Arab Storm: Politics and Diplomacy Behind the Gulf War

449 Pages·2006·18 MB·English

by  Alan Munro

Arab Storm
Politics and Diplomacy
behind the Gulf War
Beirut SYRIA 0 200 400 600 Km
LEBANON Damascus 0 200 400 Miles
Baghdad
ISRAEL IRAQ
Amman An Najaf N
JORDAN
Basrah
IRAN
KUWAIT Kuwait
Hafer Ra’s al Khafji
al Batin Persian
Ha’il Gulf
Al Jubayl
Dhahran BAMHaRAnIaNma OMAN
Unayza Dubai
EGYPT Doya Abu Gulf of
Medina Riyadh Dhabi Oman
Muscat
U.A.E
Mecca SAUDI OMAN
At Ta’if
Jeddah ARABIA
SUDAN
Red Sea
Khamis
Mushayt
Abha
Arabian Sea
ERITREA Sanaa YEMEN
Arab Storm
Politics and Diplomacy
behind the Gulf War
Alan Munro
For Grania,
and for all those friends and colleagues in the Kingdom
with whom we shared eventful times
Published in paperback in 2006 by
I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
www.ibtauris.com
First published by Brassey’s in association with
the Royal United Services Institute in 1996
In the United States of America and Canada distributed by
Palgrave Macmillan a division of St Martin’s Press
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
Copyright © Alan Munro, 1996, 2006
The right of Alan Munro to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act
1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part
thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN 1 84511 128 1
EAN 978 1 84511 128 1
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
Contents
Map ii
List of Plates vi
Preface vii
Introduction xiii
1 The Saddam Hussein Factor 1
2 The Gathering Storm 14
3 The Reason Why 38
4 Invasion and Response 45
5 Light Blue 74
6 Business as Usual 104
7 The Long Haul… 130
8 … And Longer 153
9 Khaki 168
10 Oil and Money 198
11 Cold Feet 208
12 Clearing the Decks 236
13 The Fog of War 252
14 Diplomatic Distractions 279
15 Climax 299
16 Anticlimax 315
17 Profit and Loss 343
18 The Fourth Estate 356
19 Aftermath 375
Bibliography 400
Index 402
List of Plates
Air Vice Marshal Sandy Wilson with the author. (Press Association)
Jubail Industrial City. (Royal Commissionfiubail and Yanbu)
The author with Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz. (Crown Copyright)
King Fahd at the Cairo emergency Arab Summit. (Saudi Press Agency)
Saudi volunteers during military training. (Saudi Press Agency)
King Fahd with the Ruler of Kuwait. (Saudi Press Agency)
Patriot missiles at Riyadh military airport. (Raytheon Company)
President Mubarak visits King Fahd in Jedda. (Saudi Press Agaq)
Tom King in a meeting with King Fahd and author. (Saudi Press Agenq)
President Bush visits the Kingdom. (Saudi Press Agency)
The author with Chas Freeman. (Crown Copyright)
Postcard sent by Kuwaitis to British troops. (Author)
John Major visiting British troops. (Author/Crown Copyright)
Wreckage of a Scud missile in Riyadh. (Saudi Press Agenq)
Scud missile damage in central Riyadh. (Saudi Press Agency)
Saudi infantry in action at A1 Khafji. (Saudi Press Agency)
The author with Scud, the cat. (@ania Munro/Crown Copyright)
Douglas Hurd, Prince Saud a1 Faisal and the author. (SaudiP ress Agency)
General Prince Khalid bin Sultan briefs the media. (Saudi Press A~ency)
- .
20 &21 Wildlife victims of the oil disaster. (Michael McKinnon)
22 RAF Tornado at Dhahran air base. (Authm/Crown Copyright)
23 Saudi military personnel being welcomed into Kuwait. (Saudi Press
Agenq)
24 Mutla Ridge, March 1991. (Author/Crown Copyright)
Damaged hardened aircraft shelter in Kuwait. (Author/Crown Copyright)
Oil wells ablaze near Kuwait City. (Author/Crown Copyright)
Bombed BA jet at Kuwait airport. (Author/Crown Copyright)
John Major at Dhahran air base. (Crown Copyright)
The author with the RMP close protection team. (Crown Copyright)
General Prince Khalid bin Sultan with the author. (Saudi Press Agency)
General Sir Peter de la Billiere. (Author/Crown Copyright)
General Norman Schwarzkopf with Flight LieutenantsJ ohn Peters (left)
and John Nichol. (Press Association)
The author at the old Hejaz Railway. (Authm/Crown Copyright)
A wrecked Turkish troop train from the First World War. (Author/Crown
Copy right)
PREFACE
From Success to Disaster
Our military operations have as their objective the defeat of the
enemy, and the driving of him from these territories. In order
to complete this task, I am charged with absolute and supreme
control of all regions in which British troops operate; but our
armies do not come into your cities and land as conquerors or
enemies, but as liberators … You people of Baghdad are not to
understand that it is the wish of the British Government to impose
upon you alien institutions…
Proclamation to the inhabitants of Baghdad on 19 March
1917, by Lieut. General Sir Stanley Maude, following the
occupation of the city by British forces
The major changes to the political landscape which have been brought
upon Iraq through military conquest and occupation in the decade since
this book was first published have produced a dismal and chaotic sequel
to the efficient international action of 1990 and 1991 which rolled back
Iraq’s illegal seizure of Kuwait. No long-term solution is readily available
to the intercommunal insurgency which has predictably followed the
American-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein and subsequent attempt to
convert Iraq into a beacon of liberal democracy. It is fitting to compare
the political contexts in which the two operations took place, and to
ask whether lessons to be derived from the success achieved by the first
coalition, with its carefully prepared military campaign and diplomatic
aftermath, and which were so recklessly ignored in the subsequent
engagement, can yet help salvage a disastrous outcome.
Indeed the risk of unleashing endemic internal tensions figured
prominently among the factors which deterred the members of the
