PRELUDE TO SADDAM’S MILITARY AGGRESSION

Saddam Hussein (right) walks with Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Jaber Al Ahmad Al Sabah during the 1989 Arab Summit in Baghdad, in a picture from the private archive of an official photographer for the Iraqi regime. -REUTERS

By OMAR SHARIFF | International Editor

Dubai: Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, was a political and military firestorm that set in motion a chain of events whose impact is being felt to this day. Apart from constituting criminal aggression against a fellow Arab state, the military action was a strategic blunder of extreme proportions that cost Iraq, and the region, dearly. It would also indirectly cost Saddam Hussein his life at the gallows, 16 years later.
Kuwait emerged as an independent country in 1961, a reality that Iraq struggled to accept. Since Kuwait’s independence, Iraq dubiously tried to lay claim over Kuwaiti territory.
But Saddam’s aggression against its tiny Arab neighbour to the south can be traced back to the Iran-Iraq war. In 1980, Iraq launched an invasion of its much larger eastern neighbour that resulted in a brutal war that dragged on for eight years and ended in a bloody stalemate. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, alarmed by the spread of Ayatollah Khomenei’s violent revolutionary ideology, supported Iraq with billions in loans during the course of the war. Kuwait was especially generous with help during 1982-83.

An Iraqi tank crew during an Iranian air strike in Abadan, Iran in October 1980. The eight-year Iran-Iraq war, which ended in a stalemate in 1988, destroyed the economies of both countries.

By 1988, the economies of both Iraq and Iran lay in ruin, and Saddam set his eyes on Kuwait’s vast economic riches, hoping to use them to pay off the colossal debt Baghdad had accrued in the course of the war. In mid-1990, the Iraqi leader gave a fiery speech in which he falsely accused Kuwait of stealing oil from Rumailah fields located along the Iraq-Kuwait frontier, using the so-called ‘slant-drilling’ method. He also said that Iraq had gone to war with Iran on behalf of all Arabs, and demanded that Kuwait and Saudi Arabia write off $30 billion of Iraq’s foreign debt.
Increasingly frustrated, he accused the two Gulf states of hatching a plot to keep oil prices low by increasing production and producing a glut in the market, thereby derailing Iraq’s hopes of using its oil wealth to pay off its debt. Reverting to form, the Iraqi regime even challenged Kuwaiti sovereignty, claiming the Gulf nation was an “artificial state” carved out of Iraq by British colonialists. Baghdad’s posture towards Kuwait grew increasingly hostile, and the regime began to amass troops at the border by late July 1990.
Analysts believe Iraq felt that taking over Kuwait’s enormous wealth and adding it to Iraq’s depleted coffers might have the twin effect of slashing its foreign debt and launching the vast reconstruction efforts that the government had promised Iraqis following the devastating war with Iran. This military aggression resulted in Iraq controlling more than 20 per cent of the global oil supply. Iraq also gained access to a much larger area along the Arabian Gulf.

Then Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, alarmed at the gravity of the situation and eager to avoid a conflict that would almost certainly attract global powers, brokered talks between Iraq and Kuwait. But almost immediately after the discussions began, Saddam abandoned them. At 2am on August 2, 1990, four elite Iraqi Republican Guard divisions marched into Kuwait.
They were joined by Iraqi Army special forces units which amounted to an actual division, meaning that the invasion of Kuwait was carried out by five divisions of elite troops. To support its advancing special units, Iraq deployed Soviet-made Mil Mi-25 helicopter gunships, and transport helicopters, including the American Bell 412.
The Iraqi Air Force tried to achieve early air superiority, by carrying out targeted strikes against key Kuwaiti air bases. The Iraqis deployed two squadrons of Sukhoi Su-22, one of Su-25, one of Mirage F1 and two of MiG-23 fighter-bombers. The main task of the IQAF was to establish air superiority through limited air strikes against two main Kuwaiti air bases. The Kuwaiti military - air force, the army, and the navy - mounted resistance but were totally outnumbered by the Iraqis. In what came to be known as the Battle of the Bridges, Kuwait’s 35th Armoured Brigade deployed a battalion of Chieftain tanks, against the invading army, delaying it at Al Jahra.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein visiting Iraqi troops at a military camp in occupied territory in Kuwait after the August 2, 1990 invasion of the Gulf state -AFP

Overall, however, the Kuwaiti army was no match for the numerically superior, battle-hardened Iraqi forces. The Kuwaiti Emir, Sheikh Jaber Al Ahmed Al Sabah, managed to cross into Saudi Arabia, where he set up a government-in-exile. However, his younger brother Sheikh Fahad Al Sabah was killed defending the Dasman Palace, the Emir’s residence, where some of the heaviest fighting took place. By the end of August 2, only small pockets of resistance were left in Kuwait.
In the early hours of August 3, Kuwait’s last remaining units were putting up a desperate fight, and the Ali Al Salem air base was still in their hands. Kuwait jets were flying in from Saudi Arabia with supplies to help in the military effort to prevent the Iraqis from taking control of all of Kuwait. But the base fell by the end of August 3, killing all hope of mounting a robust defence.
Hours after the invasion began, Iraqi-controlled radio had announced that a so-called “provisional government” - an Iraqi puppet regime of dissidents opposed to the ruling Al Sabah family - was now in charge in Kuwait.
But Kuwaiti Crown Prince Saad Abdullah Al Sabah, speaking on Kuwaiti TV being broadcast from Saudi Arabia, told Kuwaitis: “Let [the Iraqi occupation forces] taste the chalice of death.”

Saudi Arabia’s King Fahad, along with Kuwait’s government-in-exile, sought the help of the US and other Nato powers to free Kuwait.

On the regional political front, Saddam was taken aback by the ferocity of the opposition within the Arab League to the invasion; the regime has mistakenly banked on wide Arab support for the invasion. Most of the Arab League condemned Iraq’s action and demanded an unconditional pullout. US President George H.W. Bush slammed the Iraqi invasion, as did the Soviet Union and the UK. On August 3, the United Nations Security Council called for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait. Saudi Arabia’s King Fahad Bin Abdul Aziz, along with Kuwait’s government-in-exile, sought the help of the United States and other Nato powers to free Kuwait from the Iraqi occupation. Defiant, Saddam ordered the annexation of Kuwait on August 8, calling it Iraq’s “19th province”.

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