INTRODUCTION:

So, What Is This Book All About?

       These questions are going to be answered in the relevant chapters of the book. Readers are going to see how the Bush administration handled the crisis & the war in the Gulf. By investigating & analyzing these questions & the related issues, the real story of the Gulf War is revealed. So, this book is about providing readers with information & analyses that have not been provided by other works about the Gulf War.

     In Chapter I, the Iraqi claims of Kuwait will be investigated, shedding some light on the special relationship between the two states, which is usually underestimated as a main factor that contributed to the crisis. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was described as caused by border disputes & disagreement over oil prices. While this was true, it would not warrant an invasion. There was a special relationship between Iraq & Kuwait that led Iraqis to take such action. Throughout the 20th century, Iraq has claimed Kuwait as an Iraqi territory. In fact, the 1990 invasion was the fourth Iraqi attempt to restore Kuwait. Iraqis have always felt that it is the duty of Kuwaitis to support Iraq. They expected Kuwaiti support during & after the Iran-Iraq war. The crisis started when the Kuwaiti government began asking Iraq to pay back the war debt. Then, the crisis was more deepened when Kuwaitis did not concede to the Iraqi border demands & did not respond to the Iraqi appeals to stop their overproduction of oil. Thus, Chapter I focuses on the special relationship between Iraq & Kuwait, as a necessary background to understand the crisis & the War.

                  Chapter II focuses on the relationship between Saudi Arabia & Kuwait in order to clarify the indispensable role that Saudis played during the crisis & the War. During the first few hours of the Iraqi invasion, the Kuwaiti government & the royal family took refuge in Saudi Arabia. Saudis also supported Kuwaitis by their decision to receive & finance the coalition troops. But why did Saudi Arabia take the Kuwaiti side? It is true that the Bush administration persuaded the Saudis to take that stance. But there was another important factor. The Kuwaiti & Saudi royal families have been allies throughout the 20th century. In 1901, the ruler of Kuwait, Mubarak Al-Sabah, supported Abdul Aziz Al-Saud to restore the rule of his family over Nejd. Saudis paid back this debt first in 1961 when they supported Kuwait during the third Iraqi attempt to restore it. Then, Saudi-Kuwaiti relations were strengthened when both states joined the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), in 1981.Nevertheless, relations between them have not always been friendly. There have been border disputes & even fighting in some occasions.

                  In Chapter III, the relationship between Kuwaitis & immigrants in Kuwait is investigated. In particular, mistreatment of immigrants is analyzed in order to help readers understand how Kuwaitis are perceived in the region. The Kuwaiti insensitivities concerning Iraqi grievances, particularly insisting on debt repayment & overproduction of oil, were not isolated from an overall Kuwaiti way of thinking & treatment of others. Immigrants in Kuwait were systematically discriminated against socially, economically, & politically through denying them permanent-resident status & citizenship. Although Kuwait is not the only Arab state that followed this policy toward immigrants, it was unique in doing so for three major reasons. First, Kuwait had a large population group of non-citizens who had no citizenship of any other country, known as Bedoons. These were exploited by the Kuwaiti government, which hired them in the lowest-paying jobs in the police & the armed forces without giving them a legal status in the country.

Second, Kuwait had the largest Palestinian immigrant community outside Palestine & Jordan. Despite the fact that Palestinians started to come to Kuwait in the 1930s & participated in building the country, they were also discriminated against. Like the Bedoons & other immigrants, they were denied permanent-resident status & citizenship. Third, the Kuwaiti discriminatory policies led to the material & psychological separation between immigrants & citizens. This led to a mutual distrust & suspicion that escalated to persecution of the Palestinians & the Bedoons, after the war. The irony was that despite mistreatment of these two population groups before the war, the Kuwaiti government expected them to be more loyal than Kuwaitis themselves. They were blamed for staying & working in the country during the period of the Iraqi rule. Unlike Kuwaitis, they could neither leave nor stop working. As a result, they were made scapegoats after the war by accusing them of collaboration with the Iraqi authorities. While Kuwaiti discriminatory policies & their consequences are discussed in Chapter III, the terror campaign against Palestinians after the war is the subject of Chapter X.

                  In Chapter IV, the conflict is analyzed within an inter-Arab context. The Kuwaiti-Iraqi crisis developed as a result of the fact that the ruling elites in the two Arab states represented two conflicting ideologies. In this inter-Arab conflict, the Iraqi Ba'ath Party represented an ideology close to socialist ideologies in Western societies. The ruling class in Kuwait represented a quasi-feudal ideology according to which members of the royal family control the country=s major resources, allow their loyal subjects to have access to them, & deny them to others. While followers of different ideologies, such as liberalism & conservatism in the United States & other industrial societies, alternate the exercise of power peacefully by accepting results of elections, this has not happened yet in the Arab Middle East. Some Arab states do not have multi-party elections, others do not have elections at all. In addition to that, rivalry between Arab states intensifies these ideological differences. Consequently, the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait can be better understood if it is analyzed as a result of a conflict between two different ideologies in the absence of a unified & democratic Arab homeland.

                  Chapter V analyzes the role of Western interests in the development of the crisis & the War. The Gulf War has demonstrated that the power elites in the West are willing to go to a major war in order to secure their interests in the Gulf. They considered the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait as a threat to their oil interests. However, Iraq was targeted by hostility from the West for a long time. In order for Western interests to be protected, successive Iraqi governments have been kept busy fighting with their Kurdish minority, throughout the twentieth century. Between 1922 & 1975, Iraqi Kurds revolted several times against the Iraqi central government receiving assistance first from the British then from the United States & Israel. Peace in Iraq lasted only about five years, between 1975 & 1980, then the Iran-Iraq war started & continued until 1988. That war was closely related to the Kurdish problem because it started as a result of canceling the 1975 Iraqi-Iranian treaty, which ended the Kurdish rebellion.

     By the time the Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988, Iraq was about $90 billion in debt & in need for money to rebuild its economy. The decline in oil prices did not help the Iraqi plans for reconstruction. Thus, the 1990 economic distress, that Iraq found itself in, was caused originally by the eight-year war with Iran & the longer war with the Kurds.

     In addition to oil interests, the Western power elites have an interest in keeping militarism alive & well. For a few months, in 1989 & 1990, the downfall of the Soviet Union deprived the military industries in the West from the major justification of keeping the military spending as high as possible. In the United States, people even started talking about peace dividends. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was a golden opportunity for the military industries & their constituents among the power elites to argue for the continuation of the high military spending. Thus, as one Cold War was over, another was aggressively argued for. After all, the Cold War was a big business. In the United States alone, the cost of the Cold War reached about $12.8 trillion between 1945 & 1990.

                  Chapter VI deals with the 1990 crisis that led to the invasion. Relations between Iraq & Kuwait have been tense throughout the twentieth century. However, tensions increased during the five main crises of 1901, 1902, 1938, 1961, & 1990. Only the last crisis escalated to an Iraqi invasion. When the Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988, Kuwaitis felt the need to avoid future problems with Iraq. To achieve that, they demanded an Iraqi recognition of the borders between the two states. When Iraq did not agree, they retaliated by exerting economic pressures. They demanded repayment of the $12 billion war debt. Then, they increased their oil production, thus violating the OPEC quota, & contributing to a 30 percent decline in the oil prices. Feeling these economic pressures, the Iraqis responded by sending troops to the border. When the Jeddah talks failed to resolve the disputes, the stage was set for the Iraqi invasion.

     The Arab initial reaction to the invasion was a mixture of shock & disbelief. Therefore, it took the form of diplomatic initiatives demanding the Iraqi withdrawal. However, the tough positions of the U.S. & the U.K. in the United Nations & their pressures on some Arab states led the Arab League to condemn the invasion & demand an instant Iraqi withdrawal. The turning point was when King Fahd agreed to receive American troops in his country. That was the first step toward the eviction of the Iraqi troops from Kuwait & the destruction of Iraq during the war.

      The Bush administration contributed to the crisis by leading the Iraqis to believe that it would not interfere in the dispute. On July 23, 1990, the U.S. State Department spokeswoman, Margaret Tutwiler, said that the U.S." had no defense treaties with Kuwait; no special defense or security commitment to Kuwait."
 Two days later, on July 25, Ambassador April Glaspie assured the Iraqi President that the U.S. was not going to interfere in "inter-Arab disputes."
 

       Europeans & Israelis also contributed to the escalation of the crisis by making the Iraqis nervous. First, the Iraqis began to fear an imminent Israeli attack on their nuclear installations. Second, an anti-Iraq media campaign spread all over Europe & North America because of the Iraqi counter-threats against Israel. Then, European countries started intercepting industrial shipments purchased by Iraq for fear that these shipments may be used in making the Babylon Super-Gun, which may threaten the Israeli military superiority in the Middle East. Third, Israeli agents assassinated the Canadian designer & builder of the Super-Gun, Gerald Bull.

     One of the most important aspects of the Gulf War was how the war decision was made. It took President Bush less than two days to conclude that Iraq was wrong. Neither the Congress nor the media contemplated seriously on the possibility that Kuwaitis were as responsible for the escalation of the crisis as Iraqis were. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was considered as a disruption of the world order. However, the Kuwaiti disruption of the oil markets, which led to the sharp decline in oil prices, was ignored. The unique relationship between Kuwait & Iraq was also ignored despite the fact that the relationship between them is very similar to the relationship between Syria & Lebanon. Such relationship allowed Syria to send its troops to Lebanon & stay there without serious regional or international objections. Finally, in concluding that Iraq was wrong, the Bush administration ignored the historical background of the inter-Arab conflict.

     President Bush found himself between the Thatcher anvil & hammers of the hawks in his administration. All of them demanded a tough stand against Iraq. Margaret Thatcher gave him a lecture in colonial history & how she defeated Argentina in the Falkland War, a few years earlier. Brent Scowcroft, James Baker, Dick Cheney, & their assistants, particularly Richard Haass, Larry Eagleburger, & Dennis Ross, hammered him to take a strong stance against the invasion. As Chapter VI reveals, these pressures led President Bush to choose war over sanctions.

     Once the war decision was made in the first few days after the invasion, the Bush administration started preparation for war. Troops were sent to Saudi Arabia after convincing Saudis that they were in danger. The coalition was built & the necessary U.N. resolutions were passed using the Bakerian diplomacy of cajoling, extracting, threatening, & buying votes. This is the emphasis of Chapter VII, which documents the Bush administration's rejection of all peace initiatives, dismissing them as a "linkage". It also analyzes the role of Congress, particularly the attempt of Democrats to avoid the War.

     While all this was being done, the basic right of the American people to know the truth concerning the Iraqi-Kuwaiti crisis was not observed by the Bush administration & its supporters in Congress. When they held Congressional hearings, they did not give a fair chance to sociologists, historians, & history-oriented political scientists who are experts on the Middle East. This deprived Congress & the American people of understanding the social & historical backgrounds that contributed to the development of the crisis. Hearings conducted by supporters of the administration were biased & aimed at charging the American people emotionally against Iraq. In one hearing, Iraqis were accused of throwing Kuwaiti infants out of their incubators in a hospital & taking the medical equipment to Iraq. Several media investigative reports after the war demonstrated that this never happened. Interviews were conducted with the director & doctors of the Kuwaiti hospital who said that they hid the medical equipment in the basement of the building during the crisis & the war.

     The "war or peace" debate was ruled out in the first few days of the crisis. Few opportunities were given in Congress to experts who would argue for resolving the crisis peacefully, through negotiations, or by the use of economic sanctions. In fact, there was a real need for other experts who would educate the American people & their representatives about the history of the Iraqi-Kuwaiti relations. However, those who tried to give experts a chance to argue for economic sanctions instead of war, like Senator Sam Nunn, were criticized, as documented in Chapter VIII.

                  In spite of that, Sam Nunn continued his efforts to educate the administration, the Congress, & the public about the origins & consequences of the Gulf crisis. He started a series of televised Senate hearings on September 11 & 13, November 27-30, & December 3, on the U.S. Gulf policy, posing questions on the use of sanctions. He argued that the U.S. should stick to sanctions for up to two years, if necessary. His position attracted the support of many Democrats. During the hearings, he called seventeen government officials, retired senior military officers, & experts to testify. The vast majority of the witnesses spoke out against the use of force because sanctions would do the job if they were given the chance to work.

     However, the Bush administration succeeded in containing opposition in Congress in preparation for war against Iraq. Expecting that the war would be horrendous in its consequences, the Iraqi President called it "the Mother of All Battles" (Chapter IX). Although Iraq was defeated, the war still deserves that description, at least within an Arab context. It was the largest attack on Arab forces in history. The number of Arab casualties was unprecedented given the short time of the war. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis lost their lives in forty-four days.

     The "Mother of All Battles," or the Gulf war over controlling Kuwait, started on January 17 & ended on February 28, 1991. It resulted in the destruction of the major Iraqi military & civilian infrastructure, industry, & centers of gravity. It also resulted in a huge number of military & civilian casualties. General Schwarzkopf estimated that the number of the Iraqi soldiers who were killed reached one hundred thousand at the end of the air campaign & fifty thousand more at the end of the ground war. Other estimates ranged between 50,000 & 220,000 (Chapter IX).

    Actually, the "Mother of All Battles" could have developed into a nuclear holocaust had the Iraqis used chemical weapons. General Powell & Secretary Cheney contemplated the use of tactical nuclear weapons in that occasion. The Israelis also were ready to retaliate with nuclear weapons if they were attacked by chemical weapons. It was the Iraqi decision not to use unconventional weapons that saved Iraq & the region from total destruction.

     The war was an excessive "slaughter," as described by Secretary Baker. Even America's allies, the British & the French, described it as "wanton killing." It was also "un-American" in the sense that thousands of Iraqi soldiers were killed while in retreat. This was contrary to the assurances given by Baker to Aziz in Geneva that "Americans don't shoot their adversaries in the back," & to President Bush's announcement on February 24, 1991 that "the coalition forces would not attack unarmed soldiers in retreat."
 

     Despite the destruction & the huge loss in human life, many critics of the war wanted more killing, destruction, & even the occupation of Iraq & the overthrow of its government. Some of them criticized the President for declaring the cease-fire prematurely. Others criticized him for not going far enough. Generals Powell & Schwarzkopf were criticized for that "incomplete success." Their critics claimed that in order for them to protect the image of the American military, they allowed half of the Republican Guard forces to withdraw without being destroyed.

     Reactions of these critics lead to several serious questions that most authors avoided. Was the destruction of Iraq & the huge number of Iraqi casualties inevitable, or intentional? Why weren't the Iraqi troops allowed to withdraw in order to avoid such destruction & casualties? In other words: Was the war really executed to force Iraq out of Kuwait, or to inflict maximum destruction on Iraq itself? &, why were leaders of the coalition determined to destroy Iraq? Chapter IX attempts to answer these & other related questions.

                  In Chapter X, the focus is on the terror campaign against Palestinians in Kuwait, after the War. This topic is missing from all the books that have been published in the West about the Gulf War. During the war, Americans as well as citizens in the other coalition countries were allowed to read, hear, & watch what the coalition military commanders wanted them to know. This happened as a result of a carefully controlled media coverage of the war. The "smart" weapons were shown destroying Iraqi weapons & installations neatly. The coalition casualties were unbelievably low & some of them were even caused by friendly fire.However, the media generally avoided covering the Iraqi casualties or the degree of destruction inflicted on Iraq. The exception was when Peter Arnett, the CNN correspondent, reported on the civilian shelter in downtown Baghdad, which was hit by two "smart" bombs killing hundreds of civilians. President Bush was still bitter about that report years after the war, as he mentioned it in his PBS interview in January 1996 & in his 1998 book.

     The media also rarely reported on the terror campaign against Palestinians, Bedoons, & other Arab immigrants in Kuwait, which was conducted directly after the war. In fact, the Kuwaiti terror campaign was may be attributed to pre-war conditions than to the formal Palestinian support for Iraq. During the two decades that preceded the 1990 invasion, Kuwaitis demonstrated their will to get rid of the Palestinians but they were waiting for a pretext to do so. When the Palestinian leadership expressed its support for the Iraqi "linkage" initiative, the Kuwaiti government found the excuse it was looking for to force Palestinians out of the country. The campaign started as threats by Kuwaiti officials in-exile,then was carried out by Kuwaiti police & armed forces after the war. 

     Thus, when Americans were euphoric, celebrating victory over the Third World country of Iraq, Kuwaitis were heavily involved in persecuting Palestinians in the country. Thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians were taken from their homes & from the streets to police stations & detention centers. There, they were tortured, raped, & killed for no reason other than being Palestinians.

    The killing & torture of Palestinians in Kuwait was happening with full knowledge of the coalition governments. The Kuwaiti terror campaign was rarely reported by the media or in government briefings. Even when they published their books about the war, neither President Bush nor any other officials in his administration mentioned anything concerning the Kuwaiti atrocities. Chapter X addresses these atrocities against Palestinians, showing that Kuwaitis were not the victims that they were portrayed to be.

                  In Chapter XI, the Gulf War is assessed in terms of its consequences on the Middle East & the United States. In particular, the War influences on democracy, Cold War, militarism, & the Middle East peace are analyzed. The first part of the Chapter deals with the way war decisions are made in America. An emphasis is on the role played by non-elected officials, which poses serious questions about democracy in America. Another part of the Chapter focuses on how proponents of war in the United States have been pushing for a new Cold War to replace Cold War I against communism. This time, Muslims are suggested to be the new enemies. Then, an analysis of the main negative consequences of the war follows, particularly how the War victims have continued to suffer inside Iraq, even a decade after the War. The Chapter includes an assessment of human rights conditions, democracy, & militarism in Arabia.

THE REAL STORY OF THE GULF WAR

On August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait as a culmination of developments that spanned a century.

• In response, the United States led a coalition of 31 countries that forced Iraq out of Kuwait.

• The 1991 Gulf War that reversed the Iraqi invasion resulted in killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers in addition to thousands of Palestinian & Arab civilians after the War.

• Throughout the decade that followed the war, Iraq has been kept under an embargo & a strict regime of economic sanctions that have resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of children.

So, why did Iraq invade Kuwait, in the first place?

What happened to warrant all these deaths?

Why was Iraq destroyed, instead of just being forced to reverse its invasion?

Why did the Bush administration insist on the use of force instead of sanctions, despite major Congressional opposition?

This book is different:

• it is more objective, particularly in uncovering the way the crisis was handled & the war was executed.

• it explains the crisis as a historical development instead of just dealing with it as if it is an accidental event or a chaotic eruption that disturbed the world order.

• addresses the basic aspects of the crisis & the war that were not addressed by most of the previous books.

The real story of the Gulf War is revealed in a way that respects readers' intelligence.

• Furthermore, the conflict is explained in relation to inter-Arab politics as well as Arab-Western relations.

• A special emphasis throughout the book is on how & why America became involved in the conflict.

Finally, this book is unique in three main ways.

1. it is critical of the way the Bush administration handled the crisis & the War.

2. it points to the special relationship between the American power elite & the Gulf absolute monarchies.

3. the author is an Arab-American who lived in the Gulf region as well as in the United States, enabling him to provide readers with insights from the Arab & American dimensions, which is missing from the experiences of most authors.

Proponents of the 1991 Gulf War claimed that it was fought to reverse the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait & to put an end to the ambitions of the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein. More specifically, the following main questions will be investigated.

• First, was the War really fought to reverse the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait or to reassert the hegemonic position of the three major Western powers: the U.S., Britain, & France, in the region?

• Second, who were the War constituents? Was not the destruction of Iraq a goal in itself? Was not the War an opportunity to justify continuous militarism, particularly in the U.S.?

• Finally, was not the War an opportunity to strengthen the position of the ruling families in the Gulf & provide them with direct Western protection from their rivals, Arab nationalists?

Concerning the War itself, the book investigates & analyzes basic questions that were rarely addressed.

• Was the administration reluctant to go to war or was it determined to launch it?

• Was the administration willing to accept a peaceful solution or was it insistent on denying Iraq any chance to withdraw without fighting?

• Did the War stop when the Iraqis were forced out of Kuwait, or did it continue unnecessarily?

