‘Coalition of the Willing’ Promotes No Fly Zone
Damascus
Since around Valentine Day and aided by truly magnificent warm weather for this time of year, the dozens of parks in
Damascus have been receiving unusually large numbers of visitors, not least of whom are Syrian soldiers on leave,
enjoying the green space with girlfriends, families and friends. At the large garden with dozen of benches and
sculptures, called Al-Manshia (Presidents Bridge) public park, and located between two five-star hotels, the Dama Rose
and the 4-Seasons, some soldiers, presumably from out of town and with many appearing utterly exhausted, can be seen
simply laying on the grass fast asleep under the warm healing sunshine.
Soldiers joke, laugh and seem pleased when citizens approach them to offer their thanks for the army’s service to the
Syrian Arab Republic and to inquire about how things are going personally and if there is some help the citizen might
offer the soldier. Such is the nature of Syrian nationalism and connection with Mother Syria that this observer has
remarked about before and is strikingly rare from his experience. I love my country but frankly do not feel the pride
and deep connection that Syrians appear to exhibit about their country’s 10,000 year history as the cradle of
civilization. I would defend my country and fight for it if there were to be a legitimate war which frankly has not been
the case in my lifetime.
Over the past 30 months of frequent visits to Damascus, the city has never appeared more ‘normal’ Last night this
observers was up all night reading and there was not one bombing run or mortar or artillery fire to he heard, a first
for more than two years. For many months, I used to avoid the historic Al-Hamidiyah Souk, the largest and the central
souk in Syria located inside the old walled city of Damascus next to the Umayyad Mosque, despite its hundreds of
interesting shops. The reason I tended to stay away was because I was one of very few people meandering among the warren
of stalls and felt self-conscious when shopkeepers would plead with me to buy something-anything to help feed their
families many of whom lived near the labyrinth.
Today, Al-Hamidiyah Souk, if not frequented with the numbers of shoppers and visitors as it was before March 2011, it is
nonetheless very crowded such that foreigners can pass unnoticed…well, sometimes for at least the first hundred yards or
so. In Damascene neighborhoods, no longer do citizens quickly disappear into their homes at the first sign of dusk but
the streets and many cafes are crowded well past 9 p.m.
“Quo Vadis Syrie”, (‘where is Syria heading’) one Damascus University classics major, turned international law student,
asked this visitor as we both sat on the steps of the Law Faculty while enjoying a bit of sun yesterday afternoon. “Is
our crisis nearly over so we can start re-building Mother Syria or do our enemies have other plans to destroy us? I
worry that today’s calm will soon disappear with an arriving hurricane.” His comment was perhaps triggered by a certain
sense here and more widely elsewhere that a forming “coalition of the willing” appears to be pressing for a
‘humanitarian’ No Fly Zone. Some American allies envisage and are making plans to implement, a NFZ stretching up to 25
miles into Syria which would be enforced using aircraft flown from Jordanian bases and flying inside the kingdom,
according to Congressional sources.
Any NFZ would be very different from what is currently being promoted and advertised by certain war-mongers in
Washington, Tel Aviv and several European capitals as well as among elements of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the
League of Arab States. Post Round Two of Geneva II, the White House and the usual “bomb the bastards” coterie in
Congress and among the US Zionist lobby, are said to be re-thinking the idea of a No Fly Zone (NFZ) for Syria. It would
be planned and executed with US and a yet to be specified, “Coalition of the willing” using aircraft now at the ready in
Jordan and Turkey to begin with.
Ranking with the fake “non-lethal aid” concept, in terms of cynical deception (virtually all “non-lethal” aid is indeed
lethal for its facilitates certain forces killing others including night goggles, telecommunication equipment, GPS
equipment, salaries, fake IDs and much else), a limited, ‘humanitarian’ NFZ would almost certainly became a bomb
anything/person that moves ‘turkey shoot’ as was the case in Libya in 2011 as was studied and witnessed first-hand by
this an many other observers. What we observed in the then, but no more, Al Jamahiriya (state of the masses), was that
the misnomer ‘limited humanitarian Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) promoted by Obama Administration UN Ambassador Susan
Rice for Libya and now by her predecessor Samatha Power for Syria, was that a NFZ means essentially an all-out war for
regime change at all costs in terms of expendable lives and treasury.
