Ghouta 2013: Eliot Higgins Replicates UN-OPCW's Fake Findings

June 11, 2020 

edits 6/13

He did WHAT?

The "Open Source Intelligence" investigators at Bellingcat brag of being "particularly significant for advancing narratives of conflict, crime, and human rights abuses." In line with their funding and support, these are generally the same narratives pushed by the US and UK governments in Syria, Ukraine and beyond. As explored in some detail here, they have claimed and then denied "partnership" with OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons), have likely been a source of some of the OPCW FFM's zaniest findings, and promote blind faith in those findings while eagerly helping their management to discredit internal dissenters.

Earlier this year Bellingcat founder and executive director Eliot Higgins released a self-authored book I Am Bellingcat (not exclusively, of course), which boasts of his (and others') adventures in narrative advancement. A fairly minor point but fit for inclusion was his work confirming their rocket trajectories in 2013 Ghouta sarin attack, by which the Syrian government was blamed for killing over 1,000 civilians.  

The findings, in review: in report A/67/997–S/2013/553, there was just one reading offered by the UN-OPCW joint mission for 3 visited sites in Eastern Ghouta, found at "Impact site number 4 (Ein Tarma)." Here the rocket engine with "no form of lateral bending" was found to point "precisely in a bearing of 285 degrees" or reversed, it was fired at "105 degrees, in an East/Southeast trajectory." But that's plainly, evidently very far off, as I first explained here a few years back, and better in a forthcoming report (see here (link f/c) for the TWO new reports). At 285 it would be just 8° from parallel with this wall running 277°, but to most eyes it's closer to perpendicular than parallel. What do your own eyes say?

At right: some early readings for the first 2 located impacts, site 4 and a nearby field impact we call "field." I give color codes for estimates from open sources, visually explained, verifiable or falsifiable (note some are lines, some ranges). The one never explained that we were just supposed to trust is shown in white. At site 4 colored estimates run up to 60° different from the UN-OPCW white line, but the best reading in magenta (see reports) is also the closest - about 30° different, give or take 2 degrees. "Precisely," they said.

Higgins' yellow line for "field" impact: apparently not trying for real precision, he called "north" but perhaps never drew this vertical line to exactly 360° (I thought I'd seen it drawn in red, but can't relocate). We'll come back to his method and sources below. That's reasonable, not far off from other readings, but magenta is again best, and quite different. This is an oddity of an irregular impact, as explained in the report analysis. In brief, the forward bend is also to one side, so misleading - the trench it dug right before stopping is a better measure and points more to the NW as shown.)

Most thinking has been geared towards a single firing spot, and we can see the yellow and white lines are not going to remotely converge - they're ~75° different, nearly perpendicular! And again, the white is not remotely close to any estimate that can explain itself. As far as I can see, Higgins has ventured no estimate for the crucial site 4 to compare. He'll want to agree with the official decree, but does so by silently deferring and adding no further detail. 

Higgincats' self-congratulation in his book earned some confused but enthusiastic praise from ally Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, pseudo-academic and regime change activist. The Day the World Stood Still: How Assad’s worst chemical weapon attack changed history was run Feb. 23 at "Newlines Magazine" where he's somehow a senior editor, and where the news ... it's on some lines all right.

Ahmad noted Higgins' identification of the "Volcano" rockets used in the Ghouta attack, which was important work at the time. But after reading the book, he learned that Eliot's "other major finding was confirming the trajectory of the rockets." Here's the full paragraph, to be broken down and digested below:

Confirming that nonsense sounds like something Eliot would try to do, but his original "north" estimate would be of little help. How did he also confirm the white line pointing almost perpendicular to that? What other important work did he do that I had missed? I had to dig in and find out.

The "UN" Found What?

Ahmad explains: 

"In Eastern Ghouta, [investigators] found rocket fragments that would help them profile the delivery mechanism. More importantly, by aligning two holes that a rocket had made as it pierced through a rooftop and hit a wall, they were able to establish its trajectory."

