Yemen and Syria pose a greater threat to us than Libya
Unlike Libya, both countries pose an active and current threat to our everyday
well-being, writes Con Coughlin.
7:10PM GMT 24 Mar 2011
Comment
With the anti-government protests in Syria and Yemen becoming more ugly by the day, I am increasingly of the view that, by launching military action against Libya, we may actually have managed to target the wrong country.
I fully concede that Muammar Gaddafi and his dysfunctional family should be removed from power at the earliest opportunity. But these days they can hardly be said to pose a serious threat to our security, having surrendered their investment in nuclear proliferation and international terrorism many years ago.
But the same cannot be said for Syria and Yemen, two countries that, in their different ways, pose an active and current threat to our everyday well-being.
Take Syria. The Assads have ruled Damascus with an iron fist since the Ba'athist dictatorship established its uncompromising rule in 1963 – longer than Gaddafi has controlled Libya. Since then, Syria has been a defiant enemy of the West, supporting a wide array of terror networks and establishing itself as Iran's most important regional ally.
During the bitter conflict in neighbouring Iraq, American forces came close on several occasions to attacking Syria after the regime was identified as actively supporting al-Qaeda's terror network, as the recent disclosure of WikiLeaks documents revealed.
Syrian intelligence officials have been implicated in the 2005 murder of Rafik Hariri, the Lebanese prime minister, while the strength of the country's relationship with Tehran was emphasised last month when the first Iranian warships to pass through the Suez Canal since the 1979 Islamic revolution made a triumphant entry at the Syrian port of Latakia.
So long as the Assad regime remains in power, it is highly unlikely that the West can ever achieve its ambition of bringing peace and stability to the region. For this reason we should give our wholesale support to the brave protesters who have recently marched through the Syrian city of Deraa demanding freedom from the Assad tyranny.
This is the most serious unrest the government has faced since the infamous revolt in 1982 when Islamist militants challenged the rule of then president Hafez al-Assad in the town of Hama. Assad senior responded by massacring the occupants – up to 40,000 people were killed – thereby silencing all opposition for best part of the next three decades.
Bashar al-Assad, 40, the London-educated opthalmologist who succeeded his father in 2000, has been portrayed as a more moderate figure who has made various attempts to court the West.
William Hague is one of the many Western dignitaries to have visited Damascus in recent months in the hope that the government could be persuaded to mend its ways.
But when, inspired by the success of other protests around the region, demonstrators took to the streets in Deraa this week, the government responded with characteristic brutality. At least 15 people were killed and scores more injured as security forces opened fire on unarmed civilians, protesting against the arrest of a group of schoolchildren who had written anti-government graffiti on the town walls.
Similar scenes of carnage are taking place in the Yemeni capital Sana'a, where protesters have recently intensified their campaign to end the dictatorship of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been in power for 32 years. Saleh's offer to stand down has failed to stem the tide of dissent, and dozens of unarmed civilians have been killed by militias loyal to Saleh.
Yemen under Saleh also enjoys the unhappy distinction of posing a serious threat to Western security. Anwar al-Awlaki, the mastermind behind the recent ink cartridge bomb plot at East Midlands airport, is based in the country, as are many other al-Qaeda terror cells.
In short, Yemen poses a greater threat to our security than Libya ever will, a fact our politicians would do well to note.
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