Gulf War: Liberation of Kuwait
A coalition of thirty-five countries expelled Iraq from Kuwait in six weeks in early 1991. Iraq had invaded on 2 August 1990 and annexed the country as its nineteenth province. The reasons were debt from the eight-year war with Iran, much of it owed to Kuwait, a dispute over the Rumaila oilfield and over Kuwaiti overproduction depressing prices, and an old territorial claim. The United Nations imposed sanctions within days and authorised the use of force in November with a deadline of 15 January. The coalition assembled some 700,000 troops in Saudi Arabia over five months, which Iraq did nothing to prevent. The air campaign began on 17 January and ran for five weeks against command centres, bridges, power stations and the army in the field, and was the first war shown live on television — precision-guided weapons were a small fraction of the tonnage dropped and most of the footage. Iraq fired Scud missiles at Israel to break the coalition by provoking a response, and Israel did not respond. The ground war began on 24 February and lasted a hundred hours. The main coalition force swung far to the west through open desert and cut the Iraqi army off, and the retreat from Kuwait City was destroyed on the road to Basra. Iraqi military deaths are estimated between 20,000 and 35,000; the coalition lost about 300. The decision to stop rather than march on Baghdad was deliberate, and the Shia and Kurdish risings encouraged by Washington were then crushed.
- Year: 1991 CE
- Category: Military