CHAPTER I

THE IRAQI CLAIMS OF KUWAIT

CHAPTER IV

ARAB NATIONALISM:

TWO CONFLICTING PERSPECTIVES

The Arab nation is divided into several sovereign states. Arab nationalists call for the unification of these states into one nation-state. However, the wealthy oil-exporting states, which benefit from the status quo reject unification. Moreover, they have been successful in creating material & psychological barriers between their citizens & other non-citizen Arabs.

Accordingly, I argue that privileges of citizenship may be stronger than nationalistic affiliation.

The 1990 Iraqi-Kuwaiti crisis, which developed into the 1991 Gulf War lends support to this argument.

Positions of Iraq & Kuwait represented two different perspectives of Arab nationalism. Each one of them represented the ideology of a different group of Arab states.

While Iraq represented unionists, Kuwait represented sovereigntists. In order to understand the ideological conflict between unionists & sovereigntists, & consequently the relationship between nationalism & citizenship, several questions need to be answered.

• First, who are the unionists & the sovereigntists?

• Second, What was the role of the European imperialists in starting & perpetuating that conflict?

• Third, how did the oil wealth increase the gap between the wealthy & the poor Arabs?

• Fourth, how did the development of the two Arab Cooperation Councils reflect the Arab split?

• Finally, how is Arab nationalism understood differently by each group?

Throughout the 20^th century, Arabs move rapidly back & forth between brotherhood & betrayal, as well as between unity & conflict. During the 1980s, Kuwaitis assisted Iraq in its war against Iran.

• However, as soon as the war was over, they demanded Iraq to pay back its war debt.

• Moreover, they started to overproduce oil contributing to the decline in oil prices, which hurt the Iraqi plans for post-war reconstruction.

On the surface, it may appear amazing that Kuwaitis shifted from a position of support to a position of indifference or even adversity. Anyway, the Kuwaiti behavior resulted in that Iraqis felt so cornered that they invaded the small brotherly country that supported them. However, a deeper historical analysis is more suitable for understanding the Iraqi-Kuwaiti crisis & the war that followed.

• In its origin, the conflict between Iraq & Kuwait represented the conflict between national liberation movements & European imperialist powers & their local clientele classes.

• Starting from the 1950s, the struggle became more between Arab unionists & Arab sovereigntists than between Arabs & Europeans, as it was earlier.

• The ruling elite groups led the sovereigntist camp, which is mainly composed of a minority of Arabs, particularly citizens of oil-exporting states. Maintaining the status quo has allowed them to enjoy privileges of citizenship & excluded others from having a direct access to the important slots in the labor market. 

• Unionists, on the other hand, appealed to the rising middle class & the majority poor in non-oil-exporting states, promising that unification of the Arab homeland would increase their opportunities for a better life.

• Had the Arab states been unified & democratic, the two rival ideologies could have coexisted. They could have alternated control over government, like what happens in representative democracies in the world.

• Instead, conflict resolution has often been conducted by the use of force, in the region. In the case of Kuwait, the British have intervened to maintain the status quo every time Iraq attempted to change it (Chapter I). Their intervention demonstrated that the conflict, in its essence, is between the European imperialist powers & the unionist Arab national liberation movement. Border disputes in Arabia provide an example of how the European imperialist presence intensified the inter-Arab conflict. 

Border Disputes 

     Border disputes in Arabia may be mainly attributed to the 19th century Saudi expansion & the Ottoman reactions it triggered. However, these disputes were intensified later by the competing Western interests. In spite of the British-Saudi alliance at the beginning of the 20th century, a confrontation erupted between Britain & Saudi Arabia in the 1950s. This developed when Saudis tried to extend their southeastern frontiers to reach Al-Buraimi Oasis, which was also claimed by Abu Dhabi (now in the United Arab Emirates) & Oman. The British were involved because they were still the colonial administrators of the Arabian Gulf chiefdoms. The Saudi border claims go back to 1933 when the Standard Oil Company of California obtained an oil concession that covered the Saudi Arabian southeastern frontiers.

     Tensions increased between Britain & Saudi Arabia throughout 1955 & 1956. This happened when Egypt was attacked by Britain, France, & Israel on October 31, 1956, which resulted in the Anglo-French occupation of the Suez Canal & the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory of Gaza Strip & the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula. In support for Egypt, Saudi Arabia broke its diplomatic relations with Britain & did not restore them until January 1961. During that period, Saudi Arabia joined other Arab nationalist governments in opposing the British colonial presence in the region. It joined Egypt & Yemen in supporting Imam Ghalib Bin Ali in his challenge to the Sultan of the British protectorate of Oman, Sa'id Bin Taimur. It also financed the purchase of weapons by Yemen from the Soviet Union & China in an effort to liberate South Yemen from the British occupation.   

Unity or Sovereignty? 

• A stronger argument than the zakat evidence could have been the invalidity of the 1913 Anglo-Turkish Convention as a basis for drawing borders in eastern Arabia. That convention was never ratified because of the break out of World War I.

• This fact also represents the main support for the Iraqi claims of Kuwait, which was administratively part of the Iraqi governorate of Basra until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in World War I.

• - Actually, most Arab states may claim their neighboring Arab states or part of them on the same basis. Syria & Lebanon separated from each other when they were given independence by France at the end of World War II, as two sovereign states. However, each one of them may claim parts of the other on basis of their administrative status during the Ottoman era. The same principle applies to the relationship between Palestine & Jordan as well as to Saudi Arabia & the rest of the Arab states in the Gulf.

• Arabs are split between unity & sovereignty. While Kuwait belongs to the sovereigntists block, Iraq is a leading unionist state. They found themselves on a collision course since the beginning of the 20th century.

• While rulers of Kuwait found their salvation in being independent in a state under the British protection, Iraqis did not stop their attempts to restore Kuwait.

• Britain has always been in the way obstructing that dream, sometimes alone & recently supported by other regional & Western powers. 

British Imperialism

• Britain not only separated Kuwait from Iraq but also invaded & controlled Iraq for decades. The British troops started the invasion at the beginning of World War I, in 1914, & completed it by the end of the war, in 1918.

• The Shaikh of Kuwait, Mubarak Al-Sabah, assisted the British military efforts during the war. He attacked the Iraqi positions at Safwan, Um Qasr, Bubayan Island, & Basrah.

• The British then controlled the country & its government. When King Faisal Bin Al-Hussain was deposed & expelled from Syria by the French in 1920, the British brought him to Iraq. They arranged for him to become the first king of the country in 1921. They did that in reward for the Hashemite support for Britain against the Ottoman government in World War I.

• British influence in Iraq came to an end on July 14, 1958, when Abdul-Karim Qassem led a military coup that ended the monarchy in the country.

In 1959, Iraq withdrew from the sterling bloc & the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), which was a Pro-British regional alliance that included Iraq, Turkey, Iran, & Pakistan.

• In 1961, Qassem marched to restore Kuwait following the British withdrawal but his attempt was aborted by Britain & some members of the Arab League.

• On February 8, 1963, Qassem was overthrown & killed in another military coup that was led by Ahmed Hassan El-Bakr & Saddam Hussain.

• In 1979, El-Bakr resigned allowing Saddam to become the fifth president of Iraq.

The Iraqi republican governments were consistent in their Arab nationalist policies.

• During the 1960s, they were active in pursuing unification with Egypt & Syria.

• In June 1, 1972, the Iraqi government nationalized the Iraq Oil Company, a step that was echoed in other oil-exporting Arab states. The company was known as the Turkish Petroleum Company in 1925 when it was given a 25-year concession in Iraq.

• In 1952, a new agreement was reached, which increased oil production & gave Iraq half of the profits. This was influenced by the Musaddaq's nationalization of oil in Iran in 1951.

• Following the 1958 revolution, the Iraqi government entered negotiations with the oil companies, in the country in an attempt to increase its revenues. The oil companies were reluctant to do so, which resulted in a stalemate.

• At that point, the Iraqi government took back, by decree, 99.5 percent of the territories, which were given in concessions to oil companies. Thus, Iraq was labeled by the lobby of oil companies as following anti-Western policies, particularly if compared with other oil-exporting Arab states.

In the region as a whole, Western oil companies continued to receive enormous amounts of profits that reached about 1115 percent of its costs, in the 1970s. Three major factors had contributed to that oil bonanza.

1. Western oil concessions included the largest oil fields in the world, namely Burgan in Kuwait, Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, & Kirkuk in Iraq.

2. costs of production in the Middle East were minimal in comparison to these in other parts of the world. More than 90 percent of the Arab oil flows by its own pressure without pumping. This allows the average Arab oil well to produce about 5,000 barrels of oil per day in comparison to 12 barrels in the U.S., 80 barrels in Russia, & 300 barrels in Venezuela.

3. the agreements of oil concessions allowed Western oil companies to receive profits almost three times higher than those received by the producing Arab states. While annual profits of these companies reached about $91.8 billion in the 1970s, Arab revenues were only $35.8 billion.

Oil Wealth Deepens the Gap 

     At the beginning of the twentieth century, rival Arab leaders aligned themselves either with the Ottomans or with the British. The October 1973 War & the Arab oil embargo that followed led to a large increase in oil prices. That contributed to deepening the gap between the two groups of Arab states, even further.

• The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was established in Baghdad by Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, & Venzuela, in 1960.

Between 1974 & 1996 (excluding 1984 & 1986), oil revenues of these Arab states reached about $1.956 trillion.

The wealthy states invested in developed societies, mainly in Western Europe, North America, & Japan. Actually, half of the Arab financial surpluses were invested in the United States & the United Kingdom. By 1980, the Arab investments in the United States had reached about $100 billion from Saudi Arabia, $55 billion from Kuwait, & $40 billion from the United Arab Emirates. Investment of surplus Arab oil revenues in the West continued throughout the 1980s & the 1990s reaching about $800 billion by 1998.

The Gulf Cooperation Council 

The six wealthy Arabian Gulf states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, & the United Arab Emirates, felt the need to group together.

• They wanted to form an entity that would differentiate them from the rest of the Arab states.

• The first attempt for such grouping was a Kuwaiti initiative in 1976. However, the first summit conference for these states was convened in May 1981 & resulted in the establishment of the "Cooperation Council of the Arab Gulf States." For brevity purposes, the group is more commonly known as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

• The Conference discussed two initiatives about its entity. The first was presented by Oman & emphasized the uniqueness of the Council states. The Omani initiative called the GCC states to look to the West for security & protection from regional & international dangers. In particular, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan & the Iranian revolution in 1979 were cited as reasons that supported the Omani argument.

• The Council also appealed to the international powers to keep their fleets away from the Gulf. Moreover, the council reaffirmed its Arab identity by expressing its support for the Lebanese, Palestinians, & Syrians in their struggle to free their territories from the Israeli military occupation.

     Thus, in spite of the Kuwaiti enthusiasm in creating the "Gulf" entity, Kuwaitis still wanted to maintain some ties with other Arabs. In particular, they wanted to convey special messages to Egyptians & Palestinians. They could not afford forgetting the Egyptian interventions in Arabia in the 19th & 20th centuries, which strengthened Kuwaitis vis-a'-vis their more powerful neighbors to the north (Iraqis) & south (Saudis). Kuwaitis also wanted to convey a message to Palestinians who constituted the largest immigrant community in the country. They wanted to assure them that Kuwait would continue its support for the Palestinian cause.

The Arab Cooperation Council 

     When the GCC was founded in 1981, it was perceived as the exclusive club of the wealthy Gulf Arabs.

• In particular, Iraq & Yemen were most unhappy about it. As a Gulf state & oil exporter, Iraq qualified to be a member of the GCC. Yemen expected to be invited to the club membership as an Arabian Peninsula state.

• Both Iraq & Yemen felt betrayed & looked for other Arab states, which might be willing to form a rival Arab alliance.

• Egypt & Jordan were ideal for Iraq because of their support during its war with Iran. Moreover, Jordanians, Egyptians, & Yemenis began to look for Iraq as a new market for their surplus labor, particularly due to the expected postwar reconstruction.

• More important for Arab migrant workers was the fact that Iraqi immigration laws & practices allowed Arab nationals to live permanently & even acquire citizenship, which is almost impossible to attain in the GCC states.

• Thus, on February 23, 1989, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, & Yemen founded the Arab Cooperation Council (ACC).

     During the following year & a half, Iraq felt more betrayed by the Arab Gulf states.

• With a population of 17 million people, Iraq had a war debt of about $75 billion. About $35 billion of that debt was owed to Kuwait & Saudi Arabia.

• In particular, Kuwait expressed its unwillingness to forgive the Iraqi war debts.

• Iraqis believed that they were defending all other Gulf states, not just Iraq. Therefore, forgiving the debt was the least they expected from their Arab brethren in the Gulf.

• In addition to that, Kuwait & the United Arab Emirates started to overproduce oil in violation to OPEC'
  s quotas, which contributed to a sharp decline in oil prices. In 1986, Kuwait was reluctant to accept OPEC's 1.25 million barrels per day (bpd) quota of oil production. In 1989, it rejected an OPEC's level of about 1.1 million bpd. In early 1990, Kuwait challenged OPEC by producing about 2 million bpd. That Kuwaiti behavior contributed to the sharp decline of oil prices, which denied Iraq the money it needed for postwar reconstruction.

Thus, by 1990, Iraq felt that the GCC states, particularly Kuwait, were conspiring with the West to bring Iraq down.

• The Iraqi fears increased when the United States started to exert pressures on Iraq.

• The Bush administration cracked down on the BNL bank, which was functioning as a liaison between Iraq & American financial institutions.

• American banks even suggested the establishment of an international consortium to manage Iraq's finances on behalf of the creditors. This suggestion sounded like the late 19th century developments that led to the Anglo-French financial management of the Egyptian treasury, which finally led to the British occupation of Egypt in 1882.

• Arabs have become very sensitive to such ideas ever since & may perceive them as indications of an imminent foreign assault on their sovereignty.

• Such ideas might have contributed to the Iraqi fears that the United States was preparing to bring Iraq down, in collaboration with Kuwait.

• Egypt sided with Kuwait against Iraq.

Conclusion 

• The 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait may be partly attributed to a deep & historical ideological inter-Arab conflict.

• Kuwait represented a group of Arab states that may be described as sovereigntists. They are mainly the wealthy oil-exporting Gulf states. For them, Arab unity meant providing some material & moral support for the other poor Arab states. However, they did not feel enthusiastic about unification with them.

• Iraq represented another group of Arab states that may be described as unionists. They called for the unification of the Arab homeland into one nation-state that would include all the present Arab states. They argue that Arabs constitute one nation as they speak the same language & have experienced the same history. They look at the status quo as a product of European imperialism, which dismembered the Arab nation into separate states. They also argue that unification is necessary for a balanced social & economic development of the Arab Middle East. 

The ideological conflict was reflected in the formation of the two Arab councils that represented the two groups. Kuwait was instrumental in the establishment of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which represented the sovereigntists. Iraq was instrumental in the establishment of the Arab Cooperation Council, which represented the unionists.

• When Iraq was fighting Iran in the 1980s, the Iraqis reiterated that they were defending the Arab Gulf states, as well. Consequently, they felt that they were entitled to financial support from them.

• However, when Kuwait & other Gulf states appeared indifferent & less appreciative at the end of the war, the Iraqis felt betrayed. In particular, Iraqis were outraged when Kuwait demanded them to pay the war debt.

• Moreover, Kuwait was unwilling to cooperate in stopping the decline in oil prices.

• Thus, the 1990 invasion may be explained in relation to this ideological conflict about the meaning of nationalism. While Kuwaitis were thinking as a sovereign state that has its own interests, Iraqis were thinking as Arab nationalists who could not believe that a fellow Arab could be as ungrateful & indifferent.

     The split of Arabs into unionists & sovereigntists lends support to the argument that citizenship privileges may supersede nationalistic affiliation. In particular, the wealthy oil-exporting Arab states succeeded in forming an identity that is based solely on the economic benefits of citizenship, rather than on national origin of the population. The "Gulfer," Khaliji, identity has been replacing the "Arab" since the establishment of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

     The ideological conflict between unionists & sovereigntists has increased as a result of the increase in the oil wealth. Unionists have argued that the Arab oil wealth should be invested in the Arab homeland. It is the wealth of the Nation, not just the wealth of the states that produce it. This argument is based on the fact that oil prices had increased dramatically following the embargo, which followed the 1973 War that was fought by the non-oil-exporting states. In spite of that, sovereigntists were indifferent towards the economic hardship that the poor Arab states were passing through, including the Iraqi economic hardship at the end of the Iran-Iraq war. Thus, the stage was set for the Iraqi-Kuwaiti dispute that led to the Iraqi invasion in 1990 & the 1991 Gulf War that followed. But the inter-Arab ideological conflict has not developed away from the influence of the Western interests in the region. That will be the subject of the following chapter

CHAPTER V

WESTERN INTERESTS

& THE GULF WAR

The 1990 crisis that led to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait & the 1991 Gulf War that followed was not purely regional.

• Western interests contributed to that crisis through competition for the region's resources, particularly oil & its revenues.

• The West also supported Kurdish separatism, which contributed to the Iran-Iraq war.

• Finally, after its war with Iran, the West had perceived Iraq as a regional threat that should be eliminated.

This chapter starts with explaining how that Western hegemony developed, particularly British & American oil interests in the area. This is followed by an investigation of how the Kurdish rebellion contributed to the Iran-Iraq war. An important part of the chapter is about the relationship between militarism & war. In particular, there is an examination of the influence of the world military industry on the development of war in the Middle East. 

The Western Hegemony 

     According to the world-system theory, the world is divided into three main groups.

1. The first represents the "core" developed industrial societies, mainly Western Europe, North America, & Japan.

2. The Second represents the "peripheral" underdeveloped societies in Africa, Asia, & Latin America.

3. The third group represents the "semi-peripheral" societies, which try to get rid of their peripheral status, such as Russia, Eastern Europe, & East Asian societies.

The core industrial societies

• have maintained their control over the underdeveloped periphery.

• The objective is to guarantee the procurement of raw materials at the cheapest possible prices, use them in manufacturing finished products, then sell these products back for the highest possible profits.

• The end outcome has been that as the core continues to develop the periphery remains underdeveloped. The core has been successful, so far, in its endeavor to keep the periphery underdeveloped. This has been facilitated by the creation & protection of local capitalist classes that have collaborated with the core business interests. This explains the dependency of these peripheral clientele classes on their core capitalist protectors. It also helps explain the close relationships Britain has kept with the ruling families of Arabia since the beginning of the 20th century.

Consequently, it may be argued that there was much at stake for the West to intervene & force Iraq out of Kuwait.

• It was not just safeguarding the flow of the world supply of oil or liberating a country from the occupation of its neighbor. If that were the case, the Israeli occupation of the Arab territories would have been addressed first.

• Israel has been occupying the Arab territories since 1967. The U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 & 338 have called for the Israeli withdrawal. Resolution 425 called for the Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon, which was occupied in 1982.

• However, the Western powers have never contemplated the notion of forcing Israel out of the Arab territories.

• Actually, Western interests in Arab oil & its revenues represented one of the major factors that led to the war against Iraq.

• The oil-exporting Arab states have become more a source of wealth for the ruling classes in the Western core societies than mere a source of oil for Western societies, as usually claimed.

• The surplus of Arab oil revenues has been systematically transferred to the West in the form of investments, for decades.

• By 1980, half of the Arab financial surpluses were invested in the U.S.A. & the U.K. In the U.S. alone, Arab investments reached about $100 billion from Saudi Arabia, $55 billion from Kuwait, & $40 billion from the United Arab Emirates.

•  By 1990, the Kuwaiti investments in the West reached about $100 billion.

The story of oil in Kuwait is an example of the competition & the relentless efforts of the core developed societies to procure cheap raw materials from peripheral underdeveloped societies. The British government became seriously interested in oil explorations in the Middle East in 1913. The British Navy Secretary, Winston Churchill, announced that the Royal Navy intended to own or control oil production in the area in order to guarantee continuous supplies of oil to the British ships. In 1914, the British government bought fifty-one percent of the shares owned by the Anglo-Iranian oil company.

