‘Death was everywhere’: Syria’s chemical weapons victims share their trauma | Syria’s war news
Eastern Ghouta, Syria – Amina Habya was still awake when she heard screaming outside her window in Zamalka, Ghouta, on the night of August 21, 2013.
Bashar al-Assad’s regime had just fired rockets filled with sarin gas into Zamalka, and people were chanting, “Chemical weapons attack!” Chemical weapons attack!”
She quickly soaked a towel with water and placed it over her nose as she ran with her daughters and sons-in-law to the fifth – and highest – floor of her building.
Since chemicals are typically heavier than air, Habya was aware that the upper floors of buildings might be less contaminated.
They were safe, but Habya later discovered that her husband and son, who were not at home, as well as her daughter-in-law and two children who were sleeping, had all suffocated.
“Death was everywhere,” said 60-year-old Habya, sitting on a plastic chair outside her home, wearing a black abaya, black hijab and a black scarf around her face.
Habya still lives in Zamalka with her married daughters, remaining grandchildren and sons-in-law in a modest one-floor apartment. Their building is one of the few intact ones in the neighborhood.
The others were razed to the ground by regime airstrikes during the war.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, she held up a photo of eight children wrapped in black blankets, whose bodies were recovered and suffocated after the sarin gas attack.
Two of them were her grandchildren.
“This is my granddaughter and this is my grandson,” she told Al Jazeera, pointing to the two dead children in the photo.
According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, the attacks killed around 1,127 people and left 6,000 others suffering from acute respiratory problems.
“(Rescuers) found five dead people in a bathroom. Some (bodies) were found on the stairs and some on the floor. Others (died) while they were sound asleep,” Habya said.
A legacy of chemical warfare
On December 8, al-Assad fled to Russia with his family before opposition fighters could reach the capital.
For 13 years, he and his family waged a devastating war against their people rather than cede power to the popular uprising against them that began in March 2011.
Al-Assad’s regime systematically launched airstrikes on civilians, starved communities, and tortured and killed tens of thousands of real and perceived dissidents.
But the regime Use of chemical weapons – banned by international laws and conventions – was perhaps one of the darkest aspects of the conflict.
According to a 2019 Global Policy Institute report, the Syrian regime carried out 98 percent of the 336 chemical weapons attacks during the war, while the rest were attributed to ISIL (ISIS).
The confirmed attacks took place over a six-year period between 2012 and 2018 and typically targeted rebel-held areas as part of a broader policy of collective punishment, the report said.
Cities and districts in the Damascus suburbs were hit dozens of times, as were villages in governorates such as Homs, Idlib and Rif Dimashq.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights estimates that around 1,514 people suffocated in these attacks, including 214 children and 262 women.
In Eastern Ghouta, victims told Al Jazeera they still cannot shake the harrowing memory, even as they are filled with joy and relief that al-Assad is finally gone.
Joy and despair
Before the war, Habya says, she neither hated nor loved al-Assad, but she became increasingly afraid as the regime began brutally repressing protesters – and innocent civilians.
In early 2013, regime officials kidnapped her son and detained him while he prayed in his shop. Months later, they killed their son’s family in the chemical attack.
Habya never saw her son again and just learned that he died in the notorious Sednaya Prison in 2016.
Habya believes the regime has particularly repressed and persecuted civilians in Ghouta because the city is on Damascus’s doorstep and has been taken over by rebels.
“We were so scared,” Habya told Al Jazeera. “The name ‘Bashar al-Assad’ alone would instill fear in all of us.”
As the Assad regime committed more and more atrocities, then US President Barack Obama told reporters in 2012 that the use of chemical weapons in Syria was a “red line” and – if crossed – would force him to use military force in Syria .
After the sarin attack in August 2013 Obama was pressured to heed his warningwhich risked alienating his voters, who believed the United States should not get involved in foreign conflicts.
According to a Pew Research Center poll conducted between August 29 and September 1 of that year, only 29 percent of Obama’s Democratic base believed the U.S. should attack Syria, while 48 percent strongly opposed it. The rest was uncertain.
In the end, Obama called off the attacks and accepted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer to allow the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) – a United Nations body – to destroy chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria.
Although the OPCW had eliminated many chemical weapons that the Syrian government claimed to have by the completion of its first mission on September 30, 2014, the UN body said the government may have hidden some stockpiles.
Following the regime’s repeated use of chemical weapons in the war, the OPCW decided in April 2021 to suspend Syria from the Chemical Weapons Convention for failing to meet its obligations.
Hungry for justice
The lack of consequences against the regime angered Syrians, and many victims of the 2013 attack still yearned for justice.
Habya’s daughter Eman Suleiman, 33, stuck her head out the side of the door and told Al Jazeera she wanted the global community to help hold al-Assad accountable for his atrocities, suggesting that the International Criminal Court ( ICC) could indict him.
However, Syria is not currently a member of the Rome Statute, a treaty that gives jurisdiction to the court. The ICC can only open a case in Syria if the new authorities sign and ratify the statute or if the UN Security Council passes a resolution allowing the court to investigate atrocities in Syria.
Al-Assad and his closest associates could theoretically be charged with a long list of serious violations, including the use of chemical weapons, which could amount to crimes against humanity, according to Human Rights Watch.
In November 2023, French judges approved an arrest warrant for al-Assad, accusing him of ordering the use of chemical weapons in Eastern Ghouta.
The arrest warrant was issued based on the legal concept of “universal jurisdiction,” which allows any country to try suspected war criminals for serious crimes committed anywhere in the world.
“We want (al-Assad) to be tried, convicted and held accountable,” Suleiman told Al Jazeera.
“We just want our rights. Nothing less and nothing more. “In every country in the world, if someone kills another person, they will be held responsible,” she said.
But even if some form of justice is achieved, no verdict or prison sentence will bring back the dead, says Habya.
“God will punish every single oppressor,” she sighed.
Speak up
Five years after the first chemical attack, the Assad regime carried out another attack in Eastern Ghouta on April 7, 2018.
According to an OPCW report, chlorine gas was used this time, killing around 43 people and injuring many others.
Both al-Assad and his main ally Russia claimed Syrian rebel groups and rescue workers staged the attack.
They then allegedly intimidated and muzzled the victims after taking Eastern Ghouta days later.
Tawfiq Diam, 45, said regime officials entered his home a week after his wife and four children – Joudy, Mohamed, Ali and Qamr, aged between eight and 12 – died in the chlorine attack.
“They told us that they did not use chemical weapons, but that it was the terrorists and armed groups who did it,” Diam recalled angrily.
Diam added that regime officials brought with them a journalist from a Russian channel who asked for an interview about the chemical attack.
He said he told journalists and security officials what they wanted to hear under duress.
Now, he says, he can finally speak freely about the attack after living in fear of the regime for so long.
Habya agrees, saying that the fear she carried in her heart under al-Assad’s rule disappeared with his escape.
She remembers being overcome with joy as she asked dozens of young men outside her home why they were cheering and celebrating on December 8th.
“They told me: ‘Bashar the donkey is finally gone.”
