So, Syria's dictator has run away from his country, after he had been abandoned by his backers Russia and Iran.
I recall Iraq's dictator, Saddam Hussein, back in 2003, being ousted following America's "shock and awe" operation to remove him, accusing him of being in possession of weapons of mass-destruction. Saddam appears to have gotten rid of those, but he became a scapegoat for 9/11. He was unceremoniously hanged in December 2006, after (I think) 45 years in power, being feted by the high and mighty of this world. Saddam had been useful to the USA as a counterweight against the Islamic Republic of Iran; the two countries fought an eight-year war. Saddam deployed chemical weapons against his own population, the Kurds. Halabja was a killing ground against up to 5000 people. But when the Yanks booted him out, Saddam's WMD were nowhere to be found. Nobody mourned his dreadful death, but the justification for the invasion was void.
I recall the equally maverick, but equally deadly dictator Muammar Ghadaffi, Lybia's leader with the assumed rank of Colonel. His regime has been accused of masterminding the downing of PamAm flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. We commemorate the 36th anniversary of that atrocity on 21st December. But Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who had been accused of involvement with the attack was later released on compassionate grounds. Kenny Macaskill, the Scottish justice secretary in 2009, conveniently overlooking that Al-Megrahi had been convicted of crimes that showed no compassion at all.
Syria's Bashar al-Assad also deployed chemical weapons against his own people, in his own capital, 11 years ago. The uprising from 2011 caused a civil war that appears to have been concluded with his fall. A ghastly dictator, who had no compunction in killing Syrian civilians, prompting a mass exodus. Their number is thought to be as much as 11 million. Some have ended up here in Stornoway, I know of a barber shop which was set up by a Syrian refugee.
Will these refugees come back? Once the elation of Assad's craven flight to his paymasters in Moscow has subsided, they may be well advised to await developments, and see whether Syria is spared the bloody aftermath that followed the removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and of Muammar Ghadaffi in Libya.
