Invasion

On August 2nd, 1990, even when Saddam Hussein had massed thousands of troops on Kuwait’s border, there were few who thought he would risk plunging the Middle East into turmoil over what was basically a minor dispute over territory, oil rights and debt. Those who did suspect military action thought the land-grab would be limited to a disputed border oilfield and a gulf beach head long coveted by Iraq.

The seeds of the crisis can be traced to the end of the Iran-Iraq war, exactly two years before, in August 1988. Saddam, saddled with $70 billion in debt, including money he owed to Kuwait, needed to salvage his ambition of leading the Arab world. In Baghdad, the Ba’ath government, fond as it was of conspiracy theories, had concluded that the United States sought to destroy Iraq to prevent it from being a military challenge to Israel and to control the flow of Arab oil. To their discomfort, Saddam and his henchmen watched as the United States maintained its superpower status while the Soviet Union’s world position waned. Iraq had, in spite of the American assistance it had received during the war with Iran, been a Soviet client state and had relied on Soviet backing in its international relations. Now the United States, the most-favored enemy, had the international stage pretty much to itself.

There were obvious consequences for Iraq: “This means that if the gulf people, along with all Arabs, are not careful, the Arab Gulf region will be governed by the wishes of the United States,” Saddam said. In that case, oil prices “would be fixed in line with a special perspective benefiting American interests and ignoring the interests of others.”

A part of this was nothing more than “viewing with alarm.” The United States, everyone knew, was a “Paper Tiger.” Chairman Mao had used the term first, years before, and it had been picked up as gospel as the Americans first left Vietnam, knowing it would fall behind them, then tied its own hands in dealing with threats to its interests. Terrorist groups effectively operated with impunity; countries such as Libya announced periodically that they were “at war” with the United States and all that it stood for. When the U.S. did respond to a threat, it was half-heartedly. The Carter administration had become noted for “sending signals” rather than troops. When troops were sent, as in Desert One, operations were a fiasco. The significance of the Libyan strikes, Grenada and Panama was overlooked. These were quick operations, in-and-out, calling for no real long-term resolve. When the casualties got heavy, as with the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, the response was to withdraw, accompanied by loud remonstrations and fixing of blame from a hostile Congress. As a superpower, the U.S.A. was regarded as pretty much a bust. Saddam was setting up a strawman, dramatic but not a real threat. Saddam’s intent was to put on a good show for the Masses. There was probably no thought of any real danger to the regime.

Regarding itself thus as free from any significant external threat, Iraq’s words and deeds became more bellicose in March, when Farzad Bazoft, an Iranian-born journalist on assignment for the London Observer, was hanged for spying for Britain and Israel. In April the Iraqi president promised that if Israel attacked Baghdad, “by God, we will make the fire eat up half of Israel.”

The U.S. State Department called this speech "inflammatory, irresponsible and outrageous." The White House issued a statement on April 3rd calling the remarks "particularly deplorable and irresponsible." President Bush suggested Saddam Hussein withdraw the statements.

Saddam met with Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the USA, and told him that he had been misunderstood — he had threatened to attack only if he was attacked by Israel.  A surprise strike by that country in 1981, when he had been in the midst of his war with Iran, had destroyed the Osirak nuclear reactor, south of Baghdad, and the memory left bad feelings.

"I want to assure President Bush and His Majesty King Fahd that I will not attack Israel," Saddam told him. In return, the Americans would have to work with Israel to ensure that Israel did not again attack Iraq. The prince told Saddam that he would pass this on to Bush, and Saddam added: "By the way, we have to be very careful about this conspiracy because the imperialist-Zionist forces keep pushing this theory that I have designs over my neighbors.  I don't have designs over my neighbors."

July 17th, 1990, was Revolution Day in Baghdad. In his address to his nation Saddam again waxed eloquent. Dwelling on his successes against Iran, he announced to the world that Iraq had become the Arabs’ sole reliable defender. Because of his country’s military might, enemies dared not attack, but relied instead on economic warfare.

This was not just a passing bit of rhetoric. A day later, Iraq accused Kuwait of stealing oil, worth $2.4 billion, by slant drilling from the Rumaillah oilfield that straddles their border. What was more, Kuwait was purposely driving down world oil prices by overproduction. This was Kuwait’s official appearance on Iraq’s “enemies’ list.”  Saddam wanted $13 billion to $15 billion in reparations for Kuwait’s crimes; it wanted that country to give up its corner of the Rumaillah field and it wanted a lease on Bubiyan and Warba, the two Kuwaiti islands obstructing Iraqi access to the Persian Gulf. On top of it all, Iraq wanted forgiveness of $10 billion in war debts it owed to Kuwait.

A day earlier, on July 16th, U.S. intelligence detected the beginning of load-up of T-72 tanks belonging to the Hammurabi Division of the Republican Guard.  The next day's photographs showed that the whole of the division—300 tanks and more than 10,000 men—was in place along the Kuwait border, and the Medinah Division was on the way.  On the 18th of July the Tawakalna Division was moving south.  By July 19th, more than 35,000 men were deployed within 30 miles of the border.

