Removing Assad’s Chemical Weapons

Hear from Jerry Smith as he recalls what it was like to be part of the team tasked with removing Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s declared chemical arsenal.

The use of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war has been a key element of the international geopolitical debate for the past decade. As the first reports of use emerged in 2012, Syria was not signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and therefore not subject to that treaty’s inspection and verification regime.

After the infamous 2013 nerve-agent attacks, and under threat from the US and its allies, Syria (assisted by Russia) came to the negotiating table. Four weeks later, with President Assad’s declared arsenal verified and disabled, the process of removal began.

At this time, Jerry Smith was working for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). He was the Head of Operations for the joint OPCW-UN team that deployed to verify, disable and remove Assad’s chemical weapons. In this talk, he will outline how the international community sought to eliminate Syria’s capability, and the key operational issues they faced along the way.

About the speaker

Jerry Smith

Jerry Smith served in the British Army as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) officer in the 1990s. After a few years in commercial EOD and humanitarian de-mining, he took up a management role at Porton Down. Initially focusing on counter-terrorism and the de-militarisation of legacy chemical weapons in the UK, he moved into counter-proliferation, working with the Foreign Office to reduce the threat from biological weapons on the international stage.

This led to working in the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) as a weapons inspector. He led field operations for their initial missions and was subsequently the Deputy Head of Mission to verify, disable and remove Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s declared chemical arsenal.