Joby Warrick mentions this in his Red Line book, which Ahmad also cites (included in online excerpt and check his commentary - and unresponsiveness). But at the time the investigators found "of the five impact sites investigated by the mission, three do not present physical characteristics allowing a successful study of the trajectories followed by the rockets involved, due to the configuration of the impact places." Actually both Moadamiya Impact sites 1 and 2 gave readings that were taken as one angle, and it was just two sites they didn't get readings for, both in E. Ghouta. Those were Impact Site 3 on a roof and site 5 at a vacant apartment. If they had a reading from the roof, it should be some kind of northwest as their photos show, and as Warrick heard. It's not clear why, but they denied that at the time.

We have located the roof site, a bit off the bottom left corner in the above image. Below it's pinned by Chris Kabusk from an image the photographer said was taken from that roof when he visited in 2013 (the man on crutches is not in the satellite view, obviously). It pans out: the scenery details at that site match w/a clear photo facing west taken in 2017, and w/videos from 2013 to the extent you can tell (see here, forthcoming reports). 

The hole in a west-facing wall and then the roof align to suggest an origin from the northwest. But it wasn't terribly amenable to precision; a very wide spread of angles seemed possible, with a moderate wedge north of center seeming more likely. This is the estimate from my own report, with site 4 noted with a 285° line, and for what it's worth, intersection between the two is barely possible at this level of open-mindedness. (again, it's not worth much - that's probably not site 3's trajectory and that 285 line is a fiction anyway)

So the UN-OPCW investigators reported just the one trajectory for E. Ghouta and it was grossly erred. But at the end of another error - a five-fold exaggeration of its operational range - that line intersected with the trajectories to the Western Ghouta impacts, inside a well-secured Syrian army base. As Human Rights Watch showed it in 2013 (right), it seems like a smoking gun discovery. As Ahmad put the point in his 2021 article: "the rocket trajectories from eastern and western Ghouta intersect over the Republican Guard base on Mount Qasioun," which he still considered "the U.N. mission’s most significant finding." 

First, that never was their finding. They did imply it to the point they may as well have said it, but they never really said intersection, or 10km. It was on observers like HRW, C.J. Chivers at the NYT, etc. to run that faulty line so far out and notice the intersection with the other line. 

Next, even the implication has been withdrawn. UN-OPCW mission leader Åke Sellström said in a December, 2013 press conference (after 16:00 in this video) that “we have consulted with experts and if you simulate the flight path, it seemed not to meet as may be indicated … from the report" (emphasis in original, gesturing 2 paths intersecting). Those experts could have been consulted sooner.

He was apparently referring to the "Volcano" rocket's range of about 2km, not the 10km needed for that theory. The shorter range was then nearing consensus, with former UN weapons inspector Richard Lloyd leading. Higgins had already accepted it (see below), and in that same press conference when Sellström was asked, he said 2km was a "fair guess." Lloyd and Postol's study would make news in January, 2014 and seal up the coffin on a 10km range. 

Perhaps Sellström  and those experts were aware they had also terribly messed up that trajectory reading, but that aspect remains unclear. Either way, the relevant people no longer support the claims of a Mt. Qasioun intersection. Yet to M.I.  Ahmad "Higgins’ other major finding" was to confirm it anyway and thus to clash with the current consensus. 

OK, How Does One "Replicate" That? 

Well, Mr. Ahmad isn't the best at following these things, but as he followed:

"To do this, he first established the precise location of the impact site by triangulating geographical features from five different images. Having determined the location, he used shadows in the photo to calculate the trajectory of the projectile. Tracing the rocket back on its flightpath, he established its likely launch site: a regime military installation."

