And now Saddam comes out to play.
Chapter VII: Iraq and the Gulf Crisis, 1987-1988.
Perhaps the biggest twist of the Cold War in the 80s concerned Iraq and its dictator President Saddam Hussein. In 1968, Saddam participated in a bloodless coup that replaced President Abdul Rahman Arif with Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr while he became Vice President as well as Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council and oversaw the subsequent purge of the non-Ba’ath faction led by Prime Minister Naif, regardless of its support for the coup. An effective politician behind the scenes, Saddam became the moving force of the regime and effectuated stable rule in a country split along ethnic, religious, social and economic fault lines through massive repression and the improvement of living standards. The high oil prices of the 1970s and the early 80s enabled the expansion of this agenda.
Oil revenues rose from half a billion to tens of billions of dollars in the 70s and the money was put to good use. Saddam provided free education all the way up to the university level, initiated a successful anti-illiteracy campaign during which hundreds of thousands of people learned to read, gave subsidies to farmers, mechanized agriculture, granted free hospitalization to everyone, electrified most of the country, nationalized banks, and initiated a national infrastructure campaign that made great progress in building roads and railroads, building power plants and hydroelectric dams, promoting mining and developing other industries. By the late 70s, Iraq had the most modern public healthcare system of the Arab world, earning Saddam a UNESCO award.
The flipside was that Saddam built a strong security apparatus able and willing to engage in massive human rights violations (torture, unlawful imprisonment, murder, genocide) and suppress internal coups and external insurrections. Besides that, a colossal personality cult was built around Saddam. This continued unabated after Saddam drove al-Bakr out of power in 1979 (to prevent the merger of Iraq and Syria, which would’ve made Syrian President Hafez al-Assad al-Bakr’s deputy, pushing Saddam into obscurity).
After annexing Khuzestan in 1980 at Iran’s expense, Iraq controlled even more oil and firmly established itself as the world’s third oil exporter behind Saudi Arabia and the Soviet Union. Iraq had acted as an important junior partner in the Soviet-Iranian War and Soviet-Iraqi relations had been friendly during the 60s and 70s. During a brief window in 1980-’82 it seemed like Iraq would become Moscow’s primary Middle Eastern ally.
Very soon the Kremlin would find it impossible to juggle the interests of its Middle Eastern partners Iran, Iraq and Syria. Iran was angry about losing Khuzestan to Iraq and quickly re-establishing normal relations with Iraq, as mandated by the cordial relations of their Soviet sponsor with the Iraqis, required near impossible levels of restraint. Relations between Damascus and Baghdad weren’t any better. Ever since Saddam had sabotaged the Syrian-Iraqi merger, relations between the two countries had been poor and Soviet mediation only raised that to mediocre. Ultimately it was Saddam himself who threw a monkey wrench into Iraq’s ties with its Soviet patron and ironically uncomplicated Moscow’s Middle Eastern diplomacy.
Saddam became increasingly furious at the newly established Kurdish Autonomous Socialist Republic, a federal subject of Iran with a great degree of freedom. His intelligence and repression apparatus informed him that weapons shipments to aid the KDP and PUK were coming in from there. This later proved to be untrue: as much as the Kurdish leadership in Sanandaj wanted to, the Iranians and the Soviets forbade them from aiding their brethren in Iraq, Syria and Turkey. The KDP and PUK in Iraq and the PKK in Turkey had nothing to with the autonomous Kurds in Iran.
Soviet foreign minister Gromyko went to Baghdad to defuse the situation in March 1987. He was confronted by an irrational Saddam who demanded that Moscow withdrew its support for the Iranian Kurds (and preferably for Iran as a whole) and who disbelieved evidence that the Kurdish Autonomous Socialist Republic (KASR) wasn’t supporting Iraqi Kurds against him. During the talks Gromyko crossed his legs and inadvertently showed Saddam the bottom of his shoe, an insult in the Arab world. An agitated Hussein threw a temper tantrum, talks were abruptly ended then and there, and Gromyko packed up and left, reporting to Moscow about the breakdown in talks. Subsequent talks through diplomatic backchannels mediated by Romania amounted to naught. Soviet-Iraqi relations were damaged to say the least.
Shortly thereafter the Iraqi army fired Scud missiles at several locations in the KASR. The Soviets responded by deploying an S-300 long range surface-to-air missile system that could shoot down Scuds with relative ease. They also stationed a squadron of MiG-29s at a Kurdish airfield base near the capital of Sanandaj and sent 150 “military advisors.” Supplies of arms to Iran also increased. Soviet-Iraqi relations were now irreparably damaged.
