- 1991 uprisings in Iraq
Infobox Military Conflict
conflict=1991 uprisings in Iraq
date=March 1 -April 5 1991
place=Iraq
result=Iraqi government victory
* Mass reprisals against the population
* Exodus of 2 million refugees
* Accelerated destruction of the Tigris-Euphrates marshes
* Continued war in the North
* A low-level conflict in the South
territory= Establishment of theIraqi no-fly zones
combatant1=
combatant2= militia defectors
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casualties2= The 1991 uprisings in Iraq were a series of anti-governmental "intifada " (rebellion s) in Southern and NorthernIraq during the aftermath of theGulf War in March–April 1991.The revolts in the
Shia -dominated Southern Iraq involved armedcitizen s as well as demoralized Iraqi troops returning from Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War, but were in part organized by the agents of theIslamic Dawa Party and Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI)—Iraqi Shia militant groups then largely based inIran . Another uprising in the Kurdish areas of Northern Iraq broke out shortly after. Unlike the spontaneous rebellion in the South, the uprising in the North was organized by two rival Kurdish party-basedmilitia s, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and thePatriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).Although they presented a serious threat to his
Baath Party regime , Iraqi PresidentSaddam Hussein was able to suppress the rebellions with massive force and maintained power on his own, as the expectedintervention by theUnited States never materialized. The uprisings were eventually brutally crushed by theIraqi Republican Guard , followed by mass reprisals and intensified forced relocating ofMarsh Arabs , including the draining of the Iraqi marshlands. During the few weeks of unrest, tens of thousands of people were killed with many more dying during the following months. In addition, nearly two million people fled for their lives.U.S. radio broadcasts
On
February 15 ,1991 ,President of the United States George H. W. Bush was heard by Iraqis on theVoice of America radio saying:On the evening of
February 24 ,1991 , several days before theGulf War ceasefire was signed inSafwan between Iraqi andCoalition military commanders, a radio station called the Voice of Free Iraq, based in theSaudi Arabia n town ofKhafji , funded and run by the AmericanCentral Intelligence Agency (CIA), broadcasted a message to the people of Iraq telling them to rise up and overthrow Saddam. [Fisk, Robert. "The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East". London: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006 p. 646 ISBN 1-84115-007-X] The speaker on the radio was Salah Omar al-Ali, a former member of the IraqiBaath Party and the Revolutionary Command Council. Al-Ali's message urged the Iraqis to overthrow the "criminaltyrant of Iraq":Al-Ali's radio broadcast encouraged Iraqis to "stage a
revolution " and claimed that " [Saddam] will flee the battlefield when he becomes certain that the catastrophe has engulfed every street, every house and every family in Iraq." [Fisk. "Great War for Civilisation", p. 647]The uprisings
The outpouring of popular support among religious Shia for the uprising was largely spontaneous, although some long-term planning had taken place, particularly in the North. The revolt was fueled by the perception that the
Iraqi security forces were uniquely vulnerable at the time, and by heavily fueled anger at government repression and the devastation wrought by two wars in a decade, the Gulf War and theIran–Iraq War .Unlike the Kurdish
Peshmerga guerrillas, the Shia groups lacked a well-trained fighting force, but it still maintained cells and had carried out armed operations on occasion. The Shia opposition has long enjoyed sanctuary and support from theIran ian regime, including the arming of theBadr Organization as a pro-Khomeini fighting force made up of Iraqi POWs, theIslamic Dawa Party and Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).Tehran does not appear to have furnished significant material or logistical assistance during the March 1991 uprising.The revolts of March 1991 in Southern Iraq followed a general pattern. On the day that a city rebelled, masses of unarmed civilians and small contingents of rebels converged in the streets. Shouting antiregime and pro-Iranian slogans, they descended on government buildings, especially offices of the security forces. These were then attacked, usually with considerable bloodshed on both sides. Government forces fought back, but then were either killed or captured or allowed to flee. Once in control, the rebels flung open the regime's prisons and interrogation centers, and seized small caches of weapons.