By 1920, the American oil companies became interested in the Middle Eastern oil. This interest developed as a result of three main factors.

1. First, the American oil reserves were diminishing.

2. Second, costs of American oil production were high.

3. Third, the American oil companies began to fear that the Anglo-German monopoly over the old world oil production might limit their opportunities in the future.

So, in 1922, the largest seven American oil companies started negotiations with the Turkish Oil Company in order to buy some of its concessions. In 1928, the American oil companies became full partners with the Anglo-French oil company, which had a monopolistic oil concession in Iran.

The need for a regular flow of oil continued to be a strategic Western goal. Therefore, in 1987, the United States sent its naval escorts to protect the Kuwaiti tankers from the Iranian attacks.

.... despite the strong relationship between the major Western powers & the ruling elites in the Gulf states, the West did not go to war just to evict Iraq out of Kuwait. Rather, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was an opportunity for the military establishments in the West to enhance their positions in their societies. 

Militarism 

     The 1991 Gulf War was mainly a Western campaign to destroy the military machine that Iraq had bought & built during the preceding fifteen years.

• The military & industrial equipment that Iraq used in developing its conventional & strategic weapon systems was legally purchased from more than 445 Western companies.

• Indeed, during the Iran-Iraq war, 1980-1988, Western governments promoted the carnage by encouraging business arms deals. When the war was over in 1988, however, the Western policy makers were a bit uncomfortable with all these weapon systems in Iraq. They were perceived as a potential threat to the security of Israel & to the Western interests in the Middle East.

In his Farewell Address in 1961, President Eisenhower warned that the combination of a large permanent military establishment & an immense military-industrial complex may threaten democratic government & the pursuit of world peace. The military-industrial complex may become an independent power in setting priorities in domestic & foreign relations. Funds may be diverted from social programs in order to support the arms build up. With billions of dollars in profits & thousands of jobs at stake, the complex would have a vested interest in world conflict rather than peace. Eisenhower's fears became reality.

President Eisenhower summarized it all, on April 18, 1953, when he said:

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger & are not fed, those who are cold & are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, & the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities."

The Middle Eastern states have also competed in their military spending. In particular, there were three major factors that influenced armament in the region.

1. The first was the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Arab territories. To maintain its military occupation of these territories, Israel spent about $72.4 billion during the period extending from 1984 & 1994 thus outspending its neighbors altogether. Egypt spent $25.59 billion, Jordan spent $3.66 billion, & Syria spent $31 billion on their military establishments (Table V.4).

2. The Iranian policies represented the second major factor that contributed to tensions in the region, consequently to armament. The Shah's government bought huge quantities of weapons that were used in threatening its neighboring Arab states & occupying Arab islands in the Gulf. Iran's support for Kurdish separatists had left Iraq with little choice but to arm itself to fight the rebels & preserve the unity of the country. Both countries continued to buy weapons to combat each other throughout the long 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War. Between 1984 & 1994, the Iranian military spending reached about $139 billion & the Iraqi military spending reached more than $85 billion.

3. The Iran-Iraq war & its consequences represented the third factor that led to a new cycle of military spending in the region. Fearing the outcome of the war, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states spent about $257.4 billion on their military during the same period, 1984-1995. Saudi Arabia took the lead, spending about $187 billion, followed by Kuwait $31.2 billion, Oman $17.5 billion, the United Arab Emirates 17, & Bahrain $2.3 billion.

If military spending is added in all the Middle Eastern countries (including Israel), it amounts to about $622.8 billion.

The Kurdish Rebellion 

The Kurds have played a major role in creating the atmosphere that led to the 1990 crisis & the 1991 Gulf War that followed.

• Their aspirations for independence coincided with the Iranian & Western attempts to weaken Iraq & keep it diverted from Israel.

• By 1990, Kurds were about 26 millions, most of them lived in Turkey (13.7 million), Iran (6.6 million), & Iraq (4.4 million).

• They revolted against these three countries in different times throughout the 20th century trying to get their independence.

• The Kurdish problem started at the end of World War I. The Western allies heightened their expectations when they promised them autonomy, according to the Treaty of Sevres in 1920. However, they ignored Kurdish aspirations in the Treaty of Loazanne in 1923.

• The Soviet Union supported the Iranian Kurds in establishing a Kurdish republic for less than a year, in 1946. Kurds were used as a bargaining chip to pressure the Iranian government to grant the Soviets some oil concessions. When it did, the Soviets reciprocated by allowing it to crush the Kurdish revolt.

• The most recent stage of the Kurdish rebellion was at the end of the Gulf War when President George Bush & Prime Minister John Major called for the overthrow of the Iraqi President.

Israeli & American Assistance to the Kurds 

Like other independent Arab states, Iraq entered the 1948 war on the side of the Palestinian people.

• However, unlike these states, it did not sign an armistice agreement to end the state of hostilities with Israel after the war.

• The Israelis supported the Kurdish rebellion in an attempt to weaken Iraq & pressure it to accept the status quo.

• The Kurds were also used to assist in the effort of helping Iraqi Jews immigrate to Israel. Finally, Israel was looking for oil concessions in northern Iraq in case the Kurdish rebellion would become successful.

The American involvement in the Iraqi internal affairs came as a reinforcement of the Israeli-Iranian efforts to weaken Iraq.

• At the beginning of the 1961 rebellion, Barzani took refuge in Iran. There, he received a radio station, a printing facility, intelligence, weapons, training, & military advice.

• Iran also functioned as a bridge for passing Israeli & American assistance to the Kurdish rebels.

• Barzani received a $14 million from the United States, in 1969. The objective was encouraging him to continue his revolt in order to keep the Iraqis occupied, away from threatening the U.S. allies in the region.

• However, the U.S. did not want the Kurds to prevail either, just to sap the resources of Iraq. If they succeeded, they would threaten the stability of Iran & Turkey.

• The U.S. renewed its assistance to the Kurds following the Iraqi nationalization of the oil industry.

• The Nixon administration hoped that the Kurdish rebellion might contribute to changing the Iraqi regime into another one that may allow the return of the U.S. oil companies to the country.

• In 1972, the Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, visited Iran to coordinate the Iranian-Israeli policies towards Iraq.

• Few days later, President Richard Nixon visited Iran after his meeting with the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, in Moscow. Nixon agreed with the Shah that it was necessary to keep Iraq busy with the Kurdish problem for two reasons.

• - First, this would enable Iran to play the policeman role in the Gulf area.

• - Second, it would weaken Iraq enough so that it could not support other Arab states in their attempts to liberate their territories from the Israeli occupation.

The Iran-Iraq War 

As a result of the 1975 Algiers Accord, Iraq began to be perceived by the United States as a friendly country.

• This was reinforced by the Iraqi increased opposition to the Soviet influence in the region. Iraq criticized the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan at its early stages in December 1979.

• Iraq also supported Saudi Arabia in its dispute with the socialist government of South Yemen, in March 1980.

• When the Iranian-Iraqi relations started to deteriorate, in July 1980, the Iraqis communicated their position to the American administration during a high-level meeting held in Amman, Jordan, between Zbigniew Brezezinski & a high-ranking Iraqi official. It was important for the Iraqis to let the Americans know about the Iranian violations of the 1975 Algiers agreement because they did not want to be perceived as the aggressor, later on. As a result, Brezezinsky expressed America's understanding of the Iraqi position.

In general, the American-Iraqi positions towards major issues of stability in the Middle East were not in conflict.

By the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988, the American position had changed to considering Iraq as a regional threat.

• Between February 23, 1979 & July 26, 1980, the Iranian forces conducted 244 land, air, & naval violations & attacks against Iraq. These included shelling Iraqi border posts, capturing border guards, intercepting civilian aircraft, & attacking foreign & Iraqi ships & boats in Shatt Al-Arab.

• The Iraqi authorities sent 240 memoranda to the Iranian government, through the Iranian embassy in Baghdad, recording these violations & their consequences. Similar memoranda were sent to the regional organizations of the Arab League & the Islamic Conference Organization. Nevertheless, fighting escalated across the borders.

• On July 28, the Iranian attack on the Iraqi Sheeb border post was massive & caused unprecedented damages.

• By August 27, 1980, there were real battles in most border posts, in which Iran used land-land missiles for the first time. On September 4-16, several air & naval battles broke out when the Iranian artillery shelled the Iraqi cities of Khaniqin, Zirbatiyeh, & Montheriyeh together with the facilities of Khana Oil & the junctions of Mendali & Mustafa Al-Wand.

• The Iraqi forces bombed the Iranian cities of Qasr Shirin & Mahran & occupied the territories of Zain Al-Qows & Saif Sa'ad, which Iran had not yet returned to Iraq, according to the 1975 agreement.

 Background to the 1975 Iran-Iraq Agreement

       In his address to the Iraqi National Assembly on September 17, 1980, the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussain, told the story of signing the 1975 treaty between Iran & Iraq. He mentioned that there were two major factors that led Iraq to reach & sign that agreement. First, the Iraqi government concluded that Iran had played a major role in assisting the 1974/75 Kurdish rebellion. In order for Iraq to end the rebellion completely Iran had to be neutralized. Second, there was an earlier need to reach an agreement with Iran. Iran also had to be neutralized if Iraq would actively participate in defending the Arab homeland against the Israeli expansionist policies.

     The battle to end the Kurdish rebellion lasted about twelve months between March 1974 & March 1975. The Iraqi losses were more than sixteen thousand casualties & injuries. The civilian losses exceeded forty-four thousand casualties & injuries. The Iranian forces played an important role in assisting the rebels. Sometimes, they participated in fighting beside them, other times they conducted military exercises along the borders with Iraq in an attempt to distract the Iraqi forces from the battles against them. Throughout the fighting, they provided a continuous supply of weapons to the rebels. At the same time, the Iraqi equipment & ammunition started to decrease dramatically to the extent that heavy artillery ammunition were about to finish & there were only three heavy aircraft bombs. 

     When Egypt & Syria started the October 6, 1973 war to liberate their occupied territories, Iraq was caught by surprise. Otherwise, it would have sent its forces to the front earlier. However, Iraq could not afford being a spectator. In order for its forces to leave to Syria while the borders with Iran are safeguarded Iran had to be neutralized. Therefore, the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council issued a statement on October 7, 1973 offering Iraq's readiness to resolve its problems with Iran peacefully. The statement eventually expressed Iraq's readiness to consider Iran's demands in Shatt Al-Arab. The Iraqi troops then moved to Syria & participated actively in defending Damascus & stopping the Israeli counter attack. In 1975, the Algerian President Hawari Boumedian mediated between Iran & Iraq in order to resolve their problems through direct negotiations. The negotiations ended by singing the agreement on March 6, 1975. Iraq agreed to concede half of Shatt Al-Arab to Iran by expanding the Iranian borders to reach the Thalweg line. In return, Iran agreed to return the Iraqi territories of Zain Al-Qows & Saif Sa'ad. Iran also agreed to stop its support for the rebels in the north who ended their rebellion & surrendered immediately. The leaders of the rebels, the Barzani family, left for the United States to stay there. In 1979, the new Iranian government invited them to come to Iran. They accepted the invitation & made headquarters in Iran, which was a major violation of the 1975 agreement (Al-Farzali, 1982: 219-227).

In an emergency session of the Iraqi National Assembly (the Parliament) to discuss the border battles on September 17, 1980, the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussain, announced Iraq's abrogation of the 1975 treaty with Iran.

• In particular, he mentioned that Iran violated the treaty first by its intervention in the Iraqi internal affairs, its support for the Iraqi opposition Da'wa Party, & not returning the Iraqi territories of Zain Al-Qows & Saif Sa'ad, as stated in the treaty. More important was that the 1980 border battles, which broke out along the borders, represented a striking violation of the treaty.

• In fact, Iraqis perceived the treaty with the Shah's government as a sort of blackmailing. The Iraqi government had to give up sovereignty over half of Shatt Al-Arab in return for stopping the Iranian support for the Kurdish rebels. Thus, the first consequence of canceling the treaty was considering all Shatt Al-Arab waterway again as an Iraqi territory. This required ships to fly the Iraqi flags. When that happened, it triggered Iranian attacks & Iraqi counter attacks.

Stages of the War 

The Iran-Iraq war passed through four main stages.

1. The first stage extended from September 1980 to June 1982. Iraq was on the offensive & Iran was on the defensive. Iraq occupied about 5,400 square miles of the Iranian territory, including the country's most important port, Khurramshahr. Iran demanded the unconditional Iraqi withdrawal & compensation for civilian & military costs. A U.N. resolution was passed calling for a cease-fire but not for a withdrawal. Iran did not accept it & continued the war. Imam Khomeini insisted that there could be no peace or compromise with Iraq. When Iran recaptured Khurramshahr on May 24, 1982, Iraq announced a unilateral withdrawal from the Iranian territories. The Iranian leaders responded by calling openly for the invasion of Iraq.

2. The second stage of the war extended from July 1982 to January 1984. Iran was on the offensive adopting "human-wave" tactics to occupy Iraqi territories. However, the Iranian offensive failed to occupy major territories or to destabilize the Iraqi government. In October 1982, Iran rejected a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a cease-fire accompanied by a mutual withdrawal. The Iranian leaders demanded the unconditional surrender of Iraq & the punishment of the Iraqi leaders.

3. The third stage of the war extended from February 1984 to February 1987. Each party inflicted heavy casualties & losses on the other but without an apparent victor. Therefore, this stage may be described as a stalemate. The Iranian human-wave offensives continued resulting in the occupation of parts of southern Iraq but without seriously affecting the Iraqi military capabilities. Iraq had the upper hand in the air & sea. Iraq launched more missile attacks on the Iranian cities & caused more damages to Iranian ships & tankers carrying Iranian oil, in the Gulf. Iran responded by attacking Kuwaiti tankers, as Kuwait was an ally to Iraq. Kuwait reacted by asking the U.S. & the U.S.S.R. for protection from these attacks. The Soviets leased three of their tankers to Kuwait & the U.S. agreed to reflag & escort eleven Kuwaiti tankers. To end the stalemate, Iran tried to acquire new weapons from the U.S. The climax of the American-Iranian negotiations was during a visit by Robert McFarlane, President Reagan's National Security Advisor, to Tehran in May 1986. This resulted in the arms-for-hostages deal that became more known as the Iran-Contra scandal.

4. The fourth & final stage of the war extended from March 1987 to July 1988, when Iran accepted the U.N. cease-fire resolution. In this stage, the United States, Soviet Union, & many European countries became directly involved in the efforts to end the war & minimize its effects on the Gulf oil supplies. Iran responded to the American escorting of Kuwaiti tankers by sowing the Gulf with mines. As a result, the U.S. & other European countries became more involved in mine-sweeping. In July 1987, the U.S. led the U.N. Security Council to pass Resolution 598, which called on Iran & Iraq to begin negotiating a peaceful settlement. The resolution was binding with a mechanism to impose sanctions on the party that would reject it. The peace plan was to be implemented in eight steps beginning with a cease-fire. While Iraq accepted the resolution as it was, the Iranian response was neither acceptance nor rejection. Instead, Iran announced that it needed more time to study the order of the eight steps. In particular, Iran called for the simultaneous implementation of the first step (cease-fire) & the sixth step (establishment of a committee to determine which country had started the war). The Iranian reluctance to accept the resolution triggered an Iraqi escalation of the war. Starting from February 1988, Iraq used hundreds of missiles that reached the main Iranian cities, including Tehran. In the battlefront, Iraq intensified the use of chemical weapons. The missile attacks & the chemical weapons demoralized civilians as well as armed forces. When Iraq launched its ground offensive, the Iranians abandoned their positions en masse.

The West & the Iran-Iraq War 

The Western countries did not like the Iranian revolution from the beginning.

• It overthrew the pro-Western Shah government & identified itself as anti-Israel.

• Iraq also was anti-Israel as it led the Arab states in rejecting the 1978 American-brokered peace treaty between Israel & Egypt.

• Thus, when the war broke out between Iran & Iraq in 1980, the West looked at it as a war involving two of its enemies. The American credo towards the war was "neither victor nor vanquished." This meant leaving the two countries engaged in a devastating war for about eight years. In spite of some efforts to reach a cease-fire in the United Nations, the genuine Western position was selling arms to both sides.

The eight-year Iran-Iraq war was a bonanza for the world military industries, particularly in the West. About thirty-nine countries sold arms to both sides.

• The arms brokers & weapon manufacturers made sure that both countries were getting enough bullets, bombs, mines, & rockets.

• Iran received weapons from Israel, Italy & Britain as early as the start of the war. This allowed the Iranians to launch their counter attack during the second stage of the war.

• The United States started selling Iraq weapons at the early stages of the war, as well.

• The Lebanese broker Sarkis Soghenalian mediated a helicopter deal. At the end of 1983, Iraq received the French-made Super-Etendard planes. These were used in attacking the oil tankers in Iran's oil terminal, Kharg Island.

• In 1983, Saheeb Al-Haddad of Nashville, Tennessee, exported variety of commodities to Iraq, including those used in manufacturing chemical weapons. In December 1983, Iraq attacked the Iranian troops occupying parts of Southern Iraq with Mustard gas, which contributed to the Iranian defeat there. In 1984, Iraq used poison gas again to liberate the Majnoon Islands, Southeast of Basrah, from the Iranian troops.

During the third stage of the war, Iran occupied the Iraqi Faw Peninsula, in 1986.

Moreover, in December 1986 & January 1987, the Iranians attacked Iraq again in what they called "the Karbala Offensive." This attack was made possible by the American & other Western arms that Iran received (directly or through Israel) in return for releasing the Western hostages in Lebanon.

During the final stage of the war, Iraq used missiles & chemical weapons to force Iran to accept the U.N. cease-fire resolution. Starting from February 29, 1988, Iraq launched 189 ballistic missiles against Tehran & five other Iranian cities.

The missile attacks brought the war to the Iranian hinterland thus contributing to ending the war. The Iraqi surprise attack on the Iranian troops occupying the Faw Peninsula also contributed to ending the war. The Iraqis used their new nine-ton bomb, called "Nassr." The blast was so powerful that the Iranians thought that it was an atomic bomb. Moreover, they bombarded the Iranian troops with chemical artillery shells, which led to the Iranian acceptance of the U.N. cease-fire resolution, in July 1988.

      Concerning the Arab-Israeli conflict, the war distracted Iraq away from the conflict & made the Iranian desire to support Arabs unrealistic. At the same time, it gave Israel the opportunity & resources to develop its nuclear research & arsenal.

A Threat to Western Interests 

     By the time the war stopped in 1988, Iraq had assembled a huge war machine that included conventional, chemical, & biological weapons. In addition, there was a potential for developing nuclear capabilities.

• This represented a threat to the Western military interests. The region's societies may not be interested in buying new weapons, as the perceived Iranian danger was no longer there.

• Moreover, the Iraqi military industry together with the Egyptian military industry have reached a level of development that may satisfy the regional needs for some weapon systems. This meant an emerging Arab military industry that the Western military industries, particularly the French, could not afford to ignore.

• Between 1975 & 1990, Iraq bought about $20 billion worth of French weapons. During the war, France became the major arms supplier to Iraq. Therefore, after the war, it was unhappy to see the country trying to develop its own weapon systems.

By 1990, the Western countries became worried about how Iraq was going to conduct itself after its war with Iran. The Iraqi armed forces came out of the war intact. However, the country was heavily burdened with debts.

• One possibility was that Iraq might start exporting arms, as a way out of its financial crisis. The Arab Middle Eastern countries may prefer to buy some of the military equipment they need from Iraq, a fellow Arab state, rather than from foreign countries.

• Moreover, the Western countries were worried about an Iraqi regional hegemony in which Iraq may dominate the Arab Middle East & threaten Israel.

• For all these reasons, the Western military establishments did not like these developments in Iraq.

• Soon, the country was officially portrayed by the Western military leaders as the new source of danger after the Soviet danger had weathered away. It was during this period, when the American Central Command pointed to Iraq as the new regional enemy & began to draw its strategic planning accordingly.

Conclusion 

The defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I led to the division of the Arab homeland among the victorious Western allies.

