Talk:Barzah scientific research centre

Timmerman source
Is the Timmerman source even appropriate for Wikipedia? --- Another Believer ( Talk ) 02:53, 15 April 2018 (UTC)


 * No comment on its quality as a source in general, but for this article it is problematic. The Barzah site is mentioned only obliquely - "Syria is now believed capable of producing several hundred tons of CW agents per year. Four production sites have been positively identified, one located just north of Damascus, and the second near the industrial city of Homs. The third, in Hama, is believed to be producing VX agents in addition to sarin and tabun. Officials in Washington identified a fourth facility dedicated to the production of biological agents in Cerin, while Israeli intelligence is monitoring several additional "suspicious" sites." This is assuming the Barzah site is the one "located just north of Damascus". No other mention is made of this site, but the report covers CERS in some detail, tracing the Syrian organisation and its links with French and other European companies. Adding it on to here though is very WP:COATRACKY. The final sentence in the article is also problematic - "Per Timmerman's Weapons of Mass Destruction: The cases of Iran, Syria, and Libya, Russia had no role in developing this center". Timmerman makes no such statement, the best that can be said is that he does not say Russia had any role in developing it, and indeed nor does he say Nepal or Brunei did either, to name two other countries at random. This is very different to a direct statement that 'Russia did not have any role' - not that I think any is being implied anyway yet. I propose that the whole paragraph be removed, leaving the opening sentences. The article can be developed as more up to date sources are found that discuss the Barzah site specifically. 82.39.49.182 (talk) 22:50, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
 * The Timmerman info seems to mainly be about the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center as a whole, not the Barzah facility specifically. So the info should be taken out of this article and merged into the SSRC article. Maybe this whole article should be merged into the SSRC article. I don't think we have a separate article for the Jamraya facility. Nurg (talk) 11:10, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't think we should merge the entire article, at least not yet, but we should remove poor sourcing for sure. I went ahead and removed this content. --- Another Believer ( Talk ) 14:24, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Is this the same place that was inspected by OPCW in Nov 2017?
See section 11: https://www.opcw.org/fileadmin/OPCW/EC/88/en/ec88dg01_e_.pdf Keith McClary (talk) 14:59, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I think it highly likely that it is the same place. Nurg (talk) 09:09, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Title
Should this page be moved to Barzah Research and Development Center or Barzah Scientific Research Facility? --- Another Believer ( Talk ) 22:02, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
 * What is its proper name in Arabic? That will give a clue as to the equivalent in English. The current source for the name is Metro - that is inadequate without corroboration from other, more reliable, sources. Nurg (talk) 09:19, 20 April 2018 (UTC)