Israeli-Palestinian Conflict - 1990-91 Gulf War
The 1991 Gulf War was
a conflict between Iraq and a coalition force of 34 nations mandated by
the United Nations and led by the United States.
The lead up to the war began with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August
2, 1990, which was met with immediate economic sanctions by the United
Nations against Iraq. Hostilities commenced in January 1991, resulting
in a decisive victory for the coalition forces, which drove Iraqi forces
out of Kuwait with minimal coalition deaths. The main battles were
aerial and ground combat within Iraq, Kuwait, and bordering areas of
Saudi Arabia. The war did not expand outside the immediate
Iraq/Kuwait/Saudi border region, although Iraq fired missiles on Israeli
cities.
Other common names for the conflict include the War in the Gulf,
Iraq-Kuwait conflict, UN-Iraq conflict, Operations Desert Shield, Desert
Storm, Desert Sabre, 1990 Gulf War (for the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait),
1991 Gulf War (1990-1991), the Second Gulf War (to distinguish it from
the Iran-Iraq war) and Gulf War Sr. and First Gulf War (to distinguish
it from the 2003 invasion of Iraq). In Iraq, the war is often
colloquially called simply Um M'aārak ("the Mother of All Battles").
Causes
Prior to World War I, under the Anglo-Ottoman Convention of 1913, Kuwait
was considered to be an autonomous caza within Ottoman Iraq. Following
the war, Kuwait fell under British rule and later became an independent
emirate. However, Iraqi officials did not accept the legitimacy of
Kuwaiti independence or the authority of the Kuwaiti Emir. Iraq never
recognized Kuwait's sovereignty and in the 1960s, the United Kingdom
deployed troops to Kuwait to deter an Iraqi annexation.
During the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, Kuwait was allied with Iraq,
largely due to desiring Iraqi protection from Shi'ite Iran. After the
war, Iraq was heavily indebted to several Arab countries, including a
$14 billion debt to Kuwait. Iraq hoped to repay its debts by raising the
price of oil through OPEC oil production cuts, but instead, Kuwait
increased production, lowering prices, in an attempt to leverage a
better resolution of their border dispute. In addition, Iraq began to
accuse Kuwait of slant drilling into neighboring Iraqi oil fields, and
furthermore charged that it had performed a collective service for all
Arabs by acting as a buffer against Iran and that therefore Kuwait and
Saudi Arabia should negotiate or cancel Iraq's war debts. Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein's primary two-fold justification for the war
was a blend of the assertion of Kuwaiti territory being an Iraqi
province arbitrarily cut off by imperialism, with the use of annexation
as retaliation for the "economic warfare" Kuwait had waged through slant
drilling into Iraq's oil supplies while it had been under Iraqi
protection.
The war with Iran had also seen the destruction of almost all of Iraq's
port facilities on the Persian Gulf, cutting off Iraq's main trade
outlet. Many in Iraq, expecting a resumption of war with Iran in the
future, felt that Iraq's security could only be guaranteed by
controlling more of the Gulf Coast, including more secure ports. Kuwait
thus made a tempting target.
Ideologically, the invasion of Kuwait was justified through calls to
Arab nationalism. Kuwait was described as a natural part of Iraq carved
off by British imperialism. The annexation of Kuwait was described as a
step on the way to greater Arab union. Other reasons were given as well.
Hussein presented it as a way to restore the empire of Babylon in
addition to the Arab nationalist rhetoric. The invasion was also closely
tied to other events in the Middle East. The First Intifada by the
Palestinians was raging, and most Arab states, including Kuwait, Saudi
Arabia and Egypt, were dependent on western alliances. Saddam thus
presented himself as the one Arab statesman willing to stand up to
Israel and the U.S.
Iraq and the United States pre-war
Prior to the Iran-Iraq War, U.S.-Iraqi relations were cool. The U.S. was
concerned with Iraq's belligerence toward Israel and disapproval of
moves towards peace with other Arab states. It also condemned Iraqi
support for various Arab and Palestinian nationalist groups such as Abu
Nidal, which led to its inclusion on the incipient State Department list
of states that sponsor terrorism on December 29, 1979. The U.S. remained
officially neutral during the outbreak of hostilities in the Iran-Iraq
War, as it had previously been humiliated by a 444 day long Iran hostage
crisis and expected that Iran was not likely to win. In March 1982,
however, Iran began a successful counteroffensive (Operation Undeniable
Victory). In a bid to open the possibility of relations to Iraq, the
country was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Ostensibly this was because of improvement in the regime's record,
although former United States Assistant Secretary of Defense Noel Koch
later stated, "No one had any doubts about [the Iraqis'] continued
involvement in terrorism....The real reason was to help them succeed in
the war against Iran." [1]
With Iran's newfound success in the war and its rebuff of a peace offer
in July, arms sales from other states (most importantly the USSR,
France, Egypt, and starting that year, China) reached a record spike in
1982, but an obstacle remained to any potential U.S.-Iraqi relationship
- Abu Nidal continued to operate with official support in Baghdad. When
the group was expelled to Syria in November 1983, the Reagan
administration sent Donald Rumsfeld as a special envoy to cultivate
ties.
