Iraq : The Context Of Events From 1988 to 2004 By Alfred Roberts

Iraq : The Context Of Events From 1988 to 2004

By Alfred Roberts

Al-Jazeerah, November 29, 2004

There is something of a divide in attitudes towards Iraq. The divide splits even brothers or sisters with those under the divide of 23 - 24 (aged 9 or 10 and able to recall the invasion of Kuwait and the 1991 Gulf War) understandably appalled at the callous behaviour of the USA and UK and their utter disregard for the human life of the Iraqis and find the attitude of their peers incomprehensible. Those above 23 - 24 are either not too keen on the Iraqis or are outright hostile to them because of what they remember from Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the 1991 Gulf War. The article places the saga in context and tries to bridge the divide.

No one would have liked to have been living in Iraq in 1991! A left wing delegation which went there in April 1991 reported, 'Nothing could have prepared us for this, a country reduced to the pre -industrial age, for a considerable time to come', the UN noted that 'the effects of the coalition bombing place a rather highly urbanised population in danger of being reduced to the pre - industrial age...' Notes in the Guardian article, 'Fear on the Basra Road' in April 1991 described a scene in which Southern Iraq was denuded of electricity, gas and useable water. Bridges over the River Eurphrates built by British companies in the 1950s had been razed like a buzz saw by the RAF, the broken spans careering into the water and the twisted steel reinforcing rods sticking out like uprooted tree roots. At the sewerage works not only had the ! pumping machinery and control gear been wrecked but the huge steel turbine blades had been blown out and replacements were prohibited under the UN embargo. Once the bombing, and the fighting on the ground during the allied offensive to free Kuwait and the ensuring Iraqi civil war had ended, the Iraqis faced death from disease – epidemics of cholera and typhoid brought about by drinking river water laced with sewerage drawn straight from the rivers and bathing in the polluted rivers after the potable water supply had broken down in the early days of the war.

These were the results of the US – led plan to reduce Iraq to a pre – industrial age if the Iraqis did not withdraw from Kuwait. Yet under the Geneva Convention deliberate targeting of civilian power, water, waste water disposal, fuel and gas installations, schools and hospitals (which is what was done behind the 1991 media pictures of ‘precision’ air strikes) is illegal. Most people's ears prick up at the mention of ‘the Geneva Convention’ and would not violate it lightly. Yet the USA and UK felt able to abrogate it and to such devastating effects (after the end of the water supplies families were witnessed bathing in or drawing water from the polluted rivers) which many must have found very disturbing. For all their notorious acts of aggression in the cold war the USSR were not in a hurry to start war with Iraq in 1991 and certainly would not have followed plans to neutralise the enemy by paralysing the means needed for communication and modern life behind their lines. After the war ended the USA and UK followed the same policy, designed to bring Iraq back into the world by toppling the Ba’athist regime. One can trace a thread through the behaviour of the USA and UK leading (and largely being the brains behind) the attempt to reduce Iraq to a pre - industrial age in 1991, to the ire their diplomatic dominance has created since and the debacle in Iraq a generation later. There are those who allege that there has been the rise of one menace in the ashes of another.

No excuses can be made for what Iraq did between 1980 and 1990. The appalling behaviour of the Iraqi army was a pivotal factor in mobilising the world against the Iraqis in August – September 1990. The US Air Forces regarded the notorious ‘Road of Death’ between Kuwait and Basra in late February 1991 as punishment of the Iraqi army and ‘security’ services for the barbaric and ruthless way they had treated the people in Kuwait. Just after the invasion in 1990 after the taking of hostages to deter a western attack British hostages captured in Kuwait or Iraq at the time of the invasion languished in jail as British citizens (resident in Iraq from the situation days before when it was the darling of the west) played tennis outside. The scenes of Saddam Hussein visiting the hostages (and talking to the small children among them) repulsed the world.

The situation after the war is an interesting sequel to the situation just after the invasion of Kuwait, when as many in UK breathed fire at the mention of the Iraqis many said 'be careful saying that, they've got a million men under arms and they could probably make mincemeat out of us.' In comparison to the situation a decade or so later, although nobody in 1990 wanted to see Iraq dominate the Persian Gulf, Iraq's battle hardened army were the major obstacle to preventing it.