• As a result, the Western economic control over the area followed the European military occupation. It was first expressed by British & American oil concessions in the 1930s, then by linking the economies of Arab states to Western economies.

• The dependency of local ruling elites on their Western protectors led them to invest most of the oil revenues in the West.

• This has kept the region underdeveloped & the gap growing larger between the "haves" & the "have-nots."

The core industrial societies were not content to just receive Arab oil revenue surpluses in the form of investments.

• In addition to that, they received more of the oil revenues in the form of weapon purchases & services.

• Military spending in the industrial societies since the early 1980s led to burdening these societies with debt & depriving the working classes of the fruits of their labor.

• It also hurt underdeveloped societies of the Middle East by forcing them to buy unnecessary weapon systems instead of investing oil revenues in their economies.

Iraq is an example of what happened to other Arab states.

• Successive Iraqi governments were pushed from one war to another throughout the 20th century.

• The Kurdish rebellion kept the Iraqi governments involved in military campaigns & peace initiatives to end it.

• Iranian militarism, under the Shah, was induced by the American encouragement for Iran to play the role of the policeman in the Gulf area.

• Israeli military strategy led to the cooperation with Iran in providing assistance to the Kurdish rebels in an attempt to keep Iraq away from the Arab-Israeli conflict. This assistance forced Iraq finally to accept the 1975 agreement with Iran, in which it gave up its sovereignty over half of Shatt Al-Arab.

• The Iranian attempt to export the revolution to Iraq led to the Iraqi abrogation of the 1975 agreement & the 1980-88 war between the two countries.

• When, finally, the Iran-Iraq war was over, Iraqis looked up to their Arab neighbors for assistance in reconstruction. However, a new dispute developed between Iraq & Kuwait & that led to the 1990 crisis (Chapter VI) & the devastating 1991 Gulf War that followed.

Thus, throughout the 20th century, the Iraqis were forced to spend most of their resources, particularly oil revenues, on the military in order to combat the Kurdish rebels & their Iranian supporters.

Western interests, as expressed by oil concessions, oil revenues, military spending, & protection of local allies, played a major role in these developments in the region.

CHAPTER VI

THE 1990 CRISIS 

LEADING TO THE IRAQI INVASION OF KUWAIT

The 1990 crisis that led to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was the fifth in the relations between the two Arab states.

• In 1896, Mubarak Al-Sabah usurped office & became the ruler of Kuwait after killing his two brothers, Muhammed & Jarrah. To protect himself from their children & followers, who took refuge in Basra, he signed a protection agreement with Britain in 1899.

• His nephews, backed by Iraqi authorities & other supporters, launched two attempts to restore Kuwait in 1901 & 1902.

• Although they failed, successive Iraqi governments have never approved of the British arrangements, particularly the protection agreement, that led to the secession of Kuwait from Iraq.

• Tensions resurfaced for the third time in the 1930s, with a climax in 1938, when King Ghazi of Iraq led a media campaign against the Shaikh of Kuwait, Ahmed Al-Jaber.

• He also criticized the British imperialist policies that led to the dismemberment of the Arab nation & obstructed unification.

• The fourth crisis between the two states followed termination of the protection agreement on June 19, 1961. Four days later, Iraq announced its intentions to annex Kuwait.

• In all these four crises, Britain was there to protect Kuwait & supporting its independence (Chapter I).

The 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was the climax of the fifth crisis between the two neighborly Arab states. However, it was the most violent of these crises resulting in the most serious consequences for both of them.

This chapter attempts to explain how the fifth crisis developed. This is followed by an analysis for the major factors that intensified the crisis to reach the war stage.

A special attention is paid to the Iraqi-Israeli relations, which contributed to the escalation of the crisis. 

Background to the Crisis 

Relations between the two states cooled off in the 1970s.

• This was attributed to Iraq's occupation with the Kurdish rebellion & disputes with Iran over Shatt Al-Arab.

• In the 1980s, the Kuwaiti support for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war contributed to a major improvement in the relations between the two states.

• Kuwait made its territory a strategic depth for the Iraqi military efforts. Iraqi fighters & bombers were allowed to use Al-Ahmadi airbase, thus threatening the Iranian oil terminal at Kharg from a safe haven.

• Kuwait also allowed Iraq to build a pipeline that carried Iraqi oil, through Kuwait, to the Saudi port of Yanbu at the Red Sea. This allowed Iraq to continue exporting oil even when the Iranian troops occupied parts of southern Iraq in the last stages of the war.

• Moreover, Kuwait provided Iraq with $12 billion in loans to finance its military & civilian purchases.

• Because of that support, the Kuwaiti government expected that the Iraqi government would reciprocate by demarcating the borders between the two states.

• The Kuwaitis were encouraged after the Iraqi-Saudi agreement of non-aggression & military assistance had been signed in March 1989. Following the steps of King Fahd, the Emir of Kuwait, Jaber Al-Ahmed, went to Baghdad, in September 1989, to negotiate an agreement on the borders but he failed.

The failure to reach an agreement reflected the genuine differences between the Iraqi-Kuwaiti relations & the Iraqi-Saudi relations.

1. While there were Iraqi claims of Kuwait, there were neither Iraqi claims of any Saudi territories nor border disputes between Iraq & Saudi Arabia.

2. The Iran-Iraq war demonstrated the vulnerability of Iraq's access to the Gulf. Therefore, after the war, the Iraqi government looked for expanding that access by annexing or leasing the two Kuwaiti islands of Bubayan & Warbah. Thus, when the Emir went to Baghdad asking for an Iraqi recognition of the borders, he did not find a positive response.

3. While Saudi financial support for Iraq during the war was perceived & appreciated as a brotherly Arab nationalist duty, the Kuwaiti support for Iraq was expected because of the special historical relations between the two states.

4. Finally, the Iraqis argued throughout the war that they were not only defending Iraq but also the entire Arab Gulf states. However, Kuwait was more threatened than Saudi Arabia & other Gulf states, particularly when the Iranian troops became very close to Kuwait, during the last stage of the war.

The crisis started to deepen following that failed mission of the Emir in Baghdad. While Saudi Arabia commuted an essential part of its loans on Iraq to gifts, Kuwait started to press for the repayment of the $12 billion of Iraqi war debts.

• In response, Iraq began to criticize Kuwaiti overproduction of oil that contributed to the 30 percent decline of oil prices, reaching as low as $14 per barrel.

• In an Arab summit conference in Amman in May 1990, the Iraqi President pointed that for every single dollar drop in the price of a barrel of oil, Iraq's loss would mount to $1 billion a year.

• On July 16, 1990, the Iraqi foreign minister, Tareq Aziz, reiterated these accusations in a letter to the Secretary-General of the Arab League. In that letter, Iraq accused Kuwait & the United Arab Emirates of overstepping the quotas of oil production agreed upon by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

• The letter also accused Kuwait of stealing oil from the Rumaila oilfield on the border between the two states.

• On July 20, Iraq moved about 30,000 of its troops to the border, threatening Kuwait.

• Several Arab leaders tried to mediate between the two governments. These included President Mubarak of Egypt, King Hussain of Jordan, Yasser Arafat of the PLO, & the Saudi foreign minister Saud Al-Faisal.

• Their efforts succeeded in reaching an agreement between the two sides to hold face-to-face talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

• By the time the talks began on July 31, Iraq increased the number of its troops on the border to about 100,000.

• The crisis influenced the Geneva OPEC meeting on July 27.

• The Iraqi strong position to stop the violation of quotas was supported by most OPEC members, particularly Iran & Libya.

• The 13 OPEC oil ministers decided that the price of oil would be increased by $3 to reach $21 a barrel by the end of the year. In order to achieve that price, they decided that production ceiling should not exceed 22.491 million barrels per day (bpd). Actually, the new ceiling was slightly higher than the previous ceiling of 22.086 million bpd. The objective was to accommodate demands from the United Arab Emirates to match Kuwait's quota. However, the emphasis was on the strict observance of the quotas, which was expected to take 800,000 bpd off the oil market, allowing OPEC to achieve its target price by the end of the year.

     The Iraqi delegation to the Jeddah talks was headed by, the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, Izzat Ibrahim. He presented four Iraqi demands on Kuwait to meet: abiding by OPEC quotas, ceding the southern part of the border-Rumaila oilfield, writing-off of the war debt, & compensation for oil market losses as a result of the oil price decline. The Kuwaiti delegation, which was headed by the Crown Prince Sa'ad Al-Abdallah, insisted on a once-&-for-all settlement, that is, writing-off the debt in return for border demarcation. The talks lasted less than two days ending with disagreement on all issues early on August 1.

The Invasion 

     When the Jeddah Conference failed to solve the Iraqi-Kuwaiti disputes, the stage was set for the invasion.

• The most important historical development just before the invasion was from the United States. The Bush administration made it known to the Iraqi leadership that it was not going to interfere in inter-Arab disputes.

• The Iraqi leadership might have understood that as the American "
  green light"
   to go on with the invasion.

• Another factor was that Iraq became more nervous of the possibility of an Israeli attack on its nuclear installations.

• In addition, pressures on Iraq increased by the Western demands for repayment of the war debts (Chapter VII).

      The Kuwaiti military authorities informed the country's political leaders about the Iraqi military build-up on the border & asked for declaring the state of emergency.

• However, the political leaders did not take the Iraqi actions seriously.

• They argued that Iraq was just trying to exert pressures on Kuwait but would never invade the country as a whole.

• The worst case-scenario, they imagined, was occupation of the disputed border areas, mainly a strip of the Kuwaiti border near the Rumaila oilfields together with the Bubayan & Warba islands. As a result, they did not agree to declare the state of emergency demanded by the Kuwaiti military leaders.

     On July 31, 1990, there were five Iraqi divisions (about 53,000 soldiers) ready to fight on the border, under the leadership of General Iyad Al-Rawi.

• Some of the Iraqi troops actually crossed the border as early as the afternoon of August 1, 1990 but tanks crossed at 10:30 p.m. They reached Al-Jahra town, 90 kilometers inside the Kuwaiti territory, by 2:00 a.m. of August 2. At 2:30 a.m., the Kuwaiti Chief-of-Staff, General Mizyid Al-Sani, signed the emergency (readiness for fighting) orders but it was only at 5:00 a.m. when the first Kuwaiti unit became ready for fighting.

• While General Al-Sani was signing his orders, the Emir & the Crown Prince left to Saudi Arabia.

• The rest of the Kuwaiti government (cabinet ministers) followed them at 3:40 a.m. The Iraqi military operation was completed by occupying Al-Ahmedi airbase, south of Kuwait, by 10:30 p.m. of August 3.

• The isolated Kuwaiti military resistance continued until August 4 (two days after the invasion), when the last Kuwaiti military unit surrendered.

• By August 4, the Iraqi troops in Kuwait increased to about 150,000. They completed the occupation of the country in twenty-four hours & it took them twenty-four more hours to end the Kuwaiti formal resistance.

• Thus, in spite of billions of dollars spent on the Kuwaiti military establishment, it did not demonstrate any serious resistance. Escape was in everyone's mind. At one time, cars from Kuwait to Saudi Arabia were four abreast, 30 kilometers deep.

A Kuwaiti investigation, after the war, pointed to several factors that may explain the poor Kuwaiti military performance.

1. The Kuwaiti army was not taken seriously by the political leadership.

2. the military establishment lacked the necessary political vision, training, equipment, & the right leadership.

3. the Kuwaiti officers reported that the army was not trained for defending the country against outside threats; rather, it was established for internal security.

4. buying military equipment was subject to the approval of civilian officials who cared more for their commissions than for what was best for the armed forces.

5. the armed forces suffered from a low morale, looseness, administrative corruption, cliques, & nepotism (promotion on basis of kinship & friendship ties, rather than competence).

6. while the officers were mainly Kuwaiti citizens, about 80 percent of soldiers were stateless residents of Kuwait, known as Bidoons ("without" citizenship). It was absurd to expect a persecuted population group (Bidoons) to defend its oppressors.

7. the military leaders were inefficient & incapable to perform the least of their professional duties & were completely dependent on the political leadership.

8. the top military officials (the Defense Minister, the Chief-of-Staff, & their deputies) were so ignorant about their duties that they did not know what to do following the declaration of military emergency.

9. Finally, the political leadership left to Saudi Arabia without appointing an alternative leadership to run the country.

Reaction to the Invasion 

The United States & Britain were quick in their response to the invasion.

• In just few hours, they led the United Nations Security Council in adopting Resolution 660, which condemned the invasion & called for the Iraqi withdrawal.

• They also led European & Asian countries in freezing all Iraqi & Kuwaiti assets, in the same day.

The Arab response to the invasion was different.

The Arab League held an emergency meeting on August 2 without the adoption of any resolutions, waiting for results of King Hussain's peace initiative.

• The Iraqi President called the King earlier in the day suggesting a mini-summit to solve the problem.

• King Hussain flew to Cairo to get President Mubarak's approval & the two of them called President Bush asking for 48 hours to end the crisis.

President Bush did not waste any time, particularly after he had been "admonished" by Margaret Thathcher.

• The British Prime Minister, who had a pre-scheduled meeting with President Bush, told him that this was no time to go "wobbly."

• He called King Fahd & offered U.S. aid if Iraqi troops did not stop at the border.

• On August 3, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, John Kelly, sent a message to the Egyptian Foreign Minister threatening that the United States may stop the annual military assistance if Egypt did not take a firm stance on the Kuwaiti issue. As a result, President Mubarak issued a statement condemning the invasion.

On August 3, King Hussain announced that Iraq agreed to start withdrawing troops from Kuwait on August 5.

• However, later the same day, in another emergency meeting of the Arab League, 14 Arab states followed Mubarak's lead in condemning Iraq & calling for an immediate Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait.

• The seven votes against that resolution were from Djibouti, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Sudan, & Yemen.

On August 4, President Bush called King Fahd to warn him that Iraqi troops were massed along the Saudi border. He offered sending Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney, to Riyadh for talks about defending Saudi Arabia.

• On August 6, King Fahd agreed to receive American troops in his country, which became known as Operation Desert Shield.

• In the same day, the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 661 imposing economic sanctions on Iraq.

• In response to the arrival of the American troops in Saudi Arabia & to the U.N. economic sanctions, Iraq declared a union of Iraq & Kuwait on August 9 (which was altered to a formal annexation on August 28).

• On the same day, August 9, the Arab summit conference was held with 14 heads of states, chairman of the PLO, & five government representatives.

• President Mubarak forced a vote on a resolution that called for an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait & the restoration of the Emir.

• The resolution also rejected annexation of Kuwait, supported the U.N. economic sanctions, & called for the formation of an Arab "expeditionary force" to aid Saudi Arabia.

• The vote on the resolution divided the Arab states into three camps, one supporting Iraq, another supporting Kuwait, & a third was neutral.

• The twelve votes in favor of the resolution were those of Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria, & the United Arab Emirates.

• The three votes against were those of Iraq, Libya, & the PLO.

• The remaining six states were neither for nor against. Algeria, Jordan, & Yemen abstained; Sudan & Mauritania expressed reservations; while Tunisia was absent from the meeting.

Suffering the Invasion 

The Iraqi invasion & the military rule of Kuwait that extended between August 2, 1990 & February 24, 1991 led to tremendous suffering among the inhabitants of Kuwait, citizens & immigrants alike.

• About 300,000 Kuwaitis fled the country or did not return after vacationing abroad. These included Al-Sabah ruling family, the wealthy, prominent government figures, the military, & security personnel & their families. They constituted more than 57 percent of the Kuwaiti citizens.

• Although most of them did not suffer financially, they were devastated to discover their new status as stateless & homeless refugees. .

• About 250,000 Kuwaiti citizens stayed in Kuwait together with about 240,000 Bidoons (stateless residents), about 130,000 Palestinians, & several thousands of other non-Kuwaitis.

• Iraqis also took several thousand men as prisoners of war, but the vast majority of them were returned at the end of the war. By the year 2000, only about 600 men were still unaccounted for. In spite of the few number of casualties & injuries among Kuwaiti citizens, they suffered from a military rule that robbed them the freedom & the luxurious lifestyle they enjoyed before the crisis.

• More suffering was experienced by non-Kuwaitis. This has been least reported on so far. About one million immigrants of various nationalities were affected by the invasion. Most of them had to leave the country, thus losing their jobs in extraordinarily difficult circumstances.

• However, non-Kuawaitis who stayed in the country suffered even more. These were mainly Bidoons & Palestinians. They did not receive financial assistance from the Kuwaiti government in-exile. Therefore, they had to report to work during the Iraqi rule.

• This gave Kuwaitis the pretext they were looking for to accuse them of collaboration with the Iraqi authorities. Thus, from their safe havens abroad, Kuwaitis started threatening the remaining Bidoons & Palestinians of retribution. Inside the country, the Kuwaiti resistance targeted them with a number of explosions that killed & injured many of them. The Iraqi authorities required the Bidoons to join the militia otherwise they would be arrested & jailed. When they tried to flee to Saudi Arabia, they were not even allowed to enter the country, like Kuwaiti citizens. They were trapped in a refugee camp on the border, near the town of Khafjeh. After the war, the Bidoons, Palestinians, & other Arab immigrants who stayed in Kuwait were subjected to a terror campaign during which thousands were killed, injured, tortured, raped, & detained without trial, as documented in Chapter X. 

Analyzing the Invasion 

• The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait may be more understood if it is analyzed using the functional & conflict sociological perspectives.

• From a functional perspective, Iraq's invasion & annexation of Kuwait was perceived by Western leaders as a major dysfunction that led to the creation of an imbalance not only in the Gulf region but also in the world as a whole.

• The Iraqi action has created a state of disequilibrium in the world order. Therefore, in order for the world to restore the equilibrium, the Iraqi action had to be reversed. Thus, forcing Iraq out of Kuwait would correct the dysfunction that occurred in the world order.

• However, that was not enough, as it may not guarantee that Iraq would not threaten the world order again in the future.

• Therefore, the United States-led coalition adopted the destruction of Iraq as the major goal that would also lead to forcing Iraq out of Kuwait.

• President Bush was outspoken throughout the crisis in describing the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait as a threat to the world order. General Schwarzkopf, commander of the coalition forces, also mentioned that the destruction of Iraq was a major goal of Desert Storm.

Viewing the crisis from an Iraqi functional perspective would mean that the Iraqi invasion aimed at restoring stability to the world order.

• In his July 17, 1990 speech, the Iraqi President attacked rulers of Kuwait for damaging the Iraqi economy.

• He accused them of illegally taking about $2.4 billion worth of Iraqi crude oil from the Rumaila oil field on the border between the two states.

• He also accused the Kuwaiti government of disrupting the status quo by violating the OPEC quota system. By exceeding OPEC's production quota, Kuwait contributed to the dramatic decline of oil prices, which hurt Iraq. Overproduction of oil led to lowering oil prices by 30 percent, from $21 a barrel in January 1990 to $14 a barrel six months later. Iraq was particularly hurt because it was in need for more money in order to finance its development plans & reconstruction following the eight years of war with Iran.

• Thus, from an Iraqi functional viewpoint, it was Kuwait which disrupted the status quo in the region & that the Iraqi invasion aimed at restoring it.  

It is clear that the functional analysis may justify both the Iraqi action & the Western-led coalition's reaction.

• The major shortcoming of this type of analysis is that it is a historical, as it does not account for the historical development of the crisis.

• To the contrary, the conflict analysis accounts for history & attempts to uncover the real interests of the parties involved in the conflict. This helps us understand how the crisis developed & why Iraq was destroyed, as a result.

According to the conflict perspective, the capitalist classes in the core industrial societies as represented in this crisis by the United States, Britain, & France perceived Iraq as a threat to their interests in the Gulf region.

• Therefore, it had to be destroyed as a military & economic regional power.

• Thus, the region has continued as an underdeveloped periphery that exports its cheap energy to the core societies & imports expensive manufactured commodities from them.

• Furthermore, enabling Al-Sabah family to restore its rule of Kuwait has assured the other regimes in the region that the core will continue protecting them in the future.

• Finally, the destruction of Iraq removes away, once & for all, a potential threat to Israel. 

