Exactly 26 years ago, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) entered into force on April 29, 1997. However, over the years, the watchdog has lost its veneer of impartiality and transparency, becoming a convenient instrument in the West's geopolitical games.

"The OPCW was established in 1997 to effectively end the production, the stockpiling, and the transfer of chemical weapons and of course the use of chemical weapons in a war situation and the elimination of any existing stocks of these weapons over time," Vanessa Beeley, an independent investigative journalist who specializes on the Middle East and Syria, told Sputnik. "But in my opinion, what we see with the OPCW, as we see with the International Criminal Court (ICC), is even if these organizations were originally set up with the best intentions, eventually they are infiltrated, they are influenced, and compromised by the powerful countries, particularly among the neocolonialist Western blocs, into following an agenda or providing corroboration of an agenda. And of course, we've seen that on numerous occasions with the OPCW, and more recently with the ICC.”

What is the OPCW?

Following the end of the Cold War, the OPCW was created to implement the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), the world’s first multilateral chemical weapons disarmament agreement. The collapse of the USSR and subsequent geopolitical changes saw the international community launch multiple disarmament initiatives as a new post-Cold War world order emerged. Still, it appears the initiative was long overdue, given the destruction prompted by chemical arms.

The First World War saw the first massive use of chemical arms by Germany during the Second Battle of Ypres (April 22 – May 25, 1915), in Belgium. The German forces fired more than 150 tons of lethal chlorine gas, which resulted in tens of thousands of casualties.

On August 6, 1915, Germany used poisonous gas against Russian troops at Osowiec Fortress. The battle rose to prominence and became known as the Attack of the Dead Men as the surviving soldiers of the Russian infantry regiment managed to counter-attack the Germans despite coughing up blood and bits of their own lungs. By the end of the First World War, around 124,200 tons of chlorine, mustard, and other chemical agents had been released, with over 90,000 soldiers dying in agony due to exposure to them.

Despite the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibiting the use of "asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases," global players continued to develop them. During the Second World War, Nazi Germany used poisonous gases to murder millions of people in gas vans or stationary gas chambers.

The War in Vietnam saw yet another massive use of chemical arms. US military forces used Agent Orange, a powerful herbicide, as part of its herbicidal warfare program, Operation Ranch Hand, between 1961 and 1971. In addition to huge environmental damage, Operation Ranch Hand caused severe health problems among the Vietnamese population.

Over the course of the Cold War, world powers amassed considerable stockpiles of chemical arms, which they agreed to eliminate in 1997, with 192 states supporting the initiative. For instance, Russia completed the full destruction of the 39,967 metric tons of its chemical weapons in September 2017. The US has yet to destroy its chemical stockpiles.

In 2013, the OPCW received the Nobel Prize for Peace for extensive efforts in eliminating chemical weapons. However, the Syrian War has exposed the other, darker side of the international organization.

OPCW, Syria War, and Chemical Provocations

The Syrian War that saw the West's military assistance and weapons deliveries to jihadi rebels in a bid to oust the nation's legitimate President Bashar al-Assad amid the infamous Arab Spring in the Middle East became a litmus test for the OPCW.

Since the beginning of the conflict in 2011, the US government has threatened the legitimate Syrian government with a full-scale attack if it uses chemical arms. Still, there have been no confirmed cases of the Syrian Arab Army's use of any sort of poisonous substances.

On March 19, 2013, jihadi rebels used makeshift projectiles containing the sarin nerve agent in Khan al-Assal near Aleppo, killing 28 people and injuring over 130. In August 2013, jihadi opposition carried out another chemical provocation with sarin in Eastern Ghouta, a Damascus suburb. The chemical attacks came in handy for Washington, providing it with a pretext for an invasion. However, Russia intervened.

