World History: The Modern Middle East 1989 to 2002



#6- World History: The Modern Middle East 1989 to 2002

1. The First Persian Gulf War 1991

a. In August, 1990 Iraqi forces invaded and occupied oil-rich Kuwait. The United Nations condemned the invasion and passed a resolution demanding Iraq withdraw by January 15, 1991. If Iraq did not comply the organization’s member states were free to use all necessary means to drive Iraq out of the country.

b. Iraq was confident. Their army was the fourth largest in the world. They had more than 5,000 tanks, Scud missiles and chemical weapons that had been employed against Iran in the 1980-88 war and against Iraqi Kurds in Halabja in March of 1988.

c. Iraq allowed the deadline to pass and on January 17, 1991 US warplanes launched the first of what would become thousands of strikes on Iraqi targets. On February 24, the ongoing air assault was complemented by the one hundred hour ground war known as Desert Storm.

d. More than half a million soldiers, mostly American, had been stationed in Saudi Arabia by February, 1991. These forces drove into Kuwait led by tanks and armored bulldozers. Iraqi trenches were shattered by bombing and overwhelmed by armor.

e. Thousands of Iraqi soldiers surrendered and thousands more streamed back into Iraq. US warplanes destroyed large numbers of Iraqi tanks and trucks as they retreated.

f. Saddam Hussein’s forces had been weakened but not annihilated. With Kuwait’s independence restored the military action ended. Saddam was still in power. President Bush assumed his regime could be toppled by rebellion. He urged the Iraqi people to rise in revolt.

g. The Shiites of southern Iraq rose up and Saddam’s forces turned on them. The rebellion was quickly crushed. More than 20,000 rebels were killed in the fighting. Many thousands more were later arrested, interrogated, tortured and killed by Saddam’s security forces.

2. Containment: 1992-2001 - No Fly Zones and UNSCOM (UN Special Commission on Iraq)

a. Shiites felt betrayed by the Americans who had urged them to revolt and then left them to battle Saddam alone. Weeks after the Shiite rising, the Kurds of northern Iraq revolted, they too were crushed.

b. The American military enforced “no fly zones” in both regions. Iraqi warplanes were prohibited from flying in these zones jets but Iraqi helicopter gunships were free to patrol and strike.

c. After the war U.N Weapons Inspectors investigated sites throughout Iraq as a result of UN Security Council Resolution 687 which mandated: the "destruction, removal, or rendering harmless" of all Iraqi biological, chemical, and nuclear weaponry; the machinery and facilities used to develop them; and ballistic missiles with a range greater than 150 kilometers (about 100 miles). This resolution invoked Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, which authorizes the use of force to enforce it.

d. The inspectors located hundreds of tons of chemical weapons agents and thousands more tons of the chemicals used to make them; a major biological weapons production facility; machines for separating out radioactive isotopes that could be used to fuel a nuclear bomb; and dozens of missiles, launching pads, and missile warheads for both conventional and chemical munitions. Inspectors were stunned by the volume of information and material they found, and surprised that Iraq's weapons programs were much more advanced than they had expected.

e. The Iraqi government harassed the inspectors, closed “presidential sites” to access, sabotaged equipment, created secret laboratories that were mobile or underground or contained in civilian factories. The inspections ended in 1998.

f. As the years passed, Iraq found new ways of evading its U.N. obligations; at the same time, international resolve to back up the inspections with the threat of force eroded.

g. Iraq accused UNSCOM of spying for the United States, barred American employees of UNSCOM from the country, and declared off-limits a growing number of "presidential sites"--a category not recognized in the U.N.-Iraq inspections accords.

h. After negotiating with the Iraqis, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan exempted the sprawling presidential sites from inspections. Nevertheless, in October 1998, Iraq said it would no longer cooperate with UNSCOM. That refusal triggered several days of U.S. and British air strikes, known as Operation Desert Fox, in December 1998. UNSCOM withdrew its inspectors before the air strikes began, and they never returned to Iraq.

i. Desert Fox lasted four days during which 415 cruise missiles and more than 600 bombs hit 97 sites in Iraq. However the operation also came a week after the House Judiciary Committee had approved articles of impeachment President Clinton was being investigated on a series of charges that led to his impeachment trial on February 12, 1999.

j. Senate Majority Leader Republican Trent Lott said about Desert Fox, “I cannot support this military action in the Persian Gulf at this time. Both the timing and the policy are subject to question.”

k. President Clinton was tried in the Senate where the necessary 2/3 vote for removal was not met. The no-fly zones continued to be policed in Iraq but the inspections were over. They would not resume until after September 11, 2001.

