Starting on January 17, 1991, the U.S.-led coalition unleashed the forty-three days of
Operation Desert Storm. The coalition
air forces quickly disrupted
Iraq's
command and control network and tore up its extensive
air defences. American fighters quickly found that
Iraqi pilots were poor
dogfighters (many could barely fly, let alone fight) and shot down nearly three dozen
Iraqi jets with only one coalition loss. Coalition strike aircraft shut down much of the country's electricity, water, and
oil production, as well as destroying bridges and railroads, impeding movement on
Iraq's roads, and hammering
Iraq's
military forces themselves. In addition, the coalition mounted a fierce campaign on
Iraq's known
WMD and arms production factories.
Iraq did fight back, launching volleys of
al-Hussein modified
Scud missiles at
Israel,
Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain, but U.S. diplomacy (and the reassuring -if ultimately ineffective- presence of American Patriot surface-to-air missiles in Israel and
Saudi Arabia) succeeded in keeping the Israelis out of the war and the Saudis in. When the Scuds failed to do the trick,
Saddam tried other approaches. He threatened the international
oil market by setting
Kuwait's
oil wells on fire. He tried to create an ecological catastrophe by dumping
Kuwaiti
oil into the Persian Gulf. He tried to mount several terrorist operations against the coalition, but these were easily thwarted by Western intelligence services. Finally, he mounted a surprise offensive by two of
Iraq's best regular army divisions to maul some of the coalition
Arab units in the hope that this would force the coalition high command to cut short the air campaign and get on with the ground campaign (in which,
Saddam still believed,
Iraq would be able to inflict heavy casualties on the coalition). But the attack had to be called off on its second day when the two divisions came under murderous fire from coalition air forces.
Very shortly, the
Iraqis began to realise that things were not going according to their plan. As the weeks passed,
Saddam concluded that many of his assumptions had been badly off base.
Saddam's military advisors had expected the coalition's air campaign would last three to seven days at most; even the most pessimistic among them had not believed it could go on for more than ten days. It never occurred to the
Iraqi leadership that the coalition would sit back and bomb them for thirty-nine days before making a move on the ground. By mid-February,
Saddam had become very concerned, in particular because the coalition air campaign was doing more damage to his army in the
Kuwaiti Theatre of Operations than he had ever expected.
Saddam's concern was not that the air strikes themselves would destroy the
Iraqi Army or drive it out of
Kuwait, but that they would so weaken his army in the
Kuwaiti Theatre that it would not be able to stand up to coalition ground forces when they finally did attack. Coalition air strikes probably destroyed about 1,200
Iraqi armoured vehicles. Of far greater importance, the coalition air campaign had effectively shut down
Iraq's logistical system in the KTO and was demolishing the morale of the army, leading to widespread
desertions. Indeed, by the time the coalition ground offensive did kick off on February 24,
Iraqi forces in the
Kuwaiti Theatre had fallen from their high of around 550,000 to about 350,000 because of these morale and logistical problems.
The coalition launched its long-awaited ground campaign on February 24. When it came,
Iraq's frontline
infantry divisions disintegrated in a mass of surrenders and flight. The coalition strategy consisted of a diversionary attack by U.S.
Marines into southeastern
Kuwait, coupled with a vast outflanking manoeuvre to the west of the
Iraqi lines (the famed "Left Hook") by the U.S. VII Corps, the most powerful armoured concentration in history. On the second day of the ground war
Baghdad realised two important facts. First, that morning they had counterattacked the
Marines with one of their best regular army mechanized divisions, only to have it wiped out in a few hours of fighting, having done virtually no damage to the
Marines. This let
Baghdad know that even its best formations could not hope to defeat the coalition army. Second, after several
Iraqi units were destroyed by huge American armoured formations in the far west of the
Kuwaiti Theatre,
Baghdad recognised the Left Hook. It must have been a terribly shock to the
Iraqis to realise that powerful U.S. armoured forces were moving to cut off the entire
Iraqi Army in
Kuwait. In response,
Saddam issued a general retreat order to try to get as much of his army out as far as he could. Meanwhile, the
Iraqi General Staff shifted five
Republican Guard divisions and three armoured and mechanized divisions of the regular army to form up defensive screens to the west and south, behind which the army was supposed to retreat. They also pulled several other
Republican Guard and regular army heavy divisions back to defend
Baghdad and al-Basrah against a possible coalition move to overthrow the regime.
