170 Sigrid Faath and hanSpeter Mat teS
17 January 1991, ending in a truce after the liberation of Kuwait on 2 March
1991), but also split the Arab world in two along the lines of economic wel-
fare, with the richer, low-population-density oil-exporting countries (= the
anti-Iraq fraction) on the one side, and the resource-poor, heavily populated
countries with low income levels, such as Yemen, Sudan and Palestine (=
the pro-Iraq fraction), on the other. This polarisation extended to those
countries whose leaders formally supported the intervention activities for
political reasons (Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria), and whose peoples tended
to voice anti-American sentiments (Faath 2006). In light of the sanctions
levied by the UN in March and April of 1991 against Iraq^14 – which were in
effect until the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and caused great hardships
for the Iraqi people – these affections or disaffections only grew stronger.
An analysis of the Second Gulf War has been done from various
vantage points. Besides the broad studies and documentation aimed at
reconstructing the military operations and the Iraqi arms plans – ABC
weapons (Cordesman & Wagner 1996; Zehrer 1992) – a number of other
studies concentrated on the role of the United Nations (1996) and the media
(Taylor 1998) in the conf lict, the humanitarian repercussions of the UN
sanctions (Clark 1996; Cordesman & Hashim 1997) or the developments in
the Kurdish territories both during and after the Gulf War (Leizer 1996).
Very few analyses, however, tried to put the conf lict in a wider context.
Ruf (1991) and his contributors viewed the events from an ideological
vantage point and saw in the Gulf War an example of how the US f lexed
its hegemonic muscles and assumed the role of world leader following the
end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union – thereby
instrumentalising the UN Security Council for its own purposes – to bring
about a new political structure.^15 Dierke (1996), who assumes a high level
of conf lict potential in the partial territory of the Middle East, developed a
theoretical framework for analysing regional wars there. His main conclu-
14 On 3 April 1991, in Resolution 687, the UN Security Council set the conditions for a (lasting)
ceasef ire as follows: (1) the recognition of Kuwait according to the bilateral protocol of 1963;
(2) the renunciation of terrorism; (3) the payment of compensation for war damages; (4) the
destruction of all biological and chemical weapons, as well as all ballistic missiles with a range of
more than 150 km; (5) the elimination of the respective production plants; and (6) the disclosure
and future waiver of the purchase and development of nuclear weapons and of material for their
production.
15 For this reason Ruf speaks of replacing bipolarity by a new world dis-order characterised
by inst abi lit y.