Operation Desert Storm ••• 405confess their "crimes" against the Iraqi people on state television. Many
Kuwaitis were kidnapped and taken to Iraq to serve as human shields
against allied attacks. As they retreated, Iraq's troops set Kuwait's oil fields
on fire. Later, Saddam tried diplomacy to enhance Iraq's position by send¬
ing his foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, to Moscow to enlist Soviet aid to stop
the war. Iraq and the USSR offered several proposals for Kuwait's evacua¬
tion, hoping to forestall an invasion. But Bush and his coalition partners
ignored the deals and ordered Iraq to obey all Security Council resolu¬
tions. When it rejected their demands, the coalition began a ground offen¬
sive that within 100 hours had driven Iraqi troops out of Kuwait. The guns
fell silent on 27 February 1991.
The Bush administration and the US seemed to have won a great vic¬
tory in a surprisingly short time. Unlike the wars in Korea and Vietnam,
the Gulf War was backed by most Americans. People hoped at the time
that the US government would bring all the Middle Eastern countries to¬
gether to settle their political differences. To a degree, it did. People feared
at the time that fighting would continue in Iraq. It certainly did. When
coalition forces occupied parts of southern Iraq, the local Shi'is rose up in
rebellion against the Baghdad regime, as did the Kurds farther north. Even
though the coalition leaders had encouraged these uprisings, they gave no
military help either to the Shi'is, who might have formed an Islamic re¬
public in southern Iraq, or to the Kurds, whose formation of an au¬
tonomous Kurdistan might have led to similar demands by Kurds in
Turkey. It did not overthrow Saddam, who deflected all attempts, military
or civilian, to oust him.
Instead, the coalition tried to enforce the destruction of Iraq's nuclear,
biological, and chemical weapons, maintaining for almost thirteen years
the UN sanctions that would impoverish the Iraqi people without ever
harming their leaders. Saddam believed that he won the war, for he stayed
in power, whereas Bush was voted out of office in November 1992. Iraq
was able to rebuild its army and the Republican Guard, menacing Kuwait
again in 1993 and 1994 and defying UN weapons inspection teams in 1997
and 1998. Meanwhile, more than a million Iraqis died due to the sanc¬
tions. After years of resistance, Saddam consented to a UN deal that al¬
lowed him to sell $2 billion worth (soon raised to $5 billion and then to an
unlimited amount) of Iraqi oil every six months in exchange for imported
food, medicine, and other necessities, starting in 1997 (much of the
money was skimmed off by Saddam and his henchmen). Even though the
UN inspectors eventually got access to most of Iraq's military installations
and presidential palaces, they were ordered by Washington to leave in
1998, just before an Anglo-American bombing campaign that hurt mainly