Dear Sanmdaman,
While there were three wars that are sometimes called "The Gulf War",
the conflict did not begin in 1980. It has much deeper roots. Let me
begin with those roots.
Religion, Ethnicity and Borders
===============================
The borders between countries in the Middle East were set arbitrarily,
by the colonial powers (the French and the British), after the defeat
of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War. Remember Lawrence of
Arabia? T.E. Lawrence's job was to act as a go-between, so that the
Arabian tribes would submit to the British, and therefore to enahnce
British influence during 1916-1918, when the Ottomans were losing.
Kuwait was back then and autonomous area within Ottoman Iraq. The
British, who conquered the area in the First World War, treated the
two as separate countries. "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." (SOURCE: Wikipedia, "First Gulf War",
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990/1_Gulf_War>).
Conflicts between the different groups residing in the gulf region and
further into what we call today "Iraq" have existed long before that.
However, these border agreement between the British and the French,
called the Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916), set different ethnic and
religious groups into the same "nation state" - a term, which
originated in Europe, and that was foreign to the post-Ottoman Middle
East. A further border - that between Iraq and Kuwait - was set in
1922.
[You can read about the Sykes-Picot Agreement here:
Wikipedia/Sykes-Picot Agreement
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes-Picot_Agreement> ]
The Persians (at that time - today the people in the Islamic Republic
of Iran), and many of the Iraqis, are Shi'ite Muslims. Some of the
Kurds in the north are Shi'ite as well. This had brought conflict to
the region long before the colonial powers were there.
In addition, we have the conflicts between non-Arabs (the Kurds in the
North and the Persians in Iran) and Arabs.
And finally, we have borders that are disputed upon, which includes
the area of the Shatt el-Arab, an oil-rich (that sounds familiar) area
in and around the delta of the river with the same name in Southern
Iraq. As it happens with colonial borders, there are two problems:
- Borders were not particularly well drawn. Many border run in
straight lines, more or less (See the map here:
Alternative Learning/ Map of the Middle East
<http://www.alternative-learning.org/international/middleast.html>
- There were drawn on a large-scaled map, which means that sometimes
it is not clear where the border actually goes, and even if it only
several dozen kilometers here or there, it could be important if you
have there a certain ethnic group/tribe that will not separate, an
oil-rich area, or just a ruler in one of the countries who'd like to
make a point, in order to enhance his legitimacy.
- And, when not drawn on straight lines in the middle of the desert,
the borders are based on rivers. That's good, right? This is like
borders in Europe, for example. "Natural" borders. hmmm... What do you
do when the river changes its flow and because of modernisation, what
used to be a small delta is now huge - and again, oil-rich?
Dictators who like to make a point
==================================
If that's not enough, we have the politics in the region, which is far
from stable. In Iran, prior to 1979, we had the corrupt regime of the
Shah (emperor). Iran was a pro-Western (read: U.S.-backed)
constitutional monarchy, but not particularly democratic. In fact,
those who had critique, found themselves getting to know the SAVAK,
the Shah's notorious secret service. In 1979, all hell broke loose and
one of the many groups opposing the Shah's oppression, the Islamists
headed by Ayatollah Khomeini.
On the other side of the border, Saddam. Saddam rose to power in 1979,
although he was involved in the regime since a Ba'ath-led coup in 1968
- in fact, he has done an internal coup, slowly taking power away from
Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, who was the leader of the 1968 coup.
In other words, in 1979 both parties needed something that would
strengthen the internal unity and the legitimacy of the regime. What's
better than these old border disputes to ignite the fuse? The fact
that Iran was now in feud with the West gave Saddam the perfect
opportunity to try to attack it, as he could count on some Western
support. During the war, the US and several other Western countries
armed Iraq dn helped it develop its Weapons of Mass Destruction
programme.
Iraq also used the weapons - against Iranian soldiers (20,000 killed
immidiately by nerve gas) and later against its own civilians - Kurds
in the north of Iraq, who rebelled.
See:
Wikipedia/Halabja poison gas attack
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_poison_gas_attack>
Wikipedia/Iran-Iraq War
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Iraq_War>
The war ended in 1988. Saddam ended the war with billions of dollar
debts. He claimed, that the war was fought not only for the sake of
Iraq, but for the benefit of the whole Gulf region, and therefore his
neighbour, Kuwait, should expunge his debt of $30 billion to the
country and to Saudi Arabia. The two countries refused. Kuwait has
also refused to raise oil prices in order to help him raise money
through oil profits.
The Gulf War (Desert Storm)
===========================
On August 2nd, 1990 Saddam invaded Kuwait, which had about the same
oil reserves as Iraq. Saddam met the US ambassador to Iraq just two
weeks before the invasion, and had apparently expected, given the past
American support in Iraq (it has also got some $40 billion from the
United States during the war), that the United State will not react
dramatically.
He was wrong. Because of the interest to preserve the Saudi oil
fields, President Bush sent troops to protect Saudi Arabia from
invasion at the beginning of August. The UN has given Iraq a deadline
to withdraw - on January 15, 1991.
