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1994-05-02
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<text>
<title>
The United States in the Middle East
</title>
<article>
<hdr>
Current History, January 1992
The United States in the Middle East: The Gulf War and Its
Aftermath
</hdr>
<body>
<p>By Adeed Dawisha--professor of government and politics at
George Mason University.
</p>
<p> "The king is dead. Long live the king." This was hardly the
kind of clarion call the administration of United States
President George Bush or the American public wanted to hear in
the wake of the Persian Gulf war. "Baghdad's Dictator"--as
Bush continued to call Iraq's president Saddam Hussein--had
emerged from the war not just defeated but bloodied and
humiliated. His much vaunted army devastated, and his economy in
shambles, Saddam would surely be headed for a quick and
ignominious exit from Iraq's political scene. That was the
conventional wisdom in early March 1991: the king was dead. Or
so it seemed.
</p>
<p> But in the fall of 1991, Saddam, his confidence apparently
restored, was still in power, ruling over the hapless Iraqi
people in a way that suggested little had changed. Although he
was careful not to push the United States too far, neither did
he seem ready to submit to "international will." Indeed, as the
days passed, Saddam grew more defiant, intent on showing the
world, as well as the Iraqi people, that he was back at the
helm, and that news of his death was greatly exaggerated.
</p>
<p> In Washington the debate that followed the war took the gloss
off Bush's military triumph, particularly after it was revealed
that General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the commander of United
States forces in the Gulf, had preferred to continue the war
effort, presumably until Saddam's demise. Bush's decision to
call a cease-fire on February 27 was increasingly characterized
as having been "too hasty."
</p>
<p>Saddam's Resilience
</p>
<p> "Why did the allied forces stop short of ridding Iraq and the
world of Saddam Hussein?" This question dominated the American
political debate after Bush's unilateral announcement of a
cease-fire. And when major insurrections in March by the Kurds
in northern Iraq and the Shiites in southern Iraq were
ruthlessly suppressed by the remains of Saddam's supposedly
"devastated army," many came to believe that with its
cease-fire announcement the White House had lost its best, and
perhaps only, opportunity to overthrow Iraq's "dictator."
</p>
<p> Bush and members of his administration insisted that they had
done the right thing. First, they argued, none of the United
Nations (UN) Security Council resolutions issued after Iraq's
August 1990 invasion sanctioned interference in Iraq's internal
affairs. The objectives of the resolutions were Iraq's
withdrawal from Kuwait and the restoration of Kuwait's
sovereignty. The resolutions could justify the destruction of
Iraq's offensive capability, even its economic and industrial
infrastructure. But hunting down Saddam himself was outside the
language of the resolutions, and any such action would have
quickly lost international, especially Arab, support and would
have undermined the international coalition that Bush had so
painstakingly built.
</p>
<p> Administration officials further argued that forcibly
removing Saddam from power would have been a logistical
nightmare, entailing a military thrust as far as Baghdad and
engaging some of the Iraqi leader's best equipped and most
loyal troops. The allied forces would have had to hunt Hussein
down at immense risk. Once they had captured him and eliminated
his government, the allied troops would have had to stay long
enough to put another government in place--and that is when
the real problems would have begun. Secretary of Defense Dick
Cheney expressed this apprehension:
</p>
<p> "What kind of government? Should it be a Sunni government or
Shi'a government or a Kurdish government or a Ba'athist regime?
Or maybe we want to bring in some of the Islamic
fundamentalists? How long would we have had to stay in Baghdad
to keep that government in place? What would happen to the
government once U.S. forces withdrew? How many casualties
should the United States accept in that effort to try to create
clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently
unstable?" (The Soref Symposium: American Strategy after the
Gulf War--Washington D.C.: Washington Institute for Near East
Policy, 1991, p. 45.)
</p>
<p> Cheney's view suggests another reason for American reluctance
to eliminate Saddam. Administration officials were apparently
convinced that one of two outcomes, neither of them attractive,
would follow Saddam's demise. The first would be either a
Baathist or a military regime. In other words, the ruling elite
that had participated in the invasion of Kuwait and the war
against the United States would remain in power. Administration
officials knew that would not be tolerated by the American
public.
</p>
<p> The second outcome would be a balkanization of the Iraqi
state into three conflicting areas: Kurdish in the north,
Shiite in the south, and Sunni in the center. The northern
Kurdish region would destabilize the large Kurdish minorities
in Iran, Turkey, and to a lesser extent Syria. In the south, the
Shiites could look to their co-religionists in Iran for
protection, a state of affairs that would not only threaten
American strategic interests, but would also be unacceptable to
the Kuwaitis and Saudis.
</p>
<p> Observers in the Middle East ascribed ulterior motives to
America's reluctance to remove Saddam Hussein from power. One
argument pointed to the Security Council's resolutions demanding
that Iraq pay war reparations. Indeed, on August 15, 1991, the
Council voted to allow Iraq to sell $1.6-billion worth of oil,
but with the stipulation that 30 percent of the income from the
sale would be set aside for reparations. Those who argued this
said that if Saddam were replaced with a compliant and
democratic regime, then the allies of the United States, notably
Kuwait, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, would find it more difficult
to demand reparations from Iraq.
</p>
<p> Ulterior motives notwithstanding, it was also suggested that
the White House overestimated Hussein's vulnerability and
underestimated his instinct for, and power of, survival.
Certainly, the administration could be excused for thinking that
his days were numbered as his humiliated army began to return
to Baghdad. Few other dictators had survived such a devastating
defeat.
</p>
<p> America's Arab allies shared this perception. Most Arab
observers thought Hussein would not last more than six months.
Lieutenant General Khalid bin Sultan, the commander of the Arab
coalition forces and the son of Saudi Arabia's defense minister,
gave Iraq's leader only 40 days, and repeated this prediction
many times.
</p>
<p> The insurrections that erupted in early March in the Shiite
south and the Kurdish north seemed to confirm expectations that
Saddam would be overthrown from within, either through the
insurrection or by elements of his own ruling circle. But Saddam
was able to suppress the rebellions with surprising ease. In the
cities of southern Iraq, thousands of Shiite rebels were killed.
In the north the defeat of the Kurdish insurrection was so
complete, and the fear of Saddam's retribution so pervasive,
that by early April more than one and a half million Kurds had
fled their homes for the Turkish and Iranian borders. Hussein's
troops might not have matched the coalition's superior
technology, but they could still easily suppress any uprising
within Iraq.
</p>
<p> With Western hopes for a quick overthrow of Iraq's leader
dashed, Bush decided on April 16 to pursue British Prime
Minister John Major's suggestion to establish "safe havens" for
the Kurds in northern Iraq. Bush announced that American,
British, and French troops would build and protect several
interim refugee camps for the Kurds in the flatlands of northern
Iraq. When asked whether this would constitute an infringement
of Iraqi sovereignty, Bush replied that his decision