Middle East - Anthony Ham [178]
Saddam Hussein’s brutal legacy is epitomised by the horrific events that took place in the small Kurdish village of Halabja. On the morning of March 16, 1988, Iraqi forces bombed the village with poison gas as retribution for Kurdish support of Iranian forces. In less than an hour, more than 5000 men, women and children were killed.
The Gulf War
The wounds of the Iran-Iraq war had barely healed when Saddam turned his attention to Kuwait. In July 1990 Saddam accused the Kuwaitis, (with some justification) of waging ‘economic warfare’ against Iraq by attempting to artificially hold down the price of oil and of stealing oil by slant-drilling into the Iraq side of the border. On 2 August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, whose small armed forces were quickly overrun. Six days later, Iraq annexed Kuwait as its 19th province. It was a costly miscalculation.
Led by the US President George W Bush Snr, an international coalition of nearly one million troops from 34 countries amassed on Iraq’s borders. On 17 January 1991, Operation Desert Storm began with a massive five-week bombing campaign, followed by a ground offensive that drove Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Widely varied figures estimate that between 20,000 and 100,000 Iraqis were killed. As part of the ceasefire agreement, the UN ordered Iraq to destroy all chemical, nuclear and biological weapons and long-range missile programs. The ‘Mother of All Battles’ ended badly for Saddam, but even worse for Iraqi civilians.
Shortly before the war ended, Iraqi Shiites and Kurds took up arms against Saddam, encouraged by the impending victory and promises of coalition support. But help never arrived. Saddam’s forces quickly crushed the rebellion, leaving thousands more dead. Other Saddam opponents were imprisoned, tortured or simply vanished. Coalition forces later established no-fly zones in southern and northern Iraq to protect the Shiites and Kurds, but it was too little, too late.
UN economic sanctions did little to undermine Saddam’s regime, but they brought untold misery to the people of Iraq in the form of malnutrition, poverty, inadequate medical care and lack of clean water. The subsequent UN oil-for-food program suffered widespread corruption and abuse. In 1998 US and UK forces launched a four-day bombing campaign as punishment for Saddam’s repeated interference with UN weapons inspections. Sporadic bombings and sanctions would continue for years, but Saddam remained defiantly in power.
The 2003 Iraq War
In a 12 September 2002 speech to the UN General Assembly, US President George W Bush Jnr set the stage for war by declaring that Iraq was manufacturing weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and harbouring Al-Qaeda terrorists, among other claims. Saddam disputed the claims but reluctantly agreed to allow weapons inspectors back into the country. UN inspectors concluded that Iraq had failed to account for all its weapons, but insisted there was no evidence WMDs had existed. Meanwhile, a ‘coalition of the willing’ led by American and British troops was massing in Kuwait. On 20 March 2003 – without UN authority – the coalition launched its second war on Iraq. Allied forces easily overran Iraqi forces, with relatively few casualties. Baghdad fell on 9 April 2003, but Saddam escaped. On 1 May 2003, Bush declared victory under a banner that read ‘Mission Accomplished’. But the war was just beginning.
Allied forces were at first welcomed by Iraqis as liberators. But initial optimism quickly vanished, and it soon became clear that planning for post-war Iraq had been woefully inadequate. Iraq descended into chaos and anarchy. Looting was widespread. The Iraqi Museum was robbed of priceless artefacts. The Iraqi Army was disbanded and former Ba’ath party members were excluded from the new Iraqi government, suddenly leaving millions of unemployed