From 1983 to 1990, the US government approved around $200 million in
arms sales to Iraq, according to the Stockholm International Peace
Institute (SIPRI). [2] These sales amounted to less than 1% of the total
arms sold to Iraq in the relevant period, though the US also sold
helicopters which, although designated for civilian use, were
immediately deployed by Iraq in its war with Iran. [3]
An investigation by the Senate Banking Committee in 1994 determined that
the U.S. Department of Commerce had approved, for the purpose of
research, the shipping of dual use biological agents to Iraq during the
mid 1980s, including Bacillus Anthracis (anthrax), later identified by
the Pentagon as a key component of the Iraqi biological warfare program,
as well as Clostridium Botulinum, Histoplasma Capsulatum, Brucella
Melitensis, and Clostridium Perfringens. The Committee report noted that
each of these had been "considered by various nations for use in war."
[4] Declassified U.S. government documents indicate that the U.S.
government had confirmed that Iraq was using chemical weapons "almost
daily" during the Iran-Iraq conflict as early as 1983. [5]
Chiefly, the U.S. government provided Iraq with economic aid. Iraq's war
with Iran, and the consequent disruption in its oil export business, had
caused the country to enter a deep debt. U.S. government economic
assistance allowed Hussein to continue using resources for the war which
would have otherwise had to have been diverted. Between 1983 and 1990,
Iraq received $5 billion in credits from the Commodity Credit
Corporation program run by the Department of Agriculture, beginning at
$400 million per year in 1983 and increasing to over $1 billion per year
in 1988 and 1989, finally coming to an end after another $500 million
was granted in 1990. [6] Besides agricultural credits, the U.S. also
provided Hussein with other loans. In 1985 the U.S. Export-Import Bank
extended more than $684 million in credits to Iraq to build an oil
pipeline through Jordan with the construction being undertaken by
Californian construction firm Bechtel Corporation. [7] [8]
Following the war, however, there were moves within the Congress of the
United States to isolate Iraq diplomatically and economically over
concerns about human rights violations, its dramatic military build-up,
and hostility to Israel. Specifically, the Senate in 1988 unanimously
passed the "Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988," which would have
imposed sanctions on Iraq. The legislation died when the House balked as
a result of intense lobbying against it by the Reagan administration.
[9]
These moves were disowned by some Congressmen though some U.S.
officials, such as Reagan's head of Policy Planning Staff at the State
Dept. and Assistant Secretary for East Asian Affairs Paul Wolfowitz
disagreed with giving support to the Iraqi regime.
The relationship between Iraq and the United States remained
collaborative until the day Iraq invaded Kuwait. On October 2, 1989,
President George H.W. Bush signed secret National Security Directive 26,
which begins, "Access to Persian Gulf oil and the security of key
friendly states in the area are vital to U.S. national security." [10]
With respect to Iraq, the directive stated, "Normal relations between
the United States and Iraq would serve our longer term interests and
promote stability in both the Gulf and the Middle East."
In late July, 1990, as negotiations between Iraq and Kuwait stalled,
Iraq massed troops on Kuwait's borders and summoned American ambassador
April Glaspie for an unanticipated meeting with Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein. Two transcripts of that meeting have been produced, both of
them controversial. According to the transcripts, Saddam outlined his
grievances against Kuwait, while promising that he would not invade
Kuwait before one more round of negotiations. In the version published
by The New York Times on September 23, 1990, Glaspie expressed concern
over the troop buildup, but went on to say:
[W]e have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border
disagreement with Kuwait. I was in the American Embassy in Kuwait during
the late '60s. The instruction we had during this period was that we
should express no opinion on this issue and that the issue is not
associated with America. James Baker has directed our official spokesmen
to emphasize this instruction. We hope you can solve this problem using
any suitable methods via [Chadli] Klibi [then Arab League General
Secretary] or via President Mubarak. All that we hope is that these
issues are solved quickly.
Some have interpreted these statements as signalling a tacit approval of
invasion, though no evidence of this has been presented. Although the
State Department did not confirm the authenticity of these transcripts,
U.S. sources say that she had handled everything "by the book" (in
accordance with the US's neutrality on the Iraq-Kuwait issue) and had
not signaled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein any approval for defying the
Arab League's Jeddah crisis squad, which had conducted the negotiations.
Many believe that Saddam's expectations may have been influenced by a
perception that the US was not interested in the issue, for which the
Glaspie transcript is merely an example, and that he may have felt so in
part because of U.S. support for the reunification of Germany, another
act that he considered to be nothing more than the nullification of an
artificial, internal border. Others, such as Kenneth Pollack, believe he
had no such illusion, or that he simply underestimated the extent of
American military response.
In November 1989, CIA director William Webster met with the Kuwaiti head
of security, Brigadier Fahd Ahmed Al-Fahd. Subsequent to Iraq's invasion
of Kuwait, Iraq claimed to have found a memorandum pertaining to their
conversation. The Washington Post reported that Kuwaiti's foreign
minister fainted when confronted with this document at an Arab summit in
August. Later, Iraq cited this memorandum as evidence of a CIA-Kuwaiti
plot to destabilize Iraq economically and politically. The CIA and
Kuwait have described the meeting as routine and the memorandum as a
forgery. The purported document reads in part:
We agreed with the American side that it was important to take advantage
of the deteriorating economic situation in Iraq in order to put pressure
on that country's government to delineate our common border. The Central
Intelligence Agency gave us its view of appropriate means of pressure,
saying that broad cooperation should be initiated between us on
condition that such activities be coordinated at a high level.
Invasion of Kuwait
At the break of dawn on August 2, 1990, Iraqi troops crossed the Kuwaiti
border with armor and infantry, occupying strategic posts throughout the
country, including the Emir's palace. The Kuwaiti Army was quickly
overwhelmed, though they bought enough time for the Kuwaiti Air Force to
flee to Saudi Arabia. The heaviest fighting occurred at the Emir's
Palace, where members of the royal guard fought a rear guard action to
allow the royal family time to escape. A cousin of the Emir, who
commanded the guard, was amongst those killed. Troops looted medical and
food supplies, detained thousands of civilians and took over the media.
