Background to the Conflict
As I recall the "stated reason" for the invasion was that Kuwait was slant drilling in to Iraq oil fields but the basic conflict was somewhat more complex. Once in Kuwait, they declared it Province 19. A fast cursory look at the map of the area makes one wonder why it was a separate country and not a province of Iraq.
This is immensely complex, as are all grand tales, but the short answer is that the various sheikhs of Kuwait in the 19th century determined to break from Istanbul's rule, and allied themselves with the East India Company, which then ran the Persian Gulf. (The various sheikhdoms in the Gulf were Indian colonies until 1947, when the British took them over.
The East India Company, a British appendage, came to dominate the Persian Gulf early in the 19th century, and developed peaceful relationships with most of the coastal states there. These states had been appendages of the Ottoman Empire, then the 'sick man of Europe', but shifted allegiance easily enough, as the Ottoman Empire was unable to exert its military to the Gulf's shores.
However, the Empire did hold on to what was then called Mesopotamia. During the First War, the British mistakenly believed that dominion over Kuwait meant a ready extension of their rule to Baghdad but were sorely shaken up when a bright but weak British general, Townsend, allowed himself to be cut off at Kut-al-Amara and surrendered, a defeat which shook confidence in British abilities precisely as did the fall of Singapore 26 years later.
The British then send out Allenby, who develops a comprehensive game-plan which, in two years, defeats the Turks decisively both in the West and East. Following the collapse both of the Ottoman Empire and of the Meinertzhagen / Lawrence / Churchill plan for a unified Arab kingdom under the Hashemites based at Damascus, the British founded two new Hashemite kingdoms, the principality of the Trans-Jordan and that of Iraq. Jordan is still under the Hashemites, one of only two Arab states whose ruling houses can trace descent from the Prophet. (An important point, as a true Jihad requires declaration by a descendant of the Prophet: only the Kings of Morocco or Jordan can legally do so. And it is this which made the Turks so anxious to hold onto the allegiance of the Sheriff of Mecca, great-great-grandfather of the current King of Jordan.)
Iraq was a troublesome colony for the British - and, oddly enough, it was ruled not by the Colonial Office but by the Air Ministry as a dependency of the RAF! In 1936, they allowed it its independence but retained basing rights. In World War II, the Iraqi government sequesters the young King Feisal II and declares for the Axis; there was a brief siege of the RAF contingent and dependants at the airfield outside Baghdad, but Indian troops were flown in and restored British rule. (Only the small Christian community were pro-West, and these were slaughtered in 1958. They had constituted the one loyal military force in the area, the "Assyrian Levies", the only native military unit to give honours to the British on their second departure in 1955.)
In 1955, the British pulled out a second time. Three years later, a Communist coup by the far-left Ba'ath Party overthrew Fiesal II (they dragged his body behind a jeep through Baghdad, as they also served his Prime Minister, Nuri al-Said, who had ridden with Lawrence in the First War; such is the respect of Marxists for basic human decencies). In 1963, the Ba'ath Party, having become moderate in power, was over-thrown by a clique of military officers of more pronounced radicalism. From this group, Saddam Hussein arose as the dictator of Iraq around 1969 or 1970.
Iraq tried to grasp Kuwait from the get-go, on the grounds that both Mesopotamia and Kuwait had been in a common Villaret under the Ottomans, ruled from Baghdad. In 1960, the Ba'ath government sends its Army to the Kuwaiti border; the British send in, at the request of the Kuwaiti government, a single brigade, which camps on the border facing the Iraqis, who then go back home, and the crises dissolves peaceably.
