1991 Iraqi uprisings

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1991 Iraqi uprisings
Part of the aftermath of the Gulf War

An Iraqi government tank disabled by rebels
Date1 March – 5 April 1991
Location
Result Iraqi government military victory
Territorial
changes
Establishment of the
Iraqi no-fly zones
Belligerents

 Government

leftist elements of opposition
:

Kurdish rebels:
Peshmerga:

Support:
MEK
Support:
 United States[1]
 Iran[2]
 Syria
Commanders and leaders
Massoud Barzani
Jalal Talabani
Strength
c. 300,000[3] c. 59,000–107,000
  • SCIRI:
    c. 40,000–50,000[3]
  • KDP:
    c. 15,000–45,000[3]
  • PUK:
    c. 4,000–12,000[3]
Casualties and losses
c. 5,000 killed or captured[4] c. 25,000–180,000 killed (mostly civilians)[5][6][7]

The 1991 Iraqi uprisings were ethnic and religious uprisings against Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq that were led by Shi'ites and Kurds. The uprisings lasted from March to April 1991 after a ceasefire following the end of the Gulf War. The mostly uncoordinated insurgency was fueled by the perception that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had become vulnerable to regime change. This perception of weakness was largely the result of the outcome of the Iran–Iraq War and the Gulf War, both of which occurred within a single decade and devastated the population and economy of Iraq.[8]

Within the first two weeks, most of Iraq's cities and

Kurdish Islamists, and far-left groups. Following initial victories, the revolution was held back from continued success by internal divisions as well as a lack of anticipated American and/or Iranian support. Saddam's Sunni Arab-dominated Ba'ath Party regime managed to maintain control over the capital of Baghdad and soon largely suppressed the rebels in a brutal campaign conducted by loyalist forces spearheaded by the Iraqi Republican Guard
.

During the brief, roughly one-month period of unrest, tens of thousands of people died and nearly two million people were displaced. After the conflict, the Iraqi government intensified a prior systematic

.

Earlier calls for uprising

During the Iran–Iraq War, Iran's supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, called on Iraqis to overthrow the Ba'ath government and establish an Islamic state.[9] Because of his incitement, many Shia Arabs were driven out of Iraq and some were recruited into armed militias backed by Iran, although the majority remained loyal to Iraq throughout the duration of the war.[10]

U.S. radio broadcasts

On February 15, 1991, then President of the United States,

military coup to topple Saddam Hussein, Bush stated:[11]

There is another way for the bloodshed to stop: and that is, for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside and then comply with the United Nations' resolutions and rejoin the family of peace-loving nations.[12]

Bush made a similar appeal on March 1, a day after the end of the Gulf War:

In my own view...the Iraqi people should put [Saddam] aside, and that would facilitate the resolution of all these problems that exist and certainly would facilitate the acceptance of Iraq back into the family of peace-loving nations.[13]

On the evening of February 24, four days before the Gulf War ceasefire was signed, the Voice of Free Iraq radio station, allegedly funded and operated by the CIA, broadcast a message to the Iraqi people telling them to rise up and overthrow Saddam.[14] The speaker on the radio was Salah Omar al-Ali, an exiled former member of the Ba'ath Party and the Ba'athist Revolutionary Command Council. Al-Ali's message urged the Iraqis to overthrow the "criminal tyrant of Iraq" and asserted that Saddam "will flee the battlefield when he becomes certain that the catastrophe has engulfed every street, every house and every family in Iraq."[15] He said:

Rise to save the homeland from the clutches of dictatorship so that you can devote yourself to avoiding the dangers of the continuation of the war and destruction. Honorable Sons of the Tigris and Euphrates, at these decisive moments of your life, and while facing the danger of death at the hands of foreign forces, you have no option in order to survive and defend the homeland but put an end to the dictator and his criminal gang.[16]

Revolution

Southern uprisings

Many of the rebels in southern Iraq, where the uprisings began, were either demoralized soldiers of the

Iraqi Army or members of anti-regime groups, in particular the Islamic Dawa Party and Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Iraqi armed forces were composed largely of Shia conscripts and contained substantial anti-regime elements, and thus many of the government's troops quickly switched sides and defected
to the rebels.

