Contemporary Issues in the Persian Gulf I
American Military University
In 1991, when the Coalition forces began their push to supplant Saddam’s forces from Kuwait and the small patch of Saudi Arabia they had begun to encroach upon, I was stationed in a compound in Saudi Arabia just short of the Kuwait border, about a mile behind two Marine divisions.
While the Coalition bombing campaign was doing a magnificent job of softening the Republican Guard and pummeling the massive conscript armies near the border, Saddam was steadily attempting to provoke Israel into joining the conflict. Obviously, Israel’s entrance into the war would have fractured the Coalition and alienated most of the Arab and Gulf States involved in the Coalition.
Further, what seemed at the time, at least from the perspective of our commanding general as the very real possibility of Israel using nuclear weapons against Baghdad would have thrown the entire region into chaos. I recall that during a series of SCUD attacks that managed to find several targets in Israel, every platoon was assigned to report to a five-ton truck in the event that the local compounds needed to evacuate to avoid fallout from a nuclear attack on Baghdad. While in hindsight it appears unlikely that Israel would have resorted to such extreme measures, we lacked sufficient information to make such a judgment at the time.
Once the air war and ground war had achieved the U.N.’s goal of ejecting Saddam’s forces from Kuwait, the aftermath was worse that imagined. In an especially disgusting move, Saddam’s troops set fire to hundreds of oil fields. The black smoke created a serious health hazard and the loss of income from the burning wells was like rubbing salt in a wound. In addition, I remember that while serving on a security detail entering Kuwait City, the destruction and looting of the Republican Guard left malls, banks and stores all over Kuwait City trashed and empty.