 Shah of Iran |
Over to Iran. In 1977, Carter instructs his ambassador to the Shah to tell
the senior military leadership and the Iranian Parliament that the Shah, no longer enjoyed
the support of the US government. The military leadership all get extended TDY tours to
Paris, and the moderates take over the government. Then, the middle-ranking military and
the brush clergy unite to overthrow the moderate government in a frenzy of Shi'ite
religious fundamentalism. (When prophet Mohammed died, there was a power-struggle between
his daughter, Fatima of the Seven Veils and Omar the Tentmaker. Fatima's followers became
the modern Sunni sect, a majority of Moslems being Sunni today, and those of Omar becoming
the Shi'ites. The overwhelming majority of Iranians and a significant minority of Syrians
and Iraqis are Shi'ites.) No need to run over the next fifteen years of Shi'ite rule of Iran. In 1990, the US Ambassador to Iraq was in conference with Saddam Hussein, who protested to her that he understood the Kuwaitis were drilling diagonally into Iraqi oil fields, and he wanted something done to resolve the problem. She gave what was meant to be a conciliatory response, along the lines of, "well, this really isn't a US issue, as we don't use Kuwaiti, or Iraqi oil, but we believe some diplomacy may resolve the problem, if not, well, more direct measures may be necessary." She later said she had meant something along the lines of diplomatic protests or even an appeal to the UN. Hussein took it, however, to mean that the US would not intervene if he invaded Kuwait. And, so he did. The diagonal-drilling thing might be partly true, there are oil fields quite close to each other along the border, but it is more likely to have been inadvertent than intentional. It is a bit difficult to keep a 12,000-foot drill on target. |
 President Carter |
The Iran-Iraq war in the late 1970's and early 1980's was partly a result of two powerful states located in close proximity and partly a result of religious rivalries. (And, if you recall your Classical history, you will remember that the Persians are rarely just Persians, they are generally known as 'the Kingdom of the Medes and the Persians'. Well, the Medes became Kurds and the Persians became Iranians. Old cultural splits, almost as obnoxious as those between the National League and American League.) Well, both Iraq and Iran have large Kurd minorities, and both Hussein and Khomeni felt that a war between their nations would give their government a chance to REALLY put those Kurds in their place.
Iraq was well equipped with Soviet gear, Iran with recent US equipment. The West was confident in a quick Iranian victory. But the senior military brass had emigrated and the US was not supplying repair parts to Iran any longer (can you say, "the Iran-Contra Scandal"?), while the Soviets had lots and lots of advisors and lots and lots of new supplies sent to Iraq. So, the war became a deadlock over the Shaat-al-Arab oilfields shared by Iran, Iraq, and Kuwait. And, when the War had petered out, the Iraqis were still spoiling for a fight. Thus, Kuwait was next.
(The West was all a-fevered over the Iran-Iraq War, figuring the Iranians would rapidly whip the Iraqis, F-15's against MIG-25's, US-trained pilots against Soviet-trained pilots, M-60 tanks against T70's, and so forth. What actually developed was that the US-trained pilots had fled, the F-15's were inoperable due to lack of parts, the M-60's were stuck in motor pools both in NORM and NORS status, and so forth, while the Iraqis managed to get their smaller and numerically weaker forces on line, as Saddam had forecast. What he hadn't predicted was that most of the other Arab states, distrusting and hating him, would back the Khomeni regime.)
 Ayatollah Khomeni |
** The saddest part of the Persian Gulf War was the
backing of Saddam Hussein by King Hussein of Jordan, first, because this was the only time
in his forty-year rule where he missed being a political genius, and because it meant that
he was supporting the ideological heir of those who had dragged his great-uncle's body
through Baghdad. The Iran- Iraq War of
the 1980s During this time, Western observers watched the conflict and were concerned by the use of Chemical weapons. The US , which had always had friendly relations with Iran, became the hated enemy. As a result, the US was sort of friendly to the Iraqis, however the Iraqis got most of their military equipment from the Soviet Union. Tanks, AFV, artillery, missiles and radios were supplied. |
| ** Additional Comments by LTC Marc Small. |
The Intelligence Record: 1976-90
Before its demolition by US forces in 1991, the Khamisiyah facility was a large ammunition
storage depot in south-eastern Iraq, approximately 100 kilometres (km) from the Kuwaiti
border. The facility we now call Khamisiyah was first identified in intelligence
information from September 1976, while it was under construction. The Intelligence
Community (IC) identified the facility as a conventional ammunition depot. In June 1977,
it was assigned the name Tall al Lahm--after a nearby town--in our imagery database. This
remained the most common name the United States used for the facility until mid-1996, when
the name used by the Iraqis Khamisiyah was adopted to avoid confusion. Information
available to the IC identified the facility's location as 304700N / 0462615E.
The first known reference to the depot using the Iraqi name Khamisiyah occurred in intelligence reporting in April 1982, when the "Al Khamisiyah ammunition depot" was mentioned in connection with the transfer of munitions in support of Iraqi military operations during the Iran-Iraq war. This report did not specify the facility's location, but subsequent reporting associated it with the geographic co-ordinates of the nearby town of Khamisiyah (3046N / 04629E). Neither this reporting nor the intelligence from 1976 hinted at any connection with chemical weapons. This facility was maintained in a National Security Agency database as Khamisiyah, and in the imagery database as Tall al Lahm. No apparent effort at the time was made to reconcile the facility names.
