On March 3rd, Schwarzkopf met with the representatives of the Iraqis to dictate the terms of surrender. The meeting was held in Safwan, a town in Iraq that was under the control of a Republican Guard armored brigade. On Friday, with the temporary cease-fire in effect, 1st Infantry Division sent Col. Tony Moreno’s 2nd Brigade to secure the area. Moreno sent two companies equipped with Bradley AFVs to the airfield there to ask the Iraqis to withdraw.
The Iraqis on the scene were not enthusiastic about the idea. “They asked us why we were in Iraq, and if we were lost,” Capt. Ken Pope, commander of one of the two companies, told the Washington Post.
Pope and his colleague, Capt. Mike Mills, found themselves surrounded by T-72s and the object of Iraqi bluster. Eventually, however, the Iraqis summoned tea and the officers conferred on the mechanics of securing Safwan for the talks. The Iraqis suggested that a site in Kuwait would be better; Pope and Mills insisted that Safwan had been the U.S. command’s choice. “They told us that we should stay out of Arab business,” Pope recounted. “They said that Americans should leave Iraq. They said, ‘We can’t believe you’re in Iraq.’ So I said, ‘Well, you should stay out of Kuwait.’”
It took a few hours, but the Republican Guard withdrew. The men from 1st ID moved in, destroying bunkers, establishing a defensive perimeter, and finally erecting a tent for Schwarzkopf, other allied commanders, and the eight Iraqi officers.
The allied commanders arrived by helicopter. “I’m not here to give them anything,” Schwarzkopf said, walking toward the tent. “I’m here to tell them exactly what they have to do.” He was seconded by Lt. Gen. Khalid bin Sultan, his Saudi counterpart.
The eight Iraqis—seven generals and a colonel—arrived in less state. They stopped at an Army checkpoint several miles away and were brought to the site in eight Hummers, escorted by two Bradleys, two M1A1s, and two Apaches. “I don’t want them humiliated,” Schwarzkopf was overheard instructing on of his officers. The Iraqis were screened with metal detectors out of sight of the photographers and television crews thronging the scene.
The head of the Iraqi delegation was Lt. Gen. Sultan Hashim Ahmad, Chief of Operations of the Iraqi Ministry of Defense. He was seconded by Lt. Gen. Salah Abud Mahmud, commander of the Iraqi III Corps.
The meeting lasted for two hours, and was observed by allied generals from Britain, France, Kuwait, Egypt, Syria, and other Coalition partners. The talks, as described by Lt. Gen. de la Billiere, “started off cool, and it never really got any warmer.” There were no discussions on the conduct of the war, no shop talk; all was focused on the immediate problems of implementing the cease-fire. “I would describe the Iraqis as pushing to see this resolved as quickly as possible and agreeing to everything they needed to,” de la Billiere said. “There was no argument.”
The terms were simple, stringent, and fair:
The terms were those of UN Resolution 686, which had been passed Saturday night by a vote of 11-1, with three abstentions.
“I am very happy to tell you,” Schwarzkopf announced at the conclusion of the session, “that we agreed on all matters. We have made a major step toward the cause of peace.”
Asked what he wanted for his country now that the war was over, General Badr, the resistance leader, replied: “I want to see my people one family. I want to see everyone be democratic. And I want everyone to live like brothers.”
Lance Corporal Andrew Hess of the 1st of the 5th Marines looked forward to the day when he could take “a day-long shower, grab a cold Miller draft and a good-looking lady and live the hell out of life.” His colleague, Private Tony Morales, was going to build a wonder truck and never go to the beach again. “I never want to see sand again in my life,” he told Newsweek.
We had worried about Melissa Neeley, the girl captured by the Iraqis near Khafji. We had feared she would be mistreated and abused. The Iraqis apparently hadn’t known what to do with her. One had tried to seduce her, telling her she was “braver than Stallone, more beautiful than Brooke Shields,” and trying to ply her with whiskey.
Some of the troops came home, to heroes’ welcomes. Others remained behind, waiting for the formal cease-fire, waiting to get on a plane and go home. On March 31st, they held the First Annual Sand Trout Fishing Tournament, in a bone-dry irrigation ditch.
The war was over for the troops, or at least for most of them, and they could start coming home to the heroes’ welcomes they had earned. The war’s ripple effect, however, was busy changing much of the background that had made the war possible in the form it had taken.
Al-Ahram feared the continued presence of foreign troops on Iraqi and Arab land and the possibility of conditions being dictated to humiliate the Iraqi people. Al-Akhbar said that before there could be a security structure in the Middle East the Palestinian problem would have to be solved, otherwise “20 other Saddam Husseins will appear, and instability and coups will continue to be the characteristic features of the region.”
The Project on Military Procurement, had previously issued studied reports telling us that the M-1 tank, the Bradley IFV and the Apache helicopter wouldn’t work. Now, renamed the Project on Government Procurement, the organization charged that the Patriot operated only under “favorable combat conditions” and only demonstrated “part of its required mission capabilities.” There is no pleasing some people.