West Faces Challenge in Moving Syrian Chemical Arms Through Battlefields

A plan announced over the weekend for getting the bulk of Syria’s chemical weapons out of the country in coming weeks has raised major concerns in Washington, because it involves transporting the weapons over roads that are battlegrounds in the country’s civil war and loading them onto a ship that has no place to go.

Khalil Ashawi/Reuters

Syrian rebels took up positions inside a damaged house last week in Deir al-Zour, in eastern Syria. There are fears of attacks on shipments of chemical arms.

Security for the shipments is being provided entirely by Syrian military units loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, who has surprised American officials with how speedily he has complied with an agreement brokered by Russia to identify and turn over his chemical weapon stockpiles. Intelligence analysts and Pentagon officials say the shipments will be vulnerable to attack as they travel past the ruins of a war that has raged for two and a half years.

Asked over the weekend what the backup plan would be if the chemical weapons components were attacked by opposition forces linked to Al Qaeda, or even elements of Mr. Assad’s own forces, a senior American official said: “That’s the problem — no one has attempted this before in a civil war, and no one is willing to put troops on the ground to protect this stuff, including us.”

Another official noted that the choice now facing the United States and other nations was to “either leave the stuff in place and hope for the best, or account for it, get it out of there, and hope for the best. That’s the ‘least worst’ option.”

A range of current and former administration and Pentagon officials discussed the risks of moving the Syrian chemical munitions on the condition of anonymity. Most were reluctant to even disclose their concerns, because of the delicacy of the continuing operations to clear the country of chemical weapons. Even if the chemicals make it safely to a Syrian port and are loaded on cargo ships to be taken out of Syrian territory by the deadlines set in the agreement — Dec. 31 for the most critical material, Feb. 5 for most of the rest — the problems would hardly be over.

On Friday, Albania turned down an appeal by the United States to destroy the weapons on its territory, after thousands of Albanians took to the street in protest. Norway rejected an earlier request, saying it did not have the expertise or the facilities to destroy the weapons. The issue caused a major political dispute there as well.

As a result, Syria’s chemical weapons material may be on the high seas for a long time, as officials seek a country willing and able to destroy it. Already there are fears that the cargo ships bearing the material could become the weapons equivalent of a barge loaded with garbage that left Long Island in 1987 but could not find a place to unload for four months. American law prohibits the importation of chemical weapons for destruction here, and Russia says it is still overwhelmed by the task of destroying its own stockpiles.

The more immediate concern is that over the next six weeks, the material — more than 600 tons of precursor chemicals, mostly stored in one- and two-ton containers — will present a huge, slow-moving target for the Syrian opposition groups at war with the Assad government — and sometimes in conflict with one another.

“The transportation stage of any operation is usually a critical, vulnerable stage,” a senior Defense Department official said.

The Syrian military appears to understand the challenge. Over the weekend, there were reports of fighting along the highway that links Damascus with the coast. Much of the area, near the Lebanese border, is mountainous and has been highly contested.

The original American idea was to avoid transporting the weapons at all. Early plans, developed more than a year ago, called for destroying the materials in place in Syria. But that would have required a major presence of outside troops, and there were numerous environmental hazards. It also would have taken years to build the necessary facilities.

Thought was also given to flying the chemicals out of their sites, but that would have carried other risks, American officials said.

Instead, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, or O.P.C.W., which announced the plan for removing the material late on Friday, is expected to train Syrian forces to package, seal and safeguard the containers for transportation in truck convoys to the port from 23 declared weapons sites. Then the organization has to oversee the maritime voyage — assuming that a destination can be arranged.

The plan “sets ambitious milestones to be met by the government of Syria,” Ahmet Uzumcu, the director general of the disarmament organization, said Friday. “This next phase will be the most challenging, and its timely execution will require the existence of a secure environment for the verification and transport of chemical weapons.”

Under an agreement reached in September, Russia and the United States are to work closely with the disarmament agency and Syrian officials to develop a plan for “the security of the monitoring and destruction mission.” But the accord noted the “primary responsibility of the Syrian government in this regard.”

The effort will be helped by the fact that the precursor chemicals are useless as weapons before they are mixed. But as one senior American official said, “The biggest challenge we’re facing now is convoy security, from the sites to the port.”

Assessing the threat is not easy. Senior Qaeda leaders in Pakistan and Qaeda-linked elements in Syria have made clear their desire to seize precursor chemicals, possibly to develop their own chemical arsenal. But one former senior White House official said that the threat posed by the extremist militants, while not inconsequential, was moderated by intelligence reports that they were neither well trained nor well equipped to deal with the highly toxic materials.

“This material would obviously be a target for any opposition element,” one senior Defense Department official said. “But we have seen reporting — both O.P.C.W. and others — that indicates the regime is serious about security.”

Moreover, a former senior White House official said that while relying on the Syrian government for security is not an ideal solution, the Syrians have shown surprising prowess in the past year in moving and consolidating their chemical weapons stocks around the country, to prevent them from falling into rebel hands. In addition, the former official said, Russia has an incentive, as an ally of the Assad government, to help ensure that the chemical agents are disposed of safely.

Iraq and Afghanistan have given militant groups more than a decade of experience in mounting attacks on convoys, using improvised roadway bombs, small arms and mortar strikes. American officials note, however, that attacking a convoy to kill and injure was not as complex as attacking a convoy to seize its cargo without damaging it.

“Al Qaeda is known more for brute force, not finesse,” one military officer said. “As you can imagine, grabbing chemical weapons would most definitely require finesse.”

By DAVID E. SANGER, THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT

A version of this article appears in print on November 18, 2013, on page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: West Faces Challenge in Moving Syrian Chemical Arms Through Battlefields.