Desert Storm out of Turkey...

MacCaulay

Banned
...this is an excerpt from Into the Storm, written by Tom Clancy and Gen. Fred Franks, Jr. (Ret.).

General Franks commanded VII Corps in Desert Storm. It was the heavy corps that engaged the heavy armoured units of the Republican Gaurd and was tasked with it's destruction during the ground war.

He (Franks) also had his planners look at an indirect approach to forcing the Iraqis out of Kuwait. "What if we moved VII Corps to eastern Turkey," he asked, "and then attacked toward Baghdad? Is that a workable alternative? Could we move our corps through the terrain and could we logistically support the operation?" After some corps planning work, it began to look like a workable option. As far as they could see, no Iraqi force was available to stop them. If Saddam saw an armored corpos on the move to Baghdad, he might quickly decide his capital was worth more than Kuwait.
Franks informally discussed the Turkey option to his own higher commanders, General Crosbie ("Butch") Saint, the U.S. Army Europe commander, and Genearl Jim McCarthy, USAF, deputy commander of U.S. forces in Europe, both bold thinkers, and they liked the idea. But when they tried the concept out on still higher echelons, Franks's idea was squelched.

This would've put XVIII Airborne Corps, US Marine Corps, and Arab Corps to the Iraqi Army's south in Kuwait, and VII Corps in the north.

Now...how would this have effected the war, and how would Saddam have reacted to a ground as well as air campaign out of Turkey in 1991?
 
The biggest problem would be political. ODS was about liberating Kuwait, not attacking Iraq. If VII corps is in turkey it's clear it's purpose is invasion of Iraq, while forces in the south are clearly there to liberate Kuwait and will invade Iraq only as little as necessary.
 
Hmmm, the Kurds in north west Iraq may take the chance to split off from Iraq the Turks wont like that one little bit.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
Hmmm, the Kurds in north west Iraq may take the chance to split off from Iraq the Turks wont like that one little bit.

That's an interesting angle on it. I can say with certainty (I've got the book right in front of me) that VII Corps didn't seem to really put that into consideration.

I think they were really only putting their energy into putting direct pressure onto Saddam. That, though, is quite a different way of fighting the war than was done in OTL.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
I think the risk of them bogging down in a sectarian mess would be bigger that way.

I was kind of thinking about that.

VII Corps, even in it's retooled Desert Storm form which differed fairly largely from the VII Corps of the 80s, was still definitely an armour-heavy Cold War machine.

And I can't help but wonder if the logistics the Iraqi Army had to hold down any Kurdish rebels in the 1990s would still even be around after a three or four division thrust into northern Iraq in 1991.

The same bases the Iraqi Army would later use to launch raids against the Kurds would be the ones they'd use to defend against this ground attack. And VII Corps, as well as the Coalition air support from Incirlik and other Turkish airbases, would probably not leave much in their wake when they finally withdrew at the end of hostilities.
 
The US did stay in Northern Iraq under Operation Provide Comfort until 1996. (My boss was a Kurdish interpreter for the US Army and left Iraq in the aftermath.) If US forces had entered from the north, then Provide Comfort may have been shorter- but the later Iraqi response would have been lessened.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
The US did stay in Northern Iraq under Operation Provide Comfort until 1996. (My boss was a Kurdish interpreter for the US Army and left Iraq in the aftermath.) If US forces had entered from the north, then Provide Comfort may have been shorter- but the later Iraqi response would have been lessened.

Yes! Precisely!

Man...I'm really surprised I didn't think about the aid programs afterwards...they'd be a lot easier. The Coalition would've already been over that ground, and chances are that anyone who'd be looking for aid might already be pouring over the border, or at least congregating around the seperate way points and fuel depots that VII Corps would need to put down inside Iraq for it's operations.
 
Well Mac, you've got to have answers to the political issues at hand (and frankly, the world would have supported removing Saddam in 91', Bush I just didn't want to do it.)