Iraq detained thousands of Western visitors as hostages and later
attempted to use them as bargaining chips. Hussein then installed a new
Iraqi provincial governor, describing this as "liberation" from the
Kuwaiti Emir; this was largely dismissed as war propaganda.
Diplomacy
Within hours of the initial invasion, the Kuwaiti and United States of
America delegations requested a meeting of the UN Security Council,
which passed Resolution 660, condemning the invasion and demanding a
withdrawal of Iraqi troops. On August 3, the Arab League passed its own
resolution condemning the invasion and demanding a withdrawal of Iraqi
troops. The Arab League resolution also called for a solution to the
conflict from within the Arab League, and warned against foreign
intervention. On August 6, the Security Council passed Resolution 661,
placing economic sanctions on Iraq.
The decision by the West to repel the Iraqi invasion had as much to do
with preventing an Iraqi invasion of Saudi Arabia, a nation of far more
importance to the world than Kuwait. The rapid success of the Iraqi army
against Kuwait had brought Iraq's army within easy striking distance of
the Hama oil fields, Saudi Arabia's most valuable. Iraqi control of
these fields as well as Kuwait and Iraqi reserves would have given it a
large share of the world's oil supply, second only to Saudi Arabia
itself. The United States, Europe, and Japan in particular saw such a
potential monopoly as dangerous. Saudi Arabia, a geographically large
nations with dispersed population centers would have found it difficult
to quickly mobilize to meet the Iraqi division deployed in Southern
Kuwait. Without a doubt Iraq would have gained control of the Eastern
Oil fields but it is heavily debatable whether Iraq could have have
fought into the Saudi capital of Riyadh. The Iraqi armoured divisions
would face the same difficulties that Saudi forces were facing in order
to defend the Oil fields, namely to transverse large distances across
inhospitable dessert. This would have all occured against the backdrop
of intense bombing by the Saudi Airforce, by far the most modern arm of
the Saudi military. No other nation or grouping of nations militaries
apart from the United States would have been able to dislodge 450,000
battle hardened Iraqi soldiers with over 2,000 modern battle tanks and
countless artillery and heavy mortar pieces. While it is true the
nations of France and Great Britian possess equal levels of military
technology as the U.S. they would not have achieved the critical mass
neccessary to swing the war decisively in their favour. It after all
took half a million American troops to dislodge Iraq while Britian and
France would have struggled to muster anything more than 80,000 troops
on their own. No other nations apart from United States, Britian and
France have any capacity to project force half way across the globe.
Iraq had a number of grievances with Saudi Arabia. The concern over
debts stemming from the Iran-Iraq war was even greater when applied to
Saudi Arabia, which Iraq owed some 26 billion dollars. The long desert
border was also ill-defined. Soon after his victory over Kuwait Saddam
began verbally attacking the Saudi kingdom. He argued that the
American-supported Kingdom was an illegitimate guardian of holy cities
of Mecca and Medina. Saddam combined the language of the Islamist groups
that had recently fought in Afghanistan with the rhetoric Iran had long
used to attack the Saudis.
The addition of Allahu Akbar to the flag of Iraq and images of Saddam
praying in Kuwait were seen as part of a plan to win the support of the
Muslim Brotherhood and detach Islamist Mujahideen from Saudi Arabia.
There was further escalation of such propaganda attacks on Saudi Arabia
as western troops poured into the country.
President George H. W. Bush quickly announced that the US would launch a
"wholly defensive" mission to prevent Iraq from invading Saudi Arabia -
Operation Desert Shield - and US troops moved into Saudi Arabia on
August 7. On August 8, Iraq declared parts of Kuwait to be extensions of
the Iraqi province of Basra and the rest to be the 19th province of
Iraq.
The United States navy mobilised two naval battle groups, USS Dwight D.
Eisenhower and USS Independence, to the area, where they were ready by
August 8. The United States also sent the battleships USS Missouri and
USS Wisconsin to the region, and they would later become the last
battleships to actively participate in a war. Military buildup continued
from there, eventually reaching 500,000 troops. The consensus among
military analysts is that until October, the American military forces in
the area would have been insufficient to stop an invasion of Saudi
Arabia had Iraq attempted one.
A long series of UN Security Council and Arab League resolutions were
passed regarding the conflict. One of the most important was Resolution
678, passed on November 29, giving Iraq a withdrawal deadline of January
15, 1991, and authorizing "all necessary means to uphold and implement
Resolution 660", a diplomatic formulation authorizing the use of force.
The United States, especially Secretary of State James Baker, assembled
a coalition of forces to join it in opposing Iraq, consisting of forces
from 34 countries: Afghanistan, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain,
Bangladesh, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany,
Greece, Hungary, Honduras, Italy, Kuwait, Morocco, The Netherlands,
Niger, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia,
Senegal, South Korea, Spain, Syria, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates,
the United Kingdom and the United States itself. US troops represented
74% of 660,000 troops in the theater of war. Many of the coalition
forces were reluctant to join; some felt that the war was an internal
Arab affair, or feared increasing American influence in Kuwait. In the
end, many nations were persuaded by Iraq's belligerence towards other
Arab states, and offers of economic aid or debt forgiveness.
