The Gulf was a British domain until they withdrew in December of 1971. American agents existed but they had limited influence and didn�t amount to more than a regional nuisance to the British dominance (1). International struggle started only when the British began their withdrawal from East of Suez in 1966 in the form of American claims to the right to control the Gulf. It justified these claims internationally as the only way to guarantee the West and US oil supply (2).
When the British announced plans for withdrawal from the Gulf in 1967, the US proposed a five-state alliance, between the Gulf States and the US, to protect the Gulf. However, all Gulf states, including Iran, rejected it. As a part of their planned withdrawal, the British redesigned Gulf politics to close the region out against any pretext for foreign presence after their departure. They created a federation between the Gulf Shiekhdoms (the UAE) to stabilize the small statelets in the south. They also appointed Iran as the new guardian of the Gulf. To prepare Iran to play this role, they got it to launch a major armament drive. They also manufactured a regional political process to negotiate British withdrawal where Iran was given a say in the future shape of the Gulf after withdrawal. Iran feigned opposition to the Shiekhdoms� federation and claimed Bahrain, Abu Mousa and the two Tunbs. It was only after British mediation/consultation with Iran that Iran accepted the existence of Bahrain and the UAE. The climax came when Britain allowed the Shah to occupy the two Tunbs in November of 1971, two days before their withdrawal in order to assert Iranian dominance over the Gulf.
The ultimate British goal was to develop an alliance between all Gulf states with Iran & Saudi Arabia as senior partners in the alliance. The Dhafar rebellion in Oman, 1965-1975, and the �Marxist� government in south Yemen (both British) were used to justify the need for this alliance. Indeed, after the British withdrawal from the Gulf in 1971, an alliance between Iran and Saudi Arabia was established. The Shah took care of blocking US attempts to gain a foothold in the Gulf. He claimed that he was providing the security needed for Western oil supplies without any need for foreign presence in the Gulf.
The Shift in Saudi Arabia
The assassination of King Faisal in March of 1975 and the assumption of power by Fahd shifted Saudi Arabia to the American camp. As a result, there was an increase in rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia but Iran still had the upper hand (3). In May, Fahd visited Iraq and called for the inclusion of Iraq in Gulf security arrangements. He and his American sponsors meant to break Iran�s lock over Gulf security. That was acceptable to the British now that a political order was firmly in place in the Gulf that didn�t include any international presence and thus there was no need to stress the US vs. Russia play with its pre-requisite of clashes between Iran and Iraq (4). Consequently, the alliance between Iran and Saudi Arabia was enlarged in 1975 to include Iraq.
The Iranian Revolution
The British lost their dominance in the Gulf with the Iranian revolution in 1979. The whole security structure of the region was built around the Shah�s Iran as a guardian of the British order in the region. When the US replaced the Shah with Khomaini, it also brought down that order, thus creating an opening to justify internationalization of Gulf security arrangements and a direct US role in the region. Accordingly, the US began an active campaign to dominate the Gulf under the same pretext of protecting Western and US oil supplies.
An active struggle for Gulf control developed between the US and UK. Consequently, the Gulf evolved into a second flash point in the Middle East (a gateway for international meddling, a ready justification for conflict and thus realignment of the region according to the interests of this or that great power). The Middle East has since then had two foci: Israel and the Gulf.
The opening move in that struggle saw Iran putting Iraq on the defensive by supporting Kurdish rebellion in the north and Shia resistance in the south. It also threatened Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia with internal trouble. The US tried to use the threat of the Iranian revolution and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan as excuses to increase its role in the Gulf. However, the US could not interfere directly in the region. None of the British Gulf States was willing to invite direct US presence in the region. Further, they couldn�t use the purported threat to Western oil supplies to pursue an aggressive unilateral military policy in the region. Soviet-allied Iraq could have countered that by calling in Russian forces and creating an anti-US atmosphere in the region. The Russians would have welcomed the chance to have a presence and a stake, even if fake, in the Gulf. Instead the US tried merely to create a foothold by asserting the legitimacy of some sort of military existence in the Gulf through the Carter Doctrine: �The US will prevent any hostile power from dominating the Gulf,� (1980). The Rapid Deployment Force (RDF) was established to represent this US presence/control over the region without direct occupation. Bases and facilities for the force were established in Egypt, Kenya, Somalia and Oman. However, it was rejected in the Gulf and opposed by Saddam. So by 1980, the US had managed to stack a claim to a role in the region but was not able to translate it into actual presence in the region.
The British tried to regain the initiative in the region through a series of counter measures. Their agents launched a concerted campaign opposing foreign presence in the region, that is the Carter Doctrine and the RDF. Saddam created a "Pan-Arab Defense Charter" in February of 1980 calling for the elimination of superpower influence in the region. In October, King Hussein said that the "region does not need an outside umbrella and protection." Kuwait foreign Minister, Sabah Al-Ahmed, parroted the same statement. When an American representative visited Iraq in May of 1981 to reopen direct relations, Iraq still publicly rejected US presence in the region. More significantly, Saddam attacked Iran in September.
In response, the US continued to develop its efforts within the Carter Doctrine to gain a foothold in the region. It devised new ways to create a military presence, such as pre-positioning of weapons, in 1981, and stationing of forces over the horizon, in bases outside but close to the region. These surreptitious moves were meant to accommodate the Sauds fear at being seen openly working with the US. To further cover the US presence there, the Sauds backed both Iraq and the US as protectors at once: paying money and buying arms for Saddam while buying the AWACS, using it as a cover to increase US presence inside Saudi Arabia and building military bases, pre-positioning of arms for the use of US forces. By January of 1983, the US efforts to create a military presence were so successful and wide-ranging that the US reorganized its forces in the region upgrading them from a Joint Task Force (RDJTF) to a new regional command: the Central Command (5).
Iraqi Invasion of Iran, 1980-1982
Iraq occupied a thin buffer zone all along the borders and paused waiting for Iran to accept its conditions stipulating full control for Iraq over Shatt Al-Arab. The Iranian army was out of commission following the revolutionary purges of 1979-80 (7). Saddam assumed that Iran would have to concede and negotiate for peace. However, Iran refused to negotiate for a cease-fire; in response Iraq went on attack again and took Khoramshahar. Subsequently, Saddam said on October 31st that he has attained his objectives, will not try to penetrate any further into Iran, and will keep his buffer zone inside Iran until it negotiates with him. Indeed, Iraq settled into the buffer zone and surrounded but didn�t launch serious attempts to take over the other cities of Khuzistan (Abadan, Ahwaz and Dezful).
Had Iran accepted to cede Shatt Al-Arab or merely allowed a standstill or a de facto cease-fire to develop, Iraq would have emerged as the victor and the Iranian revolution would have been undermined, Britain would have regained dominance in the Gulf. Instead, Iran�s refusal to negotiate, stirring of trouble in the Gulf, and later counter attacks maintained a deadlock between Iran and Iraq in the Gulf. Saddam�s calculations misfired. In effect, the British had checked US advances but couldn�t regain their unchallenged dominance in the region.
In response, the US settled on a policy of prolonging the war, the so-called mutual-containment policy. In order to achieve its goal (dominance in the Gulf), the US needed to drain the Iranian revolution, breakdown Iraq and blackmail the sheikhdoms into accepting US protection. All of that required maintaining and prolonging the war (8).
Meanwhile, the Soviet Union cut Iraqi weapon supplies during 1980-82 while it made a show of courting Iran. However, the Iraqi army had already enough accumulated supplies and was able to get what it needed from East European sources, which were under direct Soviet control. So Russia was not serious in cutting off Iraqi supplies. What the Russians wanted was to help Saddam move away from his old pro-East image and paint himself as pro-West. This was meant to help lock Western presence out of the Gulf since Saddam now had begun receiving help from Europe and had the image of a dependable Western proxy (9).
The Iranian invasion of Iraq, 1982-1987
Iran tried to counter attack using the army but it was badly defeated in the spring of 1981. As a result, it switched emphasis to the Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guard) backed by the Basij (reserve forces) and introduced the human waves tactics in late 1981. Their counter-attacks succeeded in forcing Iraq to withdraw from Iran in June of 1982 and put Iraq on the defensive inside its own borders. With that, the regional balance of power leaned towards Iran.
The reformed Iranian army took over in mid-1983 pursuing a war of attrition by launching small attacks all over the front. Barzani helped Iran in its attacks on northern Iraq. Iran was successful in taking over Hajj Umran, while Barzani managed to penetrate all the way to the borders with Turkey and re-establish his bases there.
This tactic exhausted the Iraqi army and forced it to create a mobile reserve force, the Republican Guard, as a counter-measure. It seems that the US ordered a switch to the old human waves and the use of the Pasdaran and Basij. This was meant to dissipate the revolution�s energy and put it under control. So the human wave attacks came back in February of 1984 and with that a stalemate developed.
Meanwhile, the US resumed formal relations with Iraq and began supplying Iraq with intelligence about the Iranian military in 1982. In 1983, it launched a diplomatic and intelligence campaign called �Staunch� designed to restrict Iran�s arms supplies and diplomatic relation with other countries. All along, it had allowed its agents (Egypt, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina) to support Iraq and sell it weapons. Further, the US offered Iraq direct, non-military economic aid (10).
Internationally, this strategy was meant to show Iraq�s inability to protect the Gulf on its own, thereby justifying US direct interference in the region. Regionally, it maintained a tense standstill: Iran on top, attacking but incapable of victory; Iraq defending, in need for US agents help and hoping for US mediation. This plan allowed the US time to gain more of a foothold in the Gulf (without risking open occupation that might invite a Russian reaction). It also held the possibility of exhausting Iraq over time into submission to the US.