The turmoil first began in the towns of

. Smaller cities were swept up in the revolution as well.

Many exiled Iraqi dissidents, including thousands of Iran-based

the Shia holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, alienating many people who did not subscribe to their Shia Islamist agenda and pro-Iranian slogans, for which SCIRI was later criticized by the Dawa Party. Ranks of the rebels throughout the region included mutinous Sunni members of the military, leftists such as Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) factions, anti-Saddam Arab nationalists, and even disaffected Ba'athists. Disastrously for them, all the diverse revolutionary groups, militias, and parties were united only in their desire for regime change as they had no common political or military program, no integrated leadership, and there was very little coordination between them.[19]

Northern uprisings

Another wave of insurgency broke out shortly afterwards in the

Kurdish populated northern Iraq. Unlike the spontaneous rebellion in the South, the uprising in the North was organized by two rival Kurdish party-based militias: primarily the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and to a lesser extent the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). Additionally, the Assyrian Democratic Movement (ADM) served as the principle Assyrian opposition group, although the group was more active in the 1980s. The ADM reported that the government displaced thousands of Assyrians in Kirkuk, as there were around 30,000 in the city prior to 1991.[21] In the north, the defection of the government-recruited Kurdish home guard militias, known as jash
, gave a considerable force to the rebellion.

The rebellion in the north (

Al-Anfal Campaign in which the government forces had systematically killed tens of thousands of Iraqi Kurds and members of other ethnic minorities three years earlier in 1988; 14 tons of these documents were obtained by Human Rights Watch.[24]

Unlike in the south, the Kurdish rebellion was preceded by demonstrations with clear political slogans: democracy for Iraq and autonomy for Kurdistan. After Mosul was taken, Jalal Talabani proposed to march on the capital Baghdad.[19]

Loyalist offensive

On March 7, in an effort to quiet the uprisings, Saddam Hussein offered the Shia and Kurd leaders shares in the central government in exchange for loyalty, but the opposing groups rejected the proposal.

limited unrest in the Shia-populated vast slum of Saddam City
while the rest of Baghdad remained calm.

U.S. Gulf War leaflet depicting Saddam Hussein as Death

Soon, regime loyalists regrouped and went on an offensive to reclaim the cities. They were helped by the fact that about half of tanks of the elite and politically reliable

helicopter gunships and indiscriminate artillery barrages when the Ba'athists responded to the uprisings with crushing force. According to Human Rights Watch, "in their attempts to retake cities, and after consolidating control, loyalist forces killed thousands of anyone who opposes them whether a rebel or a civilian by firing indiscriminately into the opposing areas; executing them on the streets, in homes and in hospitals; rounding up suspects, especially young men, during house-to-house searches, and arresting them with or without charge or shooting them en masse; and using helicopters to attack those who try to flee the cities."[29]

There were several reports of chemical warfare attacks, including of a nerve agent being used during the assault on Basra. Following an investigation, the United Nations (UN) found that there was no evidence that Iraq used chemical weapons to repress the uprisings, but did not rule out the possibility that Iraq could have used phosgene gas which would not have been detectable after the attack.[25] According to the U.S. government's Iraq Survey Group, Iraqi military did in fact use the nerve agent sarin, as well as non-lethal CS gas, on a massive scale when "dozens" of improvised helicopter bombing sorties were flown against rebels in Karbala and the surrounding areas in March 1991; evidence of apparent mustard gas attacks have been also reported in the areas of Najaf and Karbala by the U.S. forces that have been stationed there at the time.[30]

In the south, Saddam's forces quelled all but a scattering of the resistance by the end of March. On March 29, SCIRI leader

People's Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI, also known as MEK) assisted the Iraqi Republican Guard in suppressing the Kurdish uprisings;[31][32][33] however this has been denied by the MEK,[34] with other sources saying that the MEK supported the Kurdish rebellion.[35][36]

On April 5, the government announced "the complete crushing of acts of sedition, sabotage and rioting in all towns of Iraq."[37] On that same day, the United Nations Security Council approved Resolution 688 condemning the Iraqi government's oppression of the Kurds and requiring Iraq to respect the human rights of its citizens.[25]

Casualties

The death toll was high throughout the country. The rebels killed many Ba'athist officials and officers. In response, thousands of unarmed civilians were killed by indiscriminate fire from loyalist tanks, artillery and helicopters, and many historical and religious structures in the south were deliberately targeted under orders from Saddam Hussein.