Ahmad only gives "a regime military installation" as identified, but follows with "Indeed, the rocket trajectories from eastern and western Ghouta intersect over the Republican Guard base on Mount Qasioun." He must have meant that same base, and in this way, "Higgins had replicated the U.N. mission’s most significant finding without leaving his room." 

Ahmad seems totally unaware, or perhaps just unconcerned, that mission leader Sellström and Higgins himself had already denied this "most significant finding" over 7 years ago. Higgins was asked to clarify his amazing discovery. He chose not to respond, but he hasn't replied to me once anywhere since 2014. If he did answer, it would likely be to say Ahmad misunderstood but it's no big deal, an honest mistake in pursuit of truth and justice, and his excellent article should stay up as is just for having the right spirit.

HRI Mark helped answer my question with a book excerpt where Higgins explains "I used five separate images of the rocket site" - singular - to set the one location of the "field" impact. Then "using shadows in the photo, I determined the angle of the rocket." Tracing that azimuth back on Wikimapia (a useful tool indeed), he was able to make it to a label identifying what he calls "a Syrian military installation, largely surrounded by rebel-held territory." 

Citation 98 leads to an August 26 post at his Brown Moses blog, which is where he described the north firing spot as discussed above - not anything I had missed that actually agrees with the official angle.

It wasn't specific shadow angles but general field layout (rows running E-W) that led Higgins, like most, to miss the subtler clues and see a tube bent forward to point roughly south. "This would strongly indicate the munition was fired from the north," he explains with no more specific measure, but finds "6-8km away you'll find a number of military installations, connected by a 2km road to the 155th Brigade missile base. In one version of events, the Syrian National Coalition has claimed the rockets were launched from bases housing the 155th brigade." 

That base is some 3 times further than the rockets could fly, so this fails just on that count. As for angle, due north 360° is the single best reading of that, if not the only one, so I drew that in the image above. It's not so confirmatory of the UN-OPCW 285 - in fact at 75° different, it's nearly perpendicular, or almost halfway to opposite. Naturally it indicates a different brigade's base miles away from Mt. Qassioun so that it's not a very good replica, visually anyway.

Enter Al-Jazeera: Ahmad didn't mention this, but he could use some help here. Back in late 2013, the Qatari new channel wanted to help confirm the UN-OPCW work, and wound up agreeing - by deference - that Mt. Qassioun was used. But also sent a team who took measures that seem fairly good, but then they refused to map them out from the two actual spots (program on Youtube). The angles were similar to the UN-OPCW's 285 but different enough they were forced to propose a 2nd firing spot to make it seem to work, deciding SSRC Barzeh 5km to the northwest was it. That's a supposed sarin production facility, not a military base, but rockets could be launched from there. 

Here, they use a spot marked Zamalka, at or near the closest Volcano rocket impact. This is a real video frame, where I re-drew the lines carefully on a flat map and found nothing is what it says. They map 281 for the UN's 285, and run it just 7.2 km to a relocated Mt. Qassioun (red line), and map their own angles at a stand-in 317 (blue) to indicate SSRC. They actually found 290 and 307 - I drew those in green and 285 in white (again from a stand-in spot - it looks much different from the real spots). Also their 5km and 10km reference triangles don't seem quite even.

Now see how that all comes together: Al-Jazeera's two impacts placed (known, approximate guess), with their angles assigned convergently, plus OPCW site 4 corrected. With site 4 as reported and its confirmation at "field" by Higgins just shown, see where the other three actually point that's within range - almost exactly where 6 other placed impacts also point. And this pointing will be a bit inexact. "Burned field" - if you don't know, see forthcoming reports, or bottom of this post.

Later, in November, Higgins incorporated these Al-Jazeera angles as supporting the singular "direction the rockets came from" as given by the UN report. He didn't seem to get they were reporting different angles to a second firing spot. From the two located impacts at the time (site 4, field) as stand-ins for the two described but unplaced impacts, he traced those lines to a max range 2.6km and got pretty close to the right spot. 