3. Osama Bin Laden, the American Military Presence in Saudi Arabia and 9/11

a. Osama Bin Laden told Saudi government officials the Americans were not needed to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. He told Saudi Prince Turki “we pushed the Soviets out of Afghanistan”.

b. Bin Laden and other Islamists believed the Prophet Muhammad had barred all non-Muslims from the Arabian Peninsula. Muhammad reportedly said as he lay dying, “Let there be no two religions in Arabia.”

c. Now, in the land of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, hundreds of thousands of non-Muslim soldiers were gathering. Many Saudis were mortified by the need to turn to Christians and Jews to defend the holy land of Islam. That many of these soldiers were women only added to their embarrassment. (Wright, 159)

d. The Americans represented the secular, modernizing West. It was the duty of jihadis (holy warriors) to awaken the Islamic nation to the Western threat. “In order to do that, bin Laden told his men, al-Qaeda would drag the US into a war with Islam.” (Wright, 172) Reading: Silicon Valley 176—179.

e. On February 26, 1993 an enormous bomb was exploded in the garage of the World Trade Center by an Islamic terrorist attempting to knock the towers down. Six people died, more than 1,000 were injured.

f. On June 25, 1996 a truck bomb exploded outside the Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. American servicemen patrolling the Iraqi no-fly zones were stationed there. Nineteen US soldiers were dead and almost 400 other people were injured.

g. In August of 1996 bin Laden declared war on America from a cave in Afghanistan; His stated reason was the continued presence of American forces in Saudi Arabia.

h. “Terrorizing you, while you are carrying arms in our land is a legitimate right and a moral obligation. These youths (jihadis) love death as you love life. These youths will not ask you for explanations. They will sing out that there is nothing between us that needs to be explained, there is only killing and neck-smiting.” (Wright, 4)

i. On August 7, 1998 truck bombs exploded outside American embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya. 224 people were killed 4,585 wounded – 12 victims were American the rest African.

j. On October 12, 2000 a small fiberglass fishing boat approached the billion dollar guided missile destroyer the USS Cole, a ship that stretched more than 500 feet from bow to stern. The little boat exploded and tore a 40’ hole in the Cole killing 17 sailors and wounding 39 more.

k. On September 11, 2001 nineteen terrorist hijacked four planes. Two were piloted into the World Trade Center, the third struck the Pentagon and the fourth, destined for the US Capitol failed because the passengers attacked the terrorists and the plane crashed in a Pennsylvania field.

l. 2,975 people were killed in the terror attacks of that day. The US would attack Afghanistan less than a month later. This campaign drove the Taliban from power, destroyed the terrorist training camps and narrowly missed killing/capturing Osama bin Laden who escaped into Pakistan in March, 2002.

Name: ______________________________________________Date: _____________ Period:_______

#6 - World History: The Modern Middle East 1989-2002

1. What country did Iraq invade in 1990?

2. What organization condemned the invasion?

3. What was the size of their military at this time?

4. What nation invaded Iraq after Iraq failed to comply with the UN?

5. What was the one hundred hour ground war known as?

6. What did President George Bush senior urge the Iraqi people to do?

7. How did Saddam Hussein’s forces react to the rebellion?

8. What were “no fly zones”?

9. What did the UN Security Council Resolution 687 call for:

10. What surprised weapons inspectors?

11. What were some methods the Iraqi Government used to evade the UN’s investigation?

12. What is UNSCOM?

13. What was Operation Desert Fox?

14. What distracted America from the crisis in Iraq in 1999?

15. Why did Osama Bin Laden object to the American effort to drive out Iraq from Kuwait?

16. What terrorist attack occurred in the United States in 1993?

17. What happened in Saudi Arabia in June of 1996?

18. What did Osama Bin Laden declare in August of 1996?

19. On September 11th 2001 – How many airplanes were hijacked by terrorists in the United States?

20. How many Americans were killed in these terrorist attacks?

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