CONFLICT REPORT 1 – Syria: Chemical Weapons Attacks in Ghouta and Khan Saykhun

The CBAP Conflict Report, whose first issue you can download at the bottom of this page, is a new project aiming to provide on-point information about problems relevant to the selected conflict. Every issue of the Conflict Report will focus on specific aspects of a selected armed conflict raging around the world, analyse them and offer insight into their inner and outer dynamics.

The topic of this issue is the usage of chemical weapons in Syrian civil war. In particular, the issue inspects the different dimensions of the usage on two cases – the Ghouta attack in 2013 and Khan Shaykun attack in 2017. These two attacks were selected as they are the only two cases of the use of Sarin gas in the war, and therefore offer an ideal option for their comparison and analysis.

In this regard, the presented issue offers three texts providing an insight into distinct aspects of the chemical weapons attacks. The first article, by Radka Roháriková and Samo Žilinčík, addresses the question of the strategic significance of these attacks for the Syrian government. Then, the piece by Michal Myklín and Natália de Figueiredo Coelho Maciel looks into the difference in soft power usage between the responses to the two attacks. Finally, Jakub Kuchar and Tereza Novotná’s work analyses how the international actors constructed the discourse in relation to the selected incidents.

Branislav Mičko

CBAP Conflict Report Project Manager

To download the full document click here ⇒ SYRIA: CHEMICAL WEAPONS ATTACKS IN GHOUTA AND KHAN SAYKHUN

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