Sigrid Kaag Takes on Syria’s Chemical Weapons

In August 2013, the Syrian regime launched a chemical weapons attack on rebel-held neighborhoods outside Damascus that killed more than 1,400 people.

At the time, few foreign policy experts would have predicted that just one year later the Assad government would peacefully surrender all of its declared stockpile of chemical weapons.

Many factors contributed to that remarkable disarmament, but the leadership of Sigrid Kaag was instrumental. A seasoned Dutch diplomat, Under Secretary General Kaag has for the past year served as head of the joint Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons-UN mission to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons.

During an interview before a Belfer Center director’s lunch in September, the woman whom Assad officials have said is “more man than any man” was characteristically modest about OPCW’s achievement. “Nobody ever suggested [that] in addressing chemical weapons we have solved the wider story of Syria. Far from it.” If you’re a Syrian parent, she explained, you don’t really care how your son or daughter gets killed—whether by chemical or conventional weapons.

Still, she recognizes the substantive and symbolic value of her mission’s success. The stockpile’s eradication, she says, reflects a “very tangible commitment by the international community” and a unique confluence of technical resources and political will that could energize future global efforts.

“The almost impossible deadlines,” Kaag said, meant “we couldn’t waste a second….We were on message, on mission, looking for results that you can measure.”

Kaag’s work is not done. The rise of ISIL makes the prospect of chemical weapons making their way into the hands of extremist groups all the more acute. “[O]ur instruments and our policies and our ability to ensure compliance…obviously need to be ratcheted up significantly,” Kaag said. “We’re living in an era where a number of extremist groups declare that the ends justify the means.”

Kaag is anxious about Syria’s future. Citing “tremendous destabilization” in a society disrupted by over 9 million refugees and the “pain and hurt and violations” of a civil war with nearly 200,000 dead, Kaag says it will take a long time for the country to rebuild and heal. Its duration may depend on the international community being as committed to Syria’s rebuilding as it was to its chemical disarmament.