{"id":30472,"date":"2021-03-02T08:00:13","date_gmt":"2021-03-02T04:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/?p=30472"},"modified":"2021-03-02T08:00:13","modified_gmt":"2021-03-02T04:00:13","slug":"gulf-war-30-years-on-the-consequences-of-desert-storm-are-still-with-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/gulf-war-30-years-on-the-consequences-of-desert-storm-are-still-with-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Gulf War: 30 years on, the consequences of Desert Storm are still with us"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The 1991 Gulf War was seen as the start of an age of peace, but paved the way for much future conflict<\/em><\/span><\/h4>\n
\n

\"\"British soldiers in combat in Iraq, February 1991.\u00a0Trinity Mirror \/ Mirrorpix \/ Alamy Stock Photo<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/h4>\n

It was a short message to end a short war. On February 26 1991, Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz put his signature to a letter addressed to the United Nations Security Council:<\/span><\/p>\n

I have the honour to notify you that the Iraqi Government reaffirms its agreement to comply fully with Security Council Resolution 660 and all other UN Security Council resolutions.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

A few hours later, at 8am Baghdad time, a ceasefire entered into effect. The international military campaign, dubbed by the United States as \u201cOperation Desert Storm\u201d, had lasted only a few weeks. And yet, as recent rocket attacks against US targets in Iraq illustrate, its consequences are still with us today.<\/span><\/p>\n

But how did it all begin? The then Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein criticised what he saw as Kuwaiti \u201ceconomic treachery\u201d related to the production and pricing of oil. When Kuwait refused to lower its oil production, Saddam began what would become a shortlived military intervention in the neighbouring oil-producing country.<\/span><\/p>\n

Saddam\u2019s motives in fact related to his need to replenish an impoverished Iraqi economy that had been severely undercut by a protracted and costly war against Iran (1980-1988), which resulted in more than 1.5 million estimated Iraqi and Iranian deaths.<\/span><\/p>\n

Not quite grasping what the waning of the cold war would mean for his own regional ambitions, Saddam ordered the invasion and annexation of Kuwait on August 2 1990.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once diplomatic and economic pressure to deter Saddam failed, the US \u2013 under then president George HW Bush, assembled the largest international coalition since the second world war and \u2013 with the authorisation of the UN Security Council \u2013 began a five-week military operation that pushed Saddam\u2019s forces back into Iraq and reinstated the Kuwaiti royal family at the helm of the country.<\/span><\/p>\n

Military action included the systematic targeting of Iraqi infrastructure, including the sustained \u2013 and controversial \u2013 attack against retreating Iraqi military personnel along the road connecting Kuwait with Iraq, which was subsequently dubbed the \u201cHighway of Death\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

The \u2018Highway of Death\u2019 where thousands of retreating Iraqi soldiers were killed.<\/span>\u00a0PJF Military Collection \/ Alamy Stock Photo<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The rapid military campaign was a success \u2013 and its implications were potentially massive. Before the intervention, Bush had addressed the US Congress, stressing the importance of the \u201cunique and extraordinary moment\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

The crisis in the Persian Gulf offers a great opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times \u2026 a new world order can emerge: a new era \u2013 freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

The rapid success of the international military campaign, whose legitimacy was reinforced by unequivocal UN authorisation, ushered an era of triumphalist confidence in the possibilities of such a \u201cnew world order\u201d and in the US ability to mould it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reasons to be cheerful?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Back then, there were reasons to be optimistic. One of them related to the cooperation \u2013 unseen up to that point \u2013 between Americans and Russians. Despite Iraq having been one of its main cold war clients in the region, the Soviet Union quickly endorsed the US-led military operation. Indeed, at the time of Saddam\u2019s invasion of Kuwait, US secretary of state James Baker and Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze were in a meeting together and rapidly issued a joint statement of condemnation of Iraq\u2019s aggression against Kuwait.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Declassified telephone conversation reveals the true US-Soviet difficulties.<\/span>\u00a0George H.W. Bush Presidential Library; National Security Archives digital collection edited by Svetlana Savranskaya and Tom Blanton, \u2018Inside the Gorbachev-Bush Partnership on the First Gulf War 1990\u2019.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Recently declassified sources show that US-Soviet cooperation back then was more difficult than the leaders\u2019 statements led the world to assume at the time. Yet speaking in October 1991, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev underlined that:<\/span><\/p>\n

without a radical improvement and then a radical change in Soviet-US relations, we would never have witnessed the profound qualitative changes in the world that now make it possible to speak in terms of an entirely new age, an age of peace in world history.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

He added that, \u201cthe right conclusions have been drawn from the Gulf War.\u201d But had they? In Iraq, Saddam remained in power, and bombing and sanctions against his regime continued into Bill Clinton\u2019s presidency. Until in 2003, in the wake of 9\/11 and of the invasion of Afghanistan, the then president George W. Bush declared a new war against Iraq with the disputed justification of Iraq\u2019s alleged development of weapons of mass destruction.<\/span><\/p>\n

Many commentators saw the conflict as a way to deal with the \u201cunfinished business\u201d of the first Gulf War started by Bush\u2019s father. Military \u201ccontractors\u201d flooded into Iraq, with complex consequences that are still playing out. One of the last acts of the US presidency of Donald J. Trump involved pardoning four Blackwater security contractors. These were responsible for the 2007 Nisour Square massacre, a shooting that killed 14 Iraqi civilians, including nine-year-old Ali Abdul Razzaq. UN human rights experts condemned the presidential pardon as an affront to international justice.<\/span><\/p>\n

The war of the early 2000s left behind a much weakened Iraqi state infrastructure, and a high body count \u2013 a situation that rendered Iraq an easy prey to the forces of the Islamic State, which took over Mosul in 2014, continuing a legacy of violence and brutalisation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Many saw the end of the 1991 Gulf War as the beginning of an \u201cage of peace\u201d, to quote Gorbachev. The hope at that time was that the country \u2013 and the region \u2013 could prosper. Instead, the ceasefire of February 28 marked the end of a conflict that had been remarkably short, but whose consequences and unintended outcomes are still being felt to this day.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lorena De Vita<\/strong><\/span>
\nAssistant Professor in the History of <\/span>
\nInternational Relations, Utrecht University<\/span><\/p>\n

Amir Taha<\/strong><\/span>
\nPhD Candidate, Faculty of Humanities, <\/span>
\nUniversity of Amsterdam<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

* Published in print edition on 2 March 2021<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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