Postwar Conflicts

With Iraq's defeat in the Persian Gulf War, the Kurdish minority in northern Iraq and Shiites in the south rebelled against Saddam's regime. The Iraqi Kurdistan Front, a coalition of two parties, wanted to establish an independent Kurdish state.

The Shiites, who were receiving support from Iran, hoped to overthrow Saddam and establish a pro-Shiite government in Baghdad. Washington policymakers encouraged Iraqis to overthrow Saddam, but they did not give much support to the rebellions, in part because they feared that breaking up Iraq would lead to Iranian dominance of the Persian Gulf region.

Saddam's forces brutally suppressed the insurrections. After Iraqi troops forced thousand of Kurds to flee to Turkey, the United Nations approved "no fly" zones, where Iraqi aircraft could not fly. American warplanes enforced the U. N. policy, and this allowed many Kurdish refugees to return to Iraq. With expulsion of Iraqi troops from Kurdistan, Iraqi Kurds moved toward a greater degree of self rule, establishing a Kurdish parliament.

During the elections of 1995, however, a civil war erupted between the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). In September, 1996, the KDP allied with Saddam Hussein, and a joint KDP-Iraqi expedition attacked PUK strongholds. Iraq agreed to withdraw after U. S. air strikes on military bases in southern Iraq, but the Kurdish conflict continued.

Although Saddam's regime agreed to abide by U. N. Security Council resolutions, it repeatedly resisted their actual implementation. Saddam particularly opposed inspections by the U. N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) to enforce Resolution 687, which prohibited Iraq from possessing any nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. Because of Iraq's defiance, the U. N. Security Council voted to continue the international embargo, which had a devastating impact on the Iraqi economy.

On January 13,1993, one of George Bush's last actions as president of the United States was to order the bombing of Iraq in retaliation for its incursions into Kuwait, as well as Saddam's refusal to cooperate with international inspectors. Many Iraqis hoped that the new U. S. president Bill Clinton would end the embargo. However, Clinton ordered an air strike against Iraq on June 26,1993, after receiving evidence of Iraqi involvement in an assassination plot against former president Bush.