A pro-government rally in Syria last week - the regime has also endured protests
Time, then, for a no-fly zone to protect the innocent protesters.
That, at least, should be the logical course of action after the UN sanctioned a no-fly zone in Libya after another unelected dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, started to massacre his own people after they had the temerity to challenge his brutal regime. If a no-fly zone is good enough for Libya, why not for Syria and Yemen?
There is, of course, the issue of the West’s military capacity. (The Libyan operation is still very much a Western affair. To date the Arabs, who called for the no-fly zone in the first place, have provided precisely two Qataris warplanes.) With resources already stretched to the limit over Afghanistan, it is as much as the West can do to round up enough aircraft to enforce the no-fly zone against Libya. The simple truth is that we just don’t have enough aircraft to take on every Middle Eastern dictator who decides to turn his guns on his own people.
But that has not stopped William Hague, our Foreign Secretary, from encouraging even more anti-government protest by warning that Africa could be the next region where dictators such as Robert Mugabe find their dictatorships challenged. The problem is that is all very well encouraging pro-democracy movements, as we have in Libya. But when they run into trouble, as happened in Benghazi, we feel a moral obligation to come to their aid.
I imagine the Government is encouraging the anti-government protests in Syria and Yemen, just as it did in Libya. But is it really going to lobby the UN for yet more no-fly zones when things turn nasty? I don’t think so.
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