Letters | 23 July 2015 | The Spectator

Don’t write off Assad

Sir: Ahmed Rashid refers to our ‘Arab allies’ supporting al-Qaeda (‘The plan to back al-Qaeda against Isis’, 18 July). Clearly they are no allies of ours, so thank you Mr Rashid for pointing this out. Apart from that, his perspective is peculiar. He starts off by accusing Assad of plunging Syria into a bloody civil war. Clearly that is not the case. The civil war was started by Assad’s opponents, encouraged by the ‘success’ of the Arab Spring elsewhere. Of course we now see that the ‘success’ was illusory. He also suggests that Assad is finished. Now that his ally Iran has come in from the cold, I think it is a bit early to write him off. Authoritarian regimes are not palatable to western democracies, but they are often better than the chaotic alternatives. Egypt is a safer place for its citizens than Libya or Syria. The West should work with Iran to restore Assad, or some other strong, non-Islamist government. People forget that minorities including Christians fared well under the Assad regime.
Andrew Levens

North Wiltshire

Whether Lee lied

Sir: Gavin Mortimer accuses Sir Christopher Lee of being misleading about his second world war service career when claiming to have been in ‘special forces’ (‘Who dares lies’, 18 July). It is possible that Lee was just being discreet. As an RAF liaison officer, he may have been attached to the SAS and SOE as a member of an RAF ‘Special Liaison Unit’. We now know that such people were actually answerable to MI6 and charged with disseminating Ultra — the famous signal intelligence revealed by British codebreaking. Thousands were told to keep quiet after the war about their involvement and did. Perhaps he was one of them?
Stephen Hodgart

Guildford, Surrey