International oil prices rose on the news that the two armored divisions had been moved to the Iraq-Kuwait border. Western diplomats termed it muscle-flexing in a pricing dispute, nothing particularly out of line with Saddam’s usual tactics of bluster and intimidation. At the same time, Iraq threatened retaliation against the U.S. for economic sanctions it was discussing in response to Iraq’s intimidation of its neighbors, its human rights abuses, and its program for development of chemical and nuclear weapons.

Baghdad had already accused Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates of surpassing OPEC production quotas, helping to drive the cartel’s benchmark price of $18 to below $14 and impairing its recovery from the war with Iran. In Kuwait, these allegations were interpreted as an attempt to revive long-held territorial claims. The 100-mile border had been a sensitive issue since 1961, when Kuwait gained independence from Britain. Iraq claimed sovereignty over the emirate under the pretext it had been part of the Basra governate under the Ottoman Empire.^[10]

The Arabs tried to smooth things over with a round of shuttle diplomacy, keeping it all in the family. The Saudi foreign minister flew to Baghdad and to Kuwait for consultations. Iraq’s foreign minister flew to Cairo. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak visited Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, finally persuading the reluctant Kuwaitis to go part of the way dictated by Saddam.

On July 25th, Saddam called Ambassador April Glaspie to his office and repeated his economic warfare charges against the State Department and CIA. In a message for President Bush, he stated that Iraq had given “rivers of blood” (a favorite phrase) in its eight-year war with Iran, and had won the right to live “proudly.”  Saddam would accept no injury to the Iraqi right to a high standard of living. His tone became bellicose toward Kuwait and threatening toward the U.S.:

Yours is a society which cannot accept 10,000 dead in one battle... I say to you clearly that Iraq’s rights... we will take one by one... If you use pressure [to oppose us], we will deploy pressure and force. We know that you can harm us although we do not threaten you. But we too can harm you. Everyone can cause harm according to their ability and their size. We cannot come all the way to you in the United States, but individual Arabs may reach you.

Despite the bullying tone, despite the implied threat of terrorism and assassination, Glaspie tried to placate him. U.S. policy was to try and accommodate the dictator where possible, to try and nudge him toward the mainstream. It was the same policy applied to other tin-hat strongmen. She told Saddam that she had direct instructions from President Bush to seek better relations, and she expressed American concern over the troop movements on Kuwait’s border. The Iraqi leader told her he would do nothing until he had talked to fellow Arabs about the situation. He had talked to President Mubarak and told him to assure the Kuwaitis and give them Iraq’s word that they would do nothing until the two sides had met. Reassured that the crisis was being defused, Glaspie went ahead with plans for her vacation and sent a cable to Washington suggesting there was room for negotiations between Iraq and Kuwait.

Glaspie was to take considerable heat from Congress and in the press for her handling of this episode. Part of the reason was Congress' (and the press') habit of trying to fix blame wherever possible. Part of it was due to the fact that the transcript of the conversation was first publicized and interpreted by the Iraqis.^[11] According to the transcript, Glaspie told Saddam Hussein that the United States had no opinion on the border dispute with Kuwait. Saddam took that to mean the Americans would not do anything to oppose him, analysts said. As a straight-forward statement, Glaspie said that the United States had no opinion on the details of where the border lay, supporting neither the Iraqi nor the Kuwaiti position. It could hardly be considered an endorsement of the use of force to establish one side’s view.

The troops remained in place to push Iraq’s point, and there were more than just a couple armored divisions. They had been arriving at the rate of almost a division a day since the 16th; a KH-11 reconnaissance satellite had shown up to 100,000 troops massed on the border. The logistics train that was in place gave Saddam everything he needed to invade, if he so chose. The intelligence community assumed it was a bluff to bully Kuwait into a more compliant oil policy.

Kuwait also thought it was a bluff, but they had to take Saddam seriously. He was right on their doorstep. They met with the Iraqis to negotiate, and they made it clear they were willing to pay a sizable sum for peace. Bribing tough guys is an old mid-Eastern custom; the Romans did it with the Parthians, and the Byzantines did it with a succession of barbarian and Muslim hordes. On July 27th, OPEC raised the price of oil to $21 a barrel, not quite as high as the $25 Iraq had wanted, but still a gouge on the West.

The Iraqis didn’t think they needed bribed. All that nice real estate was sitting there, along with geese that laid golden eggs. The Iraqis, as The Economist observed, “can produce unlimited demands and complaints at the drop of a hat.”  Rather than negotiating, they demanded Kuwait’s total capitulation on every count, to include the territorial demands for Bubiyan and Warba. The July 31st talks broke down after two hours. The Kuwaitis, the Iraqis said, were “not serious” about ceding territory. This may have been because there was no one to whom to cede it; the Iraqi negotiator claimed to have a headache and stalked out of the talks to sulk in his rooms before anything could be accomplished.

The Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington, watching developments closely, cancelled his planned trip home, but felt no apprehension as he watched his wife and his 16-year-old daughter board a flight to Kuwait.