"disappeared" thousands of people at random in a policy of collective responsibility. Many suspects were tortured, raped, or burned alive.[38]

Many of the people killed were buried in mass graves.[18] Mass burial sites containing thousands of bodies have been uncovered since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003.[39] Of the 200 mass graves the Iraqi Human Rights Ministry had registered between 2003 and 2006, the majority were in the South, including one believed to hold as many as 10,000 victims.[40]

Aftermath

Refugee crisis

UNHCR trucks with aid supplies for Kurdish refugees, 29 April 1991

In March and early April, nearly two million Iraqis, 1.5 million of them Kurds,[41] escaped from strife-torn cities to the mountains along the northern borders, into the southern marshes, and to Turkey and Iran. By April 6, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) estimated that about 750,000 Iraqi Kurds had fled to Iran and 280,000 to Turkey, with 300,000 more gathered at the Turkish border.[25] The approach towards the refugee immigration was met with a different approach by Iran and Turkey. Iran had opened its borders to the refugees, while Turkey first closed its borders and only opened its borders following international pressure and assurances of financial help to cope with the refugees.[42] Iran also received much less international help to cope with the crisis than Turkey, mainly due to their strained relations with the USA. According to accounts from international relief organizations cited by Nader Entassar, Turkey received more than seven times the amount of help per refugee, as Iran received.[42] Their exodus was sudden and chaotic with thousands of desperate refugees fleeing on foot, on donkeys, or crammed onto open-backed trucks and tractors. Many were gunned down by Republican Guard helicopters, which deliberately strafed columns of fleeing civilians in a number of incidents in both the north and south.[18] Numerous refugees were also killed or maimed by stepping on land mines planted by Iraqi troops near the eastern border during the war with Iran. According to the U.S. Department of State and international relief organizations, between 500 and 1,000 Kurds died each day along Iraq's Turkish border.[25] According to some reports, up to hundreds of refugees died each day along the way to Iran as well.[43]

Operation Desert Storm
, 1 May 1991

Beginning in March 1991, the U.S. and some of the Gulf War allies barred Saddam's forces from conducting jet aircraft attacks by establishing the no-fly zone over northern Iraq and provided humanitarian assistance to the Kurds. On April 17, U.S. forces began to take control of areas more than 60 miles into Iraq to build camps for Kurdish refugees; the last American soldiers left northern Iraq on July 15.[25] In the Yeşilova incident in April, British and Turkish forces confronted each other over the treatment of Kurdish refugees in Turkey. Many Shia refugees fled to Syria, where thousands of them settled in the town of Sayyidah Zaynab.[44]

Resistance and reprisals in the south

In southeastern Iraq, thousands of civilians, army deserters, and rebels began seeking precarious shelter in remote areas of the

Iraqi marshlands and the large-scale and systematic forcible transfer of the local population. The Marsh Arab resistance was led by the Hezbollah Movement in Iraq (completely unrelated to the Hezbollah of Lebanon), which after 2003 became the Marsh Arabs' main political party. On July 10, 1991, the United Nations announced plans to open a humanitarian center at Lake Hammar to care for those hiding out in the southern marshlands, but Iraqi forces did not allow UN relief workers into the marshlands or the people out. A large scale government offensive attack against the refugees estimated 10,000 fighters and 200,000 displaced persons hiding in the marshes began in March–April 1992, using fixed-wing aircraft; a U.S. Department of State report claimed that Iraq dumped toxic chemicals in the waters in an effort to drive out the opposition. In July 1992, the government began trying to drain the marshlands and ordered the residents of settlements to evacuate, after which the army burned down their homes there to prevent them from returning. A curfew was also enforced throughout the south, and government forces began arresting and moving large numbers of Iraqis into detention camps in the central part of the country.[25]