Endgames, 1986-1988
Some time in 1985, the US determined that the Iranian revolution was out of steam and the war was ripe for the endgame. The US began preparing to end the war in a way that will install it as the new guardian of the Gulf. They planned to end the war via a UN imposed cease-fire, which would require a US show-of-force in the region to impose it. In order to do that, its agent Iran had to be on the attack and have the upper hand when the cease-fire is imposed. Thereby necessitating both US political mediation to force Iran to accept the cease-fire and US military protection of the region from a present Iranian threat. To give the scheme further legitimacy, the US decided to force the lower Gulf States to invite it to enter the regional security arrangements. To that end, the US embarked on a campaign to scare the Gulf States and push them to hide in the US skirt.
It began building Iran as a credible threat to the Gulf. It helped Iran takeover Al-Faw in February of 1986 by keeping Iranian preparations for the attack a secret from Iraq. Al-Faw didn�t have a military value for Iran. It wasn�t used to launch further attacks but it demonstrated the weakness of the Iraqi position. It was a practical demonstration that Iran now had the upper-hand in the region serving the political goals of both Iran and the US. The US also allowed China (11) to supply Iran with significant quantities of weapons during 1986 (which continued until 1988) including airplanes.
The British responded in February of 1986 by using the Saudi oil minister Yamani and others to get OPEC to increase oil production. Over the first half of the year, oil prices went from $28 to $7 a barrel. Iran exports went from $16 billion in 1985 to $6 billion in 1986. Meanwhile, Saddam tried to regain his balance by attempting to take back Al-Faw and later to occupy an Iranian city (Mehran) but failed in both cases.
By the end of the summer, the US got Saudi Arabia to change its position on oil production and support Iran�s push in OPEC for an increase in oil price. Indeed from August and on throughout the rest of the year, Saudi Arabia changed its policy on oil production and helped Iran bring prices back to $18 a barrel by the end of the year. (In the process, Yamani was dismissed as oil minister in late October.)
Iran played an active role in the US endgame declaring 1986 the year of the �Final�Attack� and drumming up for a major attack in the winter of 1986-87. They also expanded the war in Gulf waters progressively attacking more ships in wider areas beginning in September of 1986. More significantly, their attacks involved ships belonging to other states beside Iraq (especially Saudi Arabia and Kuwait (12)). In January of 1987, Iran began night attacks on tankers especially Kuwait-bound tankers. These naval attacks were not simply a response to the increase in Iraqi attacks on Iranian ships, in fact they were an invitation for American interference and Iran knew that well. The US was already on the record that interference with �free navigation� of nonbelligerent ships in the Gulf would lead to a US response (US Deputy Secretary of State for Near East, 9/26/83).
The US exploited the tankers-war and sent its navy, with massive fanfare, to begin active military intervention in the Gulf under the pretext of protecting the security of international shipping in the Gulf. Other players on the international arena (Russia, France & UK) sent their warships to protect their own ships from attacks in the Gulf but they did it quietly and kept their naval ships most of the time outside the Gulf, in the Gulf of Oman, so as not to give the US naval intervention legitimacy.
Iran�s �Final Attack� began in late January. While billed as an attempt to takeover Basrah, it was merely meant to occupy the east shore of Shatt Al-Arab opposite to it or to cross Shatt- Al-Arab north of it. Thereby putting Basrah on the frontline of the battle. The attack failed by March of 1987. Nevertheless, the US government and media maintained that the attack was a success and that Basrah was under serious threat. In essence, the US was threatening the Gulf States (especially Kuwait) with an even higher level of tension: the possibility of Iran�s occupation of Basrah and thus Iraq�s collapse.
The most serious blow in the pressure campaign came in November of 1986. The US exposed its secrete contacts with and arms sales to Iran. The US not only leaked information that it was supplying Iran with weapons and intelligence (in a statement by US Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger), but also insisted after the leaks that it was willing to consider better relations with Iran under the right circumstances. That was a direct threat to the GCC that the US had more serious means to pressure them such as allowing Iran to gain the upper hand in the region. The use of the arms sales proceeds to finance the contra had the unintended side effect of turning the issue into a domestic scandal in Washington. All the same, the move had its calculated effects in the Gulf. It frightened the GCC states because it undermined their long held assumption that the US was not going to allow Iran to gain the upper hand over Iraq. It seems that the US calculated that with this threat in the air the GCC states will conclude that their only way out was to give the US what it wants directly lest it gets it through Iran and thus they would move to ask the US to intervene in the region. Indeed in December of 1986 the GCC states seemed to relent and begin to move down that road. Kuwait was delegated to provide the US with cover to legitimize and increase its military presence in the region. It asked the US and Russia (12-10-1986) to re-flag its tankers (13). The rest of the GCC states supported this American interference in the Gulf. In return for protection of the Kuwaiti tankers, the US got access to ports and airports in Saudi Arabia, Oman and Bahrain and limited access in Kuwait & UAE (even though the US actively blackmailed both for more access throughout 1987). That indicates the invitation of US interference in the Gulf was a GCC-wide plan.
Henceforth, the US used this tanker-escort excuse through 1987-88, with extensive Iranian help, to justify, assume and expand its role as the �guardian� of the Gulf. To begin with, the US took a public decision not to send any minesweepers to the Gulf, thus inviting Iran to mine (14) the first convoy�s route. A mine hit the first US-escorted tanker on July 24th. The US used that as a pretext to ask for bases for the helicopters used in clearing out the mines. Kuwait gave the US two barges to use as helicopter bases in Gulf waters north of Bahrain and authorized the US to place a third barge inside Kuwait�s territorial waters.
On July 31st Iran and Saudi Arabia arranged the killing during Haj in Mekkah raising tension and creating more of an excuse for US interference in the region. Meanwhile, Russia accused the US of escalating the conflict and said it will not escort its Kuwait-leased ships and will leave the Gulf if the US left. Both Russia and Europe campaigned for an international force or fleet to guarantee sea shipping in the Gulf.
Iran helped the US again by mining the approaches (sea-lanes) of the Gulf in the Gulf of Oman. This finally made the mines an international crisis and led France and Britain to change their stand from refusing to send minesweepers to the Gulf into sending them to the Gulf of Oman. The US �guardian� role had achieved enough international legitimacy by then that the only thing they could do was to join the US in the Gulf to try and foil its designs. The rest of Europe (Italy, Netherlands and Belgium) followed them. Thereby, lending the high US military profile further international legitimacy. However, the Europeans continued to evade US attempts to impose its military leadership on them as it requested in May.
Meanwhile, the US was preparing the legal framework to end the war. In July 20th it issued UN resolution 598 calling for an immediate cease-fire. It was meant to become the US tool to force an end of the war followed by American mediation to sort out the war fall out. Iran stalled on the UN-proposed cease-fire for the rest of the year but did not reject it.
In the fall, the US and Iran exchanged a chain of gradually escalating attacks (15), allowing the US to further expand its role in the Gulf. The US attacked Iranian navy ships and boats on September 21st and October 8th and destroyed two oilrigs on October 19th while Iran shot at US ships, made threatening moves at Saudi Arabia and hit Kuwait with Silkworm missiles (October 15th and 16th). Under this cover, the US Navy officially shifted its concentration from escorting re-flagged ships to patrolling the Gulf as a whole. By the end of 1987, escorting ships was merely a �symbolic� act involving one US navy ship per convoy while the rest of the navy divided the Gulf into sectors and patrolled each sector.
Throughout 1987, the US was consistently inflating the military capabilities of Iran and the success of its 1987 attack on Basrah and spreading fear of Iran�s positions in Al-Fao and the possibility it might takeover Basrah, thus precipitating the collapse of the Iraqi army. On the other hand, Gulf States were visibly and publicly not buying that story and could see that the US was escalating things and trying to legitimize a long-term presence in the Gulf, which indicates careful British direction. So while blackmail failed to win the US facilities in Kuwait or UAE, the US has managed to claim control over the waters of the Gulf by the end of the year.
In early 1988, US took steps towards the imposition of cease-fire. It sent Saudi Arabia (represented by Saud Al-Faisal) to try to bribe Russia into allowing the US more flexibility in the use of the UN as a vehicle for US-imposed cease-fire.
All along, the British had in store a counter-endgame to foil the US plan. In July of 1986, Iraq went into full mobilization, doubling the size of its army and building the Republican Guard as an offensive force. After the failure of the Iranian attack in the winter of 1987, Iraq began preparing its own final-attack.
In late 1987 and early 1988, Iraq began a push to inflict massive defeat on Iran and end the war on top. It attacked Iranian oil shipping all over the Gulf. On February 29th, Iraq began a sustained rocket attack on the major Iranian cities that continued until April 20th. Iran couldn�t respond in kind or stop the attacks. Instead, it launched a series of successful attacks in Northern Iraq in mid-March with the help of KDP and PUK and achieved significant victories thus regaining the upper-hand in the war. Rather than spread its forces up and down the border, Iraq bombed the Kurdish allies of Iran in Halabjah with chemical weapons to contain their attack. Iran managed, with American help, to put Iraq on the defensive and subject it to international pressure by turning the spotlight on Iraq�s use of chemical weapons against the Kurds, thereby gaining even more ascendancy over Iraq with American support.
Iraq regained the upper hand in the battle by evicting Iran from Al-Faw. It attacked Al-Faw at the dawn of April 17th and completely evicted Iran from the peninsula in the afternoon of April 18th. From the morning of April 18th and until sundown, the US launched a major attack on Iranian navy in the Gulf (16). The American attack offered the Iranian government a cover for its severe defeat in Al-Faw. The Iranian government accepted the offer and sent its navy out to the Gulf to be slaughtered and get it that cover. As a result, the Iranian government managed to turn the defeat in Al-Faw from a monumental failure and a loss of the only tangible result of years of war into another piece of evidence to show the people that they were fighting the US, not just Iraq, and thus couldn�t hope to win and had to sue for peace.
From there on, it was clear that Iran was defeated. Between May and August, the Iraqi army executed four more attacks designed to crush the Iranian armed forces and show off its prowess without falling in the trap of occupying Khuzistan again (17).
