A No-Fly Zone is not a solution to the conflict, but it is a proven means to restrict the killing.
In early 2011 anti-regime protests started in Libya, and also in Syria. In both cases the protests were met with deadly force, and escalated into armed uprisings. In the case of Libya, the UN Security Council authorised international military intervention to protect civilians. In Syria, it did not.
Today Libya is not stable, but it is no longer a war zone. Syria is still at war, with no end in sight.
Of the more than two million Syrian refugees who have fled their country, over fifteen thousand have sought safety in Libya.
Military intervention has risks. In NATO’s seven-month bombing war in Libya, it’s likely forty to seventy civilians were accidentally killed by NATO bombs according to The New York Times. According to Amnesty International, the number may be between 55 to 115 civilians killed by NATO bombs.
Weigh that toll against the toll in Syria, where in just over a week of aerial bombing in one city, Aleppo, Assad’s military killed over 300 people. On December 24 the Telegraph reported that as many as 480 people were said to have been killed, most of them civilians, including 86 children.
By the 29th, BBC News reported 517 killed by aircraft bombing Aleppo in the two weeks since December 15. According to The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, 151 of them were children.
The numbers crippled and maimed are more rarely reported.
In November a report on the child casualties of Syria’s war gave a toll of 11,420 children killed to the end of August 2013, out of a total of 113,735 civilians and combatants killed. The majority of children, 7,557 individuals, were reported killed by explosive weapons. Of those, 2,008 cases specified aerial bombardment: that’s 19 per cent of all children where a cause was recorded.
In June, arguing against mounting a No-Fly Zone operation in Syria, US Army general Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that only about 10 per cent of casualties amongst the Syrian opposition were being inflicted by aircraft, the others being caused by artillery or direct fire.
How many lives lost by air attack does that 10 per cent indicate? It’s likely to mean over 10,000 people directly killed by aircraft.* And beyond direct killing, the forces of Assad and his allies also use aircraft for artillery spotting, and they rely heavily on air transport for resupply.
Syria has been an unwanted experiment in non-intervention, and the results are clear. Comparing events in Libya and Syria, there is objective evidence that while enforcing a No-Fly Zone early in the conflict might have led to civilian casualties numbering over a hundred, it would likely have prevented several thousands of killings by aircraft, and would have restricted the ability of Assad’s forces to kill on the ground.
It’s a truism that Syria’s war is complicated, and increasingly so. A No-Fly Zone is not a solution to the conflict, but it is a proven means to restrict the killing. The logic that eliminating chemical weapons from the conflict is a good thing applies all the more to conventional air bombardment as it has taken many more lives.
Enforcing a No-Fly Zone is not an easy option. It needs money, advanced technology, expertise, and bravery on the part of many of the volunteer combatants who have to see it through. Only a few nations have the resources needed to succeed.
Enforcing a No-Fly Zone is not politically easy. In the case of Syria, it requires willingness to defy Putin’s policy of obstruction in the UN Security Council. It requires making the case that defence of collective security requires and justifies this military action even in the absence of a Security Council resolution.
There is more than one way to impose a No-Fly Zone, from the regular air patrols seen in the 1990s over Iraq, to bombing air bases in response to attacks by Assad aircraft. A discussion in May at USIP explored some of the options and constraints.
The war is far from over. Assad’s air force may yet kill several thousands more, possibly tens of thousands more.
Syria still needs a No-Fly Zone.
Kellie Strom blogs at Air Force Amazons and tweets here
*The most recent UN report on violent deaths, commissioned by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, cross-referenced casualty counts by different organisations to arrive at a minimum count of 92,901 unique killings from March 15 2011 to April 30 2013. However this number includes combatants from both sides as well as civilians. One of the UN’s sources, the Violations Documentation Centre, or VDC, counts 10,182 violent deaths amongst regime forces up to April 30 2013, but there is likely to be up to half as many again from the other sources used for the report. (The VDC’s identifiable records for the period covered 62,386 individual killings, just over two-thirds of the total number identified in the UN report, a significant undercount.) On that basis, 10 per cent of non-government people killed would be approximately 7,700 killed by air attacks up to April 30 2013.