The United States gave several public justifications for involvement in
the conflict. The first reasons given were the importance of oil to the
American economy and the United States' longstanding friendly
relationship with Saudi Arabia. However, some Americans were
dissatisfied with these explanations and "No Blood For Oil" became a
rallying cry for domestic opponents of the war, though they never
reached the size of opposition to the Vietnam War. Later justifications
for the war included Iraq's history of human rights abuses under
President Saddam Hussein, the potential that Iraq may develop nuclear
weapons or weapons of mass destruction, and that "naked aggression will
not stand."
Although the human rights abuses of the Iraq regime before and after the
Kuwait invasion were well-documented, the government of Kuwait set out
to influence American opinion with a few spectacular, but embellished
and false accounts. Shortly after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the
organization Citizens for a Free Kuwait was formed in the US. It hired
the public relations firm Hill and Knowlton for about $11 million, money
from the Kuwaiti government. This firm went on to manufacture a campaign
which described Iraqi soldiers pulling babies out of incubators in
Kuwaiti hospitals and letting them die on the floor. A video news
release was widely distributed by US TV networks; false supporting
testimony was given before Congress and before the UN Security Council.
The fifteen-year-old girl testifying before Congress was later revealed
to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States; the
supposed surgeon testifying at the UN was in fact a dentist who later
admitted to having lied. (For more, see Nurse Nayirah.)
Various peace proposals were floated, but none were agreed to. The
United States insisted that the only acceptable terms for peace were
Iraq's full, unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait. Iraq insisted that
withdrawal from Kuwait must be "linked" to a simultaneous withdrawal of
Syrian troops from Lebanon and Israeli troops from the West Bank, Gaza
Strip, the Golan Heights, and southern Lebanon. Morocco and Jordan were
persuaded by this proposal, but Syria, Israel, and the anti-Iraq
coalition denied that there was any connection to the Kuwait issue.
Syria joined the coalition to expel Saddam but Israel remained
officially neutral despite rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. The Bush
administration persuaded Israel to remain outside the conflict with
promises of increased aid, while the PLO under Yasser Arafat openly
supported Saddam Hussein, leading to a later rupture in
Palestinian-Kuwaiti ties and the expulsion of many Palestinians from
Kuwait.
On January 12, 1991 the United States Congress authorized the use of
military force to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. Soon after the other states
in the coalition did the same.
Air campaign
A day after the deadline set in Resolution 678, the coalition launched a
massive air campaign codenamed Operation Desert Storm: more than 1,000
sorties per day, beginning early morning on January 17, 1991. Weapons
used included smart bombs, cluster bombs, daisy cutters and cruise
missiles. Iraq responded by launching 8 Scud missiles into Israel the
next day. The first priority for coalition forces was destruction of the
Iraqi air force and anti-aircraft facilities. This was quickly achieved
and for the duration of the war Coalition aircraft could operate largely
unchallenged. Despite Iraq's better-than-expected anti-aircraft
capabilities, only one coalition aircraft was lost in the opening day of
the war. Stealth aircraft were heavily used in this phase to elude
Iraq's extensive SAM systems and anti-aircraft weapons; once these were
destroyed, other types of aircraft could more safely be used. The
sorties were launched mostly from Saudi Arabia and the six coalition
aircraft carrier groups in the Persian Gulf.
The next coalition targets were command and communication facilities.
Saddam had closely micromanaged the Iraqi forces in the Iran-Iraq War
and initiative at the lower levels was discouraged. Coalition planners
hoped Iraqi resistance would quickly collapse if deprived of command and
control. The first week of the air war saw a few Iraqi sorties but these
did little damage, and thirty-eight Iraqi MiGs were shot down by
Coalition planes. Soon after, the Iraqi airforce began fleeing to Iran.
On January 23, Iraq began dumping approximately 1 million tons of crude
oil into the gulf, causing the largest oil spill in history.
The third and largest phase of the air campaign targeted military
targets throughout Iraq and Kuwait: Scud missile launchers, weapons of
mass destruction sites, weapons research facilities and naval forces.
About one third of the Coalition airpower was devoted to attacking
Scuds. In addition, it targeted facilities useful for both the military
and civilians: electricity production facilities, nuclear reactors,
telecommunications equipment, port facilities, oil refineries and
distribution, railroads and bridges. Electrical power facilities were
destroyed across the country. At the end of the war, electricity
production was at four percent of its pre-war levels. Bombs destroyed
the utility of all major dams, most major pumping stations and many
sewage treatment plants.
In most cases, the Allies avoided hitting civilian-only facilities.
However, on February 13, 1991, two laser-guided "smart bombs" destroyed
the Amiriyah blockhouse, which the Iraqis claimed was for the auspices
of an air shelter. U.S. officials claimed that the blockhouse was a
military communications center, but Western reporters have been unable
to find evidence for this. The White House claims, in a report titled
Apparatus of Lies: Crafting Tragedy, that US intelligence sources
reported the blockhouse was being used for military command
purposes.[11] In his book, Saddam's Bombmaker, the former director of
Iraq's nuclear weapon program, who defected to the west, supports the
theory that the facility was used for both purposes.
We sought refuge several times at the shelter.... But it was always
filled.... The shelter had television sets, drinking fountains, its own
electrical generator, and looked sturdy enough to withstand a hit from
conventional weapons. But I stopped trying to get in one night after
noticing some long black limousines slithering in and out of an
underground gate in the back. I asked around and was told that it was a
command center. After considering it more closely, I decided it was
probably Saddam's own operational base.
