by Con Coughlin
Throughout the autumn of 1990, as he came to appreciate the ramifications of his Kuwait policy, Saddam embarked upon a number of desperate diplomatic initiatives whose sole defining characteristic was that they guaranteed his own survival. Having appointed his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, the man responsible for the gassing of the Kurds at Halabja in 1988, as the new governor of Kuwait, Saddam concentrated his energies on extricating himself from the Kuwait imbroglio while preserving his reputation, within the Arab world, at least, as the champion of Arab nationalism. From the outset Saddam acquired some surprising allies, such as King Hussein of Jordan, who insisted during his discussions with both London and Washington that the Kuwait crisis was an Arab problem that would best be resolved by the Arabs. Saddam also found himself supported by Yasser Arafat’s PLO, a surprising development given that Saddam had previously devoted much energy to destroying Arafat’s power base. Displaying his characteristic opportunism, Arafat calculated, wrongly as it would turn out, that Saddam’s new position as the undisputed champion of Arab nationalism might strengthen his own position with regard to Israel.
Saddam certainly tried to link the Kuwait issue with the Arab-Israeli conflict. In the months preceding the invasion of Kuwait he had become convinced that Israel was planning an assault on Iraq’s military infrastructure. Saddam’s susceptibility to conspiracy theories had led him to conclude that the United States was encouraging Israel to attack him while at the same time encouraging the Kuwaitis to undermine the Iraqi economy. Saddam actually articulated this convoluted theory of American double-dealing to Joseph Wilson, the U.S. chargé d’affaires, at their meeting in early August. In the following months much of the rhetoric emanating from Baghdad sought to link Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait to the liberation of Jerusalem. By annexing Kuwait, so the argument went, Saddam had fulfilled “a dear Arab goal…to rectify what colonialism had imposed on our country.”2 This noble act, however, was opposed by the “imperialist” United States, which, backed by its ally Israel, wanted to maintain its dominance of the region by preventing the Arabs from asserting their true rights. On August 12, Saddam advanced his own peace initiative in which he suggested that Iraq would withdraw from Kuwait only after all the other occupied lands in the Middle East had been liberated. Israel should withdraw from Arab land it had occupied in Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon, while Syria would withdraw from Lebanon. Even though Saddam’s peace proposal was dismissed by the West, his attempt to establish linkage between his predicament and the Palestinian issue met with some success. By September politicians in the United States, Britain, and France were all making statements in favor of convening a Middle East peace conference to resolve the Arab-Israeli issue, but only after Saddam had withdrawn from Kuwait.
Another tactic Saddam employed was to attempt to exploit differences of opinion between the members of the international coalition that was taking shape against him. Nearly twenty years previously, when he had masterminded the nationalization of Iraqi oil, Saddam had become expert at exploiting the rivalries of the great powers. In the 1970s he had successfully formed alliances with the Soviet Union and France to ensure the success of his oil nationalization program, and in the autumn of 1990 he pursued a similar diplomatic agenda in the hope of heading off an American-led campaign to drive him out of Kuwait. From the outset of the crisis the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev invested a great deal of energy in attempting to find a nonmilitary solution. Yevgeny Primakov, Gorbachev’s special envoy and a former KGB specialist on the Middle East, was an early convert to the concept of linkage between the Kuwait issue and resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict, and argued in favor of giving Saddam “some room for manoeuvre.”3 Saddam also offered the Soviets, whose economy was on the verge of collapse after seventy years of communist mismanagement, free oil supplies.
The French, who continued to value their “special relationship” with Baghdad, were similarly courted by Saddam. In September President François Mitterrand had embarrassed Washington by indicating, during his speech to the United Nations General Assembly, that he recognized the legitimacy of some of Iraq’s territorial claims to Kuwait. In late November Saddam sought to capitalize on what he perceived as France’s good intentions toward Iraq by releasing 327 French workers who had been held as “guests” since the invasion of Kuwait. The release of the French hostages was deliberately timed to coincide with a visit to Paris by James Baker, the U.S. secretary of state, to discuss the coalition’s strategy on Iraq. Saddam’s goodwill gesture inevitably aroused suspicions that the French had negotiated their own bilateral deal with Saddam, as they had during the oil nationalization negotiations. While the French vigorously denied the suggestion, the Iraqis leaked details of a secret meeting that had taken place between the two countries’ respective foreign ministers in Tunis.4 By releasing details of the deal, Saddam expected to exacerbate the tensions between the different members of the international coalition being formed to take action against Iraq. In fact it had the opposite effect, and the embarrassed French government felt it no longer had the moral authority to challenge the coalition’s objectives.
