surprise" prediction of August 13 (see below). As I'll explain, that's just their style. It could be the same exact SAA fakers who came back in December to kidnap Razan Zaitouneh just to go unmentioned again (also see below). 

Would They Do That?

We're down to the abnormal psychology of dedicated jihadists. Liwa al-Islam denial, Sept. 20, 2013: refuting some beheading allegations, LI insisted "it is not part of its policy to execute detainees." They added some stuff about truth and justice, Allah winning in the end, crushing filth, and so on. Now let's compare with reality of LI/JI crimes admitted, crimes denied, and crimes they sort of admitted and denied.

When prominent antigovernment activist Razan Zaithouneh was kidnapped from Douma in December, 2013, JaI denied involvement, but they named no one else and never tried to find her. She was abducted with her husband and another activist following criticism of JaI and death threats sent by Alloush (as they tacitly admitted curing court procedings). Her computer was reportedly opened by password inside Jaish al-Islam's notorious Tawbeh prison, among other clues that still don't include her located body. (Mroue)

Their founder Zahran Alloush has openly expressed genocidal goals only occasionally, as in "an anti-Shiite tirade and “bring-back-the-Umayyad-Empire” propaganda piece," as Syria expert Joshua Landis put it. "Zahran calls for cleansing Damascus of all Shiites and Nusayris. (“Nusayris” is the old term that referred to the Alawites prior to the adoption of “Alawite.”" (Landis) Alloush later walked back these comments as some gibberish brought on by the stress of being under siege. But the highly sectarian December 2013 Adra Massacre happened at the hands of JaI and al-Nusra Front. Whatever truly happened there (it's disputed). it was no simple slip of the tongue. Kidnapped survivors from Adra - including women and children - were imprisoned, forced to dig tunnels, tortured, starved, openly placed in cages on rooftops to shield against airstrikes, and whatever else we don't know about. Some few thousand mostly civilian prisoners once held by JaI were never released and never accounted for.

On April 7, 2016, Jaish al-Islam's new branch in Aleppo reportedly launched a chemical attack on Kurdish defense forces, with a yellow gas (but not chlorine-color, per video) that had "a strange smell" (not a smell like regular bleach), that caused "convulsions, spasms and vomiting" and, by some reports at least, caused nine deaths. Since key indicators of sarin were lacking, chlorine was almost universally suspected. Jaish al-Islam answered the controversy with a formal public statement later the same day explaining a commander was in trouble for using "prohibited weapons" and acting "contrary to the charter of Jaysh al-Islam," and would be punished. (RT) It was naturally read as an admission, and not just by Kurdish and Russian sources. Only later did JaI spokesman Majdi Nema (now jailed in France) explain the commander had just made some innocent modifications to a rocket which they didn't authorize - not usually worth a public press release. As for the gassing incident they seemed to refer to - apparently it was no comment then, before, and ever since. (ACLOS, the denial)

Exactly 2 years later happened to be JaI's last day operating even in Douma, April 7, 2018, when they finally surrendered "only because" some 35 likely relatives of a rival rebel commander named Bakriyeh were killed by sarin, chlorine and found piled near sinks with strange facial stains, wet hair, and not a red eye among them. Plus, early reports said, some 7 other people and at least 150, maybe 180-190 or 200 total were killed by the sarin. But then only chlorine could be found, and after a few days it turned out "at least 42" were killed. Then 187 dead was sworn to a year later by "Abu Azzoun," a sectarian "civil society leader" in Douma who worked with JaI and was central in managing the corpses of those killed in the 2013 alleged sarin attack - a real insider who would know best. (Monitor masterlist for 4/7/18) 