The US moved for an exist strategy to salvage whatever gains it can from the Iran-Iraq war. In April 29th the US declared that it will protect any ship that requests protection from (Iranian) attack outside the war exclusion zones in the Gulf, thus formally declaring protection over the Gulf.
The final act in the war was designed and executed to reinforce this American theme. Iran explicitly expressed its wish to end the war, on July 2nd Rafsanjani spoke of the possibility of a �nonmilitary� end for the war. The US explicitly made the point that it�s going to force Iran to end the war. On July 3rd, the US deliberately shot down an Iranian airliner on a scheduled flight to Dubai. On July 18th, Iran announced that it will abide by the UN cease-fire (Resolution 598) using as an excuse the war�s �unprecedented dimensions� and the �engulfing� of the lives of �innocent civilians,� (we can�t stand to the US). In these and other moves, the US tried to portray the Iraqi victories over Iran that followed as if it were the US, not Iraq, that was facing down and crushing Iran.
Iraq tried to force Iran into a full peace treaty to settle their disputes, including border demarcation, on its on terms. It launched two attacks deep inside Iran on the 20th of July, and held back from accepting the cease-fire making instead a series of extra demands. The underlying Iraqi goal was to declare in practical terms its dominance over the Gulf. In response, the US painted Iraq�s demands as irresponsible, used UN machinery including the Secretary General, de Cuellar, to force Iraq to accept a mere cease-fire with Iran that didn�t address any of the disputes between them, which was in accordance with Iran and US wishes. It allowed the US to retain these disputes open for use against Iraq at a later time. However, the US had very little to show for the sustained effort to interfere in the Gulf for the previous 8 years. All it got was legitimacy for an expanded presence for its navy and a disputed claim to a role for this navy as a guarantor of the safety of shipping in the Gulf.
The Aftermath of the War, 1988-90
In late August, the Iraqi army launched a mobbing operation against the Kurds. The Barzani group fled to Turkey and complained of chemical gas attacks against them. The US ceased on it and launched a pressure campaign (18) on Iraq. This campaign seems to have been meant to force Iraq to accept the Geneva Convention�s indefinite ban on the use of chemical weapons. Iraq was resisting the convention insisting that it will not renounce chemical weapons unless Israel renounced nuclear weapons. That was an echo of the Indian objections against the convention. Both were part of the British designs to subvert the US goal of establishing complete ban on chemical weapons to retain its qualitative edge in weapons of mass destruction worldwide. In the end, Iraq acquiesced and accepted the convention in May of 1989. But the fact that the US had to go through all these contortions to force Iraq to fall in line on the Chemical Weapons treaty was indication of the limited the levers available to the US to force Iraq to fall in line and the diminished power of the US in the Gulf.
With Iraq dominating the Gulf, Saddam moved to expand his influence and follow through on the British agenda across the Middle East. He began marketing himself in the region as the strongman of the Middle East. He established the Arab Cooperation Council (ACC) with Jordan, Egypt and Yemen and tried to use it as a platform to assert his leadership in the region and to isolate Syria.
The most striking example of this effort was Saddam�s campaign against Syria in Lebanon. He backed Michel Aoun (19), his breakaway government and the Maronites in their struggle against Syria and the American plans for Lebanon.
Meanwhile, the British applied pressure on the US to reduce its naval presence in the Gulf. In February of 1990, the ACC called for the removal of US navy from the Gulf. Qatar and Iraq called for the American fleet withdrawal from the Gulf. Russia helped by withdrawing some ships from the Gulf and saying that it was willing to withdraw completely from the Gulf should the US commit itself to do the same. The US refused to withdraw saying that the fleet was there not just because of a recent invitation but also a long-standing policy of maintaining American naval presence in the Gulf since 1949. The US was reduced to defending the single concrete gain it got out of the Iran-Iraq war with a pre-war (1980) argument.
The British, with Saddam, free from the restraint of the war with Iran and a large army, were on the ascendancy in the region. The US was barely able to restrain them in the Gulf or in Lebanon. They saw no reason to fear an American trap. They had the initiative in the Gulf and were trying to use their success there as a basis to protect their interests in the rest of the Middle East.
Their vehicle to achieve that was to pump up Saddam�s image and to create out of him a new �Abdul-Nasser,� the modern savior of the Arabs. In the fall of 1989, the UK began a chain of concerted moves to pump up Saddam�s international image as a regional center of power that can�t be ignored (20).
Meanwhile, Saddam also took action of his own to project himself as the dominant regional power. In April of 1990, he threatened to burn half of Israel. Israel responded with a similar threat. In May, Iraq hosted the Arab Summit. Saddam�s ambition for Arab leadership was on display. The Summit was an embarrassment for US agents; Syria didn�t attend while Yemen accused Saudi Arabia of trying to subvert the planned union between North and South Yemen.
Saddam also began to prepare the grounds for a military act to show-case his military �might.� He signed non-aggression treaties with Saudi Arabia in April of 1989 and Bahrain, trying thereby to appease the Americans by undertaking to stay away from their declared vital interests in the region, that is: control over Saudi Arabia.
All along since the Americans lost their bet on the Iran-Iraq war, the Bush administration was laying a trap: to leave as wide a space for Saddam to charge all over the Middle East until he tried some sort of a military show-off that can be used to justify direct American interference in the Gulf again. What the British missed in their calculation was the fact that with the Soviet Union practically out of the way as a serious competitor, the US had a much wider room for direct interference in the Gulf. "The end of the Cold War eliminated a major strategic consideration from our calculus. We no longer have to fear Soviet efforts to gain a foothold in the Persian Gulf by taking advantage of our support for one of these states to build relations with the other." (US National Security Advisor, Anthony Lake, 1994)
To lure Saddam into the trap, the US sent feelers to Iraq indicating that it wouldn�t object to Iraqi efforts to raise oil prices. This message was given to Saddam in a report he commissioned from a CIA-front: the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In an interview with Arab Oil and Gas Journal, (3/01/1990), Henry Schuler, the Center's energy security program director, said: "The oil exporters are leaving money on the table,� Arab oil producers could get up to $24-$25 per barrel... This could be achieved by a change of policy in one or more of the key exporting Gulf States, � one with the power to force all the states of the Gulf to follow suit." This same message was also given to Saddam in a New York meeting between a former US ambassador and one of Saddam's closest associates and top ministers in January of 1990 (The Observer, 10/21/1990). A series of subsequent American maneuvers (21) deceived Saddam (and his British masters) into believing that the US was willing to allow Iraq to get it the oil price raise it wanted. Such American behavior was believable to the British and Saddam because the Americans had already demonstrated in Lebanon that they would try to contain Saddam�s influence in the Middle East instead of taking him head-on. When executives at Shell and BP gave clear warnings that Saddam was going to invade Kuwait to take the Rumaila oilfields and offshore islands, Sadoun Hammadi, then Iraq's vice Prime Minister, responded by saying "The US will not do anything." Even after Saddam moved into Kuwait and the trap door was slammed shut on him, he was still operating under that assumption. On August 6th, Saddam told Joseph Wilson, the American charge de affairs in Baghdad: "You did this (oil market unrest due to the crisis in the Gulf). We accepted $25 per barrel."
This was an ingenious trap. Iraq came out of the war with a devastated economy and messed up finances (22). It needed to rebuild but didn�t have the resources to do it. Saddam was in a bind. He had always maintained control by giving the people enough to eat, giving his cronies and security forces enough to swim in filthy wealth and cutting the head of anybody who raised his head. Without resources he couldn�t maintain this regime. Most pressingly, he didn�t have the resource to maintain his army under arms, nor did he have the resources to demobilize it. The soldiers had no civilian jobs to go back to. Saddam already showed signs of an obsession with the stability of the army. In June of 1989, he killed his defense Minister Adnan Khairallah because he thought he had too much influence. In January of 1990, he executed General Madhloum Al-Obeidi and a group of tribal officers because of doubts about their loyalties arising from clashes between his henchmen and their tribe over land ownership.
So, Saddam had to get money and get it fast. Threatening Kuwait had the potential for multi-rewards. It enabled him to demand debt cancellation from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, to raise oil prices and thus increase his financial resources, to officially enthrone Iraq as the dominant power in the Gulf and to get the necessary boost to claim mantle as the protector of Arab rights and champion of the poor against the filthy rich. As far as the British were concerned, attacking Kuwait (23) was the kind of minor or regional clash they were looking for to show-case Saddam in his role as the new-Nasser.
Pursuing that goal, Saddam picked a fight with Kuwait over its oil-pricing policies. He calculated that he would occupy Kuwait, let the Sabahs flee and then dictate to them and the rest of the GCC States his terms for withdrawal and pull out as the unchallenged hero of the Arabs. To be on the safe side, he tried to feel out the US response to such an act. The US kept reassuring him that it would not interfere (21). Still, Saddam tried to seize the initiative by attacking Kuwait at what he thought was an unexpected time (24).
Before the Iraqi army entered Kuwait, the Sabah family fled to Saudi Arabia as expected. The British agents began mediating between the two sides to ensure Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait. The British have had a similar, though much smaller, incident in 1986 when the governor of Sharjah was deposed by his brother in a feud between the governors of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. So the British had a well-rehearsed routine to settle this kind of internal squabbles.
In summary, the US moved to foil British attempts (25) to pull off their plan on both regional and international fronts. Internationally, the US declared that it refuses any concessions in return for Saddam withdrawal and acted to foil Russian�s and others attempts at mediation. Regionally, they used Mubarak and Fahd to foil attempts to use the Arab League as a cover for British mediation efforts. Fahd was also assigned the task of making sure the Sabahs, who fled to Saudi Arabia, stay put in there under Saudi control.