By far the most egregious tactic employed by Saddam to counter the threat of military action by the West was the use of “human shields” to defend key installations. Saddam had convinced himself that, when it came to suffering casualties, the West had no stomach for a fight. He had intimated as much during his meeting with Ambassador Glaspie in July when, in a reference to the high number of casualties Iraq had sustained during the war with Iran, he stated, “Yours is a society which cannot accept ten thousand dead in one battle.” Saddam had also taken note of the fact that a number of Western governments in the 1980s, including the United States, had been prepared to negotiate secret deals in their desperation to secure the release of their citizens who had been taken hostage in Lebanon.
In August Saddam passed an order to the effect that all foreign workers would be detained in Iraq until the threat of military action had passed. His tactic was designed to test the mettle of the governments forming the international coalition to liberate Kuwait. Saddam’s “human shield” policy, as it became known, was designed to protect Iraq’s most sensitive sites from attack. Saddam calculated that the West would be unlikely to bomb his key military and government facilities if they contained groups of foreign hostages. The tactic certainly had the effect of making him the center of world attention, although his intention of exploiting the publicity to defend his decision to invade Kuwait backfired in spectacular fashion. It soon became apparent that the fate of different groups of hostages depended solely on their government’s attitude to Saddam. Thus the French, whose government was still keen to maintain the Franco-Iraqi axis that had served their business interests so well, were soon released en masse. The British, however, whose prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, was the most vocal opponent of appeasing Saddam, were moved from one Iraqi strategic location to another. The most sickening moment in this charade came when Saddam decided to pay a “goodwill visit” to a group of British hostages. Saddam reiterated his assertion that their presence in Iraq was necessary for the cause of peace, i.e., so long as they were there, the allies could not bomb them. At one point in the proceedings, which were televised live throughout the world, Saddam approached a seven-year-old British boy, Stuart Lockwood, patted his head, and asked him, in Arabic, “Did Stuart have his milk today?” The terrified expression on the boy’s face articulated the feelings of all those unfortunates who were trapped in Saddam’s Iraq.
Saddam’s intimidation tactics may have succeeded over the years in terrifying the Iraqi population, but in the West they only succeeded in alienating whatever support he may still have enjoyed. Even so, the “human shield” policy was successful in attracting a wide spectrum of international luminaries to Baghdad, some of whom were even sympathetic, if not to Saddam himself, then to his predicament. The first visitor was Kurt Waldheim, the Austrian president, who attended a joint press conference with Saddam, and was rewarded w
ith the release of the 140 Austrians held in Iraq and Kuwait. Waldheim was followed by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who secured the release of American women and children, and men suffering health problems. Other visitors included the boxer Muhammad Ali and the former West German and British prime ministers, Willy Brandt and Sir Edward Heath, all of whom returned with a batch of hostages. Saddam’s hostage policy, however, did not provide the change in Western opinion that he desired. The Bush and Thatcher governments, in particular, refused to be deflected from their determination to seek his unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait, and as the pressure grew at the UN Security Council to give the allies the mandate to evict Iraq by force, so Saddam became more desperate to appear conciliatory. He offered to release all the hostages over a three-month period if the threat of hostilities was lifted. On the eve of the key Security Council vote, he released 1,000 Soviet workers in a deliberate attempt to dissuade Moscow from supporting the resolution. But it was to no avail. On November 29 the Security Council passed Resolution 678, which demanded Iraq’s unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait by January 15, 1991, and authorized the use of military force if Iraq failed to comply.
Saddam’s position was getting desperate, even though he continued to maintain a public posture of defiance. Rhetoric similar to that used to proclaim his greatness during the war with Iran was broadcast by the Iraqi media. “O Great Iraq, under the leadership of Saddam Hussein and his excellent management of the conflict, will remain proud and firm, challenging the gathering of evil-doers and tyrants.”5 The country, which had still not recovered from the ravages of the eight-year war with Iran, was again put on a war footing. A large-scale mobilization of reservists was announced and frantic efforts were made to turn Kuwait into an impenetrable fortress. A decree was passed making the hoarding of foodstuffs punishable by death.
In Kuwait, or Iraq’s “nineteenth province,” as it was now known, the new Iraqi provincial government, headed by Ali Hassan al-Majid, was working hard to eradicate any sign that Kuwait had ever existed as an independent nation. About 300,000 Kuwaitis, nearly one-third of the population, had fled the country, and those who remained were subjected to a systematic campaign of terrorism. The basements of the vacated palaces were turned into makeshift torture chambers by Saddam’s intelligence agents. Ordinary workshop tools such as vises and electric saws were adapted as instruments of torture, as were electric wires. Street names were changed and residents had to acquire new identity documents and license plates. The time difference between Baghdad and Kuwait was abolished. A decree was implemented banning Kuwaitis from wearing beards, and some offenders were punished by having their beards plucked out with pliers.”6
By far the most humiliating concession Saddam was forced to make as a consequence of the Kuwait crisis was the peace terms he offered Iran. Although a cease-fire had been in place since 1988, no final peace agreement had been signed between Iran and Iraq. With a massive international coalition being assembled to evict him from Kuwait, Saddam realized he could not afford to have his Iranian front exposed. Just two weeks after the invasion of Kuwait, when Saddam realized that he faced stiff international opposition, he made an approach to the Iranian president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, offering him a final peace deal on the basis of the 1975 agreement he had negotiated with the shah. In the past Saddam had argued that the 1975 Algiers Agreement had unfairly denied Iraq control over the Shatt al-Arab, and this had been his principal motivation for declaring war on Iran in 1980. But after waging one of the bloodiest wars of the twentieth century, Saddam, the nominal victor, was now prepared to concede all the key points. The Iran deal revealed once more that the only policy that really concerned Saddam was that which guaranteed his own survival.
