the Middle East finally might be ripe for a era of peace and harmony. With Saddam
Hussein defeated, and the United States having emerged as the chief power in the
region, President George H. W. Bush had no reluctance in describing to Congress on
March 6, 1991, the “very real prospect of a new world order.”
Even before Bush spoke these words, however, aspects of the old order already had
re-emerged in the Middle East. On March 1, reports began circulating of a widespread
uprising of Shiites in Basra, the largest city in southern Iraq. The spontaneous rebel-
lion quickly spread to other cities in the majority-Shiite south, spawned in part by a
revolt by a number of Shiite soldiers in Iraq’s defeated army. Under orders from Bagh-
dad, however, remnants of the army attacked the Shiite rebels in what, for a time,
appeared to be the opening stages of a major civil war. Sensing an opportunity to
achieve the independence they had long sought, Kurds in the north of Iraq also
rebelled, announcing on March 6 that they had seized control of much of their home
provinces, which they called Kurdistan. The Kurdish rebellion crested on March 19
with the capture of Kirkuk, the capital of Iraq’s northern oil-producing region.
Although most of Iraq’s regular army lay in ruins, Hussein still had command of
some reserve forces, primarily the Republican Guard, which he had held back from
the fighting in Kuwait. These units suppressed the Shiite rebellion within two weeks
and then turned their attention to the Kurdish north. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds
fled the attacking Iraqi troops, most of them heading across the mountainous border
areas into Turkey and Iran, where they faced the ravages of a lingering winter. On
March 16, with fighting still under way in the north, Hussein delivered a televised
speech promising political reforms, including a multiparty democracy. He subsequently
failed to fulfill these promises.
The Shiite and Kurdish rebellions resulted in thousands of deaths and failed to
achieve their stated goals—the overthrow of Hussein’s regime and the establishment
of an independent Kurdistan—but they succeeded in forcing the rest of the world to
pay attention to the postwar internal dynamics of Iraq. In particular, the plight of the
Kurds who had fled into Turkey momentarily captured the world’s concern and
brought an outpouring of humanitarian aid, most of it delivered by the U.S. military.
The Shiites in southern Iraq were left to fend for themselves because they remained
within Hussein’s grasp. The UN Security Council on April 5 adopted Resolution 688
demanding that Iraq “immediately end this repression” of Kurds and Shiites. The
United States and Britain later cited that resolution as authority for their establish-
ment in Iraq of “no-fly” zones—the areas south of the 32nd parallel and north of the
36th parallel to be patrolled by NATO warplanes to prevent aerial attacks on the civil-
ian population by Iraq’s military. The NATO flights would continue until the U.S.-
led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Resolution 687
The Iraqi government’s suppression of the Kurdish and Shiite rebellions coincided with
the lengthy diplomatic process at the United Nations of drafting a postwar resolution
dealing with Iraq. The war had ended on February 28, and generals on the ground
had signed a cease-fire on March 3, but the Bush administration and its allies wanted
a more permanent truce imposing conditions that would prevent Iraq from attempt-
ing renewed aggression against its neighbors.
466 IRAQ AND THE GULF WARS