Once all other initiatives were thwarted, the US moved on its own to seize the initiative. They sent the American Defnse Secretary, Richard Cheney, to force the Sauds to allow the US to introduce American forces to the Arabian Peninsula. With help from Mubarak and Fahad, after he fill in line with his American masters� marching orders, the Americans managed to force a war atmosphere on the region and the world.
Once the US slammed the trap door shut on Saddam, Saddam had to stay in Kuwait and pursue damage control. Withdrawing in return for token concessions or fighting and withdrawing defeated from Kuwait were better options for him than withdrawing under American threats. The intact forces of an undefeated Iraq could have given the US even more of a reason to occupy the region. With Saddam beaten and Iraq destroyed, US excuse for occupation is weakened. On the other hand, withdrawal without any rewards would have put Saddam in an untenable situation internally and created the possibility of trouble against Saddam inside a large army with a lot of ambitious officers seeing a chance to takeover in an atmosphere of disorganization and anger. So he calculated that whether he gets concessions in return for withdrawal or gets his army beaten blind and forced to withdraw, he was better off than bowing to American warnings rightaway.
The British tried to undermine US war plans in the Gulf. They brought down the government of Siad Berry and replaced it with chaos, thus denying the US the use of their bases in Somalia. These bases would have been ideal to pursuing the war in the Gulf and occupy of the Gulf after the war. Meanwhile, they joined the US military campaign on Iraq in their traditional style of playing both sides of the game to make sure that they will get something no matter who ends on top.
The Iraqi military planned for a traditional gradual air campaign (Ritter, 1999) similar to the one attack on Yugoslavia in March-May of 1999. That would have allowed them to incur enough damage and then withdraw allowing Saddam to claim that he has fought an honorable battle but had to withdraw because he was over powered fighting alone for the Arabs against everybody else. Such a routine would have allowed Saddam to retain his internal and some of his external posture. It would also have damaged the army enough to keep it under control but not so much to retain as an effective tool to control the population. That�s why he put the expendable regular and popular army in Kuwait and on the borders while retaining the Republican Guard, his main control tool, in the back. Instead, Americans hit Iraq with a new kind of war: an all out attack that destroyed the whole country.
Rearranging the Gulf
Once the Iraqi army collapsed at the end of February, the US declared victory and held back from invading Iraq. The reasons for that were both tactical and strategic. On a tactical level, the US had never had a solid base of agents in Iraq since the collapse of the first Ba�ath government in 1963. Whatever foothold they had left was eradicated by Ahemd Hassan Al-Baker and Saddam in the early 70s. Even if they could remove Saddam, they didn�t have a ready replacement. The US couldn�t hope to keep Iraq under direct occupation while it developed a new political class up to its own specifications. It would have been an over-reach by the US that smacked too much of a colonial land grab and created open international resistance to its policies as it was launching its new world-order. So, with Saddam out of the picture, the US would have no excuses to keep Iraq and the Gulf under occupation and Iraq would fall back into British hands.
On a strategic level, the strategic goal of the US in the Gulf is to gain regional and international submission to its role as the region�s acknowledged guardian. Saddam�s continued presence reinforced that goal.
The US moved in two directions to justify a permanent political and military role for the US in the region. It forced all the GCC states to sign 10 years protection treaties (26) under the pretext of protecting them from the ever present threat of Saddam. Under these treaties, the US secured bases in all GCC states except UAE where it only has access to naval and air facilities.
On the other hand, it maneuvered to create reasons for ongoing interference in the region. As the war was ending, the US instigated a Kurdish rebellion in the north promising the Kurdish nationalists chieftains back up if they rose against Saddam. At the same time, it also instigated a Shia rebellion in the south through Iran. It reneged on its promises to support the rebels (27) and allowed Saddam to slaughter them. When it came to their rescue, it was too late, by design. The US used this slaughter as an excuse to establish two exclusion zones in the north and south of Iraq under the pretext of protecting minorities. In the process, the US used a mixture of vague UN resolutions on the protection of �human right� and �minorities� in Iraq and unilateral actions to appoint itself guardian of minorities in Iraq and create an ongoing reason for US interference in Iraq and the region. This maneuver had the added advantages of:
Most importantly, on the short-term, it precluded any British attempts to replace Saddam in the aftermath of the war. With the country in Civil war, the British couldn�t afford to change Saddam since that could have been used to bring down the whole State of Iraq, create chaos and force the division of Iraq.
Giving the US a convenient foothold in the Kurdish North where it can work directly inside Iraq. Over the last 10 years, this project has been mostly a failure (27).
Being a step in the process of eroding the central state in Iraq.
The US then moved to create further reasons for ongoing interference in the region. As part of the cease-fire agreement with Iraq, it forced in an inspection regime purportedly to destroy Iraq�s strategic weapons. The US used this inspection regime over the next seven years, 1991-1998, to impose itself as the regional guarantor of �security� and �stability�.
Finally, to maintain this stranglehold on the region, the US designed a policy in Iraq to erode the power and control of the central government of Saddam. This policy is built around denying Saddam any access to cash, keeping the Iraqi government off-balance with continuous regional and international pressure, and maintaining the exclusion zones. Given Saddam�s approach to imposing his control, this combination undermines and over time eats away at his authority. The US uses the weakened condition of the central government to threaten Europe, Russia and the Gulf states with the prospect that should either the US bring down Saddam, Iraq will collapse as a state and chaos will rein in the region justifying even higher levels of US interference in the region. On the other hand, Saddam�s British masters don�t dare to replace him for the same reasons!
In essence, the US reworked its �Dual Containment� Gulf policy after the second Gulf war. In the first Gulf war it was the US working to keep Iraq and Iran fighting each other but unable to finish off the war. Now, it is the US claiming the right to directly control the Gulf under the pretext that both Iran and Iraq are a danger to the �security� of the Gulf, the Western interests in the Gulf and to the West itself, that no native power can do that, and that the only way to do it is for the US to do it itself. In short, the US has effectively claimed the right to maintain a permanent military and political presence in the region as the only way to guarantee Gulf security, �vital� Western oil supply and Western security.
Oil-for-Food
In 1994, the US proposed the oil-for-food program. Iraq initially rejected it, then in 1996 Iraq relented and the UN approved the program. The US created the program as a device to protect the centerpiece of US policy in the Gulf: sanctions on Iraq. The continuation of the blanket sanction on Iraq was giving Iraq, British agents in the Middle East and more importantly Europe and Russia a justification to undermine the sanction and a cover to erode them gradually. To take the humanitarian argument from their hands, the US proposed this program to create the image that the humanitarian crisis was under control and any further suffering was Saddam�s responsibility. However they made sure that this image-management device was implemented in a way that furthers the basic US Iraq-policy goal: to progressively erode the authority of the central government in Iraq. It does that by: Using the combination of the sanctions and the oil-for-food regime to deny the Iraqi government any access to cash.
UN monitoring of the program restricts the way the Iraqi government can use the goods provided under the program. It denies the Iraqi government the possibility of using the goods to raise cash or to exercise much control.
The US developed a tactic where they put holds on applications to buy certain goods (e.g. 486 computers) and remove the holds only after establishing a special monitoring regime to monitor the use of these goods and with them whole sectors of the economy. This is being used as a lever to extend UN monitoring beyond the distribution of imported goods.
The gradual increase of the amount of oil sales authorized by the program (from $2 billion to $3 billion to $6.5 billion to no cap at all) and the expansion of the scope of the program to include the infrastructure and the oil industry. That is meant to turn the oil-for-food into a permanent program covering all the finances of Iraq.
The program is used to reinforce the northern exclusion zone and to further separate it from Iraq with a special UN authority to administer it under the oil-for-food program. The fact that the UN puts back some of its share in the oil-for-food money into the Kurdish area (as infrastructure projects) means preferential treatment for the Kurdish areas and creates further nationalist tensions.
By 1998, the US had dragged the inspection regime for as long as it could, but it became increasingly untenable especially after Israel and Britain succeeded in tainting the inspectors and inspection regime with the charge of espionage. To protect the sanctions regime, in mid-1998 the US began positioning itself to separate the inspections completely from the sanctions (an official statement in Washington Post, 8/7/98). In December of 1998, the US attacked Iraq and thus dismantled the inspection (UNSCOM) mission but still retained the sanctions.
The US, then, tried to transform the sanctions on Iraq into a permanent UN mandate in Iraq. This was given various titles �smart sanctions,� �easing the sanctions,� �limiting the sanctions to the regime.� Under this new mandate, they wanted the UN (US) to permanently monitor the industry, control the finances (maintain the escrow account), oversee exports/imports, and have the right to veto any imports it doesn�t like.
Since the Bush administration assumption of power, the US has held the threat of attacking Iraq as a sword at the necks of Europe and Russia. Should the US attack and in the process remove Saddam and his regime, the state will collapse and create an opportunity for the US to impose direct control on the region (see below). Right now, however, this threat is a bluff. The US doesn�t have a dependable base of agents in Iraq. Without a supportive international (Kafir) and regional (Arab) public opinion, it would find it very hard to create a new-order to enshrine and perpetuate US control in the Gulf.
The US used this bluff to push for the �smart sanctions,� but the plan still failed. In May 2002, the US had instead to settle for a reworking of the sanctions regime that maintains the status quo but gives it a more favorable public image. On the other hand, it managed to use this bluff to revive the inspection regime again. It bluffed Europe and Russia into believing that that was the only way to prevent the US from using the platform of the �war on terrorism� as a pretext to attack Iraq.
Gulf Future
The current set-up continues to weaken the central government of Iraq by denying Saddam access to the cash he needs to maintain and control his state machinery. In parallel, the US is keeping the Kurdish area separate from Iraq and working to create antagonism and fear between it and the rest of Iraq via preferential treatment of the Kurdish north over the rest of Iraq. These steps are designed to push the central government to a point where it will either collapse or lose the ability to control the country, shrink to Baghdad and its environs and leave a vacuum everywhere else.
