Syria crisis: The challenge of destroying Assad's chemical weapons

While Russia's plan to place Syria's chemical weapons under international control faces itsown diplomatic hurdles, defence and weapons experts are pointing out the immenseand practical challenges of dismantling such a program.

The process sounds relatively simple and would be carried out in a few phases. After the terms of weapons inspections in Syriahave been agreed upon, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would have to declare his stockpiles to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weaponsthegroup in charge of implementing the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Then, the OPCW would send inspectors into Syria to verifyAssad's declaration. After that, the process of dismantling the chemical weapons plants and the declared stockpiles would begin.

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But Dina Esfandiary, a WMD expertwith the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies,told CBC News,"there'sa whole slew of problems that comes along with that."

Little is known about Syria's chemical weapons programs. Assad is believed to have the largest arsenalin the Middle East and thefourthlargest inthe world.

Production sites are believed to be located near some of the main cities, including Damascus. Storage facilities,thought to contain hundreds, if not thousandsof tonnes of sarin, VX, tabun and mustard gas,are scattered around the country.

The actual disposal processdepends on the type of weapon or agent that needs to be destroyed, Paul Walker, director ofenvironmental security and sustainability for Global Green USA, toldCBC's The Current with Anna Maria Tremonti.

For smaller stockpiles of weapons, explosive destructive systems or 'bang-boxes', in which weapons are placed and explodedwithin a reactor, can be used. But the construction oflarger incinerator sitescan cost billions, he said.

"This is not going to be a very easy process,"Walker said.

"First of all it's very expensive to do, if you want to do it right. And by doing it right I mean not endangering yourworkers, not endangering neighbouring communities. You don't want to just go in and just explode theseweapons."

It's also risky anddifficult just moving the chemicals, depending on the state in which they're in. And if they're weaponized, they're all the more dangerous to transfer.

Never been done during a war

Adding to these challenges thiskind of operation has never been donein an environment where a brutal civilwar continues to wage.

"It's hard enough to do this ina peaceful country, but when the inspectors are likely to become a target, it just makes it a million times more difficult," Esfandiary said.

Transportingsome of the weapons to a containment area where they could be destroyed would be impossible because all the convoys would be targets, she said.

As for a time frame, dismantling a chemical weapons program is not something that can be done quickly.

"People have been talking about this happeningASAP. Well we're not even talking months here, we're talking years," Esfandiary said.

In2004, Libya announced it would give up its WMDs but by 2011 only half of its stockpiles of mustard gas had been destroyed, she noted.

Walker said the U.S hasbeen destroying its own chemical weapons stockpiles for the past 23 years, and the process continues.

Need to do challenge inspections

Bruce Bennett, a senior defence analyst with RAND corporation, a global policy think tank, said forinspectorsto have any confidence, "they're going to need to be able to do challenge inspections and beable to say: 'We just got some information that pointX may have chemicals andwe need to go look.' They're going to be doing that for years."

And in the end, how would the international community know that all the weapons are contained?

"It's pretty simple. We don't. We have to trust [Assad]," Esfandiary said."The inspectors go in and they check everything but the inspectors only have access to what they're given access to. They are allowed to check out the sites that he declares.

"Syria's apretty big country.[The inspectors]can take a map and go and see if they can discover anything else. But short of that and unless they have a significant tip from a Western intelligence organization, it will be difficult for them to uncover stockpiles that haven't been declared or that are deliberately being hidden."

As the diplomatic process drags on, Assadcouldbe altering the documentation of the program to make it look like only 200 tonnes of chemicals were produced when in fact 600 or 1,200 tonnes may have been produced, Bennett said.

"Initially,Assad is most likely to sendpeople to places where theres one 55 gallon drumof chemicals or something like that, where he's not showing much of anything and probably claiming that 'well, that's much of what I've got' while hiding a bunch of other things," Bennett said.

But bothEsfandiary andBennett said that despite all the challenges, it's still a plan worthy to pursue.

"Were dealing with trying to find the least miserable option. There arent any good options here," Bennett said."And asdifficult asthis might be, if Syria at least does a fairly modest job by abiding by the proposal, thats probably better than what we can be secure doing with an attack."

Esfandiaryadded she is very skeptical about this plan and the likelihood of it being implemented in such a way that would be useful to the international community.

"Having said that, ifthe international community finds itself in a situation where it's able to degrade even a small portion of Syria's chemical weapons capability then surely it's a risk worth taking."