The turmoil began in Basra on
March 1 ,1991 , one day after the Gulf War ceasefire, when aT-72 tank gunner fired a shell into a portrait of Saddam, and soldiers around him applauded jubilantly. [ [http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/iraq501/events_uprising.html The Crimes of Saddam Hussein: Supression of the 1991 Uprising] ,PBS FRONTLINE , January 24, 2006] InNajaf , ademonstration near the city's greatImam Ali Mosque became a gun battle between Shia deserters and Saddam's security forces. The rebels seized the shrine and Baath Party members fled the city or were killed. The uprising spread within days to all of the largest Shia cities of Southern Iraq:Karbala ,Hilla , Nasiriyah,Amarah ,Samawa ,Kut , andDiwaniya ; smaller cities were also swept up in the revolt. Considerable unrest took place also in the Shiite slum ofSadr City (then called Saddam City), in the Iraqi capitalBaghdad .The rebellion in the North (
Iraqi Kurdistan ) erupted on or aboutMarch 4 , in the town ofRania , northwest ofSulaymaniyah . Within ten days, the Kurds controlled every city in the North exceptKirkuk andMosul . The Kurdish rebels' greatest triumph—the capture of Kirkuk—came on aboutMarch 20 .In Sulaymaniyah, Kurdish rebels captured regional
headquarters of the dreadedIraqi Intelligence Service ("Mukhabarat"); inside, they foundtorture devices smeared with blood and other horrors. In retaliation, the rebels brutally killed the capturedsecret police men. Ordinary government soldiers were mostly spared in anamnesty and were even issued safe-conduct passes to traverse Kurdish-held territory on their way home. InArbil , they captured and subsequently handed over to the westernhuman rights the government documents related to the genocidal Operation Anfal in which about 100,000 Kurds were killed three years earlier in 1988.Once under way, the March 1991 uprising gathered momentum as many of the government's
regular soldiers andmilitia men switched sides. The army, which is said to have grown from 140,000 in 1977 to around one million at the time of the 1990invasion of Kuwait , contained substantial antigovernment elements; Shia Arabs accounted for 80% of the fighting ranks but only about 20% of the officers. In the North, the defection of much of the government-recruited Kurdish "Jash " militia gave considerable force to the revolt; journalists reported that theirdefection was the fruit of months of planning andpsychological warfare by Kurdish rebel leaders.Suppression of the uprisings
Once troops loyal to the central government regrouped and mounted their
counteroffensive , only massive foreign assistance or intervention could have saved the ill-equipped and largely inexperienced rebels. With little more thansmall arms ,machine guns ,rocket-propelled grenade s, and some captured tanks andartillery pieces, the Shia and Kurdish rebels had very fewsurface-to-air missile s; as such, they were almost defenseless against Iraqihelicopter gunship s and indiscriminate artillerybarrage s.The central government responded to the uprisings with crushing force. According to
Human Rights Watch :The Kurdish uprising collapsed even more quickly than it began. After ousting the
peshmerga from Kirkuk onMarch 29 , the Iraqi army rolled intoDahuk andIrbil onMarch 30 ,Zakho onApril 1 , and Sulaymaniyah, the last important town held by the rebels, over the next two days.In the South, the government (aided by the
People's Mujahedin of Iran , an Iraq-based militant organization of Iranianexile s) had quelled all but scattered resistance by the end of March. OnApril 5 ,1991 , Iraq's ruling Revolutionary Command Council announced "the complete crushing of acts ofsedition ,sabotage , andriot ing in all towns of Iraq."The
death toll was high throughout the country. The rebels had killed Baathist officials in many Southern cities. In response, thousands of unarmed civilians were killed by indiscriminate fire from loyalist tanks, artillery guns, and helicopters. Later, when security forces rolled into the cities, they detained and summarily executed people at random using the policy ofcollective responsibility .The violence was heaviest in Southern Iraq, where a smaller portion of the local population had fled than in Kurdish areas (owing partly to the danger of escaping through the South's flat, exposed terrain). In 2005, the new Iraqi government estimated at least 100,000 Shia, and possibly 180,000, died in the 1991 repression. Those who remained in the South were at the mercy of advancing government troops, who went through neighborhoods, summarily executing hundreds of young men and rounding up thousands of others, many of whom were never seen again alive. In Karbala, some of
