February, the high-tech armour sliced through
and completely outflanked the Iraqi troops. Their
number and fighting readiness had been overesti-
mated – many of those dug in in Kuwait were half
starved and only too happy to be taken prisoner.
In just 100 hours the whole Iraqi army had been
routed. No accurate figures for Iraqi casualties
killed has been established; they were probably
between 30,000 and 90,000; the US suffered 389
killed, the British 44 killed, and the total for
the allies was about 466 dead and in all about
1,187 wounded. The only real danger to the
Arab–Western coalition, the involvement of Israel
in the war in retaliation for the Iraqi Scud missile
attacks, was averted by US diplomacy and the sta-
tioning of US Patriot defensive missile batteries
in Israel. On 26 February Saddam announced
withdrawal from Kuwait and on the following day
Iraq accepted all the UN resolutions. That same
day, 27 February 1991 Bush ordered the suspen-
sion of fighting. He saw grave disadvantages to
future Arab–Western relations if the defenceless
Iraqis continued to be slaughtered as they fled
from Kuwait and from the areas in Iraq occupied
by allied troops. Bush also concluded that
Saddam could no longer resist whatever demands
were made and was unlikely to stay in power.
Saddam, however, signalled his defiance by
setting alight Kuwait’s oil wells as his routed
troops pulled back. It was a disaster months of
fire-fighting only partially overcame.
An uprising by the people of Iraq was
expected, but not the forms it took. The Shia
Muslims rebelled in the south of the country,
seizing Basra, and the Kurds in the north saw
their opportunity for gaining at least autonomy,
if not independence. The Kurdish rebels rapidly
occupied the principal northern towns, as well as
the oil-rich Kirkuk district. Iraq was falling to
pieces. The Soviet Union, Syria and Turkey, with
restless Kurdish minorities of their own, were all
greatly concerned by the Kurdish rebellion. For
the US, the possibility of an extension of Shi’ite
Iranian influence in southern Iraq was equally
unacceptable. And so the Kurds and Shi’ites were
left to their fate as the rump of Saddam’s forces
with tanks and aircraft brutally crushed the
risings. A ‘just’ war ended unjustly, and the
Western world and the Iraqi people became
victims of Realpolitik. For those members of the
Security Council with internal repressions of their
own on their conscience, China and the Soviet
Union, the principle that the UN could not inter-
fere in the ‘internal’ affairs of a country was sacro-
sanct. For the US, striving for peace and stability,
the raising of the Kurdish national question in
1991 seemed likely to add another explosive issue
to others already detonated in the Middle East,
foremost among them the Israeli–Palestine and
Arab conflict.
In the face of the human catastrophe that
threatened the Kurdish people as they fled into
the inhospitable mountains of northern Iraq the
civilised world felt some sense of responsibility.
Britain and the US declared the region a ‘safe
haven’ and, with air bases in Turkey and UN
backing, enforced their decision to stop any
further Iraqi military action. The UN also orches-
trated humanitarian aid though there was much
criticism at the lack of competence revealed that
winter. During the course of 1992 the Kurds
established quasi-independence, with their own
guerrilla army, government and elected parlia-
ment while declaring their aim to be only a
federal, democratic Iraq. The Kurds were espe-
cially dependent on the toleration of Turkey, their
most powerful neighbour, and therefore avoided
going as far as stating that their aim was an inde-
pendent Kurd nation. Iran, Syria and Turkey all
have their own Kurdish minorities and had a
common interest in crushing any such ambitions.
To reassure the Turks, the Iraqi Kurds even made
common cause with them, fighting against their
own ethnic kin, the Kurdish Marxist guerrillas in
Turkey. But even Kurdish autonomy remained
precarious and was regarded with suspicion by its
neighbours. They wanted a unified Iraq, led by a
strongman other than Saddam Hussein.
The fate of the Shias in the south of Iraq ini-
tially attracted less attention. But Saddam’s brutal
repression, when it extended to the ethnic Arab
families living primitively in the marshes in the
south of the country who made their simple living
from fishing, eventually aroused the West. A sec-
ond ‘no fly zone’ was declared to cover the south
to provide some, far from complete, protection.
1
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