NFZs have been
implemented in only a few cases in the last twenty years. During the
Bosnian war, Operation Deny Flight (March 1993 to December 1995) and
Operation Deliberate Force (August to September 1995) were imposed over
the war zone. Designed to deny the Serbian air force the ability to
deploy airpower, these NFZs did little to stop the worst abuses of that
conflict, including the infamous Srebrenica massacre among other
atrocities. Intra-state conflicts, as in Libya today, are ultimately
conducted on the ground. The Serbs only came to the negotiating table
once the land power balance shifted against them. Certainly NFZs
contributed to this, but were not the determining factor. Armies cannot
be defeated by air forces alone.
In the first Gulf War, the
U.S.-led coalition imposed Operation Provide Comfort (May 1991 to
December 1996) and Operation Northern Watch (January 1997 to March 2003)
over much of northern Iraq. Designed to provide air cover for the large
humanitarian aid response in the Kurdish north, these NFZs were largely
successful for two reasons. Firstly, the proximity of airbases in
Turkey and Europe made it easy to deploy persistent and wide coverage.
Secondly and most importantly, the Kurdish peshmerga militia already
controlled much of the contested ground. The NFZ only had to complement
that ground-based force. No such dominantground force exists today in
Libya.
The post-war NFZ over southern Iraq tells a different
story. Operation Southern Watch (August 1992 to March 2003) failed to
stop Saddam Hussein's devastating use of ground forces against a weak
and fractured Shiite opposition. Saddam's regime perpetrated countless
atrocities in the south and regained total control, despite the
ever-present coalition fighters aloft.
Libya is a large country
and violence has been reported over a vast area, but the greater an area
of enforcement, the more difficult an NFZ becomes and the less likely
to be effective. The Bosnian NFZ was conducted over a small airspace
just 51,000 square miles, and even the Iraq cases were larger at
approximately 100,000 square miles. A proposed NFZ over Darfur was
mooted in part because the region, at 550,000 square miles, is simply
too big.
Unlike in Iraq and Bosnia, there are no obvious air
bases near Libya from which to impose an NFZ, so the aircraft would
likely have to be based on aircraft carrier. But it's not clear that the
U.S., or even NATO, has that kind of capacity to spare. Using European
bases would require many more aircraft as the greater distance severely
limits the amount of time each plane could actually spend over Libya.
Any
NFZ carries two serious risks: downing the wrong aircraft, such as an
aid flight or transport; and getting drawn into the conflict on the
ground. Even if Qaddafi doesn't provoke ground strikes by shooting at
occupying planes, it's not hard to see how the NFZ could escalate into a
bombing campaign. It could quickly devolve into a "no drive zone"
operation, in which Libyan ground forces such as tanks, artillery, and
convoys become targets. As the NFZ escalates, so does the risk of losing
planes and pilots, as does the possibility of mistakenly bombing
protesters, some of whom already occupy military bases and could try to
use the hardware themselves.
