The previous head of the UK authorities’s Syria staff has mentioned that the West is making the identical mistake in its response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as have been made in Syria a decade in the past, calling for a no-fly zone to be carried out above Ukraine.
In an article he wrote for The Unbiased newspaper, Reza Afshar – the previous head of the staff chargeable for Syria coverage on the UK’s Overseas and Commonwealth Workplace (FCO) – burdened that European and western nations haven’t learnt from the errors they made of their coverage of non-aggression in the direction of Russia in Syria and elsewhere.
Because the civil warfare in Syria raged all through the nation after the favored revolution erupted in 2011, Afshar “watched the loss of life toll rise to a whole lot of hundreds.” In 2015, Russia then intervened and “deployed its forces to assist Assad immediately homicide civilians, flatten cities and blow up hospitals. The West dominated out help to guard civilians for concern of direct confrontation with Russia. That very same concern now dangers consigning Ukraine to the same destiny.”
Whereas Russian forces proceed to advance in the direction of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, in a determined try to seize it, it has resulted in large civilian casualties and injury to civilian infrastructure, with Moscow committing the various identical atrocities and warfare crimes it dedicated in areas it intervened in all through virtually twenty years.
Afshar wrote that using these ways in Ukraine “is a direct consequence of the weak point of western coverage over the previous 15 years: Weak point with respect to Russia in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014, and weak responses to most international coverage crises within the final ten years, particularly, — together with Syria, Myanmar and Venezuela.”
READ: Syria opposition slams West’s ‘double standards’ over response to Ukraine war
So as to defend European and world safety, he mentioned, western nations should shock Russian President, Vladimir Putin, by defending worldwide regulation. “We have to guarantee not solely that Putin fails to take Ukraine, however that he loses greater than he began with: in different phrases, he must be pushed again to the pre-2014 established order, dropping Crimea and japanese Ukraine within the course of.”
Whereas admitting that help and weapons from the West “has and can make a distinction”, the NATO alliance’s public rejection of Ukraine’s request to shut the skies to Russian army plane “was a mistake”. He known as a no-fly zone the “solely technique to cease Putin taking Ukraine on the expense of large civilian losses and to discourage him from future misadventures”, and urged the West “to not rule out closing the skies above Ukraine if it turns into clear that Russia is headed for victory on the expense of civilian life.”
Though he acknowledged the hazard of pushing Putin right into a nook and risking doable nuclear strikes, he reasoned that “we already face the chance of retaliation, no matter whether or not we resolve to shut the skies. The means by which Putin loses are much less prone to affect his response than the very fact of the loss itself.”
What should be remembered, Afshar burdened, is that “Worldwide regulation was designed to guard civilians from the horrific excesses of warfare, nevertheless it solely works whether it is enforced.” He warned that if such measures will not be taken and Russia conquers Ukraine, “the West will probably be caught supporting a messy, lethal and dear insurgency for years, if not many years, with no assure of success.”
READ: The war on Syria emboldened Russia and its relentless targeting of civilians in Ukraine