Meanwhile, it was feared by the White House and the Pentagon that without American support, Iran could topple the Ba’ath regime with Soviet help and install a communist regime somewhere down the road. The US Department of Defence projected the use of a combination of direct military aggression and exploitation of the country’s ethnic fault lines by supporting the Shia majority and the Kurds against the Sunni dominated regime, resulting in military collapse and revolution. Though damaged from the revolution and the war with the Soviets, Iran still held the demographic advantage and the US estimated it also still had greater economic potential than Iraq in the medium to long term due to greater economic diversity. Besides that, Moscow had already directly intervened against one Middle Eastern regime. Who was to say they wouldn’t do it again? Iraq was the second most powerful Arab country after Egypt. If it fell to communism, the Americans expected other Arab countries to fall like dominos.
Knowing his country couldn’t go it alone in the bipolar Cold War system, Saddam responded to American overtures and accept them as his new superpower sponsor for lack of alternatives. Iraq had been removed from the US list of “State Sponsors of Terrorism” as early as 1980 in a bid to open full diplomatic relations between the two countries. For lack of success, both countries put relations with the other on the backburner until 1987. Weeks after Gromyko left, in May 1987, US Secretary of State George P. Shultz visited Baghdad as Reagan’s proxy and promised Saddam more weapons than he knew what to do with: M60A3 main battle tanks, M113 armoured personnel carriers, F-16 multirole fighters, C-130 Hercules transport planes, Chinook transport helicopters, Bell AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters, Huey utility helicopters, Patriot surface-to-air missiles, BGM-71 TOW anti-tank missiles and M-16 assault rifles (the existing Soviet equipment was kept in reserve, used for training purposes or sold). The Iraqi Navy also got attention as it now had to guard a significantly longer coastline: originally consisting of only eight Soviet made Osa-class missile boats and vessels for riverine warfare, Iraq got the four Kidd-class guided missile destroyers originally intended for Iran and placed orders in the Netherlands for four Zwaardvis-class (Swordfish-class) diesel electric submarines and in Italy for four Lupo-class frigates and six Assad-class corvettes.
By 1988, Saddam had an army equipped with the best equipment the US had to offer and he knew America saw his country as an indispensable buffer against communist Iran. It was time to exploit this advantage to the hilt. In June 1988, Saddam started to make noise about Kuwait’s unwillingness to abide by OPEC quotas for oil production. Discipline was required to achieve the desired price of $18 per barrel, but as a result of Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates consistently overproducing the price got as low as $10. Not that Iraq was desperate for cash, but it missed out on $7 billion worth of revenues as a result. Iraq was supported by Jordan in its demand for more discipline, with little success. Iraq pictured it as a form of economic warfare, which it claimed was aggravated by Kuwaiti slant-drilling across the border into Iraq’s Rumaila oilfield. The Iraq-Kuwait dispute also involved Iraqi claims to Kuwait as Iraqi territory. Kuwait had been a part of the Ottoman Empire’s province of Basra, something that Iraq claimed made it rightful Iraqi territory. Its ruling dynasty, the al-Sabah family, had concluded a protectorate agreement in 1899 that assigned responsibility for its foreign affairs to Great Britain. Britain drew the border between the two countries in 1922, making Iraq virtually landlocked. Kuwait rejected Iraqi attempts to secure further provisions in the region.
Saddam secured a statement from the US State Department that “the United States government has no position on inter-Arab conflicts.” He was correct that they’d appease him. After that Iraq deployed 100.000 troops to its border with Kuwait. The Iraqi Army was capable of fielding one million men and 850.000 reservists, 5.500 tanks, 3.000 artillery pieces, 700 combat aircraft and helicopters; it held 53 divisions, 20 special-forces brigades, and several regional militias, and had a strong air defence. By contrast, the Kuwaiti military was believed to have numbered only 16.000 men, arranged into three armoured, one mechanised infantry and one under-strength artillery brigade. The pre-war strength of Kuwait’s air force was around 2.200 men, with 80 fixed-wing aircraft and 40 helicopters. Kuwait stood no chance.
