No-fly zone

A no-fly zone (or no-flight zone) (NFZ) is a territory or an area over which aircraft are not permitted to fly. Such zones are usually set up in a military context, somewhat like a demilitarized zone in the sky, and usually prohibit military aircraft of a belligerent power from operating in the region. Aircraft that break the no-fly zone may be shot down, depending on the terms of the NFZ.

No-fly zones are a modern phenomenon. They can be distinguished from traditional air power missions by their coercive appropriation of another nation’s airspace only, to achieve aims on the ground within the target nation. While the Royal Air Force (RAF) conducted prototypical air control operations over contentious colonial possessions between the two World Wars of the 20th century, no-fly zones did not assume their modern form until the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

During the Cold War, the risk of local conflict escalating into nuclear showdown dampened the appeal of military intervention as a tool of U.S. statecraft. Perhaps more importantly, air power was a relatively blunt instrument until the operational maturation of stealth and precision-strike technologies. Before the Gulf War of 1991, air power had not demonstrated the “fidelity” needed to perform nuanced attacks against transitory, difficult-to-reach targets—it lacked the ability to produce decisive political effects short of total war. However, the demise of the Soviet Union and the rise in aerospace capabilities engendered by the technology revolution made no-fly zones viable in both political and military contexts.

In 1991, the United States, United Kingdom, France, Turkey, and other states intervened in Kurdish-Iraqi dispute in northern Iraq by establishing a no-fly zone in which Iraqi aircraft were prevented from flying. The intent of the no-fly zone was to prevent possible bombing and chemical attacks against the Kurdish people by the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. The initial operations were dubbed Operation Provide Comfort and Operation Provide Comfort II and were followed by Operation Northern Watch. While the enforcing powers had cited United Nations Security Council Resolution 688 as authorizing the operations, the resolution contains no explicit authorization. The Secretary-General of the UN at the time the resolution was passed, Boutros Boutros-Ghali called the no-fly zones "illegal" in a February 2003 interview with John Pilger. In southern Iraq, Operation Southern Watch was established in 1992 to protect Iraq's Shia population. It originally extended to the 32nd parallel but was extended to the 33rd parallel in 1996.

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Wikipedia