Shia Islam ’s holiestshrine s were attacked. In Najaf, residential areas were bombed, and hospital staff and patients were murdered. The homes of suspected rebels were destroyed while the suspects were executed in the streets. Many Shia institutions were destroyed or badly damaged during the suppression of the uprising, or subsequently demolished. Hundreds of Shiacleric s and their aides and students were also arrested and "disappeared" after the uprisings.Aftermath
Exodus from cities
Just as the experience of years of repression fed the fury of the uprising, it fueled the terrified
exodus as soon as the rebellion began to falter. In March and early April, nearly two million Iraqis escaped from strife-torn cities to the mountains along the northern borders, into the southern marshes, and intoTurkey and Iran. Their exodus was sudden and chaotic, with thousands of desperaterefugee s fleeing on foot, on donkeys, or crammed onto open-backed trucks and tractors. TheUnited Nations High Commissioner for Refugees called the exodus the largest in the organization's history.Thousands, many of them children, are thought to have died or suffered injury along the way, primarily from adverse weather, unhygienic conditions, and insufficient food and medical care. Some were killed by army helicopters, which deliberately strafed columns of fleeing civilians in a number of incidents in both the North and South. Others were injured when they stepped on
land mines planted by Iraqi troops near the eastern border during the war with Iran. The environmental organizationGreenpeace has estimated that the death rate among Kurdish and Shia refugees and displaced persons averaged 1000 daily during April, May, and June 1991. At one point in 1991, an estimated 2000 Kurds were dying every day.Destruction of the Iraqi marshlands
In southeastern Iraq, thousands of Shia civilians, army deserters, and rebels began seeking precarious shelter in remote areas of the marshes that straddle the Iranian border. After the uprising, the
Marsh Arabs were singled out for a mass reprisals, accompanied by ecologically catastrophic drainage of the Iraqi marshlands and the large-scale and systematic forcible transfer of the local population.Kurdish-Arab civil war in Iraq
Many observers believe that attacks by Baghdad on the Kurdish-held zone were restrained to some extent by Saddam's fear that they would provoke the intervention of Allied forces after
Operation Provide Comfort allowed Iraqi Kurds to gain a "de-facto " independence from Baghdad by the end of 1991. A long positional war followed, and an estimated 100,000–150,000 soldiers remained along the front, backed by tanks and heavy artillery. The Iraqi government established a blockade of food, fuel, and other goods going to the rebel-controlled zone in the North, which targeted one segment of the Iraqi populace—predominantly Kurds—for punishment.The general
stalemate was broken during the 1994–1997Iraqi Kurdish Civil War , when one of the main Kurdish factions sided with the government, and the regular conflict ended when the U.S.-led forces intervened on the Kurdish side during the 2003Iraq War .Mass graves
Many of the people killed were buried in
mass grave s. Several mass graves containing thousands of bodies have been uncovered since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003, notably in the Shia Arab South and Kurdish North. [ [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4561872.stm Mass grave unearthed in Iraq city] ,BBC News , 27 December 2005] Of the 200 mass graves the Iraqi Human Rights Ministry had registered in the three years since the American-led invasion, the majority were in the South, including one located south of Baghdad and believed to hold as many as 10,000 to 15,000 victims. [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/05/world/middleeast/05grave.html Uncovering Iraq's Horrors in Desert Graves] , "The New York Times ", June 5, 2006]War crimes trial
The trial of 15 former aides to Saddam Hussein, including
Ali Hassan al-Majid , over their alleged role in the suppression of a Shia uprising and the deaths of 60,000 to 100,000 people, has opened in Baghdad in August 2007. [ [http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2007/08/200852512244438973.html Iraqi Shia uprising trial begins] ,Al-Jazeera , August 22, 2007] Al-Majid has been already sentenced to death in June 2007 for genocide of Kurds.U.S. non-intervention controversy