The attack began at 03:30 AM on Sunday October 23rd 1988, precipitating the Gulf Crisis. After Iraqi commandos had already entered the country, the main prong consisting of elite Republican Guard tank divisions commenced its advance south to Kuwait City along the main highway at 05:00 AM while a supporting force simultaneously invaded from the west and cut off the city. Kuwaiti aircraft scrambled to meet the invaders, but one fifth were lost or captured during the opening phase of the conflict. Meanwhile, the partially mobilized 35th Armoured Brigade (fielding 36 Chieftain tanks, a company of APCs, a company of anti-tank vehicles and seven self-propelled guns) conducted an effective defence west of the town of Al Jahra. Not anticipating resistance, the Iraqis were caught by surprise when they arrived around 11:00 AM and were held up until 10:00 PM. It was at that point that the Kuwaitis were almost out of ammunitions. Besides that, commandos, deployed by helicopters and boats were already attacking targets in Kuwait City.
Within 36 hours all military resistance had ceased and the royal family had fled the country. After that, an Iraqi controlled provisional government held power for a few days until Saddam appointed his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid as Governor. Kuwait had ceased to exist, a situation to which the Kuwaiti government-in-exile protested against without any results. Iraq tried to legitimize its annexation of Kuwait through a bogus referendum: the voter turnout was said to be 98% and 90% supposedly voted in favour of the merger with Iraq. Though the real results weren’t known, nobody was fooled by the obviously falsified Iraqi numbers. And yet they did nothing.
Being allowed to keep Kuwait was a boon for Iraq’s economy as it was now the world’s second largest oil exporter. The state suppressed dissidents with its security forces, using torture, unlawful imprisonment and murder. A pervasive personality cult utilizing film, radio, music, the visual arts and the education extolled the virtues and achievements of Saddam Hussein. Of course no mention was made of the cruelty and brutality with which opponents were treated, about corruption or the rapes committed by Saddam’s oldest son Uday that scandalized Baghdad. With oil money the Ba’ath regime continued to buy the silence and political support, or apathy in the worst case, of the majority of the Iraqi people. The oil paid for universal healthcare, free education, cheap public housing, investments in infrastructure and projects to diversify the economy. One of those was a Fiat factory in Basra where the first generation Fiat Panda and the Fiat Tipo continued to be produced years after production in Italy ended as these cheap models proved popular among common Arabs and became a major export to neighbouring countries. A second project was a plan to produce the required spare parts for Iraq’s new American weapons locally.
The West, by contrast, experienced a fourth oil shock, though milder than the ones in 1973, 1979 and 1980. After the price of oil had peaked at $37 per barrel in 1981 (nominal) it had dropped back to only $15 by 1987. After the Gulf Crisis resulted in the Iraqi annexation of Kuwait, the price of a barrel of oil peaked again at $30 in 1989 and stayed stable at $25 the next year before returning to a more normal price of $18. This oil shock contributed to the 1989-’91 recession along with factors like restrictive monetary policies enacted by central banks out of inflation concerns, a loss in consumer and business confidence, a slump in office construction due to overbuilding in the 80s, and the savings and loan crisis.
For the Soviets it was easy to choose their political position (despite the obvious economic benefit of oil money lining their pockets). They had cut off ties with Iraq earlier and now vehemently denounced Iraq’s unilateral action. Permanent Representative of the Soviet Union to the United Nations Alexander Belonogov proposed sanctions that included an arms embargo, an economic embargo that would stop anything but food and medicine from entering Iraq, travel restrictions for senior members of the Iraqi government, and freezing the bank accounts of all members of the Iraqi government. Belonogov made a statement in the UN: “The leader of the so-called free world refuses to condemn the annexation of one country by its larger, more powerful neighbour. This reeks of appeasement, like 1938, with the modern Hitler getting his loot in exchange for peace. The American position is hypocritical and dangerous.”
The representative of China but also those of Washington’s British and French allies criticized the American position, albeit not so aggressively. The American representative in the UN weakly rebutted the original US position that inter-Arab conflicts weren’t America’s business. The US had been forced into a position, partially through their own actions, that they had to veto sanctions against Iraq after the latter’s act of aggression to protect its new ally. The USSR, its Warsaw Pact allies and many individual European countries enacted sanctions of their own in response. In regards to Kuwait the US policy was ambivalent: they continued to recognize the Kuwaiti government-in-exile and tried to negotiate with Iraq on their behalf, but not to the point of jeopardizing US-Iraqi relations. This success made Iraq the leader of the Arab world through fear. If the US wouldn’t stop Iraq from annexing a neighbour, who would? Saddam was emboldened and that would have consequences somewhere down the line.