Swallowing removing Saddam from power means fundamentally changing the scope of Desert Storm, and it leaves the possibility that Saddam might be able to hammer into Saudi Arabia (and then lose his armed forces there)

The major problem is going to be Turkey and the Kurds. Now the Turks are going to set conditions which may not be acceptable to Washington, like turning the occupation zone over to Turkish control or other perhaps even trying to veto the entire plan.

So, Mac, this is the raw kernel of a good plan, but you've got to address getting Turkey to buy this plan, and Bush I deciding that he's going to finish the job, with the possibility that Saddam may throw in chemical weapons if the USA goes past a line in the sand.

It is what happens afterwards that is most intriguing. Who were the ringleaders of the anti-Saddam rebellions after Desert Storm? Would they be the new leaders of Iraq ITTL? Could a pullout from Saudi Arabia after Iraq is done butterfly away 9-11?

And does George I win re-election if the war in Iraq is larger and leads to a far greater conclusion? So many possibilities here...
 

MacCaulay

Banned
Well Mac, you've got to have answers to the political issues at hand (and frankly, the world would have supported removing Saddam in 91', Bush I just didn't want to do it.)

Swallowing removing Saddam from power means fundamentally changing the scope of Desert Storm, and it leaves the possibility that Saddam might be able to hammer into Saudi Arabia (and then lose his armed forces there)

The main reason they didn't try to remove him was the fact that they wanted the Arab Corps to stay with the Coalition and make it a truelly multi-national force, not just a bunch of white guys fighting for the Saudis which was what it would've been if the Egyptians and Syrians would've left.

The major problem is going to be Turkey and the Kurds. Now the Turks are going to set conditions which may not be acceptable to Washington, like turning the occupation zone over to Turkish control or other perhaps even trying to veto the entire plan.

That's the big thing. There'd have to be some deal with the Turkish military about border security or something. I'll have to do some further research on Provide Comfort to see how that worked.
That mission would bare a lot of similarities to the buildup, and the possibilities of the Turks demanding similar concessions may be high.
Not to oversimplify it, but the math I'm getting in my head as a sort of rough estimate of Turkish demands would be:
(OTL) Operation Provide Comfort + (OTL) Operation Northern Watch = (ATL) Operation Desert Storm.

the possibility that Saddam may throw in chemical weapons if the USA goes past a line in the sand.

That's something else to think about. Myself, I'm can't help but wonder if this was something he was just not willing to do unless US forces got within a certain distance of Baghdad in '91. If that was true, then the use of chemical weapons wouldn't come up on the battlefield or political arena for a bit.

It is what happens afterwards that is most intriguing. Who were the ringleaders of the anti-Saddam rebellions after Desert Storm? Would they be the new leaders of Iraq ITTL? Could a pullout from Saudi Arabia after Iraq is done butterfly away 9-11?

I've got no clue who the ringleaders were in the rebellions. Myself, I'm thinking that it might put the PKK in a stronger position with the Kurds, though of course the Turks wouldn't like that.


It seems to me from reading the book that they were planning it more like a yo-yo. They'd go in from the north with the intent to put pressure on the Iraqi military and force them to withdraw their forces from Kuwait to more vital areas inside their own country.
Then when the war was over, VII Corps would be withdrawn back to Turkey.
This may mean, though, that we could see a ground force equivalent to Northern and Southern Watch. It's not overthrowing Saddam, but it's not withdrawing completely. It's sidelining him from the political process of about half of his country. That might be something worth aiming for, if you're Bush.
It's also something you may be able to sell the Turks on: "The Kurds aren't going to be causing you trouble because we're going to have some troops on the ground to make sure aid gets in after the war's over. We're going to have aircraft over head. Don't worry about it."
Sure, the PKK's going to get by it, and the Turks will probably know that they can't get out of it without a scratch. But they were fighting a border war against the Kurds for years. It's not like having Americans on the other side of the border now was going to hurt any.
 
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