The Libya experience, conceding many differences between the two countries and their governments and quality of each
country’s military, may be prologue for Syria. Backed by a U.N. Security Council mandate, NATO charged into Libya citing
its urgent “responsibility to protect” civilians threatened by claimed bloody rampages occurring across the country.
Within days, we witnessed the ‘limited carefully vetted’ targets bank turn from a promoted ‘several dozen purely
military targets” into more than 10,000 bomb runs using over 7,700 ‘precision guided bombs” and from the ground and what
we learned during weeks in Libya by victims and eye-witnesses it seemed at times that the targets were basically
anything that moved or looked like it might have a conceivable military purpose of some sort.
Human Rights Watch documented nearly 100 cases of civilians being bombed and killed as part of the R2P campaign. Other
estimates are several times the HRW published figures. To this day Libyan civilians and demanding to know from NATO,
“Why did you destroy my home and kill my family?” No answer has to date been provided to the Libyan victims’ families
despite investigations that showed NATO pilots frequently disregarded instructions and “we essentially bombed at if we
were playing video games” according to post-conflict contrite British airman.
Susan Rice, now Obama’s national security adviser, met with Saudi officials last week to discuss a NFZ and related
strategy despite White House claims that it is still skeptical. Rice told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee late
last month that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia are working together again on Syria policy after a year of occasional bitter
disagreement.
Among those currently petitioning the Obama Administration for a NFZ, which would quickly devolve into thousands of bomb
runs across Syria that would likely decimate its air force and tank corps are the so-called ‘rebels.’ They tend to agree
with France that problems lay ahead for them given April’s fast approaching Presidential election, in which the
incumbent President, Bashar Assad, is likely to seek and win re-election.
In addition, Israel, according to a Congressional source, has offered to help ‘behind the scenes” with airbases if
needed and certain activities along the southern Syrian border with occupied Palestine. A majority of Arab League
countries, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) plus Turkey, France, the UK and some members of the EU also support the
NFZ idea. Saudi Arabia has already approved large quantities of Chinese man-portable air defense systems or Manpads as
well as antitank guided missiles from Russia and more cash to help rebels oust the Assad regime, according to an Arab
diplomat. Meanwhile, the US has upped its contribution to pay the salaries of preferred rebel fighters.
Ominously, the U.S. has already positioned Patriot air defense batteries and F-16 fighter aircraft in Jordan, which
would be integral to any no-fly zone. The U.S. planes have air-to-air missiles that could destroy Syrian planes from
long ranges. But officials have advised Congress that aircraft may be required to enter deep into Syrian air space if
threatened by advancing Syrian planes. This could easily lead to all-out war with Syria and if Russia decides to provide
advanced, long-range S-300 air defense weapons to Syria, it would make such a limited no-fly zone far more risky for
U.S. pilots and it’s anyone’s guess what would happen next.
President Obama so far is keeping his own counsel as his Secretaries of Defense and State, current and former, and many
other officials and politicians offer their advice for the White House ordering a NFZ. Hilary Clinton and General David
Petraeus reportedly both favor a NFZ to ‘end this mess” in the words of the retired CIA Director.
To his great credit, Barack Obama appears so far to many on Capitol Hill to be reluctant to give formal approval to
another NFZ as he was last summer when he resisted calls to launch a war against Syria as well as Congressional
war-monger demands to go to war with Iran on behalf of the Netanyahu government. This week Mr. Obama acknowledged that
diplomatic efforts to resolve the Syrian conflict are far from achieving their goals. “But the situation is fluid and we
are continuing to explore every possible avenue including diplomacy.”
If President Obama extends his record of putting American interests first to three key decisions over the past six
months, and if he sticks with diplomacy rather than launch all-out war with Syria, and potentially the allies of
Damascus, via a NFZ, he just may be on his way to earning his prematurely awarded Nobel Prize.
Franklin Lamb is a visiting Professor of International Law at the Faculty of Law, Damascus University and volunteers
with the Sabra-Shatila Scholarship Program (sssp-lb.com).
ENDS