Factors Contributing to the Crisis 

By looking at the historical background of the conflict, six main factors may be identified as major contributors to the 1990 Iraqi-Kuwaiti crisis.

1. the relations between the two Arab states deteriorated after the Iraqi accusations that Kuwait had violated production quotas, exploited the border-Rumaila oilfield unilaterally, & demanded repayment of the war debts. Iraq needed more money not only to rebuild its economy but also to repay its foreign debts. The Western creditors started talking about an international consortium to control the Iraqi treasury, which made Iraqis very nervous.

2. The second factor was represented by the position of the Bush administration that encouraged Iraq to invade Kuwait without worrying about any serious consequences. Throughout 1990, particularly during the climax of the crisis in July, the United States never warned Iraq explicitly not to use force to settle its disputes with Kuwait. When John Kelly, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, visited Baghdad in February 1990, he expressed the American indifference concerning the Iraqi-Kuwaiti disputes. On July 24, 1990, the State Department spokeswoman, Margaret Tutwiler, stressed that the U.S. had no defense treaty with Kuwait & no special defense commitment to it. The same statement was reiterated by John Kelly on July 31, 1990. These statements must undoubtedly have encouraged Iraq to invade Kuwait. More important, when Ambassador April Glaspie met with the Iraqi President on July 25, she expressed the same policy by telling him that the U.S. has "
   no opinion on inter-Arab disputes, like your border dispute with Kuwait." In fact, she was expressing the U.S. official position from the dispute, as she added that Secretary "James Baker has directed our official spokesman to reemphasize this instruction."  The Iraqi President was very much interested to hear that statement & he had probably acted on it. Like the United States, most Western European countries, particularly Britain, France, Germany, & Italy, supported Iraq throughout the 1980s in its war against Iran. Consequently, the Iraqis did not expect a serious western opposition to their invasion of Kuwait.

3. The third factor that has contributed to the crisis stemmed from the inter-Arab conflict that had polarized the region for decades. Kuwait & Iraq stood in two rival camps in the Arab Middle East. Iraq has portrayed itself as the socialist defender of the deprived poor Arab masses, which aspire for an equal distribution of the Arab oil wealth through genuine socio-economic development in the region. Kuwait, on the other hand, has represented the fortified castle of the privileged wealthy minority of Arabs who invested most of their oil surplus wealth outside the region. Other Arab regimes had to split as supporters for one of these positions or the other. This has been one of the most serious issues in inter-Arab politics. The wealthy oil-exporting Arab states argue that they have suffered a history of deprivation & it is time now for them to enjoy the oil wealth that God has given them. This means that the oil wealth is theirs alone & they do not have to share it with the other Arab states. That is why Kuwait has invested the vast majority of its surplus wealth in the Western countries, rather than in the region.

4. The fourth factor that contributed to the crisis was represented by border disputes. The 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war showed that Iraq was vulnerable to the closing off of its only commercial port, oil terminals, & naval bases at Umm Qasr, by Iran. This simple geographical fact brought Iraq & Kuwait into conflict since the independence of Kuwait in 1961. As a solution, Iraq was looking for the acquisition of the two Kuwaiti islands of Bubiyan & Warba. They separate the Iraqi territory, particularly Umm Qasr, from the Gulf. Iraq offered to purchase, lease or exchange the islands for fresh water but Kuwait resisted the offer (See the area map).

5. The fifth factor that contributed to the crisis was represented by the Iraqi fears of an imminent Israeli attack on the country's nuclear & industrial installations. The fears increased as a result of an increase in a smearing campaign against Iraq. During the Arab Cooperation Council (ACC) summit conference in Amman, Jordan, on February 23, 1990, the Iraqi President expressed his suspicion that Israel may attack the Iraqi nuclear facilities during the coming five years.

6. The Israeli factor The sixth & the most important factor that contributed to the crisis & the war was the adversarial Iraqi-Israeli relations. Iraq has been perceived & portrayed as a threat to Israel. This may explain why the Western powers opted for war, rather than peace initiatives or even economic sanctions, to force Iraq out of Kuwait.

Tensions between Iraq & Israel started during the 1948 war when the Iraqi forces played a major role in keeping the West Bank as an Arab territory.

 In the 1980s, Israel worked hard to lengthen the Iran-Iraq war in order to "sap the Iraqi military capabilities," as the head of the Israeli military intelligence, Amnon Shahak, said. That goal was achieved through the Israeli arms sales to Iran during that war, which contributed to more tensions between Israel & Iraq. Not only the Israelis supplied the Iranians with Israeli military equipment but also persuaded the American administration to do so in what became known later as the Iran-Contra affair. When the war ended with most of the Iraqi weapons intact, the Israelis were nervous & wanted to see Iraq destroyed.

As a major Western ally during the Cold War, Israel was capable of earning the Western support for its policy towards the Palestinian people & the Arab states that supported them.

• Israel continued its denial of the Palestinian national & political rights recognized by the United Nations.

• In 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed the partition Resolution No. 181, which called for the creation of the Arab state of Palestine besides the Jewish state of Israel.

• In 1949, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution No. 191, which demanded that Israel solve the Palestinian refugee problem by compensation & repatriation. However, Israel refused to observe these United Nations resolutions.

• Moreover, it continued its expansionist policies by occupying more Arab territories in 1956 (Sinai & Gaza Strip).

• Israel also adopted more aggressive & expansionist policies, such as launching pre-emptive strikes against any Arab state that may threaten the Israeli policies. It was in this context that Israel launched the 1967 war against Egypt, Jordan, & Syria, bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, & invaded Lebanon in 1982. Israel could not do that without the continuous Western military & economic support.

Thus, ending the Iraqi invasion by force, rather than by peaceful initiatives or economic sanctions, aimed at maintaining the Israeli military superiority. The destruction of the Iraqi military capabilities was a goal in itself & a golden opportunity to guarantee the Israeli military superiority in the region, for decades to come. 

Maintaining the Israeli Military Superiority 

The West has made sure that Israel has a technological edge in the Middle East by enabling it to develop its own arsenal of nuclear weapons.

• On October 5, 1986, the Sunday Times of London published an article based on information supplied by Mordechai Vanunu, an Israeli Jew of a Moroccan origin & a former technician at the Israeli Dimona Nuclear Research Center. Vanunu's evidence showed that Israel produced between 100 & 200 nuclear weapons of various destructive forces, thus becoming the world's sixth nuclear power.

By the end of the Iran-Iraq in 1988, several Israeli leaders started to describe Iraq as a threat to Israel because of its missile & chemical weapons capabilities.

• The smearing campaign continued for the following two years until one day, on April 2, 1990, the Iraqi president was so provoked that he threatened to burn half of Israel if it attacked Iraq again. He was referring to the unprovoked 1981 Israeli attack on the Iraqi nuclear plant.

• The 1991 Gulf War showed that destroying the Iraqi nuclear facilities was a major goal of the air campaign. Actually, the Iraqi nuclear facilities were destroyed during the first week of the war. In fact, in the largest single raid of the air campaign, 56-F16s (out of the total 251 American F-16s) attacked the Iraqi Nuclear Research Center in Baghdad on January 19. Clearly, this was the major Israeli target, which had nothing to do with forcing Iraq out of Kuwait.

Iraqi Nuclear Programs became advanced enough to threaten the Israeli nuclear superiority. That was why Israel decided to destroy the Iraqi programs.

• On June 13, 1980, Israeli agents killed the Egyptian nuclear physicist, Yahya Al-Mashad, in Paris for his work in the Iraqi nuclear program in France.

• On June 7, 1981, Israel destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor (Tammuz I) in two waves of attacks by its American-made F-16 aircrafts. However, Iraq was capable of rebuilding its nuclear facilities (Tammuz II) throughout the 1980s.

• In September 1988, as evidence that production of nuclear weapons was soon to happen, Iraq sought to buy nuclear triggering devices, called krytrons. By June 1990, Pentagon analysts estimated that Iraq was somewhere between two & five years to have its first atomic bomb.

• Israel also succeeded in destroying another Iraqi weapon, the Babylon Super Gun, which was about to allow Iraq to reach the space age. In March 1989, the Iraqi 56-meter long super gun was completed & tested. Each one of its steel shells could carry about 500 kilograms of high explosives, for a distance of about 1,000 kilometers. On February 7, 1990, General Amer Al-Sa'adi announced that Iraq was ready to use the Babylon Super-Gun in launching two versions of domestically produced satellites into space.

• During April & May of 1990, an all-Europe campaign was launched to complete what Israel started when its agents assassinated Gerald Bull, the father of the Babylon Super Gun, on February 7, 1990. Customs officials in Britain, West Germany, Italy, Greece, & Turkey intercepted shipments to Iraq that included parts that may be used in making the Super-Gun. During July 1990, the U.S. officials intercepted shipment of parts, which were to be used in making the Iraqi nuclear bomb.

• Finally, Israel was much interested in destroying the Iraqi missile systems in order to maintain its air supremacy in the region. The Iraqi missile program was active & successful, as early as 1984, when Iraq developed the ballistic missile Astros II in collaboration with Brazil. The program was soon accelerated when Iraqis obtained 300 Scud-B missiles in 1986. The Iraqis took them to Brazil, where they were converted into 200 medium-range missiles with reduced warhead capacity, 190 kilograms instead of 800 kilograms. On August 5, 1987, the Iraqi President announced that the Iraqi missile, Al-Hussain, was test-fired, flew 615 kilometers, & landed in the designated target area.

• On December 7, 1989, Iraq launched its three-stage, 48-ton rocket, which stood 25 meters high. "Al-Abed" was capable of carrying a military warhead at a target some 2,000 kilometers away. The U.S. officials did not like this Iraqi achievement. The following day, December 8, 1989, they told reporters in Washington that Iraq's missile programs had become a "subject of major concern to the Bush administration.

Conclusion 

     Relations between Iraq & Kuwait were tense throughout the twentieth century. However, tensions increased during the five main crises of 1901, 1902, 1938, 1961, & 1990. Only the last crisis escalated to an Iraqi invasion.

     Iraqis felt that the Kuwaiti government ignored their grievances concerning oil prices, war debts, & border disputes. They expected a much better treatment from their brotherly neighbors. In particular, they argued that they defended Kuwait during the Iran-Iraq war. In return, they expected appreciation & economic support after the war, which they did not get.

     Kuwaitis also had their own grievances. They demanded an Iraqi recognition of the border between the two states. When the Iraqis did not agree, they retaliated by exerting economic pressure on them. They demanded repayment of the $12 billion war debt. Moreover, they increased their oil production quota, thus contributing to the 30 percent decline in the oil prices. Feeling these economic pressures, the Iraqis escalated the dispute by sending troops to the border. When the Arab-mediated Jeddah conference failed to resolve the disputes, the stage was set for the Iraqi invasion.

     The Arab initial reaction to the invasion was a mixture of shock & disbelief. Therefore, it took the form of peaceful initiatives demanding the Iraqi withdrawal. However, the tough Anglo-American position in the United Nations led the Arab League to the condemnation of the invasion & the demand of instant Iraqi withdrawal. The turning point was when King Fahd agreed to receive American troops in his country. That was the first step towards the eviction of Iraqi troops from Kuwait & the destruction of Iraq during the war.

     The Iraqi invasion & the war that followed led to tremendous suffering among millions of people in the Middle East, particularly in Kuwait & Iraq. Most Kuwaiti citizens became refugees in the Gulf area & around the world. Kuwaitis & non-Kuwaitis who stayed in Kuwait suffered the most. In particular, Palestinians were reduced from the largest immigrant group in the country numbering over 450,000 before the invasion to about 130,000 during the crisis & less than 30,000 after the war. They lost their jobs, investments, & the society that they established for more than half a century. They were also subjected to a terror campaign after the war that aimed at evicting them from the country. The Bedoons were the second non-Kuwaiti population group to suffer at the end of the war. Kuwaitis persecuted both Palestinians & Bedoons for their alleged collaboration with the Iraqi authorities (Chapter X). Nevertheless, the Iraqi people have been suffering the most: hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers were killed & injured, their country was destroyed, & hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children died after the war, as a result of the embargo.

     Using the functionalist analysis to understand the 1990 crisis is very simplistic. The crisis did not start with the Iraqi invasion, which would not escalate into the 1991 war without a host of other factors. The conflict analysis is much more helpful in understanding the historical, regional, & international factors that deepened the crisis to reach the level of an international conflict.    

     The immediate factors that contributed to the crisis were war debts, the decline in oil prices, & border disputes. However, the crisis represented a historical split between two conflicting Arab camps that polarized the Middle East for decades. Western powers also contributed to the crisis by not making their positions clear to Iraq. The United States officials expressed the opinion that they were not going to interfere in inter-Arab disputes. Israel played a major role in escalating the crisis. First, Iraqis began to fear an imminent Israeli attack on their nuclear installations. Second, a media campaign followed all over Europe & North America to smear Iraq because of the Iraqi counter-threats against Israel. Then, European countries started intercepting industrial shipments purchased by Iraq for fear that these shipments may be used in making the Babylon Super-Gun that may threaten the Israeli military superiority in the Middle East. Third, Israeli agents assassinated the Canadian Gerald Bull who built the Super-Gun.

     The 1990 Iraqi-Kuwaiti disputes were serious enough to reach a crisis stage that ended with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. However, these disputes alone could not have escalated into the 1991 Gulf War without a host of regional & international factors. Peaceful initiatives for the Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait were not given a fair chance. Economic sanctions were not given a chance either (Chapter VIII). War was the preferred solution for the crisis. Why? This is explained in Chapter VII: America Goes to War.

Conclusion 

     President Bush's quick decision to go to war against Iraq was facilitated by recommendations from pro-Israel experts in the administration. These experts succeeded in changing the American policy towards Iraq into adversarial one well before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. These experts occupy the most prominent positions in various government agencies & private institutions. Their view of the world is explained by the realpolitik theory that places great emphasis on winning wars, irrelevant of whether wars are necessary or not. Thus, going to war against Iraq was the main objective, not ejecting Iraq from Kuwait as the administration claimed throughout the crisis.

     Economic sanctions were not given any chance to work. In handling the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, representatives of the power elite opted for the use of force, rather than sanctions, for several reasons. First, the destruction of Iraq would remove the second major Arab power from the confrontation with Israel, after the removal of Egypt through the Camp David Accords. This would leave the Palestinian people in a weaker position during negotiations for the final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Moreover, it would leave Israel with a hegemonic status as the only nuclear power in the region. Second, the war would benefit the American military industry by demonstrating the need for continuous military spending in the post-Cold War era (Chapter V). Third, the destruction of Iraq would weaken, if not end, the influence of Arab nationalists & strengthen the position of the ruling elite within sovereign states. Thus, Arabs would continue as disunited & weak in dealing with Western powers that exploit them (Chapter IV).

For these reasons, Iraq was denied any opportunity to withdraw from Kuwait without war. This explains why all peaceful initiatives to end the crisis were rejected by the administration, as will be demonstrated in the following chapter (VIII).

CHAPTER VIII

 PEACE INITIATIVES

As Iraq had been accorded the status of an adversary well before its invasion of Kuwait, the war option was more preferred to any peaceful solutions to end the crisis. That was why the Bush administration kept rejecting every single peace initiative offered by Iraq or by various intermediaries. The vast majority of these initiatives were rejected using a pretext that became known as "linkage."     

This chapter starts with an investigation of that "linkage" excuse. This is followed by a review of the major peace initiatives, which were rejected as a result of that excuse, including the well-publicized Geneva Meeting. This chapter also sheds some light on the attempts of Democrats in the Congress to avoid war by trying to convince the administration to use economic sanctions instead. Leading Democrats, Such as Senator Sam Nunn, were ridiculed for their "peaceful" behavior, so were the Soviet "Arabists."
 The chapter draws heavily on three major sources: memoirs of President Bush & his National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, memoirs of the Secretary of State James Baker, & the Senate hearings conducted by Senator Sam Nunn. Using these three major sources to analyze how the administration behaved during the crisis allows us to avoid any disputes over accuracy of mentioned events. 

The Linkage Impasse 

• The first Iraqi offer to withdraw from Kuwait reached the Bush administration on August 11, 1990, almost a week after the invasion. Iraq offered withdrawal from Kuwait in return for access to the Gulf & negotiations on oil prices. The initiative was dismissed outright because withdrawal was "conditional."
   

• On the following day, August 12, the Iraqi President announced another proposal that was also rejected instantly because it included a "linkage." Iraq offered withdrawal from Kuwait without any territorial or oil conditions, this time, in return for an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Arab territories. The administration rejected that initiative, too, because it would lead to exerting pressure on Israel to observe the U.N. Resolutions 242, 338, & 425 which called for the Israeli withdrawal from the Arab territories it occupied in 1967 & 1982.

But why did the Bush administration miss that opportunity to achieve a peaceful Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait & resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, at the same time?

Supporters of Israel in the Bush administration saw the coming war as an opportunity to destroy Israel's most "hated" enemy, Iraq. Therefore, it would be inconsistent for them to accept Iraqi peace initiatives even in return for a promise to address the Israeli occupation, later.

In fact, the Bush administration was frustrated by the reluctance of the Israeli government of Shamir to commit itself to any peaceful resolution for the Palestinian problem.

• The third peace initiative was also rejected because of "linkage." It was proposed on September 9, 1990 during a meeting between Bush & Gorbachev. The Soviets knew that they lost the Cold War & that they were no longer capable of supporting Third World countries. Consequently, all what they could do was proposing peace initiatives that were all rejected one after the other. During that meeting, the Soviet President, Gorbachev, brought out a proposal to end the crisis peacefully. Iraq offered to release the hostages, withdraw from Kuwait, & restore the Kuwaiti government. In return, the United States would promise (just a promise) that it would not strike Iraq & would reduce its forces in the area, which would be replaced by an Arab peace-keeping force. An agreement for an international conference on the Middle East would follow. Once again, the initiative was rejected by President Bush as a linkage.

The administration preferred to go to war to destroy Iraq rather than promising to address the Israeli occupation of the Arab territories. This position continued even after being confronted with possible casualty figures, which were estimated in the thousands if Iraq would use chemical & biological weapons. This was evidence on the Bush administration's willingness to sacrifice the lives of thousands of American soldiers in order to help Israel continue its occupation of the Arab territories. More & more Peace initiatives continued to be proposed, just to be rejected with cold blood.

• Another Soviet-brokered peace initiative was also rejected as a "linkage." On October 4-5, 1990, Primakov's visit to Baghdad resulted in a new Iraqi initiative. Iraq would withdraw from Kuwait in exchange for access to the Gulf & a promise to address the Israeli occupation of the Arab territories. Two days later, on October 7, President Bush instructed Secretary Baker to announce the rejection of the initiative.

Thus, automatic rejection of peace initiatives on basis of "linkage" marked the Bush administration's double-standard approach in international relations. In particular, it portrayed the administration as the protector of the Israeli aggression & occupation.

When it was forced by events to change that image a little bit, it back lashed against the President. On October 8, Israeli troops fired into Muslim worshipers in Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. They killed 21 & injured more than 150 Muslim worshippers. President Bush had to agree to a resolution in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) condemning Israel for the use of excessive force & calling for a committee to investigate how Palestinians can be protected. However, the Shamir government refused to cooperate with the UN committee. Supporters of that government among Jewish Americans were surprised, hurt, & furious for the position of the Bush administration that allowed the resolution to pass.

• Then, several peace initiatives followed. All attempted to convince the Bush administration to allow Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait without punishment or even with symbolic face saving, but in vain.

• During the November 19 meeting between Bush & Gorbachev, the Soviet President brought another peace initiative from Primakov. He said that Iraq would agree to withdraw from Kuwait in exchange for access to the Gulf. Although this initiative did not include any "linkage," it was also rejected by the Bush administration because withdrawal "was tied to a condition."

• On November 29, directly after the U.N. vote that authorized the use of force against Iraq, Foreign Ministers of the five permanent members of the Security Council met for a celebration. During that meeting, Sheverdnadze launched a peace initiative. He suggested that Iraq be given assurances that it would not be attacked while withdrawing. He was supported by the British, French, & Chinese Foreign Ministers right away. Moreover, they expressed their readiness to send bilateral & collective messages of assurance to Iraq. However, Secretary Baker & President Bush adamantly rejected this initiative like they did to the previous ones. They would not allow any assurances or guarantees.