The Iraqi high command had made an elaborate effort at deception, even going so far as to invite Baghdad-based military attaches to watch troop movements, as though it were all a routine exercise. Saddam’s vice-president, Izzat Ibrahim, came back from Riyadh saying that discussions with Kuwait would be resumed in a few days. Even the U.S. National Security Agency, Middle East International reported, did not pick up any messages from Baghdad to the invading force.

At 2 a.m. on the 2nd of August those 100,000 troops rolled across the border in a five-pronged attack, a force almost five times as great as the entire Kuwaiti armed forces. The Iraqis drove 37 miles down the superhighway Kuwait had built as a gesture of friendship with them, and four hours later hit Kuwait City. Panicked citizens tried to flee south toward Saudi Arabia as an estimated 300 tanks prowled the city, 50 others surrounding the Emir’s palace and the U.S. embassy.

The MiGs and Mirages of the Iraqi air force were also at work.  The pilot of British Airways flight 140, to Kuala Lumpur, was running his pre-flight check when the international airport came under attack.  He abandoned his plans to take off as the Iraqis tried to destroy the Kuwaiti air force, consisting of 54 combat aircraft and helicopters.

Along with being vastly outnumbered, the Kuwaitis simply had not been expecting to be invaded.  An officer later described how he had called the Ministry of Defense at 9 a.m., when Iraqi units were already in the city, and was told that there were still no orders to mobilize.  The ministry had already announced that the country had been invaded.  It was the first invasion of one Arab state by another in this century.

As the Iraqis live by the sword, so the Kuwaitis live by the telephone.  Most of the 1,000 or so members of the al-Sabah clan who were in the country were warned in time and were able to flee the country.  The main prize, the Emir, Sheik Jaber al-Ahmed al-Sabah, and his family managed to get out barely in time by helicopter, at around 5 a.m.

The emir's younger brother, Fahd, the manager of the Kuwaiti national soccer team, was killed as the Iraqis shelled the palace.  About 300 Kuwaiti soldiers defended the Ministry of Defense against a large force of Iraqis. Finally recognizing defeat and in an attempt to save the lives of their men, the Kuwaiti officers surrendered. The Iraqis gathered the men’s weapons, then killed them all.

By early afternoon, Kuwait was under the Iraqi thumb.  An Iraqi spokesman said there could be no return for the Emir and his family “after the sun of dignity and honor has shown” on his country.

Mohammad al-Mashat, the Iraqi ambassador to Washington, told reporters that “the events currently occurring in Kuwait are an internal affair with which Iraq has no relation.”  It was a bald-faced lie, and it sounded ridiculous. In Baghdad, good citizens enthusiastically honked the horns of their cars in celebration of the great event, and demonstrations in support were arranged in Baghdad and other cities.

Taking a leaf from the book the Soviets had opened when they had invaded Afghanistan, the Iraqis blandly announced that they had entered the country at the invitation of the Free Interim Government, made up of “young revolutionaries,” which had supposedly seized control from the Emir. They then set about organizing the required cabal of Quislings. Ahmad Saadoun, a member of Kuwait’s Parliament, was reportedly thrown into jail after he refused to become a young revolutionary.

The “young revolutionaries” tale was anorexic. The takeover was, as President Bush termed it, simply “naked aggression,” the hijacking of an entire nation—a small one, but a rich one. Saddam would not only be able to wipe out his $70 billion in war debt, he would be able to pay for $40 billion in self-memorializing development projects that had been put on hold during his cash crunch. The invasion also gave him a shot at Kuwait’s estimated $100 billion in overseas investments, the country’s savings account, that provided more than $6 billion a year, a sum roughly equivalent to its oil revenues.

The Republican Guard were the first formations across the border and carried out the actual invasion. The three divisions—the Hammurabi and Medina Armored Divisions and the Tawakalna Mechanized Division—broke the Kuwaiti resistance quickly and thoroughly. Behind them came the People’s Army, under the leadership of Ali Hassan al-Majid, whom Saddam would later appoint as governor of Kuwait. Majid was Iraq’s Minister of Local Government and a cousin of Saddam’s. It had been he who had been responsible for gassing the Kurds at Halabjeh. Stories of looting, rape, executions and torture began coming out of the prostrate nation immediately.

Behind them came the regular army, and at the same time came 7,000 men of the Mukhabarat—Saddam’s Gestapo. Things got worse.

In Kuwait on August 2nd, General Mohammed Badr had been packing to leave on his vacation in Europe when the Iraqis rolled in. Instead of leaving, he started the resistance movement—or perhaps it picked him up as it sprouted naturally — searching out and being searched out in his turn by fellow officers and patriotic Kuwaitis. For the next seven months he would be a hunted man. He grew a beard, he never went to his own home, and made himself a false identification card. There were hundreds, perhaps even thousands, like him. The Kuwaitis were as close to unanimous in their disgust with the Iraqis as any nation has ever been.

By the sixth week of the occupation, 70 to 80 Iraqi soldiers were being killed per night. The resistance was to remain a thorn in the Iraqi side throughout the occupation and the war.