The Iraqi survivors and American critics of President George H. W. Bush say that the president encouraged the rebellion after halting UN coalition forces at Iraq's southern border with
Kuwait at the end of the Gulf war. Soon after the uprising began, fears of a disintegrating Iraq led the Bush Administration to distance itself from the insurgents.Officials downplayed the significance of the revolts and spelled out a policy of nonintervention in Iraq's internal affairs. On
March 5 ,Rear Admiral John Michael McConnell , director of intelligence for theJoint Chiefs of Staff , acknowledged that "chaotic and spontaneous" uprisings were under way in 13 Iraqi cities, but statedthe Pentagon 's view that Saddam would prevail because of the rebels' "lack of organization and leadership." On the same day,Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney said that "it would be very difficult for us to hold the coalition together for any particular course of action dealing with internal Iraqi politics, and I don't think, at this point, our writ extends to trying to move inside Iraq." [ [http://www.slate.com/id/2080606/ Shia Folly] , "Slate ", March 27, 2003]American
Major General Martin Brandtner , deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added the same day, "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." [ [http://www.hrw.org/reports/1992/WR92/MEW1-02.htm U.S. Policy] ,Human Rights Watch ]United States State Department spokesmanRichard Boucher explained the next day onMarch 6 : "We don't think that outside powers should be interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq." [ [http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1991/910306-175102.htm "Situation 'Fluid' in Southeast Iraq, Kurdish North." The Iraqi government appears to be establishing some degree of control in southeastern Iraq, but the situation is still unsettled.] ]Consequently, U.S. occupation forces who were stationed only a few miles from Nasiriyah, Samawa, and Basra did nothing to help the rebels who rose up in these cities. Soldiers watched helplessly as Iraqi troops devastated the cities, while wounded civilians fled on foot to U.S. bases nearby telling of the atrocities that were taking place.
The Administration sternly warned Iraqi authorities on
March 7 , against the use ofchemical weapons during the unrest, but equivocated about Iraq's use of helicopter gunships against civilians. President Bush and the U.S.Secretary of State James Baker stated in mid-March that helicopter gunships should not be used, but other Administration officials gave conflicting signals. The question of helicopters was ignored in theMarch 3 , ceasefire agreement, which clearly prohibited Iraq's use offixed-wing aircraft .In the end, the aircraft were employed with impunity to attack rebels and civilians alike, and proved instrumental in quelling the insurrection. The decision to permit Iraq to use helicopters in suppressing the revolt has been the subject of lively debate. Some believe that the rebels would have triumphed had helicopters been included in the Allies' cease-fire ban on flights by Iraqi aircraft. Others believe that a ban on helicopters would have merely prolonged the bloodshed without altering the outcome.
In a carefully crafted statement, U.S. State Department spokeswoman
Margaret Tutwiler said onApril 2 , that the Bush Administration had "never, ever stated as either a military or a political goal...the removal of Saddam Hussein." [ [http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/ERC/briefing/daily_briefings/1991/9104/053.html US Department of State Daily Briefing #53: Tuesday, 4/2/91] ] President Bush insisted three days later, just as the Iraqi loyalist forces were putting down the last resistance in the cities:In film
The southern rebellions were subjects of the 1999 film "Three Kings" by
David O. Russell and the 2008 film "Dawn of the World " byAbbas Fahdel , as well as the 1993 Frontline documentary " [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1095140 Saddam's Killing Fields] " by Michael Wood.ee also
*
1991 Uprising in Karbala
*Hezbollah Movement in Iraq
*Human rights in Saddam's Iraq
*Trial of Saddam Hussein
*Yasilova incident References
External links
* [http://www.hrw.org/reports/1992/Iraq926.htm Endless Torment: The 1991 Uprising in Iraq And Its Aftermath]
* [http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/iraq501/events_uprising.html Suppression of the 1991 Uprising]
* [http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/mena/marsharabs1.htm The Iraqi Government Assault on the Marsh Arabs]
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