Before the USA and UK embroiled themselves in a civil war in Iraq I think that they should have looked back the situation in 1990 that individual Iraqis behaved with great barbarity towards other peoples and that as they sat ready to fight the West in 1991 the Iraqis were expecting to repeat the treatment they had inflicted on the Iranians. This might have tempered their expectation (if indeed it existed) to be regarded as liberators and strengthened the less favourable half of the two contradictory western views of Iraq – of a nation held hostage by a dictator, and that every Iraqi is Saddam Hussein. They might have been well advised to judge that the reason for the collapse of the Iraqi Army in late February 1991 and the poor response of the Iraqi Air Force to the coalition air raids, was that instead of the response the Iraqis had expected - a straightforward fight with an invasion of Kuwait – the Iraqis had been caught by surprise on the night of 16 January 1991 [when ‘Stealth’ aircraft flew through radars and hit air defence targets and power supplies], endured the shock of the apocalyptic conditions brought about by the western bombing campaign and had simply been overwhelmed. [There were only a few aircraft and even fewer tanks in the bloated Iraqi armed forces which counted as ‘modern’ even then, many Iraqi aircraft, tanks and guns were fifteen to twenty years out of date, air crews and conscript soldiers were poorly trained and the backbone of the Iraqi air defences were second world war design anti – aircraft guns which were of restricted use against fast jets and useless against high flying aircraft, supplemented by obsolescent surface – to – air missiles]. The Iraqi government’s call up of 17 year old males in February 1991 amounted to little more than a sea of Kalashnikov rifles in the face of the waves of the coalition bombers which the Iraqis could only shake their fists at [and the high altitude British, French and American air raids through the 1990s] but had the west fought the war only a few years previously using more conventional tactics the result would have been rather less one sided as the Iraqis would have inflicted far greater casualties upon the western forces.

After the end of the 1991 Gulf War the UN sanctions were maintained, supposedly to ensure Iraq disarmed but it became doubtful that the USA would ever have been prepared to lift the embargo on Iraq whilst the Ba’athist government remained in power. The suffering that the sanctions engendered the Iraqi public* caused disquiet even very early on even in mid 1991 [as Iraqis endured a sweltering summer with no power for fans or air conditioning, no fresh water to drink or wash in, no foreign holidays, little food and limited medical facilities for anyone who fell ill in a country struggling to hold itself together] and a rash of schemes for Iraq to sell oil for humanitarian supplies were either rejected by Baghdad or later blocked by USA and UK moving the ‘goal posts’ until the idea collapsed in early - 1992. The regime’s grip on power in the early 1990’s was shaky in the face of repeated US, UK and Saudi – backed coup attempts but other western nations came to view the Ba’athist regime as the least bad option for Iraq and manoeuvred for a favourable position in the event of the lifting of sanctions. By 1995 the weapons programmes were gone and the Iraqi army’s once feared chemical weapons unit had become something of a joke inside the forces, but the USA were given a huge boost by the defection of General Kamel and the Iraqis were caught smuggling missiles via Jordan, the UK (which had wavered for the first time seemingly 'prepared for the first time to accept … and sharply aware of the mounting international pressure over sanctions’) moved back into line and the divisions over the sanctions issue, fuelled by Iraq’s co – operation with the disarmament inspectors and the suffering of Iraqis, persisted for nearly another decade. The resulting damage to the image of the USA in the Gulf region led to the poisoning of relations between the USA and the Arab nation and formed the only link between Iraq and the rise of anti-US violence.

One suspects that the response of the Iraqi public amid the chaos of the air raids was futile rage and that a bitter hatred of the west blossomed over the years that followed the war. During which time Iraq was represented in the US and UK only by a ‘phantom nation’ of exiles who had left their nation decades ago whilst the real country lived in isolation and was frequented only by left wing activists. These exiles propagated the view that the Iraqis (who to some extent brought their disaster upon themselves by acting so appallingly) understood! the noble motives of the allies and hoped for ‘liberation’ from their despotic government. On the ground, in 1998 Robert Fisk asked himself, 'Why don't the Iraqis just swing for us?'

The real stupidity of the US and UK was to have overlooked the effects of their attempts to reduce Iraq to a pre – industrial age had on the views of Iraqis. The invasion of Iraq has given them the opportunity to square up to their tormenters, fighting them face to face as they longed to since 1991. It has often been said since the invasion that Iraqi exiles in fact knew very well what would really happen if the USA actually did invade Iraq but distorted the facts because they wanted the thing to happen.

How war could have been avoided in 1991 (as the left wing anti – war protesters, much Arab opinion and the USSR which made endless efforts to reach a peaceful settlement) without Iraq continuing to pose a menace to the region and the whole world, and what the results of the latest war will be, is for the reader to decide.

Alfred Roberts has a degree in History from University of Gloucestershire 1995. He welcomes responses to robertsalfred@hotmail.com

* Editorial Note:

About 1.5 million Iraqis, including about half a million children, died as a result of sanctions.

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

Apartheid Wall


The Israeli Land-Grab Apartheid Wall built inside the Palestinian territories, here separating Abu Dis from occupied East Jerusalem. (IPC, 7/4/04).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python. (Alquds,10/25/03).

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