This was certainly Saddam’s main priority as he sought to prepare himself and the regime for the military challenge that almost inevitably lay ahead. Initially his policy on Kuwait had been to seek an advantageous withdrawal, i.e., on terms that benefited Baghdad, such as retaining the disputed islands and the Rumaila oil field, and with a pro-Iraq government established in Kuwait City. The international diplomatic momentum of the autumn of 1990, driven by Washington and London, made the prospect of such an outcome appear increasingly unlikely. As war seemed inevitable, Saddam changed his policy from one of advantageous withdrawal to one that might best be described as “survivable withdrawal.”7
Saddam concentrated his energies on ensuring the survival of the regime, rather than the defense of the country. Ali Hassan al-Majid was brought back from Kuwait to help plan the defense of the Baathist homeland. Another trusted kinsman, Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti, was promoted from commander of the Presidential Palace and Republican Guard to chief of the general staff. The divisions of the Republican Guard were deployed in such a way as to ensure both that the heart of the regime in central and northern Iraq was secure and to block any attempted invasion of the country from the south. Saddam’s half brothers—Barzan, Watban, and Sabawi—all occupied key positions in the country’s intelligence services, guarding against the possibility of an internal revolt. With these forces in place Saddam was confident that he could survive any attack; if necessary he was even prepared to sacrifice his forces in Kuwait if it meant guaranteeing the safety of the heartland.
A last-ditch effort to resolve the conflict by diplomacy was undertaken by the United States at the end of November. Having secured UN approval for military action, President Bush offered to send James Baker, his secretary of state, to Baghdad and to receive Tariq Aziz in Washington. Although the United States insisted that it was seeking an unconditional Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait, the unexpected initiative gave Saddam a face-saving formula. Saddam had been asking for direct negotiations with Washington since the start of the crisis and he was able to portray Bush’s offer as a concession to Baghdad. In an attempt to capitalize on what he perceived as a softening of the American position, Saddam ordered the release of all the remaining foreign hostages held in Iraq and Kuwait. But he had been mistaken in interpreting Washington’s offer of talks as a sign of weakness. At the very least he expected to be granted some concessions on Kuwait, such as a redrawing of the boundaries in Baghdad’s favor, before he withdrew. If Saddam withdrew unconditionally from Kuwait, he would be humiliated in the eyes of his fellow Arabs. He reasoned that his standing, and his chances of survival, would both be greatly increased either if he confronted the international coalition, or won concessions for Iraq. As Washington categorically dismissed the latter option, armed conflict was inevitable. The dictator would not be dictated to.
The Allied attack, which began on January 16, 1991, subjected Iraq to one of the most intensive aerial bombardments known to the modern world. For six weeks Allied aircraft systematically bombed military, political, strategic, and economic targets in Iraq and Kuwait with impunity. Despite having the world’s sixth largest air force and an extensive air defense system, Iraq was unable to contend with the awesome airpower launched by the Allies. The Iraqi air force did not try to challenge the Allied aircraft, and those planes that did take off did so in an attempt to escape to airfields in northern Iraq.
The coalition war plan envisaged a four-phased air, naval, and ground offensive operation that would be executed over the course of one month. The first phase of Operation Desert Storm, as the campaign was known, was aimed at softening up the Iraqi defenses in preparation for a ground offensive to liberate Kuwait. Having established total air supremacy, Allied bombers proceeded to attack a wide range of targets at will. The early bombing raids were directed at radar and communications bases, early warning stations and air defense batteries. These were followed by precision bombing attacks, using aircraft and cruise missiles, against strategic targets such as airfields, command and control centers, Iraqi troop concentrations in and around Kuwait, Iraqi oil refineries, and the long-range surface-to-surface missile batteries. In the first days of the bombardment Baghdad took the brunt of the Allied assault, and when Iraqis emerged from their shelters after t
he first night’s bombardment they saw that the Presidential Palace, the headquarters of the Baath Party, and the Ministry of Defense building had all been largely demolished.