• Moreover, President Bush & his advisors expressed their anger against Soviet "
  Arabists"
   for their stance against the use of force.

More peace initiatives continued to no avail. On December 4, Iraq ended the human shields' problem by permitting foreigners, including Americans, to leave the country if they wished. Then, it asked for a broader dialogue about ending the Israeli occupation but the administration refused.

• On January 5, 1991 the UN Secretary-General, Javier Perez de Cuellar, arrived at Camp David & asked President Bush to allow him to mediate in the conflict. Instead, the President tried to talk him out of the mission. He thought that it would offer "Saddam hope that he could find another way out," & he did not want him to find any way out.

• The last peace initiative, which was also rejected by the Bush administration, was few days before the beginning of the war. On January 14, the French Foreign Minister, Roland Dumas, expressed his government's desire to make a last-minute attempt to persuade the Iraqis to withdraw. Dumas proposed that the UN Security Council agree to a conference on the Middle East if Iraq would pull out of Kuwait. But President Bush, again & for the last time, rejected the proposal because he perceived it as a "linkage."

The Geneva Meeting 

     The Bush administration's continuous rejection of peaceful initiatives made it crystal clear that war was a goal in itself. The only attempt to communicate, not negotiate, with Iraqis was the Geneva meeting between Secretary Baker & the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Tareq Aziz. The meeting lasted six hours, during which an ultimatum was delivered to Iraq to withdraw unconditionally or face destruction. The Iraqis were also threatened not to use unconventional weapons or they would suffer devastation. In brief, the meeting aimed at making the rules of engagement clear. It was never intended to end the crisis peacefully.

    When King Fahd agreed to receive American troops in his country, on August 6, 1990, he demanded that President Bush secure the participation of troops from other Arab states, particularly Egypt & Morocco.

• Historically, the Egyptian policy was in support for the independence of Kuwait.

• Thus, Egypt sided with Kuwait in 1990 again, like it did in 1961.

• Therefore, the Egyptian participation was achieved as early as August 10, following the Arab League meeting.

• In return, President Bush called President Hosni Mubarak on September 1, 1990 to tell him that he was going to recommend to Congress that Egypt's entire debt of $7.1 billion to the United States be forgiven. The Congress passed the debt forgiveness legislation in the first week of November 1990.

     Then, President Mubarak & all other Arab coalition leaders wanted President Bush to meet with President Hafez Al-Assad of Syria, in his way back from the Middle East after Thanksgiving.

• The objective was to convince him to join the coalition against Iraq. A meeting was arranged for them in Geneva, on November 23, 1990, in which Assad agreed to send Syrian troops to Saudi Arabia.

• In return for the Syrian participation, the Syrian foreign debts were forgiven. Syria was also rewarded after the war by lifting its name from the American list of states that harbor "
  terrorists."
   Moreover, the Gulf states rewarded Syria of about $3 billion for that participation.

Turkey played a major role in strengthening the coalition against Iraq in two ways.

1. First, it made its military bases, particularly the Incirlik airbase, available for use by the coalition forces.

2. Second, it stopped the Iraqi oil from being exported through the pipeline that passes on its soil to the Mediterranean. In return, the U.S. promised to pay Turkey $1 billion, support Turkey's application to join the European Common Market, & to extend the World Bank's loans to Turkey form $400 million to $1.5 billion for the following two years. As a follow-up to that, on January 10, 1991, Secretary Baker presented a bill to Saudi Arabia, in which he asked that Turkey be paid $800 million in economic aid & $1 billion over the following five years for a Turkish special defense fund. Kuwait was also asked to pay Turkey another $800 million in economic aid in compensation for its lost revenues from Iraqi exported oil. Both governments were more than happy to pay.

Germany was persuaded to participate in the coalition by promising her unification.

• The Germans paid $2 billion in support for U.S. forces, increased their military & economic aid to Turkey, & provided ships to transport the Egyptian forces to Saudi Arabia.

• In return, the United States led the other three World War II allies in a ceremony in Moscow, on September 13, 1991, that officially ended the allied military occupation. Only then, the German re-unification became possible.

Even the Soviet Union was bought into participation in the effort to destroy Iraq.

• Although the Soviets kept bringing new peace initiatives to resolve the crisis, they had no problem dropping them at the first American rejection.

• Actually, they helped deceive the world public opinion that some peaceful resolution may finally happen.

• In return for their help, particularly for not insisting on the international peace conference, "
  linkage,"
   Secretary Baker promised Gorbachev to provide his government with economic assistance.

• On September 12, 1990, the Soviet President requested that Saudi Arabia pay his country $5 billion to ease the hardship of transition. The Saudis responded generously with $4 billion, which persuaded Gorbachev not to insist on his peace initiatives.

China was the hardest in bargaining for not using its veto power in the UNSC.

• The Chinese Foreign Minister, Qian Qichen, wanted a visit by President Bush or Secretary Baker to Beijing, in return for abstention. On November 18, he lowered his demand to just a meeting with the President. Baker bargained that a meeting reward would be granted for a yes vote not for an abstention. At the end of the day, Qian Qichen got what he wanted in return for not obstructing the American effort. It was so important for the Chinese to show that they were being accepted by the U.S. administration, which criticized them for the way they handled the Tiananmen Square affair.

The Foreign Minister of Zaire was less difficult in bargaining.

• He demanded that the U.S. foreign aid be restored to his country, in return for a yes vote.

The Ivory Coast Foreign Minister asked that the G-7 countries forgive his country's debt in return for a yes vote.

The Romanian vote was probably the cheapest. It was bought for just $80 million in humanitarian aid during a short meeting between Secretary Baker & the Romanian Foreign Minister, in Paris.

As an oil-exporting state, Malaysia did not need U.S. foreign aid.

• Therefore, its vote could not be bought, but could be obtained by threats. The Malaysian Foreign Minister started the meeting, on November 8, 1990, by reminding Secretary Baker that Israel did not withdraw from the occupied territories.

• However, Secretary Baker did not care about the implied U.S. double-standard policy in handling international relations.

• He threatened him that a negative vote would "affect relations between the two countries."
   At that moment, the Foreign Minister "became dead silent," & he gave a yes vote.

 Yemen refused to sell its vote & it did not allow itself to be intimidated. Secretary Baker met with President Ali Abdullah Salih on November 21, 1990. He promised him that in return for a yes vote, Saudi Arabia would stop forcing about one million Yemenis out of the country. When this did not work, he threatened the Yemeni President that his country would be listed as a terrorist state & would lose the annual $70 million in U.S. foreign aid. The Yemeni answer was still a no vote.

Cuba was the other state, together with Yemen, that voted against the resolution in spite of the threats that Secretary Baker used with the Cuban Foreign Minister, Malmierca. They met on November 28, just one day before the vote. Baker threatened that his country would be isolated if it voted no. Malmierca replied that Cuba would vote against the resolution even if it were alone.

       Thus, the November 29, 1990 vote that authorized the use of force against Iraq did not represent the free will of member states in the UNSC. Rather, it represented how the world system is controlled & manipulated through the use of the Bakerian diplomacy. 

Conclusion 

     The Bush administration opted for war from the beginning of the crisis. As a result, it rejected all peace initiatives. The main excuse used to justify that rejection was the linkage argument. That position represented a striking double-standard policy in international relations. On the one hand, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was unacceptable & had to be reversed by force in a few months. On the other, the Israeli occupation of the Arab territories, which continued for decades, was tolerated. In deed, a golden opportunity was lost. Had the administration promised to address the Israeli occupation, Iraq would have withdrawn from Kuwait without bloodshed & destruction. More important, the U.S. would have been seen as an honest & a fair broker of peace in the world generally, & in the Middle East in particular.

     The vote in Congress to authorize the use of force represented the fact that the war decision lacked a reasonable justification. The vote was so tight in the Senate that the administration had to lobby heavily to secure it. The war was not perceived as necessary, particularly because Iraq was announcing everyday that it would withdraw if the U.S. promised not to attack later. Moreover, sanctions were not given a chance to work. Democrats struggled to avoid war because they expected heavy unnecessary Iraqi deaths. They also feared heavy American casualties & deaths had non-conventional weapons been used. Opposition to the use of force was best articulated during the hearings held by the Senate Armed Forces Committee, chaired by Sam Nunn.

       The vote in the UN Security Council also represented the determination of the Bush administration to pass Resolution 678 by any means, even by bribes & threats. The vast majority of member states did not resist the Bakerian diplomacy. Some of them received money. Others were given favors in return for their cooperation. Three of them were threatened with punishment if they voted against the resolution. However, two of the three, Cuba & Yemen, demonstrated that there was still hope in humanity. They voted against the resolution.

     By rejecting all peace initiatives & using all means to gain the UN authorization to use force against Iraq, the Bush administration demonstrated that its main goal was not just ending the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Rather, the war itself was the goal, as Chapter IX reveals. 
 

CHAPTER IX

THE MOTHER OF ALL BATTLES

     The 1991 Gulf War was described by the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussain, as "Um El-Ma=arek," or the "Mother of All Battles."
 It turned to be really so in both regional & international contexts. It was the only war, in memory, in which an international coalition of 31 countries fought against one small Third World country. The coalition included the three strongest nations on earth: the U.S., Britain, & France. Moreover, it had unlimited access to the oil wealth of the Gulf states to get the job done no matter how much it would cost. As a result, the war was nothing but carnage & a destruction of Iraq.

     The destruction not only included the Iraqi military machine but also extended to the Iraqi economy. The cost for humans, both civilian & military, was enormous as hundreds of thousands of Iraqis lost their lives. The ratio of Iraqis who were killed in the Gulf War exceeded World War I & World War II ratios. Thus, the "Mother of All Battles" was really an example of excessiveness in wars. In this chapter, that excessiveness will be analyzed in relation to war objectives, destruction, killing, & costs. 

War Objectives 

     As mentioned in Chapter VII, the war option was made just a few days after the Iraqi invasion. The war was planned according to the American military doctrine known as "Airland Battle."
 This doctrine ensured using all available resources from nuclear weapons to psychological warfare in order to defeat the enemy. The doctrine was followed in planning the military operations of Grenada, in 1983, & Panama in 1989. The major element in the doctrine is using overwhelming force to achieve a quick victory.

     By August 25, 1990, a U.S. four-phase war plan had been in place. This included a strategic air campaign against Iraq itself, an air campaign against Iraqi forces in Kuwait, the destruction of the Iraqi Republican Guard forces in Southern Iraq, & a ground attack to eject the Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.

     The first phase of the war deserves special attention. It aimed at knocking out the Iraqi command & control installations, transportation systems, production & storage facilities, & air defense networks. Eventually, the air campaign aimed at the destruction of Iraq's "centers of gravity," which included the country's military, industrial, & transportation infrastructure. It also included the destruction of essential economic sites such as power stations, oil facilities, roads, & bridges. This meant that the destruction of Iraq was a goal in itself. Thus, ejecting Iraq out of Kuwait was not the real objective of the war. It could have been achieved by peaceful initiatives or by economic sanctions. Rather, the destruction of Iraq as a regional power would allow the U.S. to maintain its control over the Arabian oil, protect Israel's security, remove a potential threat to its allies in the Gulf, & generally affirm America's global supremacy. 

The Air Campaign 

     The U.N. Security Council issued an ultimatum to Iraq to withdraw its forces from Kuwait before January 15, 1991. As Iraq did not do that, the air campaign started 24 hours after the expiration of the ultimatum (January 17 Eastern Time) & continued for 38 days.

     In order for the planned destruction to happen, Iraq was bombarded with an enormous number of explosive devices that reached about 88,500 tons. That was equivalent to 7.5 nuclear bombs like the one dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II. The total number of sorties was 108,043, of which 83.6 percent were flown by the U.S. air forces, 6.5 percent by Saudi Arabia, 5.1 percent by Britain, & 2.1 percent by France. This shows that it was basically an American war. Actually, the American forces constituted about 86 percent of the whole coalition forces, which came to Saudi Arabia, which was 540,331 out of 630,282. This resulted in the fact that the U.S. had most of the coalition's "small" losses: 146 deaths & 338 injuries, while the second highest losses were in Saudi Arabian forces: 38 deaths & 175 injuries. Thus, the war was basically planned & fought by American forces & weapons. 

Iraqi Missiles & Israeli Pressures 

     The coalition air forces dominated the battlefield from the first day of the war. Iraq=s major reaction was firing 88 missiles: 42 at Israel, 43 at Saudi Arabia, & three at Bahrain. Otherwise, it almost did nothing except receiving aerial hits. While the coalition military leaders dismissed these missiles as unimportant, political leaders considered them as very dangerous because about half of them targeted Israel. 

     The Iraqi missiles were modified from the basic Russian Scud missile, which had an original effective range of 200 miles. Two modified versions were produced with longer reach: Al-Hussain with a range of 450 miles, & Al-Abbas with a range of 600 miles. A third modified version was Al-Abed with a range of 2000 kilometers (1243 miles). The major fear was using these missiles to deliver chemical or biological weapons during the war. Though this did not happen, Secretary Cheney & General Powell contemplated the use of tactical nuclear weapons in case the missiles were used for that purpose. The Israelis also had the same intentions against Iraq. General Barak, the Israeli Deputy Chief-of-Staff, conveyed a message to the Bush administration that Israel was willing to use nuclear weapons if the Iraqis used chemical weapons. Furthermore, the Bush administration was ready to destroy the Iraqi dams on the Euphrates & Tigris rivers to flood Baghdad. Had this happened, it would have caused a horrendous number of civilian casualties.  However, Iraq decided not to use chemical weapons in spite of the fact that there were 30 chemical warheads for Al-Hussain missiles, ready to use during the war. That wise Iraqi decision prevented the doomsday scenario of mass destruction adopted by the Bush administration & the Israeli government.

      In response to the Iraqi missile attacks, Israeli pressures intensified on the Bush administration. The Israelis wanted to participate directly in the air campaign against Iraq. The Bush administration persuaded them to give up the idea in order to keep the coalition intact. After all, by not retaliating, they achieved their "larger strategic objective -- the destruction of (Iraq's) military capabilities."
  But this was not good enough for the Israelis. That was why Secretary Baker called Shamir pleading with him: "Don=t make it more difficult for us to do the job for you,"
 thus admitting that the destruction of Iraq was being done for the sake of Israel.

     The Israeli government was still not content & asked that the Defense Minister, Moshe Arens, be briefed about results of the air campaign. He came to Washington at the beginning of February 1991, where both Cheney & Powell reported to him how the air campaign was going. However, he expressed his belief that Israel could do a better job in destroying the Iraqi missiles. At that point, President Bush felt irritated because the Israeli hard-liners "seemed to offer so little thanks for what we (the Bush administration) were trying to accomplish for them."
 Thus, President Bush, like Secretary Baker above, admitted that the destruction of Iraq was being done for Israel.

     The Israelis insisted on that Israel receive direct intelligence from the U.S. satellites so that the Israeli military would have instantaneous information on Iraqi deployment. The Bush administration agreed & began sharing intelligence with the Israeli defense headquarters.

     In addition, the Israelis demanded that the headquarters of the Central Command in Riyadh receive a team of their officers to participate in decision-making there. This was rejected by the Saudis. As a result, the Central Command had to assure the Israelis by removing one-third of the allied planes from the air campaign & diverting them to western Iraq to hunt for the Iraqi missile launchers, within six minutes of firing. Moreover, the Israelis wanted to send their planes to destroy several sites in Iraq though some of them were already destroyed & others were just sand dunes. They were finally persuaded not to insist on that because the coalition forces were doing the job for them. However, supporters of Israel in Washington continued their pressures on the administration. These were the hawkish politicians who gave Cheney & Powell a hard time, according to General Schwarzkopf.

     Although the Iraqi missiles did not demonstrate a genuine military threat, they had a serious impact on the Arab-Israeli conflict. For the first time, an Arab state could develop & use such strategic weapons to reach Israel. This happened in spite of the attempts of supporters of Israel to maintain an Israeli monopoly on these weapons in the region. Before the war, Israel bombed, shelled, & raided countless Arab towns & villages in Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, & even as far away as Tunisia, but except for an occasional katyusha rocket on a border settlement, its own population centers have never come under any Arab attacks.

     The Iraqi missile attacks on Israel ended the Israeli myth of invincibility that was created & promoted to discourage Arabs from thinking about attacking Israel. Furthermore, the missiles could have been much more lethal had they been provided with chemical weapons. The apprehension that these missiles may carry chemical weapons caused a severe psychological impact on the Israeli population. Actually, this might have been a major factor that has contributed to dragging the Israeli Likude government of Shamir to come to the negotiating table afterwards. These missile attacks, together with the Palestinian Uprising, might have convinced the Israelis that only a just peace in the Middle East can guarantee their security, as argued by Shimon Peres. 

The ground war 

     The coalition forces were in complete control of the battlefields throughout the air campaign. This meant that the air campaign was successful in achieving the war goals. The evidence was in the various Iraqi offers of unconditional withdrawal. In spit of that, they were denied any chance to withdraw. The Bush administration was not content of the destruction inflicted on Iraq & its forces in Kuwait. Actually, it did not want to "eject them out of Kuwait."
 Rather, it wanted to destroy them there. That was why President Bush ordered the unnecessary ground war. As General Schwarzkopf pointed out several times, a major objective of the ground war was the destruction of the Iraqi forces so that they would never be used again.

     There were at least five major Iraqi offers of withdrawal before the ground war, all of which were rejected by the Bush administration. These were all presented to the administration through Soviet initiatives.

       The first of these initiatives was presented by the Foreign Minister Bessmertnykh to Secretary Baker during their meeting on January 26, 1991. Baker rejected the initiative because it would allow the Iraqis to withdraw their military forces intact.

     On January 28, Baker agreed to two separate but joint statements: one on the Gulf & the other on the Arab-Israeli conflict. This angered the President & Scowcroft because they saw it as a linkage & Baker admitted that it was a "
careless error" that did not mean a change in the policy.

     The third Soviet attempt to avoid the ground war was on February 10, 1991. Primakov went to Baghdad & persuaded the Iraqis to announce their willingness to withdraw during a fixed period of time in exchange for a cease-fire. President Bush=s answer was the sarcastic slang rejection known as "no way, Jose."
  

     The fourth initiative was on February 18, 1991 during Aziz=s visit to Moscow. Iraq agreed to start withdrawing its troops unconditionally the following day after a cease-fire, in exchange for not being attacked while withdrawing. It was also rejected by the President as an unacceptable solution.

     The fifth & final Soviet initiative was on February 22. President Gorbachev called President Bush reporting that Iraq agreed to the American conditions of unconditional & immediate withdrawal that would be completed in three weeks. Iraqis also agreed that there would be no linkage to the Arab-Israeli conflict but they wanted the UN resolutions to be rescinded. President Bush rejected the initiative because of the last condition. Furthermore, he instructed his Press Secretary, Marlin Fitzwater, to issue the final ultimatum to Iraq. He announced that for Iraqis to avoid the ground war, they must agree to all previous UN resolutions, begin a full-scale withdrawal by noon New York time of the following day, February 23, 1991, & complete their withdrawal within a week. In return, the U.S. "promised not to fire on any retreating troops."
  

     It was absolutely impossible for the Iraqis to do what President Bush wanted them to do. Logistically, the Iraqi leadership could not communicate that fast with its troops in Kuwait after the destruction of its communications with these troops. Even if it could, it was impossible to complete withdrawal within a week. There was actually not enough time for them even to announce their answer to the ultimatum. Thus, the ground war started on February 24, 1991 & lasted until 8 a.m. of February 28, 1991, in spite of the Iraqi withdrawal, which was officially announced & started around midnight of February 25.

     To achieve the goal of destruction, the ground war plan required outflanking & destroying the Republican Guard by VII Corps. It also required the blocking of the Iraqi getaway routes in the Euphrates valley by XVIII Airborne Corps. The latter requirement was made in order to make sure that the retreating Iraqi forces are cut off & killed.  