In both cases (2018 - 2013), there's compelling evidence to suggest many or all the victims were held prisoner, before they were deliberately killed in gas chambers. And it's the local "Shabiha" and "Assad's dogs" that get imprisoned, no matter where those rockets fell and what was actually in them. To Islamists, these phrases don't always mean soldiers; in Latakia, also August 2013, 30+ soldiers, 115+ non-combatant men, 57+ women, 18+ children (mostly boys = more "men") were killed in the Turkish-backed raid by a united front of Islamist groups including Al-Nusra and ISIS, but somehow "rebel" sources bragged of wiping out 175-200 of "Assad's men" and zero civilians (but they did openly "rescue" every "abandoned" person they found, that wasn't too crippled to hassle with)

And ... we're getting to the point and the days around that epic massacre and those 2013 videos: German researcher einparteibuch found an odd note On 13th of August 2013 on the Facebook page of "Abu Hamza from Duma“ (this Abu Hamza al-Doumani?) where he relates (as the screengrab says, basic gist) "The final steps in preparing a new surprise for the regime are about to be completed - pray for the success of your brothers - may Allah grant us and all Muslims victory" The attached photo was said to show "Zahran Alloush posed with other insurgent leaders in Turkey" where - photo aside - I believe he was for a big gathering of regional commanders, and he was the main one for Eastern Ghouta.

This always lined up intriguingly with a detailed report by terrorism expert Yosef Bodansky, which hasn't been confirmed or refuted that I know, so let's neither ignore nor get hung up on the possible relevance of this:

On Aug. 13-14, Western-sponsored opposition forces in Turkey started advance preparations for a major and irregular military surge. Initial meetings between senior opposition military commanders and representatives of Qatari, Turkish, and U.S. Intelligence [“Mukhabarat Amriki”] took place at the converted Turkish military garrison in Antakya, Hatay Province, used as the command center and headquarters of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and their foreign sponsors. Very senior opposition commanders who had arrived from Istanbul briefed the regional commanders of an imminent escalation in the fighting due to “a war-changing development” which would, in turn, lead to a U.S.-led bombing of Syria.

A development like ... Obama's Red Line being crossed, causing a Libya-style "no fly zone," the fall of Assad and Zahran Alloush leading the march on Damascus? Maybe. He looks excited there already.
Alloush would be a regional commander being told about this, but it could be after he proposed the idea to them in the first place, by special invitation up in Istanbul. Maybe he refused to specify, even to them, just what the surprise would be. Whatever it was, it may have happened around August 20/21. Bodansky: "Indeed, unprecedented weapons distribution started in all opposition camps in Hatay Province on Aug. 21-23. ... Opposition officials in Hatay said that these weapon shipments were “the biggest” they had received “since the beginning of the turmoil more than two years ago”."

Now, would people like that film themselves launching their flock of birds, those Ababeel rockets as part of their Shrieking Wind plan to take over Syria, just to do at least part of it in a fake-seeming way and then - perhaps in time - have it released in a fake-seeming way, to sort of both admit and deny the crime in one move?

I say sure, they might well do that and I don't see who else has the motive and capability. As we question the peshmerga origin via killed terrorists, we have a likely leak of the videos there in mid-September - only after U.S. intervention was called off. A regime fake to implicate the terrorists and prevent attacks on themselves ... could have had better timing. Maybe whoever released it then, and not earlier, had a change of heart around then - as seems likely Alloush and JaI would.

Add 3/20: Prior map of impacts per Local Coordination Committees, Human Rights Watch, and us, adding ref. numbers for HRW, and expanded to include the likely firing spot. Then I took the two angles related by Al-Jazeera from 2 unique but unplaced impacts, ran from our new spot. As it seemed, they point to the right basic area, and may indicate LCC5/HRW6 and HRW9 (I wouldn't expect them to be right about that, but if so, ok). Also by now a consistent arc of attack is apparent - the part of a circle with the weapon at center, its range as a radius (drawn in gold below, but a little way out for labeling clarity). Of 12 reported impacts (14+ locations provided or found), NINE of them fit this pattern so nicely. The remainder are still unclear, but as given, are all within that zone marking the general arc of attack. 

Add 4/18: New post with some more interesting comparisons between the videos, the burned field, and rocket trajectory analysis