If he had started those lines from the right spots a bit to the east and north, had set them to intersect rather than to diverge as shown here (to encompass more area, a bit of it government-controlled?), and if he didn't fudge the range so badly ... he would have pointed roughly to "our spot" as marked here in black. That's roughly the same burned field noted above, explanation below. 

In this November post Mr. Baggins concluded "So from all this information we can conclude that the Syrian military would have been capable of launching the August 21st Sarin attack, despite the short range of the Volcano rockets." Unstated but implied; the opposition would have been far more capable, or at least couldn't remotely be ruled out, as proponents of the fake Mt. Qassioun intersection theory insist on doing to the present day. 

See, at his best, Eliot Bagginscat can almost be pretty good, despite all the constraints of having to confirm politicized nonsense. That takes some Houdini-like flexibility. In November 2013 he was pointing almost to the actual firing spot. In 2021 he had wised up and was citing his earlier stuff instead for Mr. Ahmad to misread and amplify. Higgins silently approves, as he does of the OPCW's obvious original distortion. Sometimes a good partner just has to keep quiet 

* challenge tweet: @EliotHiggins, brains  @bellingcat or allies: knowing HRW's 9.6km 285 is impossible, Sellstrom said this [pic, 2km & no intersection], 285 was a typed number w/no exp., can you back it up, using visual OSINT as all these colored lines did? Starting at NO.

They left it at no until I bumped it a few days ago - and also since then.

Higgins' last word on range agreed with Sellstrom on a firing spot close to 2km out, not 10km. They should still confirm each other on that point and (silently) disagree with Ahmad. But his one trajectory estimate contradicted theirs by ~75°. And independently both single-trajectory estimates were wrong.

Did Higgins "replicate the U.N. mission’s most significant finding"? Probably not, but one of the more crucial finding - or lesson - that we can all draw from this is all the angles and distances and such details don't matter. They can be swapped at will and point  different ways at once, SO LONG AS the Ba'ath party "regime" gets blamed. And in that way, he did indeed show the same thing. 

The UN mission, OPCW's Scott Cairns, or whoever exactly picked an angle that pointed at Assad, or flashes he saw, so the rockets might originate there if their range was 5x greater. Bilbo Bellingscat imitated that with some reference to visual truth, but forced to a much different angle and fingering a different base just 3x out of range - same lesson, worth repeating even in 2021. And the Al-Jazeera people re-enacted the play on yet another line to another place just 2.5x out of range - same lesson: it's all about the regime blame, baby. 

That's a significant finding. And who knew it could be replicated so many different ways? Mr. Ahmad is to be praised for his praise of all this confirmatory flattery-by-imitation of such crucial finger-pointing. It can't all be true and most likely none of it is, but it's all in the right spirit.

Has Anyone Done it Right?

Yes. There's another and less constrained open-source investigation* effort that has finally paid off: Kabusk, Kobs, Wilf, myself, with some others. We agree with the experts on the basic 2km range, and we're closer to confirming OPCW reading - less than half as far off as Higgins was, or about 30°. Plus we have seven more visually located impacts and estimated trajectories from different NW angles, a 9th not exactly placed but surely close, all converging just over 2km out from the furthest one, well shy of the line of contact with government forces. 

And just a few meters from there we have a spot unusually burned on the scale expected, right next to all the same features seen in some videos ... claiming to show Liwa al-Islam jihadists launching volcano rockets in the Jobar area on August 21, to what would be the southeast. Same weapon, same area, same time and as we now learn, same site features and burned area as this field at the intersection of all those trajectories. Those videos almost surely depict the very launches linked to over 1,000 civilian deaths and confidently blamed on government forces. See also this post on initial spot identification, this one-image summary, forthcoming reports.

* Not OSINT: I don't want to call it "intelligence" until I start getting that Russian paycheck I was promised, or the Western government/establishment funding Bellingcat enjoys.