Iraq launched missile attacks on coalition bases in Saudi Arabia and on
Israel, in the hopes of drawing Israel into the war and drawing other
Arab states out of it. This strategy proved ineffective. Israel did not
join the coalition, and all Arab states stayed in the coalition except
Jordan, which remained officially neutral throughout. On January 29,
Iraq attacked and occupied the abandoned Saudi city of Khafji with tanks
and infantry. However, the Battle of Khafji ended when Iraqis were
driven back by Saudi forces supported by US Marines with close air
support over the following two days.
The effect of the air campaign was to decimate entire Iraqi brigades
deployed in the open desert in combat formation. The air campaign also
prevented effective Iraqi resupply to forward deployed units engaged in
combat, as well preventing the large number (450,000) of battle-hardened
Iraqi troops from achieving force concentration essential to victory.
The air campaign had a significant effect on the tactics employed by
opposing forces in subsequent conflicts. No longer were entire divisions
dug in the open facing U.S. forces but rather were dispersed, e.g.
Serbian forces in Kosovo. Opposing forces also reduced the distance of
their supply lines and area defended. This was seen during the war in
Afghanistan when the Taliban preemptively abandoned large swaths of land
and retreated into their strongholds. This increased their force
concentration and reduced long vulnerable supply lines. This tactic was
also observed in the Second Gulf War whereby the Iraqi forces retreated
from northern Iraqi Kurdistan into the cities.
The success of the air campaign has had the adverse effect for the
American military of forcing all potential opposing forces of embracing
tactics which minimize the effects of air power.
Ground campaign
On February 22, 1991, Iraq agreed to a Soviet-proposed cease-fire
agreement. The agreement called for Iraq to withdraw troops to
pre-invasion positions within three weeks following a total cease-fire,
and called for monitoring of the cease-fire and withdrawal to be
overseen by the UN Security Council. The US rejected the proposal but
said that retreating Iraqi forces would not be attacked, and gave
twenty-four hours for Iraq to begin withdrawing forces.
On February 24, the US began Operation Desert Sabre, the ground portion
of its campaign. Soon after, U.S. Marines and their Arab allies
penetrated deep into Kuwait, collecting thousands of deserting Iraqi
troops, weakened and demoralized by the extensive air campaign. A few
days into the campaign, Kuwait City was recaptured by units of the
Kuwaiti Army.
At the same time, the U.S. VII Corps launched a massive armored attack
into Iraq, just to the west of Kuwait, taking the Iraqis completely by
surprise. The left flank of this movement was protecting by the French
6th Light Armored Division (which included units of the Foreign Legion),
and their right flank by the British 1st Armored Division. Once the
allies had penetrated deep into Iraqi territory, they turned eastward,
launching a massive flank attack against the Republican Guard. Tank
battles flared as the Republican Guard attempted to retreat, which the
Allies won with minimal losses.
The US anticipated that Iraq might use chemical weapons; General Colin
Powell later suggested that a US response to such an act might have been
to destroy dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, flooding Baghdad,
though this was never fully developed as a plan.
The United States originally hoped that Saddam would be overthrown in an
internal coup, and used CIA assets in Iraq to organize a revolt. When a
popular rebellion against Saddam began in southern Iraq, the United
States did not support it due to the fact that the coalition refused to
aid in an invasion. As a result, not only was the rebellion brutally
subdued, but the main CIA operative who was tasked with organizing the
revolt was disavowed and accused of "disobeying orders to not organize a
revolt".
In their cowritten 1998 book, A World Transformed George Bush and Brent
Scowcroft discussed the possibility of overthrowing Saddam Hussein in
1991:
Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation
of Iraq, would have violated our guidelines about not changing
objectives in midstream, engaging in 'mission creep', and would have
incurred incalculable human and political costs... Would have have been
forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would
instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting in anger and other allies
pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, there was no viable
'exit strategy' we could see, violating another of our principles... Had
we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be
an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a
dramatically different - and perhaps barren - outcome. (quoted in Losing
America, pg 154)
Iraq did not use chemical weapons and the allied advance was much
swifter than US generals expected. On February 26, Iraqi troops began
retreating out of Kuwait, setting fire to Kuwaiti oil fields as they
left. A long convoy of retreating Iraqi troops formed along the main
Iraq-Kuwait highway. This convoy was bombed so extensively by the Allies
that it came to be known as the Highway of Death. One hundred hours
after the ground campaign started, President Bush declared a ceasefire
and on February 27 declared that Kuwait had been liberated. Journalist
Seymour Hersh has charged that, two days after the ceasefire was
declared, American troops led by Barry McCaffrey engaged in a systematic
massacre of retreating Iraqi troops, in addition to some civilians.
McCaffrey has denied the charges and an army investigation has cleared
him. (Forbes, Daniel)
A peace conference was held in Iraqi territory occupied by the
coalition. At the conference, Iraq won the approval of the use of armed
helicopters on their side of the temporary border, ostensibly for
government transit due to the damage done to civilian transportation.
Soon after, these helicopters — and much of the Iraqi armed forces —
were refocused toward fighting against a Shiite uprising in the south.
In the North, Kurdish leaders took heart in American statements that
they would support an uprising and began fighting, in the hopes of
triggering a coup. However, when no American support was forthcoming,
Iraqi generals remained loyal and brutally crushed the Kurdish troops.
Millions of Kurds fled across the mountains to Kurdish areas of Turkey
and Iran. These incidents would later result in no-fly zones being
established in both the North and the South of Iraq. In Kuwait, the Emir
was restored and suspected Iraqi collaborators were repressed.