Iraq responded, that its withdrawl must be linked with a withdrawl of
Israel from the territories, which it occupied in 1967 (The Golan
Heights, The West Bank and The Gaza Strip). Interestingly, Syria,
which has claim for the Golan Heights, denied the linkage (it was a
member of the US led coalition). The Palestinian PLO leader Yassir
Arafat, on the other hand, expressed his support of Saddam.
About a day after the deadline went by, on January 17th, 1991, a US
led coalition of 35 countries began launching air raids on Iraq. On
January 18th, Iraq adopted another strategy, that of attacking Saudi
Arabia and Israel with Scud ballistic missiles. It had hoped, that by
attacking Israel and provoking it to react, it would distance the Arab
members of the coalition from it. This strategy has failed, and Israel
stayed out of the coalition and did not react to the 39 missile
attacks.
On February 22nd, a second stage in the operation begun. Iraq agreed
to withdraw and the US stated that withdrawing soldiers would not be
attacked. However, on February 24th, it launched a ground campaign to
free Kuwait. Two days later, the Iraqis bagan to retreat from Kuwait.
The Emir of Kuwait returned to the country, and the Kuwaities decided
to expel those who supported the invasion - some 400,000 people,
mostly Palestinians who resided in Kuwait.
On March 10, "Operation Desert Farewell" began, and the coalition
troops began to leave the region. However, in Iraq, Saddam had to
fight destabilisation: the Kurds in the North and the Shi'ites in the
South sought to exploit the situation in order to rebel. The rebellion
was crushed, but the UN established "No Fly Zones" to protect the
Kurdish and Shi'ite minorities from further oppression. There were
skirmishes between the Iraqi army and the UK/US planes (usually with
anti-iarcraft missiles). In addition, Iraq was subjected to UN
sanctions, until it will let UN inspect its arsenal of
non-conventional weapons. Iraq never fully cooperated.
Further Reading
===============
You can read more about the Gulf War in the following sites:
Wikipedia - Gulf War
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990/1_Gulf_War>
InDepthInfo - Gulf War
<http://www.indepthinfo.com/iraq/index.shtml>
George Washington University - Gulf War (National Archives material)
<http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB39/>
Global Security
<http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/desert_storm.htm>
On the current Iraq War, you can read in my answer here:
The Iraq war and the reconstruction effort
<http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=707905>
PS - just a note regarding your comment on US media. I don't think
that US media is more or less accurate than media in other countries.
One should be also aware when reading any press material, whose
interests stand behind it.
I hope this answers your question. Please contact me if you need any
clarification on this answer before you rate it. |
Clarification of Answer by
politicalguru-ga
on
03 Apr 2006 15:37 PDT
Dear Sanmdaman,
Basically, the reason Iraq invaded Kuwait, was for the oil?
Essentially it was over land dispute though which lead to a war, which
lead to debt, which Saddam stressed about and decided to get the money
from Kuwait.
This is part of it, but there are few other things. For example,
legitimacy. It may sound weird to people living in democracies to hear
that dictators need legitimacy as well - they are dictators, right?
They do not need approval of the people... However, this is not
entirely correct, and while it is obvious that a regime like the
Ba'ath regime doesn't act the same way as the regime in the UK or
Australia, its leaders still need some support and have to "save
face". In addition, Iraq wanted to be a leader of the Arab world, not
just "any" Arab country. In a way, it wanted to restore the days (in
the Middle Ages) that Baghdad was the political/cultural centre of the
Islamic World.
After the first was between Iraq and Iran did Iraq successfully take
over Iran, why isn't it a part of Iraq now?
Iran is a huge country (larger than Iraq and if I am not mistaken -
second in territory only to Lybia in the Middle East), and maybe I
wasn't so clear. Iraq has invaded Iran and managed to occupy sine
territory. It hasn't manage to hold the territories, but it cost Iran
lots of blood to regain them.
I understand the US wanted to defend those oil-fields also because of
money, but how did Isreal get involved?
Well, Iraq and Israel weren't exactly friendly. As I've mentioned,
Saddam wanted to play a trick on the Americans - the US had some Arab
countries in the coalition against Iraq; and Iraq thought, that if it
will place itself as the liberator of the Palestinians and the
Occupied Territories. However, Israel did not take the bait and
reacted. In any case, it is unfortunately very common to drag Israel
to all kind of unrelated conflicts.
What War Crime Laws was Iraq breaking in order for the UN to get invovled?
Ironically, it was not criticised by the UN because of the gas attacks
on Iran or on the Kurdish minority. Rather, the UN involvement was
because it has attacked (and occupied) another UN member, Kuwait.
Did any other countries fight?
Yes, as I said, the US led a coalition of 34 other nations:
Afghanistan, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Canada,
Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary,
Honduras, Italy, Kuwait, Morocco, The Netherlands, New Zealand, 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.
I heard something about Saudi Arabia?
Member of the coalition, as mentioned above.
One final question, who are the Kurds?
They have nothing to do with cheese, I'll tell you that. The Kurds are
a nation, or an ethnic group, which is based in Northern Iraq, in
Turkey, in Iran and in Syria. In each of these countries they are a
minority. They are not Arabs, but an Indo-European group (that refers
mostly to their language). You can read moer about them here:
Kurdish People
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurds>
|
