Israel once again attacked the international airports of Damascus and Aleppo in Syria, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), concerning its sources in military circles, reported. According to its data, on October 22 the Israeli army launched a rocket attack. Therefore, runways were put out of action, one employee of the airport of Damascus died, and another colleague was wounded.
Previously, the Arabic news channel Sky News Arabia, in turn, concerning the source, said that disrupting deliveries of weapons from Iran to Syria was the primary purpose of attacks against the airports. At the same time, the Western mass media said that Iran probably airlifts weapons to Syria, which is intended for fighters of the Hezbollah group. Because of these suspicions, the airport of Damascus repeatedly became the purpose of the Israeli airstrikes.
According to international humanitarian law, the airports of Damascus and Aleppo are considered civil objects, and attacks on them are allowed only if it is used for military purposes either on them or near them. However, the principle of proportionality demands that the parties of the conflict carefully compare the short and long-term effects of attacks on the civilian population, consider all ways to minimise these effects, and abstain from attack if such products are disproportionate to the required military advantage.
Nevertheless, Tel Aviv has refused to give any comments about the possible participation of air harbours in ensuring deliveries of the arms. Moreover, the «Israel Hayom» agency on social network X has reported that the office of the Prime Minister of the country, Benjamin Netanyahu, has prohibited officials from commenting on messages about shellings. Such a position of Israel prompts the Syrian side to consider Israeli airstrikes against the airports as attacks on the objects of civil infrastructure and to regard them as explicit violations of rules of international law.
Meanwhile, the states, while taking part in modern armed conflicts with enviable regularity, use civil objects, in particular, the international airports, for military purposes to achieve an advantage on the battlefield. The intent lies in the fact that airfields, from now working both for civil and military purposes, become objects of double use. As Professor of International Law at the University of Geneva, Marco Sassoli, notes, an attack on the thing of dual-use is illegal if it is meant to it will influence its civil service. At the same time, the expert gives a loophole: "Observance of this norm cannot be evaluated amid battle".
So, in August 2023, before the beginning of anti-terrorist operation by Azerbaijani Armed Forces in Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian leaders were actively pressing forward on the subject of entering into service of the airport in Gafan located several metres from conditional Armenian-Azerbaijani border. According to the Chairman of the Defence and Security Committee of the National Assembly, Ziyafat Asgarov, the proximity of the object to the territory of Azerbaijan gives serious reasons to believe that Yerevan could use this airport for military purposes as it was with the Khojaly Airport. "Everybody perfectly remembers that the Khojaly Airport repeatedly tried to be declared international and restarted several times over the last decades, but in practice, it served as the site for the landing of the Armenian helicopters transferring the Armenian military and arms on the territory of Azerbaijan", – the Azerbaijani analysts commented on this situation. Similarly, significantly, Azerbaijan itself, till August 2020, used Ganja International Airport only for civil purposes; however, afterwards, Baku placed the Turkish F-16 fighter aircraft, which have not been removed after that.
In 2019, Turkey formally requested permission to deploy the Bayraktar TB2 UAV at Gecitkale Air Base from the de facto Turkish authorities ruling northern Cyprus. And Ankara got instant approval on this matter. However, Gecitkale air base, like the airports in Damascus, Aleppo, Gafan and Ganja, was essentially a civil object. During the reconstruction of the Ercan International Airport from September 2002 to May 2004, Gecitkale Air Base served as the leading civil airport of northern Cyprus. In 2010, it was rented for 15 years to the Cypriot businessman Asil Nadir, and since then, Gecitkale has been used only for the service of cargo aircraft and charter flights.
The facts of using civil objects in the army's interests were also documented during the conflict in Ukraine. As shown in the report of Amnesty International, Kiev repeatedly turned civil infrastructure into military objectives through its actions, at the same time violating international humanitarian laws and endangering the local population. However, now, the new challenges on the battlefield force the Ukrainian side to continue adhering to very risky tactics.
In particular, according to the Secretary of Defense of the USA, Lloyd Austin, Ukraine can receive the first F-16 aeroplanes not before the spring of 2024. At the same time,e U.S. authorities, Denmark and the Netherlands have declared their intention to help Kiev to create infrastructure for the future Air Force of Ukraine based on these aircraft. Until that moment, the Ukrainian government intends to repurpose civil airfields as new air bases of AFU that will automatically turn these objects into targets for Russian missiles. After that, massive attacks on such facilities will result in logistic collapse for the whole country.
The officer of the reserve in the Azerbaijani Armed Forces and military analyst Agil Rustamzade, in interview with the Ukrainian New Voice, expressed their opinion that Ukraine can deploy a squadron of F-16 aircraft. In his opinion, these aeroplanes can use Ukrainian civil airports, which can be reworked within 1-3 months. The First Deputy Head of the Transport & Infrastructure Committee at Verkhovna Rada Yulia Klymenko, in turn, told the Ukrainian tabloid "Focus" on the need to complete the works on the runways for the American F-16s, including the civil airports in Ukraine.
At the same time, there is a possibility Kiev will try to hide the presence of the F-16s in the territory of the airports. Such moves are classified as "Perfidy" under international law. According to Professor of International Law and Security at the University of Copenhagen’s Centre for Military Studies Kevin Heller, "perfidy", according to the law, constitutes an action that can force the opponent to believe that in front of him, there is the object having the right to be protected according to rules of international law, applied during armed conflicts.
However, there are also cardinally opposite trends in current geopolitical realities. Some countries dismantle military facilities, converting them for civil use to avoid escalation of tensions with neighbouring states and benefit their trade, economic and tourist development. For example, the Prime Minister of Georgia, Irakli Garibashvili, declared on June 5 that the Vaziani Military Base, located approximately 20 km from Tbilisi, will be transformed into a civil airport. "We want to become an aviation hub of the region. And the new airport needs a new place. Vaziani has a perfect location", – the head of the Georgian government emphasised. It is planned to expand the airfield of Vaziani, which is only 2,5 km long for civilian airliners and needs a runway of more than 3 km. According to the Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development of the Republic, Levan Davitashvili, Tbilisi plans to approve the best version of the project by the end of the year and expects to begin construction next year.
International law cannot unequivocally interpret some cases of using civil objects for military purposes to the full extent. However, what is abundantly clear is that the practice of using the international airports for the benefit of the army does not contribute to the de-escalation of the situation and only aggravates the position of belligerent parties, turning one civil object into a legitimate target for the opponent.
Kemran Mamedov is a Moscow-based Azerbaijani journalist born in Georgia who focuses on South Caucasus issues.
READ MORE: Darius and Xerxes against ancient Greece, the Mullahs against Israel – Hamas’s ideology and Iran.