It has been reported that in September 2013, President Barack Obama called off US airstrikes in Syria in a last-minute decision after Moscow and Damascus proposed dismantling Syrian chemical arms stockpiles altogether under the auspices of the UN and OPCW. Between October 2013 and September 2014, a joint OPCW-UN mission together with the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad removed and destroyed all of the nation's chemical weapon stockpiles.

"In 2013, the OPCW and Russia effectively collaborated to destroy any stocks of Syrian chemical weapons," said Beeley. "But what the OPCW has never done, in my opinion, is to properly investigate the potential of supplying chemical weapon ingredients to the terrorist groups, including ISIS*, operating in Syria, who are known to have used chemical weapons. Myself, I was present during the use of chlorine gas against civilians in Hama; I think it was in 2019. And that attack, to my knowledge, has never been investigated by the OPCW. So in Syria, what we see is a very clear bias from the OPCW against the Syrian government, against the Syrian government’s allies, which includes Russia."

OPCW and Staged Douma Incident

Even though the OPCW confirmed that the Syrian government eliminated its chemical weapons stockpiles in 2013, it immediately sided with the US and its NATO coalition when the Douma chemical incident occurred in 2018.

On April 7, 2018, jihadi rebels claimed Syrian government forces had conducted a chemical attack in Douma. The incident was hastily blamed on Damascus by the Trump administration to justify massive US and allied strikes on Syrian government targets before any investigation into the matter could take place.

The OPCW backed the US narrative in its 2019 report, but it was soon dented by a WikiLeaks bombshell release as well as OPCW Fact Finding Mission (FFM) whistleblower accounts indicating that the chemical watchdog had suppressed evidence showing that the Douma incident was staged to pin the blame on Damascus as the latter was gaining ground at the time. International investigative journalists and political observers stepped forward busting inconsistencies in the US narrative and the OPCW's apparent cover-up.

"The OPCW was really weaponized against Syria," Beeley underscored. "I think it's very clear who benefits from these claims of chemical weapon use by the Syrian government, very much as it was clear who benefited from the idea that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, or that Gaddafi was giving Viagra to his troops in Benghazi to carry out mass rape operations. Who is benefiting? The US, UK, EU countries that have waged the regime change war against Syria since 2011.”

Strange Bedfellows: White Helmets and OPCW

The White Helmets, a UK-backed quasi-humanitarian group linked to terrorist elements in Syria, are believed to be the perpetrators of the Douma chemical hoax. Over the past several years, Beeley has conducted her own private investigation into the White Helmets and exposed the group's hypocrisy and ties with terrorist elements in Syria.

"The White Helmets were exclusively embedded with the armed groups, including, of course, Al-Qaeda* and ISIS* inside Syria, and they moved everywhere with those armed groups," Beeley said. "In other words, when there was a liberation campaign and amnesty and reconciliation deals were brokered between the armed groups and the Syrian government, the White Helmets never took the amnesty. They always moved with the dominant armed groups, which, as I said, were always Al-Qaeda under whatever rebranding they were given. And they moved with the groups, they partnered the groups, they shared facilities with those groups. Of course, they stand accused by Syrian civilians who lived under the occupation of armed groups of various crimes, including the abduction of children, running organ trafficking rings, theft, murder, torture, detention of civilians, and profiting from the money and the equipment that was coming in to these armed groups who we partnered in the war against Syria.”

At the same time, the White Helmets, generously funded by Western governments through a former British intelligence officer who later died under strange circumstances, have had close connections with the OPCW since 2018, according to Beeley.

"Indeed, they do have, and in fact since 2018 – so one assumes since the alleged Douma chemical attack, the White Helmets have actually developed their relationship with the OPCW, just as, of course, the OPCW now has the mandate to attribute blame through the inspection teams and investigation teams, which of course, was considered by Russia to be beyond its mandate," she said. "It shouldn't have that mandate. Russia vetoed that. And since they've been basically given the mandate to attribute blame, the reality is that the White Helmets have increased their collaboration with the OPCW. They now have a dedicated employee working directly with the OPCW to provide supposed evidence of chemical weapon use by the Syrian government, in other words, to increase the potential of attributing blame for chemical weapon use against the Syrian government."

