Iraq

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Persian Gulf War

In 1990 Hussein revived Iraq’s long-standing territorial dispute with Kuwait, its ally during the war with Iran. Iraq claimed that overproduction of petroleum by Kuwait was injuring Iraq’s economy by depressing the price of crude oil. Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait on August 2 and rapidly took over the country. The UN Security Council issued a series of resolutions that condemned the occupation, imposed a broad trade embargo on Iraq, and demanded that Iraq withdraw unconditionally by January 15, 1991.

When Iraq failed to comply, a coalition led by the United States began intensive aerial bombardment of military and infrastructural targets in Iraq and Kuwait in January 1991. The ensuing Persian Gulf War proved disastrous for Iraq, which was forced out of Kuwait in about six weeks. Coalition forces invaded southern Iraq, and tens of thousands of Iraqis were killed. Many of the country’s armored vehicles and artillery pieces were destroyed, and its nuclear and chemical weapons facilities were severely damaged.

In April, Iraq agreed to UN terms for a permanent cease-fire; coalition troops withdrew from southern Iraq as a UN peacekeeping force moved in to police the Iraq-Kuwait border. Meanwhile, Hussein used his remaining military forces to suppress rebellions by Shia in the south and Kurds in the north. Shia activists from the underground Da`wa Party and the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq overthrew the Baath throughout the southern provinces. Although the United States had called for Iraqis to rise up to overthrow Saddam Hussein, the U.S. military did not intervene when he used helicopter gunships to put down the rebellion, killing tens of thousands.

Hundreds of thousands of Kurdish refugees fled to Turkey and Iran, and U.S., British, and French troops landed inside Iraq’s northern border to establish a Kurdish enclave with refugee camps to protect another 600,000 Kurds from Iraqi government reprisals. In addition, international forces set up no-fly zones in both northern and southern Iraq to ensure the safety of the Kurdish and Shia populations, although the Shia continued to suffer from severe repression. In the 1990s most Iraqi Shia followed the spiritual guidance of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. His rival, Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, gained the allegiance of poor slum dwellers and tribesmen, as he spread a puritanical version of Shiism not far removed from that of Ayatollah Khomeini’s in Iran. Al-Sadr was assassinated by agents of the Iraqi state in 1999, and was succeeded by his young son Muqtada.

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In November 1994 Hussein signed a decree formally accepting Kuwait’s sovereignty, political independence, and territorial integrity. The decree effectively ended Iraq’s claim to Kuwait as a province of Iraq.

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Kurdish Strife

In 1994 Iraq continued its efforts to crush internal resistance with an economic embargo of the Kurdish-populated north and a military campaign against Shia rebels in the southern marshlands. The Shia were quickly subdued, but the crisis in the Kurdish region, which had long suffered from internal rivalries, was prolonged. Kurds had often disputed over land rights, and as their economic and political security deteriorated in the early 1990s, the conflicts became more extreme. In the mid-1990s clashes between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistān (PUK) and the Kurdistān Democratic Party (KDP) led to a state of civil war.

In August 1996 leaders of the KDP asked Hussein to intervene in the war. He sent at least 30,000 troops into the Kurdish enclave protected by international forces, capturing the PUK stronghold of Irbīl. The international forces decided to leave the enclave rather than intervene in the dispute between rival Kurdish factions. The KDP was quickly installed in power. The United States responded to Hussein’s incursion with two missile strikes against southern Iraq, but the following month Iraq again helped KDP fighters, this time taking the PUK stronghold of As Sulaymānīyah. By 1997 the KDP ruled most of northern Iraq.

In September 1998 the PUK and KDP signed an agreement calling for the establishment of a joint regional government. Although implementation of the agreement proceeded more slowly than planned, it resulted in an end to the fighting between the two groups.

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Sanctions

A UN trade embargo remained in place after the Persian Gulf War. The Security Council laid out strict demands on Iraq for lifting the sanctions, including destruction of its chemical and biological weapons, cessation of nuclear weapons programs, and acceptance of international inspections to ensure that these conditions were met. Iraq resisted these demands, claiming that its withdrawal from Kuwait was sufficient compliance. UN weapons inspectors entered Iraq in mid-1991 and began destroying chemical and biological weapons and production facilities in mid-1992.