U.S. 3rd Infantry soldiers wait to be deployed in support of Operation Southern Watch, the U.S. and coalition enforcement of the no-fly zone over southern Iraq

At a special meeting of the UN Security Council on August 11, 1992, Britain, France, and the United States accused Iraq of conducting a "systematic military campaign" against the marshlands, warning that Baghdad could face possible consequences. On August 22, 1992, President Bush announced that the U.S. and its allies had established a second no-fly zone for any Iraqi aircraft south of the 32nd parallel to protect dissidents from attacks by the government, as sanctioned by UN Security Council Resolution 688.

In March 1993, a UN investigation reported hundreds of executions of Iraqis from the marshes in the preceding months, asserting that the Iraqi army's behavior in the south is the most "worrying development [in Iraq] in the past year" and added that following the formation of the no-fly zone, the army switched to long-range artillery attacks, followed by ground assaults resulting in "heavy casualties" and widespread destruction of property, along with allegations of mass executions. In November 1993, Iran reported that as a result of the drainage of the marshlands, marsh Iraqis could no longer fish or grow rice and that over 60,000 had fled to Iran since 1991; Iranian officials appealed to the world to send aid to help the refugees. That same month, the UN reported that 40% of the marshlands in the south were drained, while unconfirmed reports surfaced that the Iraq army had used poisonous gas against villages near the border of Iran. In December 1993, the U.S. Department of State accused Iraq of "indiscriminate military operations in the south, which include the burning of villages and forced relocation of non-combatants." On February 23, 1994, Iraq diverted waters from the Tigris river to areas south and east of the main marshlands, resulting in floods of up to 10 feet of water, in order to render the farmlands there useless and drive the rebels who have been hiding there to flee back to the marshes which were being drained of water. In March 1994, a team of British scientists estimated that 57% of the marshlands have been drained and that in 10 to 20 years the entire wetland ecosystem in southern Iraq will be gone. In April 1994, the U.S. officials said Iraq was continuing a military campaign in Iraq's remote marshes.[25]

Iraq saw

Mohammad Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr
by the government. Like the 1991 uprisings, the 1999 uprising was violently suppressed.

Kurdish sovereign enclave

Area controlled by Kurds after the Iraqi Kurdish Civil War (area controlled after October 1991 is a combination of both KDP and PUK areas, controlled by Kurdish Peshmerga rebel forces

In the north, fighting continued until October when an agreement was made for Iraqi withdrawal from parts of Iraq's Kurdish-inhabited region. This led to the establishment of the

U.S. Air Force continued to enforce a no-fly zone over northern Iraq
since March 1991, to defend Kurds fleeing their homes in northern Iraq, the U.S. military also built and maintained several refugee camps in 1991.

This general stalemate was broken during the 1994–1997

missile strikes on southern Iraq in 1996. On January 1, 1997, the U.S. and its allies launched Operation Northern Watch
to continue enforcing the no-fly zone in the north the day after Operation Provide Comfort was over.

Post–2003 trials

The trial of 15 former aides to Saddam Hussein, including

Operation Anfal when he was also convicted for his role in the events of 1991 and given another death sentence; he was executed in 2010. The issue was also given much attention during the trial of Saddam Hussein
.

U.S. non-intervention controversy

Prompted by foreign policy "realists" in his administration—such as Colin Powell, Brent Scowcroft and Richard HaassMr. Bush allowed Saddam to fly military aircraft to put down the uprising. While thousands of U.S. troops were still on Iraqi soil and in some cases were close enough to watch, the tyrant unleashed the power of modern weaponry against men, women and children.

