Julian was working on the Syria chronologies up until his death in April 2020. As such, they were works in progress and so we were left with a snapshot which included many questions and queries Julian had posed to himself during compilation.
There were two threads of the chronologies, one looking at chemical warfare reported from Syria (as in how such methods of warfare were being used) and the second looking at the international effort to eliminate chemical weapons from Syria, including examination of the materials and equipment declared by Syria in the context of what was known about the programme from open sources. The first of these threads was much more developed. In many cases, entries that were relevant to the second thread were inserted into the first simply as a convenient method of working.
NOTE TEXT FROM THIS POINT IN IS VERY DRAFT …
The chronologies on chemical warfare reported from Syria are in eight parts:
- Part 1: 1982 through 6 August 2013
- Part 2: 20 August 2013 through 9 September 2013
- Part 3: 10 September 2013 through 5 June 2014
- Part 4: 6 June 2014 through 22 December 2015
- Part 5: 5 January 2016 through 3 January 2017
- Part 6: 5 January 2017 through 3 July 2017
- Part 7: 5 July 2017 through 4 March 2018
- Part 8: 5 May 2018 through 19 May 2019
HSP Associates can access scans of Julian’s last versions of these parts via the master copies page.
A catalogue of Syria-related sources so far digitized from SHIB has been created as a work-in-progress document: Guide to SHIB sources on SyriaLATEST VERSION NEEDS UPLOADING.
In preparing these chronologies for publication, edits have been deliberately kept to a minimum. Julian worked on printouts rather than on the computer, so manuscript annotations he made to his last printouts have been added. Simple typos have been corrected and queries he inserted to check or confirm something have been resolved where this has been easy to do. Some entries were very clearly holding entries with more complicated questions and where these have been updated from Julian’s original this is clearly marked. In addition, Julian appended printouts of relevant sources to his “master copy” printouts with the intention of adding them to the chronologies. In cases where these have been added to the text this is clearly marked.
Note on internet sources: original links included … many still work but others have expired … where some links are easily updated, new links have been posted. UN document links have been updated as in recent years a new undocs.org system has been introduced that provides a means of giving permanent links to UN documents; thus it seemed sensible to convert Julian’s links to the permanent system.
… provision of the original links to other documents is to help readers seek some of the sources through services such as the wayback machine INSERT LINK. For this reason no date given for when the date link was accessed if there is an HSP capture link …
… note on HSP capture links … with many of the sources changing over time, it is important to be able to illustrate what sources said as events developed. This is particularly important as part of the aim of these chronologies is to understand how information trickles out when allegations of use are made and policy responses have to be formulated on this incomplete information. It is not possible for key lessons to be learned unless these sorts of information flows are understood.
There are many sources that are essentially ephemeral and if not captured can be lost forever (or at least challenging to find). Sometimes this is because stories are updated or more than one version is available; for example, the version available via the web may differ from that which was printed in a newspaper. This makes inclusion in a publication such as this of the versions that were captured by researchers invaluable so that readers can judge the interpretation of the sources themselves. Some of the captured materials are under copyright and relevant rights and privileges remain with those copyright holders. Inclusion of a link to a captured version of a publication should be interpreted only as assisting the reader in understanding development of the complex situations analysed in this publication and thus falling within fair use provisions. Nevertheless, if anyone feels their copyright has been infringed we would be happy to discuss this and remove specific materials on request.