The collapse of Iraq as a nation-state will force the Gulf States to ask the US to come to the rescue and help to reconstruct Iraq. The US wants to use that as an opportunity to establish a NATO-like organization in the Gulf (it may include Iran on an auxiliary basis) with a mandate to maintain security in the Gulf as an internationally sensitive nerve center. The bottom line will be a �collective security� agreement in the Gulf under which the US will be an integral part of the political and security structure of the region on a permanent basis and will continue to occupy the region (28) without appearing to occupy it.
The British have been attempting to counter this American onslaught by trying to erode the sanctions regime until that forces the US to settle for a deal removing the sanctions formally in the UN. They tried this tactic with success in Libya during the same time frame. They are using two avenues to achieve that:
Iraq creating and expanding bilateral relations with British agents in the region and British allies internationally.
Resorting to the traditional British tactic of giving others a stack in their colonies in order to use them for their own ends. Iraq and the British have been giving France and Russia a stack in the erosion of the sanctions on Iraq and using that to gain their lobbying internationally and in the UN for the erosion of the sanctions.
Notes
1) American Attempts to Gain a Foothold in the Gulf
The US has been trying to get a foothold in the Arabian Peninsula since it started struggling with the British for control over the Middle East. Their first success came in Saudi Arabia when Saud took over from his father Abdul-Aziz in 1953. However, Faisal removed Saud and took Saudi Arabia back to the British camp in 1962. The US didn�t regain influence in Saudi Arabia until 1975 when they managed to assassinate Faisal, allowing Fahd to become the effective ruler.
The US also managed to gain another foothold in Yemen in 1962 when Abdullah Sallal replaced the Imam. But again they lost it under Saudi (British) pressure with Abdul-Nasser�s withdrawal from Yemen in 1967.
They also attempted to gain influence when they backed the Ibadi rebellion of 1954 in Oman (through Abdul-Nasser and Saudi Arabia) and when they bought Ahmed Al-Khatieb�s group in Kuwait for some time in the 50s/60s. Both cases didn�t amount to much in the end.
2) US Foreign Policy on Oil
The US didn�t depend on Gulf oil supplies in the late 60s and still doesn�t have to depend on them today. It has guaranteed access to oil supplies from Latin America and Canada that meet most of its needs. However, control over the Gulf and its oil supplies is a strategic goal for the US because it allows the US to:
Assert/exercise the role of the world�s (specially the West�s) leaders.
Control oil prices, which are important for US economic dominance in the world. This doesn�t always mean keeping the prices low. It means maintaining the price where the US economy and foreign policy would want it. The Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia, is the only place in the world where it can do that. It does not only have a big chunk of oil production, it has most of the excess production capacity necessary to lower prices at will. Under control of US agents, Saudi Arabia has shown that in practice by keeping oil prices low for most of the 90s and allowing it to rise only when the US wanted that in late 1999.
3) The wrangling Between Iran and Saudi Arabia, 1975-1977
When Iran threatened Bahrain; Saudi Arabia supported Bahrain by building an air base. Qatar, under Khalifah bin Hamad (1972-95), was mostly on the Saudi side. In the UAE, the Sauds allied themselves with Abu Dhabi while the Shah supported Dubai. In June of 1977, Saudi Arabia occupied Gharoa and Umm al-Maradim in a conflict over the Neutral Zone with Kuwait. Oman allied itself with Iran against Saudi Arabia. In December of 1977, it agreed with Iran to patrol the strait of Hurmuz jointly. The Shah supported North Yemen against Saudi Arabia. One result of that was Iranian help in building a new Yemeni military base near Mokha, 1977.
4) The Struggle between Iraq & Iran, 1969-1975
In an attempt to grab Iraq and secure control over it in the face of American competition, the British brought the Ba�ath party to power in July of 1968. Upon assuming power, Ba�ath tried to control the Kurds by playing Barzani against Talibani (6). They appointed ministers in the cabinet representing both sides and leaned towards the much weaker Talibani side. Barzani responded by launching attacks around Kirkuk in December of 1968 and restarting the rebellion again. Iran began supporting Barazani in mid 1968. The Shah was preparing to assume his British-mandated position as the guardian of the Gulf following the British withdrawal in 1971. Supporting Barzani was one more way to consolidate his position. To further make the point, the Shah abrogated the border treaty giving Iraq control over Shatt Al-Arab in the spring of 1969. He then instigated an international incident in which the Ba�ath had to back off from confrontation with Iran and to de facto accept the treaty abrogation.
Ba�ath�s hold on power was still weak. To buy time, they negotiated secretly with Barzani in the second half of 1969. In March of 1970, they struck an agreement with Barzani on an autonomy plan and in the process allowed him to dissolve the Talibani/Ahmed group. Iran acquiesced since it had already managed to make clear that it was in charge of the Gulf.
During the cease-fire, Barzani kept control over most of the Kurdish area while the Ba�ath maneuvered to weaken him. They tried to assassinate him twice but failed. Iran continued to support Barzani to keep him viable for later use.
This maneuvering culminated in 1973 with Iraq waging a concerted effort to convince Iran to settle the Kurdish issue and pressuring Barzani to surrender. As a part of this effort they:
Brought Talibani back into government.
In March of 1973, Ba�ath sent troops into northern Kuwait. They occupied a Kuwaiti border post to show that they can hurt Iran�s prestige as the guardian of regional security.
They threatened Barzani with a military build up and military moves in the North, while luring him with offers of political participation in the `ruling� National Front.
They bought off his allies in Iraqi Communist in July absorbing them into the National Front.
However, after Nazim Kzar�s coup attempt in July, the Ba�athist got scared and switched tactics to appeasement of Iran, restoring relations with Iran in October. They also climbed down from their intransigence in negotiations with Kuwait over the borders. (Even though they still managed to get some side benefits: they extracted an agreement from Kuwait, in return for their withdrawal, limiting Kuwait to civil authority only over the islands of Warbah & Bubyan. Later, Iraq was given the right to conduct military patrols there.) Further, the regime tried to improve its international image to gain more space for maneuvering. For example, Saddam gave an interview to the New York Times less than two weeks after the coup pleading for good relations with the US and Britain and distancing the regime form attempts to harm �Western� interests. Meanwhile, Barzani resisted the military moves in the North and pleaded with/offered his services to the US & Israel publicly.
As the Ba�athist regained their footing, they decided to finish off Barazani. They launched an all-out attack on the areas under his control in Northern Iraq in early 1974. The campaign featured help from another British agent: India. More than 100 Indian pilots were flying missions against the Kurds.
The campaign weakened but didn�t destroy Barzani�s forces. The Shah�s support kept Barzani going but was too little, too late, designed to keep him going but never allow him to stand on his own feet or defeat Iraq. He gave Barzani heavy weapons thus disrupting his guerilla tactics and lured him to defend large cities and keep stationary positions. All of that made Barzani completely dependent on the Shah's continued support.
So, when the Algiers declaration/agreement (March of 1975) between Iran-Iraq came, it destroyed his forces. The Shah closed the borders, cut the financial and arms assistance that Barzani came to depend on (during the previous 3 years), disarmed his fighters when they crossed to Iran and finally absorbed the refugees and surrendered those Iraq wanted (e.g. Communists) back to it.
The international background of the struggle:-
To further insulate the region from direct interference by the great powers, the British created an US-Soviet balance in the region. The Ba�ath leaned heavily towards the Eastern bloc creating economic and military links with several states in the Soviet camp. For example, they signed a friendship treaty with USSR in April of 1972 and an arms treaty in 1974. Iran claimed that to be a serious threat, called for US help and increased support for Barazani. However, Iran publicly opposed any American presence in the Gulf. With Iraq purportedly on the Soviet side, the US couldn�t interfere in the Gulf since that would have opened the way for counter Russian interference. This was a classic British tactic of balancing their agents by using the US vs. Russia image. This is a tried and true British tactic used before between India and Pakistan in the 60s and Saudi Arabia and South Yemen in the late 60s and 70s.
In response, the US acted as if it accepted Iran�s argument to leave Gulf control to Iran. They gave the Shah as much arms and loans to buy them as he wanted increasing their economic influence and the number of American �advisors� needed to run and train the Iranian army to use the new arms to 24,000 by the late 70s. Thus gaining influence inside Iran and laying the ground for the �revolution� in 1979.
As a part of this process, the US went along with the Shah in his support of the Kurdish rebellion in Iraq. The first documented US aid for Barzani came only in May of 1972 (Pike House committee hearings, Village Voice, Feb. 1976). The Shah asked the US to give aid to the Barzani and, in the process, act as a guarantor for his ongoing agreements with Barzani. The Kurds didn�t trust the Shah because he had cut them off before in late 1963 when the British came back to power in Iraq. However, US support for the Kurds was symbolic ($16 million in arms and cash supplied through the Shah) compared to that of the Shah. In comparison, the Shah went as far as sending Iranian soldiers into Iraq to support the Kurds when they came under pressure (12/1974) and in the same month used US Hawk missiles to shoot down two Iraqi planes.
The Shah was pressuring Saddam to accept his dominance in the Gulf. He wanted to use the US as an international cover for his activities. The US didn't mind because, in addition to the aforementioned long term goal, the operation gave the US an image of influence in the Gulf and kept Iraq busy away from Syria.
The war endgame was an all-British play. Mediations to end the war came through Algeria, Sadat, Turkey, Zayed of UAE, and Hussein of Jordan. King Faisal of Saudi Arabia also backed mediation efforts. All of whom are British except for Sadat who was paid $1 billion by Iraq for his efforts and was in need to get out of isolation and prepare for peace with Israel. In result, the Algiers agreement fit within the British foreign policyin the region by calling for a Persian Gulf free of all external interference. In production, the agreement was an All-British deal (Iran/Iraq/Algeria).