While not discovered until 20 March 1997, intelligence acquired in July 1984 currently provides the earliest potential indication that chemical weapons or chemical warfare activities might have been associated with the Khamisiyah depot at the time. As part of an ongoing review of historical files on Khamisiyah, we discovered information indicating that a decontamination vehicle normally associated with tactical chemical defence was at the depot. This activity was not associated with any specific bunker or other storage structure and, by itself, does not provide confirmation of chemical weapons storage.
The first recognised connection between Khamisiyah and chemical weapons--and the only such evidence prior to Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait--appeared in a CIA human-source report obtained in May 1986. This report was a translated copy of an Iraqi CW production plan and discussed the transfer of chemical weapons to Khamisiyah:
3,975 155-mm mustard-loaded artillery grenades [sic] have been issued (from June 1984 to March 1985) to al-Khamisiyah warehouses. We do not have official data about using this quantity by the third army corps. The warehouses currently have 6,293 150-mm mustard bombs [sic], enough to meet front demands for four days on a 15-minute mission.
Khamisiyah Ammunition Storage Area. This report was made available to select individuals in the policy and intelligence communities including DoD officials--but did not receive broad distribution because of its sensitivity. Of note, the munitions mentioned above were artillery shells containing mustard agent. Thus, they were different from those blown up by US troops at Khamisiyah in 1991; those were 122-mm rockets containing the nerve agents Sarin and GF, which according to Iraqi declarations were moved to Khamisiyah in January 1991.
A CIA assessment in November 1986 used the above information to conclude that chemical weapons were stored during the Iran-Iraq war "at the southern forward ammunition depot located at Tall al Lahm." This assessment shows that a connection had been made at that time between Khamisiyah and what we knew as Tall al Lahm. It also stated that "a new generation of 16 bunkers will expand Iraq's capability to store CW munitions at six airfields and at three ammunition storage depots that are strategically located throughout the country." Subsequent analytic efforts focused on this new generation of bunkers--dubbed "S-shaped" bunkers by the IC because of their unusual shape--as the most likely storage sites for forward-deployed Iraqi chemical weapons. None of these bunkers was located at Khamisiyah: the nearest were located at Tallil Airfield and the An Nasiriyah Southwest depot. Over time, the IC developed a bias toward the S-shaped bunkers as intended for CW storage. By 1991, this bias led analysts to conclude, erroneously, that reporting about Khamisiyah referred to the An Nasiriyah SW depot.
Reporting from early 1988 with the same high reliability, sensitivity, and handling as the May 1986 report, stated with regard to Iraqi chemical weapons storage locations:
As of early 1988, Iraqi artillery shells, bombs, and rockets loaded with chemical warfare (CW) materials were stored either at Samarra or in a large ammunition dump near the town of Muhammadiyat. This facility was located about 12 [sic] kilometre's outside of Baghdad. Additionally, 122-mm rockets temporarily were stored at the airbase in Kirkuk for further transport to Sulaymaniyah.
This report, especially with the "either-or" construction, suggested that chemical weapons were not stored at Khamisiyah or any other location in southern Iraq at that time. In addition--because we had previously identified an S-shaped bunker at Kirkuk airfield--mention of CW storage at "the airbase in Kirkuk" in the 1988 report further strengthened the IC's focus on S-shaped bunkers and the assessment that they would be used for forward deployment of chemical munitions, but were not intended for long-term storage.
This information, the strengthened analytic bias toward S-shaped bunkers, and several
other factors may have played a role in Khamisiyah's omission from CW facility lists
generated by the IC between 1986 and 1991. For example, following the May 1986 report and
the November 1986 assessment, some analysts believed the reported activity at Khamisiyah
represented temporary, forward-deployed storage. We have located no additional reporting
suggesting chemical weapons were stored at Khamisiyah from May 1986 to the end of the
Iran-Iraq war in 1988, a period in which Iraq used thousands of tons of CW agents against
Iran. Khamisiyah was not mentioned as a chemical weapons storage location in any finished
intelligence document or list of facilities produced during the months leading up to
Desert Storm. At the time, the IC unanimously identified S-shaped bunkers as the most
likely locations for forward deployment of chemical weapons when tasked to identify Iraqi
CW facilities. As a result, Khamisiyah was not added to IC lists of suspect Iraqi CW
facilities. Analysts emphasised at the time, however, that chemical weapons could be
stored anywhere even in the open. Nevertheless, the Tall al Lahm facility was mentioned in
28 February 1991 military intelligence information requests as suspected to have possibly
contained chemical munitions prior to the ground war.
From CIA Report Gulflink Web Site
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