     The military leaders of the coalition, represented by General Schwarzkopf, knew that the ground war was unnecessary & that the air campaign devastated the Iraqi forces in Kuwait. Therefore, they not only did not ask for it but also were angry because it was insisted on by their political leaders. Schwarzkopf described how he felt about being pushed to launch the ground war. He said:

"The increasing pressure to launch the ground war early was making me crazy. I could guess what was going on & figured Cheney & Powell were caught in the middle. There had to be a contingent of hawks in Washington who did not stop until we'd punished Saddam. We'd been bombing Iraq for more than a month, but that wasn't good enough. These were guys who seen John Wayne in The Green Perets, they'd seen Rambo, they'd seen Patton, & it was very easy for them to pound their desks & say, "By God, we've got to go in there & kick ass!"
 

     Schwarzkopf also mentioned that the Washington Hawks, not the Central Command, insisted on not giving the Iraqis any opportunities to withdraw from Kuwait alive. The Iraqis offered to withdraw in three weeks but President Bush gave them only one week. The objective was to deny them any possibility of saving themselves. Schwarzkopf knew that this might mean killing fifty thousand more Iraqis & he argued with Powell that the coalition had achieved its goals & there was no need for more killing. Powell, by turn, argued with President Bush to allow the Iraqis to withdraw instead of the unnecessary destruction of the ground war. The President insisted that they should "crack under force, it is better than withdrawal."
 Powell replied asking: "But at what cost?"
 

     On February 18, Cheney & Powell called Schwarzkopf telling him that the National Security Council wanted the ground war to start as soon as possible because the Council did not want to give the Iraqis a chance to withdraw from Kuwait alive. They also told him that President Gorbachev had another proposal to prevent the ground war, which was rejected. Instead, the State Department demanded an unconditional surrender. At that point, Schwarzopf replied that if an Arabist looked at this demand, he or she would tell them that this kind of ultimatum "does not work with Arabs: they (would) die first."
 Then, Schwarzkopf continued saying that:

"It comes down to a question of lives," I told Powell, "We have probably inflicted a hundred thousand casualties on the Iraqis at the cost of one hundred for us. Why should we inflict a hundred & fifty thousand casualties?" Cheney said, "I don't see why the Soviets have to be involved at all." I answered him saying, "For what it's worth. Saddam has to work through a middleman because that's the way Arabs do business. He will never negotiate directly. By working through a broker, he saves face & then afterward, of course, no matter what he has agreed to, he can make any claim he wants because he never talked to his enemy."

     In spite of this attempt from Schwarzkopf to prevent the ground war, the Washington hawks refused it because this might have saved some of the Iraqi forces & their equipment from destruction. In fact, the President's National Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft, admitted that he was as impatient as the President to begin the ground campaign in spite of the reluctance of military commanders & Secretary Baker.

     The ground war lasted from February 24 to February 28 & it was arbitrarily extended from four to five days. General Powell related that the idea of the arbitrary extension of the ground war was originally suggested by Schwarzkopf. This seems like a strange suggestion because he was trying to avoid the ground war altogether. Powell said that Schwarzkopf wanted the war to be extended one more day so that it may be referred to, in the future, as the five-day war. This was in imitation to the Israelis who refer to the 1967 war, as the six-day war, "in reference to God=s creation of the world in six days."
 

     It is unbelievable that a war is extended arbitrarily so history books can mention it as the five-day war, that is one day shorter than the 1967 six-day Israeli war against Arabs! Thus, in order to achieve that propagandistic goal, tens of thousands of Iraqis had to be killed. 

Excessiveness 

     Every aspect of the 1991 Gulf War was excessive. This was reflected in the number of the coalition troops, the number of air raids, & the costs of the war. However, none of these could be compared to the excessiveness in killing Iraqi soldiers, particularly while retreating north during the ground war. This was contrary to Secretary Baker=s assurances, during the Geneva Meeting with Aziz, that "Americans don-t shoot their adversaries in the back."
 It was also contrary to President Bush=s announcement on February 24, 1991 that "the coalition forces would not attack unarmed soldiers in retreat."
 Secretary Baker admitted that excessiveness when he attempted to explain why the war ended "so soon."
 He said:

"American fighter pilots were returning from their missions talking about the "turkey shoot" of Iraqis desperately fleeing north along what became aptly known the Highway of Death. These comments were certain to be followed in short order by grisly news photographs of the carnage. The Soviets had furiously sought to head off the ground war. Now there were genuine fears that they may fracture the coalition by calling on the Security Council to halt the continuing SLAUGHTER. Back home, the thought began to resonate that this war was about to become UN-AMERICAN -- that it was, perversely, too easy (emphasis added) & therefore must be stopped."

     In describing what happened in Highway 6, the Highway of Death, Secretary Baker mentioned that the "coalition pilots had caught retreating Iraqi soldiers in the open on the last day of the war ... For hundreds of yards on either side of the road, wreckage was strewn throughout the sands."
 

     When some media reports started to show the carnage, General Colin Powell called General Schwarzkopf to inform him that the White House was getting nervous. These reports, he added, "make it look like wanton killing. Even the French & the British began to ask about an end to this "wanton killing."
 

     All this was happening in spite of the Iraqi announcement of withdrawal from Kuwait & the start of actual withdrawal at 2:15 a.m. of February 25, which was 46 hours after the start of the ground war. Neither the official announcement nor the actual withdrawal helped the retreating Iraqi forces. This was simply because the destruction & slaughter were the real goals of the ground war. When General Schwarzkopf gave instructions to General Gary Luck, the XVIII Airborne Corps commander, he told him: "Your mission is to inflict the maximum destruction on the Iraqi military machine. You are to destroy all war-fighting equipment. Do not just pass it on the battlefield. We don't want the Iraqis coming at us again five years from now." Of course, when the equipment was destroyed, soldiers were destroyed too.

     Inside Iraq, the carnage was more severe. As planned, XVIII Airborne Corps with the 82nd Airborne Division & a French light armored division penetrated deep in western Iraq. The 101st Airborne & the 24th Infantry divisions moved straight north heading for the Euphrates River valley. VII Corps with the British 1st Armored Division launched the main attack that destroyed the Tawakalna Iraqi Republican Guard Division. The other two retreating Republican Guard divisions, Medina & Hamourabi, were destroyed by the waiting divisions in the East. These also destroyed other Iraqi convoys retreating from Kuwait in the "kill box" between Basrah & the Euphrates.

     The result was a horrendous massacre. Intelligence reports from marine patrols, which breached Iraqi lines, assured that Iraqi forward trenches were either empty or full of bodies. General Colin Powell, also, confirmed that fact during the war cabinet meeting on February 27, 1991 when he said: "We're killing literally thousands of people ... Iraqis trying to escape along the >Highway of Death."
 

     In spite of this admission of excessiveness by the U.S. Secretary of State & the Chairman of the Joint-Chiefs-of-Staff, most of the coalition leaders tried to avoid mentioning the huge numbers of the Iraqi casualties during the air & ground campaigns. President Bush mentioned that the Iraqi troops were "beaten up 50,000 ... & maybe more dead," in the last page of his account of the war. Some American estimates were as high as 300,000 Iraqi military casualties, others were as low as 25,000. Schwarzkopf's Deputy Commander-in-Chief, Lieutenant General Buck Rogers, stated that there were about 200,000 Iraqis killed in the war. No matter which one is the true estimate, these were unnecessarily lost lives resulting from an excessive war.

     There was also a civilian loss of life despite General Schwarzkopf=s claim that civilians were not targeted by the coalition bombs. The destruction of chemical & nuclear installations exposed the Iraqi civilian population to dangers that have resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of people after the war. In addition to that, conventional bombs represented about 93 percent of the total number of bombs dropped on Iraq. These bombs were 25 percent accurate, which meant that there was a lot of "collateral damage," or civilian losses.

     Although many civilians were killed during the war, little has been said about them. In one incident that was reported by the CNN correspondent, Peter Arnett, on February 12, 1991, two bombs hit Al-Ameriya civilian air-raid shelter & killed several hundred Iraqis, most of whom were women & children. However, General Schwarzkopf insisted that the shelter was "a legitimate military target." After his report, Arnett was fiercely criticized by the war hawks in the government & the media. They did not want him to show the American people an aspect of the war that was carefully shielded from them, loss of human lives particularly civilian ones. He demonstrated that he was different from the majority of journalists who covered that war. Most of these journalists accepted censorship & reported what they were allowed to see or report on. Thus, the American people had the slightest chances to watch, hear, or read about the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who were killed during the war.

     The enormous Iraqi casualties turned to be a sensitive issue that most political & military leaders of the coalition avoided in their accounts after the war. Although every human life is precious, during the entire crisis & the war, only few hundred Kuwaiti lives were lost. Only a few hundred soldiers from the coalition forces were killed & many of them died because of friendly fire. Only two Israelis were killed directly & eleven died indirectly because of the Iraqi missiles. Therefore, there was no justification for that excessiveness. As a result, a very small number of accounts mentioned the topic. Some of them even tried to do a damage-control job by attempting to make Iraqi casualties look very small. They tried to hide the fact that the war was unnecessarily excessive & extremely overdone.

     General Schwarzkopf estimated that by January 9, 1991, there were 38 Iraqi divisions (4 less than earlier estimates) in the battlefield. These were composed of 545,000 men, 4,300 tanks, & 3,100 pieces of artillery. By the end of the war, twenty-seven of these divisions were destroyed. This amounted to about 70 percent of them. Assuming that these divisions were equal in number, then the number of soldiers who were killed or injured would be more than 380,000. Thus, General Schwarzkopf=s estimates of one hundred thousand Iraqi deaths during the air campaign & fifty thousands more at the end of the ground were not exaggerations. Other estimates were 220,000, 200,000, & 50,000.

     However, some accounts attempted to minimize these Iraqi casualties in what amounted to a damage-control effort. Representative Les Aspin, Chairman of the House Committee on Armed Services & one of the few Democrats in Congress who supported the Bush administration in its war option, produced a report for that effect together with Representative William Dickinson. They argued that the number of the Iraqis killed during the air campaign was not enormous. They admitted from the beginning that dependable counts did not exist. Therefore, their estimates relied on counting numbers of Iraqi tanks, armored personnel carriers & artillery pieces. Accordingly, the Pentagon public affairs office B their main source of information -- did some simple arithmetic. The number of Iraqi divisions in Kuwait, which was originally believed to be 42, was multiplied by the number of soldiers thought by intelligence analysts to comprise a division. This resulted in an estimate of approximately 547,000 Iraqi troops. However, after the war, captured senior Iraqi officers reported that many of these units were substantially understrength, which is less than what they were thought to be. As a result, the report concluded that there were only 183,000 Iraqi troops. Of these, the coalition forces captured about 63,000 while the rest 120,000 escaped or were killed during the ground war.

     In explaining their conclusions, Aspin & Dickenson mentioned that the original figure (assigned strength) was 547,000 but it was later discovered that the estimated understregth was 185,000. This means that the real figure was 362,000 Iraqi troops in Kuwait. What happened to them? The report answered that 17,000 of them were injured & 9,000 were killed during the air campaign, 63,000 were captured, & 153,000 deserted.

     When these figures are analyzed, it is not difficult to find out that they are inaccurate & unreliable for three main reasons. First, the claim of 153,000 deserters is based on reports of captured Iraqi officers who represented only about 12 percent of the "assigned"
 Iraqi troops. This is not a reliable evidence that we can use to generalize about the remaining vast majority, 88 percent of the troops. It is likely that many of these were killed & buried inside their bunkers or trenches in the battlefields.

     Second, the claim of the 120,000 Iraqi troops who escaped during the air campaign or were killed during the ground war is also unreliable. On pages 32 & 34, the report mentioned that they had escaped. However, on page 35, they were described as "escaped/killed during ground war."
 The report never elaborated on how many were killed & how many managed to escape. This uncertainty of the report may be attributed to the fact that it was mainly based on "guesses," & on the hope that the other numbers are accurate. As a result, these estimates did not really represent more than wishful thinking.

     Finally, these figures did not include casualties inside Iraq during the air campaign & the ground war. Thus doing, the Aspin & Dickinson's report failed to challenge General Schwarzkopf's estimates. When President Bush published his memoirs later, in 1998, he seemed more to believe Schwarzkopf's estimates than the Aspin figures. However, he tried to minimize the Iraqi casualties by mentioning that there were more than 50,000 Iraqi deaths.

     Another damage-control effort was made by John G. Heidenrich, who worked as a military analyst for the Secretary of defense & the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during the war. Heidenrich's attempt was more blunt than Aspen & Dickinson's. He mentioned in the first page of his article that Schwarzkopf=s estimates were nothing but rumors based on the initial "misleading" field reports. Thus, his job was to address "the damage that has already been done" by the Commander of the coalition forces. However, in his damage-control job, he did not support his argument with any official materials from the Pentagon. To the contrary, the figures he used supported those revealed by Schwarzkopf. Instead of relying on official data from the Pentagon, where he worked, he used historical ratios of war casualties to argue that there was a very small number of Iraqi casualties that did not exceed 9,500 deaths & 25,000 injuries. It was a less serious but a sad attempt of hiding the truth from the American people. He mentioned that among the 100,000 Iraqis who were captured, there were 2,000 injured. He could not explain how 98,000 un-injured soldiers could be captured while 23,000 injured soldiers could manage to escape. His other major mistake was his failure to account for the casualties inside Iraq, as a result of the 38 days of the air campaign. In brief, such damage-control attempts were self-defeating & would not stand a little effort of analysis. Even seven years after the war, President Bush admitted that there were more than 50,000 Iraqi deaths during the war. 

War Costs 

     War costs in moral devastation & pain to victims cannot be estimated. Indirect material costs cannot be estimated either. But one estimate of direct material costs of the war reached more than $100 billion. Most of these were paid by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, & other Gulf states. If the increase in military spending & weapon purchases in these states, after the war, is added together with the enormous Iraqi losses, the result is a huge figure, exceeding $600 billion. The war also contributed to an increase in military spending in the entire Gulf region as well as in the United States. Consequently, the indirect costs include a decrease in socio-economic development in the Gulf & more suffering among the poor in the United States, due to less public spending on health care, welfare assistance, affordable housing, & higher education.

     When Secretary Baker toured the Gulf for financial contributions, on September 6-7, 1990, Saudi Arabia & the Kuwaiti government in-exile paid $17 billion each. Moreover, King Fahd gave an undertaking that his country would provide the coalition forces with all the food, fuel, water, accommodation, local transportation & other facilities they needed - at no cost to themselves. In addition to that, the U.S. Department of Defense presented to the Saudis a bill of $2.6 billion, which included $1.9 billion of expenses in airlifting & sealifting troops & supplies. The cost of the American military build-up in Saudi Arabia after that amounted to about $1 billion every month. Thus, by the end of the air campaign, the direct costs reached about $60 billion. When adding costs of the ground war & its consequences, including troops - stay in Saudi Arabia for several more months, the $100 billion figure of El-Rayyes is not a farfetched one.

     The Saudi support for the coalition troops was "lavish."
 It must have been the first war in history in which the troops never missed a meal. Over 750,000 troops were fed each day at Saudi expense. American forces alone were supplied with two million gallons of drinking water each day. The fuel consumption by the two American corps approached 4.5 million gallons each day.

     This "lavish" spending certainly pleased an important category of the Saudi people, contractors. These were overjoyed as they supplied the "voracious" demands of the U.S. military. That support for the coalition forces cost Saudi Arabia about $10 billion. In addition, the Saudi Ministry of Finance made a direct contribution to the U.S. Treasury of about $14 billion, while further $3.5 billion was paid direct to the treasuries of other countries that helped the coalition military effort. 

The Safwan Conference 

     According to the agreed upon plan with the military leaders, President Bush announced the cease-fire on February 27, 1991, contingent on an end to Iraqi fighting, an end to Iraqi missile attacks, an immediate release of prisoners of war, an immediate release of Kuwaiti civilian hostages, & compliance with the UN resolutions.

     In order to work out details of the cease-fire, the coalition commander met with representatives of the Iraqi military command in Safwan, an Iraqi airstrip 3 miles north of the Kuwaiti border. The Safwan Conference was held on March 3, 1991, in the 3rd day after cessation of hostilities on February 28 (Gulf time). The Saudi commander, Khaled Bin Sultan, who accompanied the coalition commander, Schwarzkopf, was disappointed for two main reasons. First, the conference did not result in the complete surrender of Iraq. He had a vision of a solemn scene like the one in Tokyo Bay in September 1945. As a result, he considered the conference a failure. Second, the Americans disappointed him when they did not insist on that Iraq should be represented by a member of the Revolutionary Command Council. Instead, Iraq was represented by two Iraqi three-star generals, who were even unknown to the coalition intelligence officers. These were Lieutenant General Sultan Hashim Ahmed, the Iraqi Deputy Chief of Staff, & Lieutenant General Salah Abbud Mahmud.

     In the Conference, the Iraqi representative, General Sultan Ahmed, asked General Norman Schwarzkopf about why the coalition had launched the ground forces into Iraq when "we had withdrawn from Kuwait & announced it on television & radio." Schwarzkopf never answered that question but replied, "we will leave it to history." General Ahmed answered him, "I have just mentioned it for history," too. Within an Arabic context, that may not be understood as a question only. Rather, a complaint about excessive killing of Iraqi soldiers. 

War Results 

     Secretary Baker summarized the Gulf War outcomes in seven major results. First, it made peace possible between Arabs & Israelis. Second, Arab radicalism had been discredited. Third, moderate Arab governments were strengthened. Fourth, The United States had earned the deep gratitude of all of the Gulf Arabs. Fifth, the war neutralized the gravest threat to Israel=s security. Sixth, the U.S. demonstrated that the Soviet Union was no longer a major player on the world stage. Seventh, the American credibility internationally became higher than anytime since the end of World War II.

     When these results are analyzed, it becomes clear that the war has benefited the minority ruling elites in the region on the expense of the majority of the Arab masses. First, a decade after the war, a just peace between Arabs & Israel has not been achieved. Israelis have been dragging their feet in an endless process of negotiations instead of a quick withdrawal from the Arab occupied territories, like what Iraqis were forced to do. Second, instead of "discrediting"
 Arab nationalists (Secretary Baker referred to them as radicals), they could have been won as friends had the crisis been resolved peacefully. Third, the war strengthened Arab dictatorships. It did not lead to the emergence of any democratic governments whether in moderate or non-moderate Arab states. Fourth, while the United States had earned the gratitude of the minority of Arabs in the Gulf, it earned a hostile attitude from the majority of Arabs, everywhere. Moreover, the war increased the material & psychological barriers between the Gulf states & the rest of Arabs.  Fifth, the war neutralized the Iraqi threat to Israel, which encouraged the Israelis to continue their occupation of the Palestinian, Lebanese, & Syrian territories. Sixth, the War demonstrated that the Soviet Union could no longer continue playing its role as a superpower that competed with the United States. Moreover, the Soviets sold their will to the U.S. during the crisis, which was an indicator to their downfall within a few months after that. Finally, the war resulted in regaining the American credibility in the world. However, the beneficiaries were the elite autocratic governments, not the majority of people. The war did not promote the American values of democracy, liberty, equality of opportunity, & hard work. To the contrary, the victorious sovereign states of the Gulf continued to represent the opposite of these American values. Although immigrants constitute the majority in these states, the vast majority of them never become permanent residents or citizens. The objective is to limit access to the oil wealth to the privileged citizens, who enjoy that access on basis of birthrights, not qualifications or hard work. The war was truly a misrepresentation of what most Americans stand for. 

     The administration missed a golden opportunity to win the hearts & minds of the majority of Arabs, who live in the less fortunate Arab states. For example, on February 7, Secretary Baker unveiled before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the idea of a Middle East Development Bank. This bank, he proposed, "would collect funds from the more prosperous countries of the region to finance economic development in the region ... The Middle East, a land of disproportionate wealth remains the only area of the world without (a development bank)," he added. However, President Bush killed the idea.