On the other hand, the international situation didn�t allow the US to scuttle the Algeirs agreement. Any open US support for the Kurds would have brought a US vs. Russia image to the Gulf. With the oil market off balance after the 1973 crisis, the US would have looked completely irresponsible trying to destabilize the Gulf/oil market. �The Shah played Ford for double-crosser on Kurds as he played Nixon for sucker on oil.� (William Saffire NYT 2/5/1976).
5) On the Organization of the American Army
The American army divides the world into five regional commands. Each of them controls all forces in its assigned region. These regional commands are:
The Atlantic Command
The Pacific Command
The Southern Command
The European Command
The Central Command: this was the last command to be organized. It covers US occupation forces in most of the Muslim world.
A �task force� is a temporary working-group assigned to deal with a specific task within the domain of a regional command. A �joint task force� is a larger group including forces from various armed services assigned to deal with a specific temporary task.
6) Kurdish politics in Iraq
The two main political players within Iraqi Kurdistan, Jalal Talibani and Masoud Barzani, are freelancers. Both of them represent tribal/regional interests in the north vs. southeast of the Kurdish populated areas of Iraq. They maneuver to maintain their existence/interests. Iran-Iraq-Turkey keep them off balance (fighting each other) to make sure that a Kurdish entity can�t be established inside Iraq.
Both Mustafa Barzani and Talibani were created by the British, in the 40s and 50s, during their direct occupation of Iraq. For a short while, Talibani worked under US influence when he established the PUK in Syria in 1976, before moving back to Iran in 1978. In the early 1980s, he again worked with the US through both Syria and Iran against Iraq. Barzani seems to have had hopes in the US in the mid-70s, he has always worked under the tutelage of Iran. Masoud Barzani inherited his father�s relationship with Iran and kept it even when Iran switched to the US. Beginning in 1983 and henceforth, he cooperated with Iran in its attacks on Northern Iraq. In the same year, Talibani switched to Iraq making a deal with Saddam to fight as an independent force. However he couldn�t establish himself as a viable force in competition with the local agents of Iraq (the Aghas). He was burned out in his Sulymaniyah power-base and he went back to Iran 1985 but he was weak and ineffectual in the war.
In the summer of 1984, Barzani allowed the US-sponsored (through Syria) PKK to use his bases on Turkish borders as a launching pad to attack Turkey. In response, the Turkish army made an agreement with Iraq allowing it to cross to the Iraqi side of the borders to keep the PKK under control. This deal allowed Iraq to reduce Barzani�s influence in north Iraq and keep him under check until late in 1987.
After the first Gulf war, Saddam eradicated their presence inside Iraq, pushing Talibani and his followers to Iran and Barzani and his followers to Turkey. After the second Gulf war Talibani kept working with Iran while Masoud Barzani switched to the British (Saddam/Turkey) side.
7) The Iraqi Army vs. the Iranian Army
At the Iraqi army at the start of the war was also quite incompetent. This fact was on display in the way it carried out the attack on Iran. It conducted the attack in a halting/uncertain style (a step, a pause, and a step) displaying an army that didn�t real know how to conduct a war. But it was at least a functioning army.
8) US Policy on the Iran-Iraq War
To prolong the war, the US set out to make sure that neither side was in a position to defeat the other decisively. At the beginning of the war, Iran was weaker militarily. The US moved to support Iran with arms supplies via Israel, condemnation of Iraq�s attack, and generally positioning itself, following the hostage release in early 1981, to be able to open relations with Iran should the pressure increase on Iran in the war. Once the military balance changed, and Iran succeeded in its counter attack and invaded Iraq, the US switched gear to support Iraq and keep it floating in the war. That was meant to make sure that it would not collapse internally.
9) US-Soviet Cooperation in the Gulf
The US and the Soviet Union turned into allies since the d�tente in 1962. However, Russia was not an agent to the US. The US takeover of Iran in 1979 was in violation to a long-standing understanding, since the Soviet Union pulled out of Iran in 1946, to keep Iran as a buffer zone. Iran�s Islamic tone and the threat it posed to the stability of the Soviet Empire in Central Asia were further aggravation. The attempt to establish direct US presence in the Gulf was thus completely unacceptable to the Russians and they consistently worked to block it. The Russian invasion of Afghanistan might have been part of these moves meant to strengthen Russia�s hand in response to this succession of threatening American moves.
10) Iraqi Procurements from the US, 1980-90
Between 1980-90, US policy banned exports of arms and ammunition to Iraq except for those items intended for "presidential security." During that period, Iraq bought US arms and ammunitions in 15 deals costing a total of $4.9 million. Most of the deals were in 1988-89. Most of the money was spent buying communications equipment. There were 4 more deals costing $43.5 million that were not delivered because the licenses to export were revoked in August of 1990.
In the same period, US policy was to sell dual use items (civilian products that can also be used by the military) but only after Commerce Department review and license. Between 1985-90, Iraq bought dual use items worth less than $500 million including aircraft and helicopters worth $308 million. The rest of the money went mostly for computers, electronics and precision machine tools. The helicopters were later converted for military use using weaponization kits bought from Western European companies. (Source: GAO/NSIAD-94-98 Iraq)
11) Sino-American Relations
China is not a real, full-blown international player. It is a regional power with interests all over East Asia but no direct interests in the Middle East. On the other hand, the US was and still is the main trading partner of China. US policy in that period was to oppose any arms sales to Iran. Had the US wanted to stop those sales (and they were known), it would have had a huge array of levers to pull to stop China from pursuing this trade. China would then lose much more than any gains it got from arms sales to Iran.
12) The Iranian Threat to Naval Shipping in the Gulf
Kuwait claimed the threat of disruption to its shipping as an excuse to invite US intervention in the Gulf. That was just a cover for GCC conceding to US threats. Iran was the most vulnerable state in the Gulf to shipping disruption. Even though it probably wanted to facilitate US interference in the Gulf, its heavy dependence on naval shipping through the Gulf led it to limit its attacks on ships. It used it primarily as a tool to react to Iraqi attacks on its own shipping and to apply mild pressure on other Gulf States. Specifically, the attacks on Kuwaiti ships were not seriously disrupting shipping (even after Iran began using mines in 1987).
The US use of the threat to Western oil supplies as an excuse to justify its interference was also false, since oil over-supply in that period made all oil shipped by sea through the Gulf redundant. That was further demonstrated by the fact that oil exports and shipping insurance rates were more or less stable while oil prices declined throughout the whole ridiculous show.
13) The Re-flagging of the Kuwaiti Tankers
Kuwait tried to get away with giving the US as little access/cover as possible. It did not ask for military escort for the re-flagged tankers. The US stalled trying to extract as much concessions from Kuwait and the GCC as possible. It asked Kuwait to lease American oil tankers, thus allowing the US a freer hand at creating pretexts for further interference in the Gulf. Kuwait maneuvered, pressuring the US by leasing three Soviet tankers in January of 1987, and talking about splitting the tankers to be re-flagged between the US and Russia. So the US proposed that Kuwait would register its tankers in the US and use the American flag on them in late January. In early February, the US told Kuwait that re-flagging would involve American protection for the tankers. In early March, it announced that Iran bought and installed Silkworm missiles in the straight of Hurmz trying to paint an image of an Iranian threat to international trade in the Gulf. Then, on March 7th, it announced plans to escort Kuwaiti tankers and began pressuring Kuwait to accept that and to abandon splitting the re-flagging of the tankers between the US and Russia. Kuwait relented. It kept the three tankers it leased under Russian flag but didn�t put the Russian flag on any of its own tankers. It also said that it only wanted re-flagging but no escorts for the tankers. Further, it asked France, Britain and China for the same re-flagging deal and actually put three of its ships under British flag in the fall of 1987. In May, Iran increased the pressure on Kuwait by hijacking boats and mining two bottleneck locations in the sea-lanes to Kuwait. In response, Iraq attacked US warship Stark on May 17th to pressure the US into accepting the re-flagging without further demands for bases, �etc. Two days later the US announced that it will protect the re-flagged Kuwaiti tankers.
14) Mining of the Gulf
The Iranian mines were a symbolic act of escalation rather than a real threat to US navy. The mines were quite crude. They were capable of causing serious damage to tankers but only slight damage to military ships. So, they were not a military threat to US fleet. But they allowed the US to paint itself as the guardian of the Gulf.
15) Iranian Internal Politics, 1987/88
The escalating clash between Iran and the US gave Iran a convenient way to end the war. It was now a war between Iran and the US that Iran couldn�t hope to win. Specifically, Iran used US help to Iraq to justify the failure of the �Final-Attack,� and more generally to prepare the domestic public opinion to end the war.
The public was exhausted and frustrated. The revolution was completely out of steam. The government was not able to recruit enough volunteers to wage the usual yearly attack in the winter of 1987/88. Rafsanjani thought the time was right to put the Revolutionary Guard under control. He scraped their signature tactic: human-wave attacks. There was no major attack, as usual, in the winter of 1988. It was replaced with minor attrition attacks in the North with the active support of both Barazani and Talibani. Americans report that the leaders of Iran decided, in a strategy conference, that they need to conserve Iran�s forces and plan a 5-year project in order to defeat Iraq. All in all, it seems that the old-line elite had decisively rested control from the new elite brought in by the revolution. The difference between the two groups does not lie in their relationship with the US. Both factions work for the US. Their differences are in who is going to control and reap the spoils of power.
16) American Attacks on the Iranian Navy
From the morning of April 18th and until sundown, the US launched a major attack on Iranian navy in the Gulf. They destroyed two oil platforms at 8:00AM but did not attack Iranian ports. Instead, they waited at sea for Iranian ships to attack. The Iranian navy stayed in port until 11:00AM when the ships were sent out to the Gulf one-by-one to be slaughtered one at a time. As a result, the Americans destroyed one third of the Iranian Navy.