Eventually, over 400,000 people were expelled from the country,
including a large number of Palestinians (due to their support of and
collaboration with Saddam Hussein).
Iraqi forces were heavily outnumbered from the start - approximately
750,000 Allied troops to approximately 450,000 Iraqi troops. A further
100,000 Turkish troops were deployed along the common border of Turkey
and Iraq. This caused significant force dilution of the Iraqi military
by forcing it to deploy its forces along all its borders (except
ironically its bitter enemy Iran). This allowed the main thrust by the
Americans to not only possess a significant technological advantage but
also a large advantage in force numbers.
The main surprise of the ground campaign was relatively low Allied
casualties. This was due to some tactical errors on the part of the
Iraqis such as deploying tanks behind sand berms which offered no
protection against the kinetic energy rounds of the M1 Abrams tanks and
also gave away the position of the Iraqi tanks from a great distance.
The Iraqi forces also failed to utilize urban warfare in Kuwait City,
which could have inflicted significant casualities on the attacking
forces. Urban combat would have reduced the greatest advantage of the
Allies, long range killing. In the desert M1 Abrams tanks scored kills
out to 4 kilometers. Rarely in urban combat does fighting range exceed 1
km, a range at which theoretically the M1 Abrams tank was vulnerable to
the 125mm gun of the T-72 tanks that the Iraqis possessed.
On March 10, 1991, Operation Desert Farewell began to move 540,000
American troops out of the Persian Gulf.
Coalition involvement
Members of the Coalition included Argentina, Australia, Bahrain,
Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Egypt, France,
Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Morocco, Netherlands, New
Zealand, Niger, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi
Arabia, Senegal, South Korea, Spain, Syria, Turkey, United Arab
Emirates, United Kingdom and the United States of America. Germany and
Japan provided financial assistance instead of military aid.
Canada
Canada was one of the first nations to agree to condemn Iraq's invasion
of Kuwait and it quickly agreed to join the U.S. led coalition. In
August Prime Minister Brian Mulroney sent the destroyers HMCS Terra Nova
and HMCS Athabaskan to enforce the trade blockade against Iraq. The
supply ship HMCS Protecteur was also sent to aid the gathering coalition
forces.
After the UN authorized full use of force in the operation Canada sent a
CF18 squadron with support personnel. Canada also sent a field hospital
to deal with casualties from the ground war. When the air war began,
Canada's planes were integrated into the coalition force and provided
air cover and attacked ground targets. This was the first time since the
Korean War that Canadian forces had participated in offensive combat
operations.
Canada suffered no casualties during the conflict but since its end many
veterans have complained of suffering from Gulf War Syndrome.
Casualties
Casualties During the War
Gulf War casualty numbers are controversial. Coalition military deaths
have been reported to be around 378, but the DoD reports that US forces
suffered 147 battle-related and 325 non-battle-related deaths. The UK
suffered 24 deaths, the Arab countries lost 39 men (18 Saudis, 10
Egyptians, 6 from the UAE, 3 Syrians, and 1 Kuwaiti), and France lost 2
men. The largest single loss of Coalition forces happened on February
25, 1991, when an Iraqi Scud missile hit an American military barracks
in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia killing 28 U.S. Army Reservists from
Pennsylvania. The number of coalition wounded seems to have been less
than 1,000.
Independent analysts generally agree the Iraqi death toll was well below
initial post-war estimates. In the immediate aftermath of the war, these
estimates ranged as high as 100,000 Iraqi troops killed and 300,000
wounded. According to "Gulf War Air Power Survey" by Thomas A. Keaney
and Eliot A. Cohen, (a report commissioned by the U.S. Air Force;
1993-ISBN 0-16-041950-6), there were an estimated 10-12,000 Iraqi combat
deaths in the air campaign and as many as 10,000 casualties in the
ground war. This analysis is based on enemy prisoner of war reports.
The Iraqi government claimed that 2,300 civilians died during the air
campaign.
One infamous incident during the war highlighted the question of
large-scale Iraqi combat deaths. This was the `bulldozer assault' in
which two brigades from the U.S. 1st Infantry Division (Mechanized) used
anti-mine plows mounted on tanks and combat earthmovers to bury Iraqi
soldiers defending the fortified "Saddam Line." While approximately
2,000 of the troops surrendered, escaping burial, one newspaper story
reported that the U.S. commanders estimated thousands of Iraqi soldiers
had been buried alive during the two-day assault February 24-25, 1991.
However, like all other troop estimates made during the war, the
estimated 8,000 Iraqi defenders was probably greatly inflated. While one
commander, Col. Anthony Moreno of the 2nd Brigade, thought the numbers
might have been in the thousands, another reported his brigade buried
between 80 and 250 Iraqis. After the war, the Iraqi government claimed
to have found 44 such bodies. [12]
The Post-War Effects of Depleted Uranium
In 1998, Saddam government doctors reported that Coalition use of
depleted uranium caused a massive increase in birth defects and cancer
among Iraqis, particularly leukemia. The government doctors claimed they
were unable to provide evidence linking depleted uranium to the cancer
and birth defects because the sanctions prevented them from obtaining
necessary testing equipment. Subsequently, a World Health Organization
team visited Basra and proposed a study to investigate the causes of
higher cancer rates in southern Iraq, but Saddam refused.