coalition that ousted Iraq from Kuwait in 1991 from carrying their
battle through to Baghdad, for all the urgent pleas for intervention
from a brutally suppressed Shi’a insurrection in the south and a Kurdish
rising in the north. As Margaret Thatcher had put it, they should avoid
vii
viii Preface
getting their ‘arm caught in the mangle’. That limb is today well and
truly caught in the snare of Iraq’s chronic political dysfunction, just as
General Maude and those who followed him were to find during the
turbulent British mandate period ninety years earlier, for all their vain
assurances of non-interference. History has thus come full circle, while
its warnings have gone unheeded.
A distinctive feature of the successful operation to expel Iraq from
Kuwait in 1991 was the broad international support it received, whether
in the form of contributions to the military coalition, or of diplomatic
support, albeit in varying degree, through the United Nations. Moreover
this included a majority of Arab and Islamic states, as well as a crumbling
Soviet Union. Even more significant was the measure of consensus that
was achieved over the objectives of the operation, focused upon the
liberation of Kuwait and the subsequent restraining of Iraq’s regime
– through sanctions and arms control measures – from any further acts
of military aggression. In other words, the agreed objective was limited
to putting Jack back in his box, and keeping the lid on. It was accepted,
even by the governments in the forefront of the campaign such as the
USA, Britain and France, and Saudi Arabia too, that their mandate did
not extend to invading Iraq, or forcing a regime change.
The wisdom of this restraint has been much debated subsequently,
but it was clearly recognised at the time that not only would such action
fracture a carefully crafted international coalition, but it would also
create major risks for the cohesion of Iraq and the consequent stability
of this crucial region. The force of these considerations is now being
amply demonstrated on the streets of Baghdad and Basra. Inevitably
there were points of dissent amongst the international community,
which Saddam Hussein skilfully exploited. But for all his defiance, and
a policy of double bluff over continuing possession of weapons of mass
destruction, his capacity for trouble continued to be inhibited.
By contrast the exercise in military pre-emption (or establishing
hegemony as many Arabs see it), conducted in 2003 by a militant USA,
and with the committed support of Britain’s political establishment,
was undertaken with little more than token regard for international
consensus. It was prompted by a fervid and impatient mood in which
an oversimplified mission to replace traditional autocratic government
across the region with western democratic practice was combined with
a frustrated urge, reinforced by the shock of the terror attacks on New
York and Washington in September 2001, to settle scores with Iraq’s
regime, both real and imaginary. In part at least the action stemmed
from understandable concern over erosion of the comprehensive
Preface ix
control arrangements which had been applied to a stubbornly recusant
Ba’athist regime in the aftermath of the Gulf War. But the caution
which had characterised the campaign of 1991, and the sensibility to
Iraq’s inherent political complexity, together with the lessons of her
recent history, were brushed aside. Superficial evidence of new military
capability and of engagement in Islamist terrorism was taken at face
value. Meanwhile provision for ensuring subsequent security and an
orderly transition to a redistribution of power among Iraq’s assorted
communities and tribes was woefully inadequate.
Equally discounted was the animosity which military intervention
and occupation in an Arab state would arouse across the Arab and
Islamic worlds, particularly when contrasted with what was perceived
as acquiescence in a tightening of control by Israel over occupied
Palestinian territory. Nor was heed paid to warnings from allies in the
region that upheaval in Iraq would serve to embolden the network of
religious extremists whose capacity for acts of terror was now a matter
of international concern. In short the consequences of this exercise in
arrogance were never thought through. The result has been to draw
occupation forces, mainly American and British, into a faltering and
demoralising security role from which there appears no early exit.
It may now be too late to draw lessons from the earlier Kuwait
conflict and its aftermath. Despite brave attempts to forge a new order
of governance out of the wreckage of Ba’athism, Iraq still looks close
to chaos, fragmentation and a resurgence of latent tensions between
her neighbours. The gravity of this prospect however should now bring
the international community to put aside its divisions and join once
again in a broader coalition which would adopt a more assertive role
on the political and security fronts to support Iraq’s vulnerable political
establishment and revitalise the crucial process of reconstruction. It
would help minimise regional fall-out if such a coalition could include
an Arab and Moslem presence – though probably not Iraq’s neighbours,
who would be perceived as partisan. This would include Saudi Arabia,
who played such a pivotal role in stabilising the last Gulf crisis.
The prospects for such a coalition may appear unpromising, but
the endeavour is justified, indeed essential. Without strong central
authority, which the Iraqi government cannot establish on its own,
liberal democracy can never flourish in Iraq.
And what of the Saudis, whose country played such a stalwart part in
the dramatic events covered by this book? The process of drawing
the Kingdom’s sheltered community into a broader participation in