According to Beeley, this same employee, Radi Saad, writes regular posts on the UK Foreign Office blog. The investigative journalist raises the question: "If the White Helmets are the primary source of evidence for these alleged chemical attacks, and this organization is funded by the British government, amongst others that are funding the war against Syria, and they are now basically in bed with the OPCW that are also being influenced and funded by the same government, one has to raise the question: isn't there a huge conflict of interest here?"

Doesn't this mean that the White Helmets are basically being used as a tool to provide the evidence for the OPCW to corroborate what the West needs in order to criminalize Syria and to continue with the sanctions, with the hybrid war pressure against the country?

OPCW's 2023 Douma Report: Repetition of Old Lies

The West completely suppressed OPCW whistleblower accounts of the Douma incident: in February 2023, the OPCW presented the results of its "investigation," claiming that the Syrian government was responsible for the use of chemical weapons in Douma in 2018. This is hardly surprising, according to Beeley.

"These chemical attack narratives serve to criminalize in Western public perception the Syrian government and its Russian allies in particular, and enable further military intervention by proxy, on occasions for calling for a no-fly zone, for US occupation in the northeast of Syria, and the economic sanctions, some of the most unprecedented, savage sanctions that have been imposed unilaterally against the Syrian people on the basis of these alleged assaults carried out by the Syrian government against the Syrian people," the investigative journalist pointed out.

"And of course, in the latest reports from the OPCW regarding the alleged chemical attack in Douma in 2018, we see that their reports have been entirely compromised and are a fraudulent, retrospective corroboration of the US, UK, and French foreign policy and unlawful aggression against Syria without any justification that the Syrian government had carried out the alleged chemical attack," she continued.

'OPCW Lacks Credibility'

Last month, Permanent Representative of Russia to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzia said that "almost any mention of the OPCW has been politicized in an anti-Syrian and anti-Russian spirit." Beeley agrees with this conclusion.

"If you go back to the second Iraq War, and this is probably the point at which the OPCW became compromised, when the then-director general, Jose Bustani, was threatened, intimidated by John Bolton when he was trying to procure permission to allow OPCW inspectors to go into Iraq to verify if there were weapons of mass destruction or not," Beeley said. "And, of course, what did that threaten to do? It threatened to derail the US narrative which was allowing them to bomb Iraq."

The investigative journalist expressed doubts about the credibility of OPCW reports and investigations given the organization's obvious bias. She argued that "until the OPCW opens its doors to a frank and open discussion with the dissident inspectors who are contesting the findings of the OPCW in Douma in Syria, it has no credibility." Beeley has drawn attention to the fact that the chemical watchdog silences its own inspectors and witnesses and puts obstacles in the way of transparency.

Similarly, the OPCW sided with the West in blaming the alleged poisoning of Sergey Skripal on Russia and, likewise, remained mum about the threat of the Kiev regime's chemical provocations in Ukraine and apparent use of poisonous substances by the Ukrainian military. 

"Why has [OPCW] demonstrated itself to have a complete bias against the perceived enemies of the US and the UK?" the British journalist asked. "You know, in this sense, any organization that has demonstrated obfuscation – and also we have to remember that retrospectively, the OPCW has effectively justified war crimes carried out by the US, UK, and France against Syrian civilians in Damascus, when Damascus was bombed before the OPCW inspectors had even managed to get into Douma to carry out their investigation. So therefore, you know, to a degree, the OPCW has to be considered an accessory to war crimes. And while it is considered an accessory to war crimes, until that is proven or disproven, how can it genuinely be considered to be carrying out an impartial role or adhering to its own mission statement?"

For more of Sputnik's exclusive analysis on the OPCW’s history and bias, check out our Telegram post here .

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