The World Health Organization was nonetheless able to assess the health
risks of Depleted Uranium in a post-combat environment thanks to a 2001
mission to Kosovo. A 2001 WHO fact sheet on depleted uranium concludes:
"because DU is only weakly radioactive, very large amounts of dust (on
the order of grams) would have to be inhaled for the additional risk of
lung cancer to be detectable in an exposed group. Risks for other
radiation-induced cancers, including leukaemia, are considered to be
very much lower than for lung cancer." In addition, "no reproductive or
developmental effects have been reported in humans" as a result of DU
exposure. [13]
The U.S. Department of State has also published a fact sheet on depleted
uranium. It states: "World Health Organization and other scientific
research studies indicate Depleted Uranium poses no serious health
risks" and "[d]epleted Uranium does not cause birth defects. Iraqi
military use of chemical and nerve agents in the 1980's and 1990's is
the likely cause of alleged birth defects among Iraqi children." In
regard to cancer claims, the fact sheet states that "[a]ccording to
environmental health experts, it is medically impossible to contract
leukemia as a result of exposure to uranium or depleted uranium," and
"[c]ancer rates in almost 19,000 highly exposed uranium industry workers
who worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory projects between 1943 and
1947 have been examined, and no excess cancers were observed through
1974. Other epidemiological studies of lung cancer in uranium mill and
metal processing plant workers have found either no excess cancers or
attributed them to known carcinogens other than uranium, such as radon."
[14]
However, some claim that the effect is more severe as the Depleted
Uranium ammunition would fragment into tiny particles when it hit the
target. [15]
Cost
The cost of the war to the United States was calculated by Congress to
be $61.1 billion. Other sources estimate up to $71 billion. About $53
billion of that amount was paid by different countries around the world:
$36 billion by Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States; $16 billion
by Germany and Japan (which sent no forces due to the treaties that
ended WWII). About 25% of Saudi Arabia's contribution was paid in the
form of in-kind services to the troops, such as food and transportation.
US troops represented about 74% of the combined force, and the global
cost was therefore higher. The United Kingdom, for instance, spent $4.1
billion during this war.
Media
The Gulf War was a heavily televised war. For the first time people all
over the world were able to watch live pictures of missiles hitting
their targets and fighters taking off from aircraft carriers. Allied
forces were keen to demonstrate the accuracy of their weapons.
The big-three network anchors led the network news coverage of the war.
ABC's Peter Jennings, CBS's Dan Rather, and NBC's Tom Brokaw were
anchoring their evening newscasts when air strikes began on January 16,
1991. ABC News correspondent Gary Shepard, reporting live from Baghdad,
told Jennings of the quietness of the city. But, moments later, Shepard
was back on the air as flashes of light were seen on the horizon and
tracer fire was heard on the ground. On CBS, viewers were watching a
report from correspondent Allen Pizzey, who was also reporting from
Baghdad, when the war began. Rather, after the report was finished,
announced that there were unconfirmed reports of flashes in Baghdad and
heavy air traffic at bases in Saudi Arabia. On the "NBC Nightly News",
correspondent Mike Boettcher reported unusual air activity in Dhahran,
Saudi Arabia. Moments later, Brokaw announced to his viewers that the
air attack had begun. But it was CNN who gained the most popularity for
their coverage. CNN correspondents John Holliman and Peter Arnett and
CNN anchor Bernard Shaw relayed telephone reports from the Al-Rashid
Hotel as the air strikes began. Newspapers all over the world also
covered the war and TIME Magazine published a special issue dated
January 28, 1991, the headline "WAR IN THE GULF" emblazoned on the cover
over a picture of Baghdad taken as the war began.
US policy regarding media freedom was much more restrictive than in the
Vietnam War. The policy had been spelled out in a Pentagon document
entitled Annex Foxtrot. Most of the press information came from
briefings organized by the military. Only selected journalists were
allowed to visit the front lines or conduct interviews with soldiers.
Those visits were always conducted in the presence of officers, and were
subject to both prior approval by the military and censorship afterward.
This was ostensibly to protect sensitive information from being revealed
to Iraq, but often in practice it was used to protect politically
embarrassing information from being revealed. This policy was heavily
influenced by the military's experience with the Vietnam War, which it
believed it had lost due to public opposition within the United States.
At the same time, the coverage of this war was new in its
instantaneousness. Many American journalists remained stationed in the
Iraqi capital Baghdad throughout the war, and footage of incoming
missiles was carried almost immediately on the nightly television news
and the cable news channels such as CNN. A British crew from CBS News
(David Green & Andy Thompson) equipped with satellite transmission
equipment travelled with the front line forces and having transmitted
live TV pictures of the fighting en route, arrived the day before the
forces in Kuwait City, broadcasting live television from the city and
covering the entrance of the Arab forces the following day.
Consequences
Following the uprisings in the North and South, no-fly zones were
established to help protect the Shi'ite and Kurdish groups in South and
North Iraq, respectively. These no-fly zones (originally north of the
36th parallel and south of the 32nd parallel) were monitored mainly by
the US and the UK, though France also participated. Combined, they flew
more sorties over Iraq in the eleven years following the war than were
flown during the war. These sorties dropped bombs nearly every other
day. However, the greatest amount of bombs was dropped during two
sustained bombing campaigns: Operation Desert Strike, which lasted a few
weeks in September 1996, and Operation Desert Fox, in December 1998.
Widespread infrastructure destruction hurt the Iraqi population. Years
after the war electricity production was less than a quarter its pre-war
level. The destruction of water treatment facilities caused sewage to
flow directly into the Tigris River, from which civilians drew drinking
water, resulting in widespread disease.