By the mid-1990s Iraq was suffering an economic crisis. Prices were high, food and medicine shortages were rampant, and the free-market (unofficial) exchange rate for the dinar was in severe decline. Although the sanctions continued, in April 1995 the UN Security Council voted unanimously to allow Iraq to sell limited amounts of oil to meet its urgent humanitarian needs. Iraq initially rejected the plan but then accepted it in 1996; it began to export oil at the end of that year. In 1998 the UN increased the amount of oil Iraq was allowed to sell, but Iraq was unable to take full advantage of this increase because its production capabilities had deteriorated under the sanctions.

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Weapons Inspections

Beginning in the late 1990s Iraq increasingly faced the possibility of another military crisis. Iraq’s interference with UN weapons inspectors almost led to punitive U.S. air strikes against Iraq in early 1998, a step that was averted by a last-minute compromise brokered by UN secretary general Kofi Annan. In December of that year, in response to reports that Iraq was continuing to block inspections, the United States and Britain pulled out the weapons inspectors and launched a four-day series of air strikes on Iraqi military and industrial targets. In response, Iraq declared that it would no longer comply with UN inspection teams. In the following years, British and U.S. planes periodically struck Iraqi missile launch sites and other targets.

Despite interference by Iraqi authorities, UN weapons inspectors succeeded in destroying thousands of chemical weapons, hundreds of missiles, and numerous weapon production facilities before leaving Iraq in late 1998. But some inspectors believed that Hussein still possessed many more chemical weapons, and expressed concerns that Iraq had inadequately reported the scale of its biological weapons program and stockpile. Other inspectors declared that 85 percent of the original stockpiles had been destroyed.

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U.S. Invasion

In 2002 U.S. president George W. Bush insisted that Iraq prove that it had disarmed as required under the terms that ended the Persian Gulf War. In November 2002, after months of heightened diplomatic pressure from the UN and military pressure from the United States, Iraq accepted a UN resolution ordering the immediate return of weapons inspectors to Iraq. In March 2003 UN weapons inspectors concluded with regard to chemical and biological weapons, “No proscribed activities, or the result of such activities from the period of 1998-2002 have, so far, been detected through inspections.” The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also reported in early March that there was no sign of a renewed nuclear weapons program. Hans Blix, who led the UN weapons inspection team, reported that Iraq was not in full compliance with UN Security Council resolutions, but Blix asked for more time to complete his mission. The United States objected to the request for more time, arguing that Hussein had failed to comply fully with UN resolutions since 1991. Earlier, in February 2003, President Bush had privately told Spain’s prime minister José María Aznar that he had lost patience with the UN and that U.S. forces would be in Baghdād by the end of March. The Bush administration argued that Iraq was continuing to hide significant quantities of banned chemical and biological weapons. Its efforts, however, to obtain UN Security Council approval for military measures against Iraq were unsuccessful.

The United States, with the support of Britain and several other nations, built up a military force in the Persian Gulf in preparation for an invasion of Iraq. Other countries, including France, Germany, and Russia, opposed military action, arguing that diplomacy and inspections should be given more time to work. After the UN Security Council failed to reach consensus regarding military action against Iraq, U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq in March 2003 with the goals of removing Hussein from power and destroying the country’s alleged stockpiles of banned weapons (see U.S.-Iraq War). By mid-April U.S.-led forces had swept across southern Iraq, and Kurdish forces, with the help of the U.S. military, had captured the major cities of the north. Baghdād fell to U.S. forces in April. Hussein remained at large, but was no longer in power. (In December 2003 U.S. forces captured Hussein at a farm near Tikrīt. He was later put on trial and executed for crimes against humanity.)

In the immediate aftermath of the fall of Baghdād, widespread looting took place throughout the capital. Criminal gangs broke into government offices, stealing equipment and setting fires. The Iraq Museum, which housed priceless artifacts from early Mesopotamian culture, was extensively looted. Although U.S. forces guarded the building of the Oil Ministry, they did nothing to intervene against the general looting. As a result of the criminal anarchy that ensued, many Iraqis became disillusioned early on with the U.S. occupation.

In addition, U.S. forces were stretched thin throughout Iraq because of the limited number of troops taking part in the invasion. U.S. generals had recommended a large invasion force of about 400,000 troops, rather than the 160,000 troops that were eventually deployed. As a result, numerous weapons caches throughout the country were left unguarded and ultimately fell into the hands of insurgents.

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