The Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi), a non-profit think tank established in 2003 in Berlin, recently published its report titled “Nowhere to Hide: The Logic of Chemical Weapons Use in Syria” in which they claimed there have been at least 336 confirmed chemical weapons attacks in Syria since the beginning of the civil war in 2011. They attributed an estimated 98 percent of the chemical attacks to the Assad regime. The rest were carried out by ISIS. At least 89 percent of the chemical attacks were carried out by the Syrian government using improvised chlorine munitions delivered by modified barrel or lob bombs against its own civilians.

“More than two-thirds of Syria’s population are internally or externally displaced, and opposition-held communities have been buckling and surrendering under the cumulative weight – and eventually the mere threat – of violence, including the use of chemical weapons,” the report said.

The report discussed the “red line” declared by former U.S. President Barack Obama in September 2013, threatening the Assad regime with reprisal for further use of chemical weapons. The report cited 227 confirmed chemical weapons attacks by the Assad regime after that declaration. In 2014, the Obama declared in his State of the Union Address that Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles had been destroyed. Despite this declaration, the report cites hundreds of chemical weapons attacks that took place after that date.

President Trump ordered a cruise missile strike against a Syrian airbase in April 2017 in response to a chemical weapons attack in Idlib that left at least 86 people dead, including 27 children, and which allegedly used the nerve agent sarin. In April 2018 the U.S., France and Britain launched a joint attack on Syrian facilities after a chemical strike on the city of Douman was reported to have killed at least 70 people