Economic sanctions were kept in place following the war, pending a
weapons inspection regime with which Iraq never fully cooperated. Iraq
was later allowed to import certain products under the UN's Oil for Food
program. A 1998 UNICEF report found that the sanctions resulted in an
increase in 90,000 deaths per year. Many argue that the sanctions on
Iraq and the American military presence in Saudi Arabia contributed to
an increasingly negative image of the United States in the Arab world.
A United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) on weapons was established,
to monitor Iraq's compliance with restrictions on weapons of mass
destruction and ballistic missiles. Iraq accepted some and refused other
weapons inspections. The team found some evidence of biological weapons
programs at one site and non-compliance at many other sites.
In 1997, Iraq expelled all US members of the inspection team, alleging
that the United States was using the inspections as a front for
espionage; members of UNSCOM were in regular contact with various
intelligence agencies to provide information on weapons sites back and
forth. The team returned for an even more turbulent time period between
1997 and 1999; one member of the weapons inspection team, US Marine
Scott Ritter, resigned in 1998, alleging that the Clinton administration
was blocking investigations because they did not want a full-scale
confrontation with Iraq. He also alleged that the CIA was using the
weapons inspection teams as a cover for covert operations. In 1999, the
team was replaced by UNMOVIC, which began inspections in 2002. In 2002,
Iraq — and especially Saddam Hussein — became targets in the United
States' War on Terrorism, leading to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, led by
the United States and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom.
Many returning coalition soldiers reported illnesses following their
participation in the Gulf War, a phenomenon known as Gulf war syndrome.
The number of children born in soldier's families with serious
congenital defects or serious illnesses is also alarmingly high, 67%,
according to a study by the Department of Veterans Affairs. [16] There
has been widespread speculation and disagreement about the causes of the
syndrome and birth defects (though the government has attempted to
downplay the seriousness of the situation). A report published in 1994
by the Government Accountability Office said that American troops were
exposed to 21 potential "reproductive toxicants". Some factors
considered as possibly causal include exposure to radioactive depleted
and non-depleted uranium used in munitions, oil fires, or the anthrax
vaccine.
The People's Republic of China (whose army in many ways resembled the
Iraqi army) was surprised at the performance of American technology on
the battlefield. The swiftness of the coalition victory resulted in an
overall change in Chinese military thinking and began a movement to
technologically modernize the People's Liberation Army.
A crucial result of the Gulf War, according to Gilles Kepel, was the
sharp revival in Islamic extremism. The change of face by Saddam's
secular regime did little to draw support from Islamist groups. However,
it, combined with the Saudi Arabian alliance with the United States and
Saudi Arabia being seen as being on the same side of Israel dramatically
eroded that regime's legitimacy. Activity of Islamist groups against the
Saudi regime increased dramatically. In part to win back favour with
Islamist groups Saudi Arabia greatly increased funding to those that
would support the regime. Throughout the newly independent states of
Central Asia the Saudis paid for the distribution of millions of Qur'ans
and the building of hundreds of mosques for extremist groups. In
Afghanistan the Saudi regime became a leading patron of the Taliban in
that nation's civil war, and one of the only foreign countries to
officially recognize the government.
Technology
Precision guided munitions (PGMs, also "smart bombs"), such as the
United States Air Force guided missile AGM-130, were heralded as key in
allowing military strikes to be made with a minimum of civilian
casualties compared to previous wars. Specific buildings in downtown
Baghdad could be bombed whilst journalists in their hotels watched
cruise missiles fly by. PGMs amounted to approximately 7.4% of all bombs
dropped by the coalition. Other bombs included cluster bombs, which
break up into clusters of bomblets, and daisy cutters, 15,000-pound
bombs which can disintegrate everything within hundreds of yards.
Among the numerous special forces from the United States, the Light
Armored Recon (LAR) played a powerful role in the removal of Iraqi
troops. Light Armored Vehicles (LAV) provided logistic command centers,
logistics posts, mortar positions and long range suppressing fire with
their powerful 50mm guns.
Scud is a low-technology rocket bomb that Iraq used, launching them into
both Saudi Arabia and Israel. Some bombs caused extensive casualties,
others caused little damage. Concerns were raised of possible chemical
or biological warheads on these rockets, but if they existed they were
not used.
America's Patriot missile defense was used for the first time in combat.
The US military claimed to have shot down many Scud rockets in flight,
with an effectiveness of 100%. Afterwards, it was demonstrated that the
Patriots' effectiveness was primarily psychological: some claim that
their effectiveness was as low as between 0% to 10%. However, there
really is no good evidence to prove whether the Scuds were intercepted
or not, so no figures are really backed up by undisputed facts. The
higher figures tend to be calculated based on the percentage of Scud
warheads which were known to have impacted and exploded compared to the
number of Scud missiles launched, but due to factors such as duds,
misses and impacts which were not reported (some Scud variations were
re-engineered in a manner outside their original tolerance, and said to
have frequently failed or broken up in flight), this is not really a
good way to measure effectiveness. The lowest figures are typically
based upon the number of interceptions where there is proof that the
warhead was hit by at least one missile, but due to the way the poorly
built Al-Hussein (Scud derivative) missiles broke up in flight, it was
often hard to tell which piece was the warhead, and there were few radar
tracks which were actually stored which could be analyzed later, hence
the very low figures. Realistically the actual performance was probably
somewhere in between. The US Army maintains the Patriot delivered a
"miracle performance" in the Gulf War.
Global Positioning System units were key in enabling coalition units to
navigate easily across the desert. Airborne Warning and Control System
(AWACS) and satellite communication systems were also important.
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990/1_Gulf_War
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