On the third and fourth days of the ground campaign, coalition forces smashed into the
Iraqi defensive screen and fought the hardest
battles of the war. In southeastern
Kuwait, the
Iraqi First Mechanized and Third Armoured Divisions put up a desultory fight around
Kuwait International Airport and the Matlah Pass that kept the
Marines occupied but never endangered them. However, in the west of the
Kuwaiti Theatre, the
Republican Guards fought to the death. On February 26, three U.S. armoured and mechanized divisions and one armoured cavalry regiment (a combined force of more than one thousand M-1A1 tanks) plowed into the lines of the
Iraqi Tawakalnah 'alla Allah Mechanized Division of the
Republican Guard. In roughly twelve hours of vicious combat, the Americans obliterated the Tawakalnah -destroying nearly every one of the division's three hundred operable tanks and APC's- but the Americans came away with a great deal of respect for the
Republican Guards, who fought on despite being outnumbered, outgunned, and outmatched in every way. The story was the same on February 27, when other American armoured units crushed a brigade of the Madinah Munawrah Armoured Division and the Adnan and Nebuchadnezzar
infantry Divisions. The guards did not fight well and inflicted minimal damage on the Americans, but they fought hard.
Meanwhile, the fog of war had descended over the American political and military leadership, prompting the most controversial decision of the war. By the end of February 27, the U.S. Central Command believed that the
Republican Guard had largely been destroyed. This was based on reports from American combat units claiming to have engaged with and wiped out
Iraqi
Republican Guard formations, reports that U.S. troops were already at the outskirts of al-Basrah, and the assumption that coalition air forces has sealed all the lines of retreat out of the
Kuwaiti Theatre. Added to this were reports of a massacre by coalition aircraft of
Iraqi soldiers fleeing
Kuwait (mostly in stolen
Kuwaiti vehicles and piled high with loot). The president was already feeling domestic pressure to end the war and the "slaughter" of
Iraqi forces. Consequently, with the advice of the Pentagon and CENTCOM, President Bush ordered a halt to the ground offensive during the morning of February 28.
The reality was somewhat different. Of the eight
Republican Guard divisions deployed in the
Kuwaiti Theatre, only three (Nebuchadnezzar, Adnan, and Tawakalnah) had been destroyed, and a fourth (Madinah) had lost about half of its strength. CENTCOM actually did not know where many American units were, believing them to be farther forward than was the case. Nor were the exits from the
Kuwaiti Theatre cut off: at least two
Republican Guard divisions -the
Baghdad infantry and the Special Forces Divisions- had already escaped across the Euphrates River and were moving to defend the capital. Finally, the Hammurabi Armoured Division and al-Faw
infantry Division remained largely intact and, along with the remnants of the Madinah, were taking up positions to defend al-Basrah. Even the reported "slaughter" on what was becoming called the "Highway of Death" turned out to have been wrong; in fact, the vast majority of the
Iraqis fled their vehicles when the first aircraft appeared, and only a few dozen bodies were found among the hundreds of wrecked vehicles. As a result, it was a rude surprise for the administration in the first days of March when the CIA began to write about the 842
Iraqi tanks that had survived Desert Storm (about 400 of which were
Republican Guard T-72s) and the steps that the surviving
Republican Guard divisions were taking to put down the revolts against
Saddam's regime.
Sources Consulted:
Pollack, Kenneth.
The Threatening Storm. New York:
Random House Books, 2002.