THE third attack allegedly using chemical agents on Khan Sheikhon calls for international investigation. Russia and Syria have denied responsibility and claimed that jets hit a jihadist stockpile. The image of seventy killed is a blueprint for further massacre. Every week an increasing number of civilians in Syria are killed or maimed. Khan Sheikhoun, Idlib, is however considered to be an event which crosses the red line. That is perhaps underrating the massacre in the past. Already about 5,00,000 have been killed and almost 11.5 million displaced as a result of the Syrian civil war. The Geneva Protocols signed as early as 1925 declared that chemical and biological weapons used in warfare are to be condemned by the civilized world. But such weapons have been used innumerable times in the last few decades. Only Nazi Germany desisted from engaging in such warfare as it feared that enemies had similar weapons. But Japan merrily used them against the Chinese Kuomintang and Communists. After World War II, chemical weapons have been used in Angola, North Yemen, Rhodesia, Iran and Iraq.
It is a misconception to think that modern warfare has become civilized. Nations which can produce and disperse chemical and biological agents use them sometimes. Syria is an opportunistic battlefield of great powers, local tyrannies and religious fundamentalists. None of the participants appear ready to acknowledge defeat. No compromise seems possible in that ravaged country. Peace and progress may be possible there if only one side wins. Till then Western powers seem interested only in aggravating the prolonged civil war in that country.