17) Iraqi Attacks, May-July of 1988
On May 25th Iraq took over the Fish Lake north of Basrah. In June 25th Iraq took over Majnoon islands in the Ahwar. In July 12th Iraq took over Zubiedat on the Iraqi side of the borders, penetrated into Iran for 45 km, took over Dehloran on the Iranian side, and then withdrew after four days. In all instances, the Iranian army was not able to respond to the Iraqi attacks. Their single success was in evicting the Mujadeen Khalq from Iran after the Iraqi army had withdrawn.
18) American Pressures on Iraq in the Fall of 1988
In September, the US State department accused Iraq of using chemical weapons against the Kurds. The US Senate accused Iraq of genocide and passed a law on sanctions against Iraq unanimously. The law was later killed by joint action of the Democratic House leadership and the Republican administration. This show was designed to create international pressure on Iraq. It enabled the State Department to pressure Iraq while looking moderate and non-aggressive when compared to the Senate. In essence, the US threatened Iraq with economic sanctions but held back from following through on its threat. In October, Shultz expressed fear of Iraq�s potential for international disruption.
19) Saddam�s Campaign in Lebanon, 1989-90
In May of 1989, Iraq gave Aoun�s government a $100 million trade agreement. Later that month at the Arab summit in Morocco, Syria came under an Iraqi-Jordanian attack against the presence of Syrian forces in Lebanon. In June, the Phalange militia said that three quarters of its weapons came from Iraq. In July, Iraq shipped short-range missiles capable of reaching Damascus to Michel Aoun. Syria threatened that it will bomb the ship if it passed the Suez Canal. The US/Soviet duo interfered and convinced Saddam to turn back the ship under the pretext that this might draw Israel into a confrontation with Syria and thus precipitate an international incident between the US and Russia. Still, in August, Michel Aoun boasted that he received military supplies from Iraq and France despite the Syrian naval blockade on his ports.
20) UK Moves to Pump up Saddam
In October 1989, Iraq arrested Bazoft, an Iranian dissident with a British travel document, and a British nurse accusing them of spying for Israel and Britain. Iraq showed Bazoft on TV confessing that he worked for British intelligence. The UK expelled four Iraqi diplomats, and Iraq retaliated by expelling three UK diplomats. In March of 1990, Iraq executed Bazoft (the British nurse was released in July of 1990). On April 5th, a British Minister at the Foreign Office, William Waldegrave, said in a statement that Bazoft had low-level contacts with Special Branch officers. The Foreign Office denied the statement at once saying that the minister made a slip of the tongue. The minister flew to Greece after making his remarks to hide away. The same minister was involved in another �slip of the tongue� a year earlier when he stated that Soviet diplomats expelled back then had links with Labor MPs. Meanwhile, several British MPs supported Iraq�s contention that Bazoft was an Israeli spy.
In March of 1990, UK custom officials confirmed the sale of military goods to Iraq�s navy. On March 28th, 1990, British customs officials, after an 18-month-long joint operation with US investigators, uncovered 40 electronic devices due to be flown to Iraq. The devices could be used as nuclear triggers. Subsequently, the UK expelled an Iraqi suspect. Although UK official admitted that Iraq was far from obtaining a nuclear weapon, they insisted the triggers indicate that Saddam was about to obtain one. In response, Iraq accused the UK of launching an anti-Iraq campaign in cooperation with the Zionists. UK rejected all calls to cut ties with Iraq insisting that many Britons work there (more than 10,000). On the other hand, the US response was very mild. Bush avoided direct criticism of Iraq, noting that Iraq was among the nations that signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. The spokesman for the State Department, Richard Boucher, denied that the US administration was letting Iraq off the hook. Iraq called for an extraordinary session of the Arab League to examine the dangers arising from the British-Israeli-US campaign against Iraq. The Arab League, in a meeting of foreign ministers, expressed total support for Iraq. Less than two weeks after the nuclear triggers issue, UK uncovered super-gun parts being exported to Iraq.
21) Laying the American Trap
In April of 1990, the Senate majority leader, Robert Dole, visiting Iraq praised Saddam, tried to appease him over US media criticism of Iraq, and appealed for better relations.
On July 25th, as Saddam prepared to enter Kuwait, he asked the American ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, about her government�s opinion regarding his dispute with Kuwait. She told him �We have no opinion in border disputes,� between Iraq and Kuwait. She also expressed satisfaction with Iraq's friendly attitude, and announced her decision to go on holiday following this meeting. Two days later, Bush sent Saddam a friendly message reconfirming America's good intentions towards Iraq and its leader.
To fool Saddam further, the US made these same reassurances in public. On July 24th, the US State Department spokeswoman, Margaret Tutweiler, said on the record that �We have no defense treaties with Kuwait.� A couple of days before Iraq attacked Kuwait, the US Assistant Secretary of State, John Kelley, testifying in Congress, had no reaction to the Iraqi threats to Kuwait and reiterated that the US had no defense treaties with Kuwait.
22) Iraq Finances after the War
During the war with Iran, Iraq had a constant problem with international creditors. By mid eighties, Iraq had defaulted on its debts at least once in most countries, especially in Europe and Japan. The Europeans and Japanese complained, not only because Iraq was not paying its debts, but also because Iraq was trying to reschedule its debts separately with each country, hoping to get better individual deals by playing one country against another.
As Iraq came out of the war, its finances were thoroughly messed up. It owed Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and UAE $40 billion. It was in arrears to almost every one of its trading partners. It was juggling payments on various credit lines in Europe and Japan (withholding payments for as long as it can, paying only when faced with threats to cut their credit line and then only after securing more loans and credits). The only notable exceptions to that were the US and UK.
While the UK consistently helped Iraq with its troubled finances, the Bush administration changed the US course when it took over in 1989. With the Iran-Iraq war over they had no need to help Iraq any more. Further, squeezing Iraq financially helped to push Saddam into the trap they were planning for him. So they undertook a concerted effort to squeeze Iraq. The details of that follow:
Britain:-
Throughout the 80s, Iraq�s credit line with Britain was expanding and never in default. In 1983, the British �Export Credits Guarantee Department� started to guarantee credits by UK banks to Iraq. There were two credit installments, the first worth 275 million pounds and the second worth 1.1 billion pounds. In the autumn of 1988, Iraq and Britain signed a framework agreement on export credits. In February of 1989, Iraq got a $540 million loan from Britain.
Also, Iraq ran front companies based in Britain such as Matrix Churchill and Technology and Development Group (which bought Matrix Churchill in 1987). These companies were used to get loans and credits (from UK, US, and other countries) and to acquire technology and machinery in Western markets.
USA:-
Almost all Iraq financing from the US came through two ways: the US Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) credit guarantees program and the lines of credit from the Atlanta branch of the Italian government-owned bank Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL).
a) CCC Credit Guarantees:
Under the CCC program, credit guarantees are issued to US agricultural exporters to help them sell commodities (wheat, soybeans, and rice etc�) to foreign countries. Typically, the purchasing country pays for the commodities by arranging for one of its banks to pay the exporter by a letter of credit in favor of the US exporter. The American exporter assigns its right to receive payment from the foreign bank under the letter of credit to a bank in the US. The US bank pays the US exporter and agrees to finance the sale of the commodities and to receive payment from the foreign bank on deferred terms over a three-year period. In essence, the US bank extends credit, guaranteed by the CCC, to the foreign purchaser to buy US commodities for which contracts have already been negotiated. The CCC guarantee covers the risk that the foreign bank will not make the required payments. Should the foreign bank default on the payment, the CCC pays the US bank and assumes the exporter�s right to collect payment from the buyer.
The CCC guarantees do not involve any transfer of money (loan) to the foreign buyer. The function of the credit guarantees is to allow the foreign buyer/government to obtain credit form the US bank. The countries that use these guarantees typically can not obtain credit on their own because the banks fear they will default on their loans. The CCC assumes this risk of default thus enabling them to get credit from US banks.
Iraq never received any money under the CCC program for the purchase of anything, including agricultural commodities. There is a distinction between a loan and a credit. The use of credit, dictated and strictly restricted what was to be purchased as well as the direction of the cash flow: the US bank paid the US farmer, the Iraqi bank paid the debt to the US bank over the three year deferred payment period.
The CCC credit guarantees program for Iraq began in 1983 after Iraq was removed from the US government�s list of nations engaged in state-sponsored terrorism. The level of those guarantees grew from $215 million in 1983 to about $1 billion in fiscal years 1988 and 1989. By that time, Iraq became the eighth largest importer of US wheat and the leading importer of rice. Between 1983 and 1989, the CCC issued $4.5 billion in credit guarantees for US exporters of agricultural products to Iraq. For fiscal year 1990, $500 million was extended to Iraq (less than half the amount requested by Iraq) although only $392 million had actually been paid out by the time Iraq invaded Kuwait. Until August of 1990, Iraq maintained a clean payment record with the US, paying on time its CCC-guaranteed obligations. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August of 1990, Iraq had about $1.9 billion in outstanding obligations under the CCC program. Of that amount, only $392 million was guarantees extended by the Bush administration.
b) BNL Dealings with Iraq:
US government institutions have consistently refused to give Iraq US loan guarantees for major development projects. The official reason was bureaucratic. Under US law, Iraq couldn�t obtain loan guarantees because it refused to deal collectively with its creditors or open its finances to international inspection. The only thing they got from US government was a $200 million revolving line of short-term loan guarantees, with strict repayment terms, from the Export-Import Bank. As a result, Iraq turned to private banks in the US. They developed a special relationship with BNL, which offered Iraq lower interest rates and was willing to violate US banking regulations to finance Iraq�s projects. None of the CCC-related deals involved any wrongdoing. The violation was the fact that the Atlanta branch manager exceeded his authority by granting Iraq loans in excess of $500,000 without getting authorization from his headquarters in Italy and US banking regulators. It�s unlikely that he was rouge individual acting on his own. It�s more likely that he was part of a tacit agreement between the US and Italy to offer limited help to Iraq in its war with Iran. Thereby from the mid-eighties and on BNL became Iraq�s principal source of credit in the US.