     The position of the President to oppose the idea of a Middle East development bank is strange. As a Texan who is close to the oil industry there, he should have been supportive to that proposal. Texan oil revenues are taxed by the federal government & thus shared with other non-oil-producing states of the Union. He took a strange position by opposing that the oil-producing Arab states share some of their oil revenues with the other non-oil-producing Arab states. In fact, he lost a historical opportunity by not establishing that bank. The Gulf rulers could not reject that proposal had he presented it to them after the war. After all, they owed him the continuation of their regimes. Because of that missed opportunity, the Middle East is still polarized as privileged halves & impoverished have-nots. This is a recipe for the continuation of instability in the region that he attempted to end by reversing the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

     It is amazing that the Bush administration adopted a double-standard policy even in inter-Arab affairs. While wealthy Arabs were rescued in the Gulf War, the poor Arabs were denied the opportunity of the Development Bank. Anyway, President Bush did not justify his opposition toward the Bank, but Secretary Baker defended the double-standard policy concerning the Israeli occupation of the Arab territories. He mentioned that when he met with the Palestinian leaders in East Jerusalem after the war, they "made the ridiculous suggestion that the same sort of international coalition that enforced UN Resolution 678 ... should now enforce Resolutions 242 & 338 by removing the Israelis from the occupied territories."
 He replied: "If you're asking that we send in the Eighty-Second Airborne, forget it ... That ain't going to happen."
 He then explained "the difference between 678, which was mandatory & unconditional, & 242 & 338, which called for negotiations involving land for peace. Despite this attempt to justify the double-standard American policy in the Middle East, Baker could not hide the fact that it was still a double-standard policy. If there was one standard in conducting foreign policy, then Resolutions 242 & 338 would be mandatory & unconditional, as well. 

Conclusion 

     The Bush administration preferred to go to war, in which hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives were lost, than resolving the crisis peacefully. Officials in the administration were even willing to use tactical nuclear weapons, which could have led to a disaster of mass destruction in the entire Middle East region. This was prevented only because of Iraq=s wise decision not to use chemical weapons during the war.

     Had the objective been the Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait, the crisis could have been resolved peacefully. But the destruction of Iraq turned to be the real objective of the war, which explains the huge loss of Iraqi lives. That destruction removed a potential threat to the balance of power in the region & left Israel as the only regional superpower. In fact, the war strengthened the position of Israel, as the idea of linkage was defeated & the Israeli occupation of the Arab territories extended ten more years. Furthermore, the war resulted in more polarization between the wealthy & the poor in the region. All this happened as a result of the lack of vision in the administration concerning the future of the region. 

       The collapse of the Soviet Union & the Warsaw Pact caught the Bush administration by surprise. The foreign policy experts in the administration were not ready with plans for peace after the Cold War. As the only remaining superpower, America needs to address challenges of peace, which is the subject of Chapter XI.

Following the 1991 Gulf War, Palestinians in Kuwait were reduced from a thriving immigrant community of more than 400,000 to less than 30,000 in 1998. Kuwaitis forced them out of the country using a systematic & violent campaign of ethnic cleansing. The Palestinian official support for Iraq during the crisis was used as an excuse for that campaign.

     The Kuwaiti atrocities started during the crisis in 1990 but intensified as soon as the war ended in February 28, 1991. The terror campaign was shielded in the West by a censored & euphoric media. While television networks were extensive in their coverage of the war, they did very little to cover the Kuwaiti campaign against Palestinians. A few number of newspapers covered major events but they were not systematic. More important is that this subject is still avoided not only by the media but also by the coalition leaders. This chapter explores that dark stage of inter-Arab relations. It starts with an introduction about how Palestinians came to Kuwait to become the largest Palestinian community outside Palestine & Jordan. This is followed by a comprehensive documentation of the campaign that has been avoided so far by the authors who wrote about the Gulf War. The chapter ends with an analysis of the Kuwaiti official explanations of the atrocities. 

Coming to Kuwait 

     Palestinians came to Kuwait early in the twentieth century. In 1932, the Mufti of Palestine, Haj Amin Al- Hussaini, toured Islamic countries collecting donations for repairing Al-Aqsa Mosque of Jerusalem. Muslims everywhere competed for participating in that endeavor. Shaikh Ahmed Al-Jaber, ruler of Kuwait at that time, invited the Mufti to come to Kuwait for that purpose. Following that visit, the Shaikh requested him to send a number of Palestinian educators to Kuwait. In response, the first Palestinians arrived in 1936, as explained in Appendix X.A.

     However, the first major wave of Palestinian immigrants came as a result of the 1948 war. The establishment of Israel in that year changed the vast majority of the Palestinian people into refugees in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon, & Syria. In order to remove them from the borders of Israel, the United Nations (UN) planned for their emigration to other parts of the Middle East. An ambitious educational program was adopted to prepare them for integration in the economies of the area, particularly those of the oil-rich Arab states. The UN educational program was so successful that the Palestinian level of higher education in the 1970s was among the highest in the world. The ratio of Palestinian college students to the general Palestinian population was 20/1000 in 1977. Among the refugee segment of the population, it was even higher reaching about 47/1000 in 1986. For other leading societies, the ratio was 30/1000 for the U.S., 18/1000 for USSR, 9/1000 for France, 8/1000 for England, & 4/1000 for the Arab states as a whole.

     Majority of the early Palestinians who emigrated to Kuwait, in the 1950s, were men. While many of them were young & unmarried, most of the married had left their families in Palestine or other neighboring Arab states. They came to Kuwait to make a living & to save up some money to send back home. They did not think about settling there. Therefore, they led a restricted social life that contributed little to their integration into the Kuwaiti society. The Palestinian teachers in the Kuwaiti island of Failaka represented this category of early immigrants. They lived together in one home in order to save up some money to help their families or their parents, back home. Once, they invited a British social anthropologist, Peter Lienhardt, to their place of residence. To his surprise, he discovered that they were not thinking about their life in Kuwait. Rather, it was Palestine that was living in their minds. It was very important for them to explain to him how the problem of Palestine started. They told him that Britain was responsible for the Palestinian problem. Through the 1917 Balfour declaration, Britain adopted the Zionist project that aimed at the establishment of Israel on the expense of the Palestinian people. They also blamed the United States for supporting Israel. The behavior of these Palestinians in Kuwait, in the 1950s, may be considered representative of the behavior of Palestinians elsewhere until the late 1960s. They could not believe the injustice committed by Britain, the U.S., & Israel against them. Their country was taken from them by force; then, they were evicted from their towns & villages to live in refugee camps. Moreover, they were expected to forget the whole problem & live quietly in their camps. However, they have not accepted that unjust arrangement & decided to become self-reliant. Education enabled them to achieve that goal through getting jobs abroad. They were the pioneers who inspired younger generations of Palestinians to pursue higher education as the salvation from the humiliation & poverty in the refugee camps.

     Throughout the 1950s, Palestinians were treated very well by Kuwaitis to the extent that the first Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman, Ahmed Al-Shukairi, expressed his gratitude for that treatment during his visit to Kuwait in 1964. His host Shaikh Sabah Al-Salem, then Foreign Minister & later the Emir, replied that Palestinians deserved to be well treated because of their skills & hard work. "Look at them. Among them is the best surgeon, the best doctor, & the best administrator. Without these skills, they would not have been appointed to these positions," he said. In recognition for their sincere services, about two thousand of the Palestinian pioneers were granted the Kuwaiti citizenship.

     These pioneers in Kuwait & other Gulf states played a major role in leading the Palestinian people in the struggle for their rights in Palestine. They participated in the establishment of various Palestinian political parties & organizations. Actually, Yasser Arafat & several other Palestinian leaders worked in Kuwait. Like other oil-rich Arab states, Kuwait was also the destination of many Palestinians who were looking for employment. Some of these reached Kuwait through very long & dangerous underground roads since several Arab states restricted their movement following the 1948 war. They ventured through the deserts of Jordan, Syria, & Iraq in order to avoid border checkpoints. Many of them died or were arrested then brought back to their camps, villages, or towns. The stories of these men inspired the Palestinian writer, Ghassan Kanafani, to write his novel, "Men under the Sun," in which he described these adventures. Kanafani himself was an example of these pioneer leaders, as explained in Appendix X.B.

     By the end of the 1960s, Palestinians graduating from colleges & universities constituted the major Arab group of contenders for jobs in the economies of the oil-exporting Arab states, including Kuwait. The 1967 war convinced Palestinians that their stay in these states was becoming permanent. Their behavior started to change from using practical tactics for temporary stay to adopting strategies that aimed at permanent residence there. This meant that after getting jobs, Palestinian employees would get married or bring families, rent homes or apartments, & spend most of their income wherever they lived. In spite of their attempt to be permanent residents, Kuwait & the other Gulf states did not grant the vast majority of immigrants, including Palestinians, a permanent-resident status or citizenship. They had to live officially as temporary residents no matter how long they stayed in the country, even if they were born there. 

Four Waves of Palestinian Emigration 

     Palestinians experienced four main waves of emigration as a result of the 1948, 1956, 1967, & 1982 wars. The first wave followed the 1948 war, which was the culmination of developments that go back to the beginning of the century. On November 2, 1917, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration in which it promised to help create a Jewish homeland in Palestine. This led to the Palestinian struggle in order to gain independence from the British & to protect the unity of the country. Neither of these goals was achieved. Instead, the 1948 war resulted in the biggest Palestinian suffering. About one million Palestinians became refugees. Their homes & possessions were either destroyed or confiscated by the Israelis. After the war, they were neither allowed to return to their towns & villages nor were they compensated for the loss of their possessions, as called for by the UN resolution 194. Thus, they have remained in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon, & Syria ever since.

     The second wave of Palestinian emigration was in 1956 when Israel participated with Britain & France in attacking Egypt. On their way to the Suez Canal, the Israelis occupied the Gaza Strip. As a result, hundreds of Palestinians were killed & thousands were injured. This led many Palestinians to leave the Strip to Jordan & other countries, including Kuwait. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had to go through the same bitter experience for the third time, a decade later. During the 1967 war, Israel occupied the Arab territories of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Sinai, & the Syrian Heights. The Israeli occupation split families & made their union impossible. People had to choose between being under the Israeli occupation, thus staying separated from other migrant members of their families, or leaving the occupied territories to be united with other family members or relatives abroad. A new wave of Palestinian emigration started first to Jordan, then to other countries, particularly to the oil-exporting Arab states. This was the time when the largest influx of Palestinians to Kuwait happened. That wave of immigrants was different from the previous ones in that it included more women & children. Additionally, more temporary immigrants became permanent. Successive Israeli governments adopted a policy of uprooting Palestinians. People were given travel permits for three-year periods. As a result, many of them lost their residence status in the occupied territories when they stayed abroad for more than three years.

     The fourth Palestinian wave of immigration resulted from the Lebanese civil war in the 1970s & the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Many Palestinians left Lebanon to several countries all over the world but few of them went to Kuwait, as Kuwaitis were determined not to receive them this time. By 1982, the 4.4 million Palestinians were uncomfortably dispersed in the Middle East & around the world. Various countries tried hard to keep the status quo by restricting their movement. Kuwait, for example, had 299,710 Palestinians who constituted about 22 percent of the population. This was the second largest Palestinian community outside Palestine & Jordan. Lebanon had the largest community, which numbered 358,207 constituting about 11 percent of the population (Table X.1).

     Kuwaitis started to fear that Palestinians may exceed them in number. This would mean a serious demographic challenge to the Kuwaiti population. Actually, by 1990, Palestinians became very close to Kuwaitis in number. While Kuwaiti citizens were about 564,262, Palestinians reached about 450,000 (Table X.2; Table I.2). The Kuwaiti government could have solved the problem of demographic imbalance by granting citizenship to qualified immigrants. However, it decided not to do so. In addition, it took several measures that aimed at decreasing the entry of Palestinians into the country & making their stay there more difficult. Moreover, Kuwaiti officials started planning to get rid of the Palestinians altogether. The Palestinian official support for Iraq during the 1990 crisis gave them the excuse they were looking for to evict the entire Palestinian community from the country. 

The Campaign of Ethnic Cleansing 

     The Kuwaiti government has succeeded in creating & perpetuating an ethnic identity for its citizens that has distinguished them from Arab immigrants. Hundreds of thousands of these immigrants were subjected to a terror campaign after the 1991 war that led to forcing them out of the country. Thus, the term "Ethnic Cleansing" is not an oversight or an exaggeration. It refers to the eviction of Arab immigrants, mainly Palestinians, from Kuwait following the Gulf War. Actually, the word "cleansing" itself was used by the Emir (ruler) of Kuwait in describing the eviction. Several Kuwaiti officials were cited in the Western media using the same word in their description of the eviction campaign.

Before the war 

     Before the 1990 crisis, some official sources estimated that Palestinians in Kuwait were about 400,000, others estimated them to be about 450,000. Between the beginning of summer of 1990 & the start of the war on January 17, 1991, many Palestinians were either on vacation outside Kuwait or left the country because of the crisis. Majority of them left to Jordan because they were Jordanian nationals. Following the war, the remaining Palestinians were estimated at about 180,000. However, most of them left during 1991, as a result of the campaign that aimed at evicting them from the country. By April, they became about 150,000 & by August, they were reduced to about 100,000. Some Kuwaiti officials, like Said Abdul-Aziz Abu-Abbas of the Defense Ministry, revealed from the beginning that only 30,000 would be allowed to stay. According to a Western diplomat, only about 15,000 to 20,000 essential Palestinians would be allowed to stay in the country.  By 1995, there were only 26,000 Palestinians in Kuwait (Table X.1), which confirmed the above-mentioned Kuwaiti plans of eviction.

     Those who remained were mainly from occupied Palestine (the West Bank & Gaza Strip) & Lebanon. They stayed because they could not find any country that would accept them, particularly the countries which host or control the main Palestinian communities in the Middle East: namely Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, & Syria.

     The Israeli policy focused on dispersing Palestinians rather than allowing them to come back to the West Bank & Gaza Strip. Jordan allowed only Palestinians with Jordanian passports to stay. The total number of Palestinians who came to Jordan was about 360,000.  While about 300,000 stayed in Jordan, about 4,000 went to Saudi Arabia & other Gulf states. About 21,000 immigrated to Canada, Australia, & other developed societies. The U.S. received 2,200 of these, mainly because they had American-born family members, as mentioned in Appendix X.C. The rest returned to the Palestinian occupied territories.

     Egypt & Lebanon, which used to issue travel documents to Palestinians of the Gaza Strip & Lebanon, did not give them return visas. Thus, they could not enter these two states. More important was the fact that these Palestinians did not have any other home than Kuwait. For them, leaving would mean becoming homeless & jobless. Many of them experienced that difficult situation in 1948, 1956, 1967, & 1982. They did not want to be exposed to that humiliation again in 1991. This is why they stayed when Kuwaitis were leaving. During the first hours of the Iraqi invasion, the Kuwaiti government left to Saudi Arabia. This encouraged Kuwaitis to leave the country, as well. They received financial aid from their government (in-exile) & other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. No government offered Palestinians any help; therefore, they had no other alternative but to stay in Kuwait throughout the crisis, the war, & the stage of persecution that followed.

     A terror campaign against Palestinians in Kuwait started during the Iraqi rule. They were the target of several explosions that also killed Iraqis & workers from other countries. In particular, the Kuwaiti resistance was responsible for four major explosions & several small explosions before the war. The explosions occurred in the predominantly-Palestinian neighborhoods of Al-Adasani, Al-Hassawi, Khitan, & Amman Street. They resulted in Killing 46 & injuring 99 people most of whom were Palestinians.

     The first explosion was in October 1990 in Al-Hassawi neighborhood, which was inhabited by Palestinians & workers from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, & the Sudan. The explosion resulted in killing twenty-two & wounding thirty-five people. There were five Palestinians & four Iraqis among the dead. The rest were from different nationalities. The Second explosion was also in October & occurred in Al-Adasani neighborhood, which was inhabited mainly by Palestinians. It resulted in killing three & wounding twenty-three Palestinians & one Indian. The third explosion was in November 1990, in Al-Hassawi neighborhood, killing seven & wounding thirty-seven people. While majority of the injured were Palestinians, the dead were four Iraqis, two Palestinians, & one Kuwaiti. The fourth explosion occurred in Khitan neighborhood, in December 1990. It resulted in killing eleven & wounding eighteen people. Among the dead were six Iraqis, three Palestinians, a Syrian, & an Asian worker. The wounded were eight Palestinians, three Bidoons (without citizenship), two Iraqis, & the rest were Asians. Finally, in January 1991, several small explosions targeted Palestinians in a commercial area known as Amman Street. Six people were killed & twenty were injured the vast majority of whom were Palestinians. 

After the war 

     The terror campaign against Palestinians intensified after the war reaching a persecution stage. The Emir, the Crown Prince, & other senior members of Al-Sabah family led the campaign from the beginning. The Crown Prince reiterated his threats of vengeance against Palestinians of Kuwait in an interview with Robert Fisk of the London newspaper, The Independent, on February 21, 1991. He called for "cleansing" Kuwait of "fifth columnists." On March 13, the Guardian cited government officials expressing the need to "clean out" the Palestinian neighborhoods. On April 3, a Kuwaiti army officer boasted to the American newspaper "USA Today" that the country was being "cleansed" of Palestinians. In his speech of April 8, 1991, the Emir also urged Kuwaitis to continue the campaign of "cleansing" Kuwait of the alleged "fifth columnists." On May 8, 1991, the government newspaper, Sawt Al-Kuwait, claimed that Palestinians committed a collective crime during the crisis when they engaged in a "concerted attempt to cripple Kuwaiti civil disobedience against the Iraqis." In the August 6, 1991 issue, the newspaper stated that Kuwait could not be secure as long as the fifth columnists are still inside the country. Apparently, the "fifth columnists" is a reference to Palestinians, Iraqis, Sudanese, Yemenis, & other Arabs whose countries supported the Iraqi position.

     The terror campaign after the war started as early as the arrival of the Kuwaiti forces on February 26, 1991. Kuwaiti militants were quoted saying that they would shoot suspected Palestinians when they found them in their apartments. Four main militia groups & two state institutions participated in a concerted effort to terrorize & persecute Palestinians in Kuwait. Two of the militias were headed by the state security officers Adel Al-Gallaf & Hussain Al-Dishti. The third was headed by Amin Al-Hindi, a gangster who specialized in rape, torture, stealing, & killing. The fourth was the group known as August 2^nd, which specialized in psychological warfare against Palestinians. The army & the police forces represented the two state institutions that were involved in this terror campaign.

     Two Palestinians were shot dead near a traffic circle, on February 27. On March 2, Kuwaiti tanks & soldiers rolled into Palestinian communities, mainly Hawalli. House-to-house searches for weapons & alleged collaborators resulted in the arrest of hundreds of Palestinians. People were also arrested at checkpoints for no reason other than being Palestinians. Typically, they were beaten instantly then taken to police & detention centers where they were tortured for confessions.

     Despite the military censorship, newspapers began to report a dramatic rise in the number of injured Palestinians in Mubarak Hospital. Scores of people were treated from severe beating & torture. Six Palestinians were brought to the Hospital shot dead in the head, execution style. By the third week of March, hundreds of people were treated from torture injuries & thousands stayed in detention centers for interrogation. Amnesty International reported that the torture of Palestinians was continuing in Kuwait by the third week of April. A 24-year-old Palestinian had been beaten for hours, had acid thrown over him, & had been subjected to electric shock torture.

     The terror campaign continued throughout 1991 achieving its main objective: terrorizing Palestinians enough so that they would leave the country. To expedite the process, the government took several other measures to evict those who did not leave. First, Palestinians working for the government were fired or not rehired. Second, Palestinian children were kicked out of public schools & subsidies for their education in private schools were stopped. Third, new fees became required for health services. Fourth, housing rents increased & people were asked by Kuwaiti landlords to pay rent for the entire crisis-period.

     More important were the feelings of injustice & insecurity Palestinians began to experience as a result of the terror campaign. It became unsafe to walk in streets or to stay at home. Rape stories functioned as a decisive pushing factor for the remaining Palestinian families. The "censored" Western media rarely reported on this part of the campaign. The CNN TV network covered one of these rape stories. Lubbadah told the same story together with many others. The Middle East Watch group also told several stories of rape.