Ahmed Chalabi in 2011[48]

Many Iraqi and American critics accused President George H. W. Bush and his administration of encouraging and abandoning the rebellion after halting

Najmaldin Karim, president of the Washington Kurdish Institute, called it a "betrayal of Iraq", blaming the policy of "a dangerous illusion of stability in the Middle East, a 'stability' bought with the blood of Middle Easterners and that produced such horrors as the massive 1991 bloodletting of Iraqis who sought to overthrow Saddam Hussein."[51]

Soon after the uprisings began, fears of a disintegrating Iraq led the Bush administration to distance itself from the rebels. American military officials downplayed the significance of the revolts and spelled out a policy of

Margaret Tutwiler said: "We never, ever, stated as either a military or a political goal of the coalition or the international community the removal of Saddam Hussein."[54] Other reasons given for not providing assistance to the uprising included fear of the "Lebanonization of Iraq," Iranian-backed Shias assuming power, and reluctance to recommit U.S. soldiers into fighting.[28]
President George H. W. Bush himself insisted three days later, just as the Iraqi loyalist forces were putting down the last resistance in the cities:

I made clear from the very beginning that it was not an objective of the coalition or the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein. So I don't think the Shiites in the south, those who are unhappy with Saddam in Baghdad, or the Kurds in the north ever felt that the United States would come to their assistance to overthrow this man...I have not misled anybody about the intentions of the United States of America, or has any other coalition partner, all of whom to my knowledge agree with me in this position.[55]

The Bush administration sternly warned Iraqi authorities on March 7 against the use of chemical weapons during the unrest, but equivocated use of helicopter gunships by the government.[18] U.S. Major General Martin Brandtner, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added that "there is no move on the [part of] U.S. forces... to let any weapons slip through [to the rebels], or to play any role whatsoever in fomenting or assisting any side."[56] Consequently, U.S. troops that were deployed in southern Iraq defended arsenals[57] or blew up them altogether to prevent the rebels from arming themselves, blocked the rebels from advancing onto Baghdad and even actively disarmed some rebel forces; according to Middle East expert William B. Quandt, U.S. forces also "let one Iraqi division go through [their] lines to get to Basra because the United States did not want the regime to collapse."[30] In addition the destroying captured munitions, the Bush administration transferred some to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, and even returned some to the Iraqis;[28] at the same time, the Bush administration accused Iran of sending arms to the rebels.[25]

Coalition Provisional Authority Human Rights Officer Sandra Hodgkinson briefs U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on the Al-Mahawil mass grave site in 2003

The U.S. abandonment of the 1991 revolution was cited by many analysts as an explanation for the fact that the skeptical Iraqi Shia population did not welcome the U.S.-led coalition forces during the 2003 invasion of Iraq the way some officials of

Basheer Hussain Najafi, stated that "the apology of the U.S. has come too late, and does not change what happened. The apology is not going to bring back to the widows their husbands, and bereaved mothers their sons and brothers that they lost in the massacre that followed the uprising."[49]

In film

Films that have used the southern rebellions as their subject include the 1999 film

Frontline documentary Saddam's Killing Fields by Michael Wood
.

See also

Notes

References

  1. .
  2. .
  3. ^ a b c d Uppsala conflict data expansion: Non-State Actor Data: Version 3.3 Archived February 21, 2014, at the Wayback Machine pp. 146; 217; 218; 502
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  9. .
  10. . Hundreds of thousands of Arab Shi'ites were driven out of [Iraq], and many formed an armed opposition with Iranian support. While most of the remaining Arab Shi'ites remained loyal, their secular and religious leaders were kept under constant surveillance and sometimes imprisoned and killed.
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  14. ^ Fisk. Great War for Civilisation, p. 647
  15. ^ Fisk. Great War for Civilisation, p. 646
  16. PBS
    Frontline, January 24, 2006
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  34. . The Mojahedin's support of the Kurdish rebellion, their opposition to the Velayat-e Faqih, and their boycott of the constituional referendum in 1979 further strained their fragile relationship with the fundamentalists.
  35. . In the political sphere, the Mojahedin attacked the regime for disrupting rallies and meetings; … violating the rights of the national minorities, especially of the Kurds.
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  41. ^ .
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Further reading