Between 1983 and 1989, BNL extended approximately $4 billion in loans and credits to Iraq. Of that amount, $1.5 billion was in CCC-guaranteed credits (see above). These agricultural credits constituted most of the BNL business with Iraq until February of 1988. The other $2.5 billion of BNL loans involved direct loans unrelated to the CCC program. These unrestricted loans, used to buy industrial goods and arms technology, began in February of 1988. A major chunk of these loans (approximately $2.1 billion) was divided into four segments: $200 million in February, $300 million in October, $500 million in December, and $1.2 billion in April of 1989. For example: when the Export-Import Bank declined to support an Iraqi plan to buy General Motors automobiles and build an auto plant in Iraq, it turned to BNL to obtain an open-ended contract in 1989, beginning with $150 million. Several other US companies (Westinghouse, Xerox) got deals from BNL to finance their business in Iraq.
In August of 1989, the FBI raided the BNL Atlanta branch, exposed the BNL illegal transactions, and interrupted Iraq�s deals with BNL. As a result, these deals (GM, Westinghouse, and Xerox) were interrupted and discontinued. By then, BNL had actually paid out approximately $3 billion in both CCC-credits and unrestricted loans. About $1 billion was still unpaid. Subsequently, BNL agreed not to take any more assignments from US exporters of CCC-guaranteed commodities. Thus, during the Bush administration, BNL was not involved in the CCC program.
Further, the Bush administration moved to tighten the CCC program with Iraq. In November of 1989, the National Advisory Council on International Monetary and Financial Policies established a tiered approach to the CCC Iraq program rather than granting Iraq�s request outright for more than $1 billion. A first tranche of $500 million was extended and the extension of any additional guarantees was to be decided on later. In early 1990, the Bush administration decided not to extend the second tranche of the CCC guarantees for Iraq. This happened despite intensive lobbying from American agricultural interests in favor of providing additional CCC guarantees for sales to Iraq.
This was even worse than denying Iraq credit outright. Because of the three-year payment schedule for these credits, Iraq had to repay debt from larger credits from the three previous years plus accumulated interest to US banks. So the repayment obligations were higher than the level of new credits it was receiving. Only $392 million in credit guarantees approved by the Bush administration was actually extended in the fiscal year 1990 before Iraq�s invasion of Kuwait. During that same period, Iraq made hard currency payments to US banks, for CCC obligations, of $847 million. Accordingly, Iraq had much less money to spend on purchases of any sort. Significantly, Iraq did not have the privilege to renegotiate the terms of the obligations as it used to do with the Europeans and the Japanese.
23) UK-Iraq-Kuwait
Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were pursuing their regional interests in keeping Saddam on check when they demanded that Iraq pay back its debts. While Kuwait, the UAE and Iraq are all British agents, its natural for agents to clash over their regional interests as long as they are not hurting their masters interests or violating his orders. The British also do not expect, nor do they ask their agents to hurt their own, personal selfish interests to serve British interests. After all, an agent is a sell-out who sold the Ummah to pursue his own selfish interests. Instead, they trick him into it and then tell him he has to deal with it and the best they can do for him is help him mitigate the damage befell (they caused) him. The British let Kuwait escalate the crisis with Iraq, while thinking that Saddam would not invade Kuwait. They then could come and tell them that: what was done, was done; however, the British could help them get their shiekhdom again if they played it right and kept their faith in �mother Britain.� The British, after all, are colonial masters not a nanny!
24) Saddam�s Attempt at Subtleness
Saddam was supposed to be waiting for ambassador Glaspie�s to return from Washington with Bush�s answers to his questions. He also was due to meet Benjamin Solarz (the US Congressman from NY) on August 8th, 1990. The Jeddah talks between Iraq and Kuwait on resolving the dispute were also scheduled to resume in Baghdad later in August.
25) British Attempts at Reconciliation
King Hussein of Jordan rushed to meet with Saddam hours after the invasion. Iraq accepted to pull out of Kuwait if the Arab League did not censure its move. The Arab League, in an emergency meeting of foreign ministers in Cairo on August 3rd, opposed any foreign intervention in an Arab dispute. Based on Hussein's report of his meeting with Saddam, the League did not criticize Iraq and announced that a mini summit meeting of Saddam, Fahd, Hussein, and Mubarak was to be held in Saudi Arabia on August 5th. However, Mubarak, acting on US orders, foiled that proposed meeting by raising the stakes and publicly denouncing Saddam the next day after the Cairo meeting. He called for unconditional Iraqi withdrawal. On the same day, Mubarak also dispatched a small contingent of Egyptian troops to Saudi Arabia. He also accused Saddam of lying to him by promising not to invade Kuwait. Fahd followed Mubarak's escalation of the crisis by demanding an unconditional commitment to withdrawal from Saddam prior to meeting him. These acts were meant to force Saddam into a corner and preempt any peaceful settlement. On the other hand, Saddam, trying to ease the situation, withdrew some troops from Kuwait on August 5th (as noted by Joseph Wilson during his meeting with Saddam on August 6th). He also hinted at the possibility of withdrawal from Kuwait. Washington and its agents ignored these gestures. An offer by King Hussein to send Jordanian forces to act as a buffer between Iraq and Kuwait after an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait was also rejected by Mubarak.
26) US Protection Treaties in the Gulf
Unlike all the other treaties, the treaty with Saudi Arabia is secrete. When the treaties came up for renewal in 2001, there was a clash between the US and Crown Prince Abdullah over it. It�s not clear if it was renewed or not yet. But the other treaties were renewed and the US bases in Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain are being expanded and upgraded on an ongoing basis.
27) The Northern Exclusion Zone
Were the Kurdish Nationalists fooled by US promises? No. Both Barzani and Talibani and their respective gangs had too much experience with the way the US conducts business and with regional politics to believe that the US would back a serious Kurdish rebellion in Iraq. A Kurdish state was internationally and regionally unacceptable at that point in time. Europe, the Soviet Union, Turkey and even local US agents would have resisted such a development. It would not only have meant the collapse of Iraq into a failed state, but would also have meant a serious Kurdish challenge to both Turkey and Iran.
So, the US and the Iraqi Kurdish nationalists were both not serious about the rebellion. Barzani and Talibani played along because they thought that even though the rebellion was doomed to failure, it was their best shot at getting international attention and sponsorship. This assessment was in clear display when they not only retreated, almost without a fight, as soon as Saddam counter-attacked but also perpetrated a mass exodus in the Kurdish areas by scaring off the population into fleeing to Iran and Turkey.
The Europeans, especially the British and French, tried to pre-empt the US attempt to lay its hands on the Kurdish North. They used the resulting human misery in Iran and Turkey to propose a UN-mandated Kurdish zone in the North of Iraq to guarantee that they would have a say in running that zone and a veto over whatever happens there. The US, however, foiled their attempts inside the UN. They took the issue outside the UN and established the Northern Exclusion Zone through unilateral American action and using British and French participation as a cover to give it a multinational flavor.
First, the Turkish government (under Turgut Ozal) obliged the US by refusing to settle the Kurds. The US then proposed to resettle the Kurds in North Iraq, threatened Saddam and ordered him to withdraw from a small area around Zakho. Once he did that and they had a foothold inside Iraq, the US expanded the zone gradually under the threat of use of force. In the end, the zone included most of the Kurdish north under the pretext of encouraging/protecting the returning Kurds. Barzani helped in this scheme by initially holding the refugees return under the pretext of fear of Iraqi forces until the zone was expanded. Thus, the US had the best of both worlds, they had maximum flexibility to act inside the zone, denied the Europeans much say in what goes there, and used there presence as a cover for all that.
While the US works to maintain the Northern exclusion zone, it doesn�t want to make it a state. It just wants to keep it stable enough to be used as a staging ground for its policy of eroding the central government.
In the beginning, Barzani and Talibani tried to please the US, especially Barzani who was initially more influential, had hosted the PKK (a US tool in Turkey) in the late 80s, and continued to host the PKK after the war. The US also paid for the creation of a political and military structure for the Iraqi National Congress in the zone, even though it is mostly made up of British agents. It used it until 1996 as a peacekeeping force in the northern exclusion zone to keep Barzani and Talibani from fighting each other.
Some time in 1992 Barzani switched his allegiance to the British side. He expelled the PKK from his area (they relocated to the areas under Talibani�s control) and went to war with Talibani, thus destabilizing the Northern exclusion zone. The US continued to use north Iraq to stage the PKK campaign against Turkey with the support of Iran under Talibani despite the active opposition of Barzani. Turkey (after the fall of Ozal) both defended itself and helped Iraq (and the British) by repeated attacks on the north of Iraq (under the pretext of flushing out the PKK fighters based there), and supporting Barazani. When Iran tried to help Talibani to eliminate Barazani in the summer of 1996, Saddam used the chance to attack the Kurdish area, drive Talibani into Iran and isolate the US/Iran internationally. Afterwards, "American diplomats had to struggle mightily to restrain Talibani from making a drive on Irbil, and ultimately make him agree to a cease-fire." (Stephen Pelletiere, referencing intelligence reports)
28) American Occupation Pattern
The American occupation force in the Gulf is envisioned to be five divisions strong, that is the bulk of the Central Command forces, using pre-positioning and permanent �exercises� to avoid looking like an occupying army. They are supposed to attack quickly then withdraw to isolated bases in the Peninsula. It avoids causalities because it can be used to incite the public opinion inside the US thus requiring a disproportionate response that can expose the US publicly as an occupier.
An example of this strategy can be seen in the current US security arrangements in Afghanistan, where American forces maintains justifications for permanent presence (fighting terrorism, rebuilding Afghanistan) and a limited number of forces that can be reinforced at any time using their over-the-horizon forces and facilities in neighboring countries.