Today the VDC has records of 83,117 non-government people killed, 61,493 of them civilians and 21,606 anti-regime fighters. Its toll of regime forces killed is 12,018. Of the non-government people killed, 7,425 are identified as having been killed by warplanes. 1,017 are listed as killed by chemical weapons without means of delivery being named. 1,750 are listed as having been killed by explosions without shelling or aircraft being named. Others are listed as having been killed by shelling, by execution, by torture, or by other means. Bearing in mind that the VDC’s figures showed an undercount of a third when cross-checked with other sources for the UN OHCHR report, it is reasonable to conclude that likely over 10,000 people have been directly killed by aircraft in the Syrian war.
28 Responses to “Syria (still) needs a no-fly-zone”
treborc1
None of this seems to bothered to many when we went into Iraq, so why should it bother us now. How many women and children did we kill and maim in Iraq on our crusade to get rid of Saddam to free the Oil.
Wars will cause this and since we are good at wars, we now look at the air space sadly not our war and I’m sick of helping people to see those same people back in the same mess.
Stay out.
Asteri
Ahem
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/10374798/Libyas-descent-into-chaos-fuelled-by-rise-of-militias.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/29/us-libya-chaos-idUSBRE99S0X320131029
Liza Lane
Why is this sort of right wing rubbish appearing in a blog called “Left Foot Forward”? Is this some kind of satire?
ShuggyMcGlumpher
Continuing this from Twitter, if you don’t mind? 140 characters is a bit limiting. The Resolution regarding Libya didn’t allow, neither in spirit nor in letter, for regime-change. It’s not any different from any other UN Resolution in that respect. I already know you don’t agree with this but there’s probably not much use in continuing with that line of argument because it isn’t me you have to persuade. You said Putin was being disingenuous. I dare say but it’s not a realistic account of the situation to pretend that only Russia are opposed. You don’t mention the Chinese, for example. The British Parliament said no – and the American Congress probably would have too. But there’s the more general comparison with Libya which is problematic, for the following reasons:
1) It’s not an obvious case study in successful intervention, as the articles linked in this thread show. You’re effectively arguing that the failed state that Libya has become is less deadly than before. Even if that were so, can you not see that this is an absolutely impossible sell re: Syrian intervention?
2) Syria’s army is much bigger than the Libyan one was under Gaddafi – just one of the reasons to doubt whether intervention would lead to a reduction in violence.
3) Those who favour intervention are fond of pointing out that the consequences of the conflict here cannot be contained within Syria’s borders. I don’t disagree with that but the same is true of intervention, which is another reason why the Libyan comparison isn’t a good one. The Gaddafi regime was the diplomatically easier target. Here we have more international players who have an interest in the preservation of the Assad regime. The point of escalating a confrontation with them in order to hasten to demise of the Assad regime isn’t clear, since the benefits of having a post-Assad Syria are by no means obvious.
Kellie Strom
There are a few things getting bunched up here I think. I’m going to respond to just your first paragraph in this comment, then add further comments.
My point from our Twitter discussion re. Putin was focused on the idea that NATO exceeded UNSC Resolution 1973 on Libya. To recap from Twitter, this is a distortion of history. The resolution authorised UN member states “to take all necessary measures… to protect civilians… excluding a foreign occupation force…” It wasn’t limited to a No-Fly Zone, and didn’t exclude actions liable to end the regime. All UNSC members knew that the US and allies wanted a resolution that went beyond a No-Fly Zone, and that they identified Gadafi’s rule as the primary threat to civilians. This was made clear publicly prior to the vote by the US Ambassador to the UN. If any Permanent Member really didn’t want this outcome, they should have voted accordingly.
Therefore we have to doubt that Russian and Chinese Government objections to a Chapter 7 Resolution for Syria are genuinely based on legalistic concerns about the implementation of Resolution 1973. Further, you’ll note that in the article I’m against allowing Putin’s obstruction to be the last word, and that I believe a No-Fly Zone “requires making the case that defence of collective security requires and justifies this military action even in the absence of a Security Council resolution.”
The British Parliament is another matter. I believe MPs need to reconsider military action based on evidence of outcomes as explained in the article above. Similarly the US Congress, though I note that their approval is not needed in advance for the President to conduct military action.