A History of the Middle East (55 page)

On 4 June 1989 Khomeini’s long-expected death finally occurred. The succession passed smoothly in spite of an underlying struggle for power between those, including Khomeini’s son Ahmed, who wished to pursue his uncompromising hostility towards the West and those who sought to normalize Iran’s relations with the world as an essential means of restoring the economy, while insisting that the Ayatollah’s legacy would remain unchanged.

It was the pragmatists who won. The Assembly of Experts swiftly appointed the mild-mannered former president Khameini as the
new spiritual leader. Two months later the speaker of the Majlis, Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, a man of high political skill, succeeded in having himself elected president with greatly increased powers and promptly ousted the leaders of the hardline faction from the cabinet.

For the millions of Iranians who mourned Khomeini’s death there was no one who could replace the man whom many of them had come to regard as God’s embodiment on earth, even if anyone had wished to try. In the decade since the Revolution, hundreds of thousands had died and the economy had been ruined in a war which had ended in failure. Dissidence had been harshly repressed, and a large proportion of the skilled and educated had fled into exile. Yet the scowling figure of Khomeini, so deeply unattractive to most of the rest of the world, still represented to his intensely proud people a spirit of unyielding defiance after centuries of humiliation by stronger powers.

The question was, how much of Khomeini’s legacy would survive? While clerical rule had been institutionalized and seemed likely to last for a time, Rafsanjani, with modest religious credentials, was essentially a secular figure. But he was not all-powerful – his hardline opponents had been bypassed but not subdued. He had to move cautiously towards calming and moderating the Islamic Republic’s policies towards the rest of the world, in order to reconstruct the economy and encourage the urgently needed exiles to return.

Only one thing seemed certain: Iran’s Islamic Revolution would not permanently change the face of the Middle East. This had proved beyond Khomeini’s power, and it was certainly impossible for his successors. As the representative of militant Shiite Islam, Iran could count on the open allegiance of many Lebanese Shiites and the covert sympathy of Shiite minorities in the Arab Gulf states, but little more. With its fifty-five million people, and occupying a strategic position, it was still a major power in Middle Eastern terms and all states with interests in the region were therefore anxious to have dealings with Tehran. But its power to influence events outside its borders was no greater than in the time of the shah.

Iraq’s World Challenge

The ambitions of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, who had been the effective ruler of his country since 1968, were not exhausted by his eight-year struggle with his larger neighbour. Despite mountainous debts and an economy in desperate need of reconstruction he still maintained a huge military machine with nearly one million men under arms, and he poured vast sums into developing advanced weapons. During the summer of 1990 he threatened Kuwait because of its reluctance to allow Iraq secure access to the Gulf through its territory. He also blamed Kuwait for the fall in the price of oil by producing in excess of its OPEC quota – a fall which he claimed was losing Iraq a billion dollars a month in revenues. In late July he massed troops on Kuwait’s border. But despite this and the failure of Saudi Arabia’s efforts to mediate there were few – except the Iranians – who expected his next move. On 2 August he invaded and occupied the whole of Kuwait on the spurious assertion that there had been a pro-Iraqi uprising against Kuwait’s Emir. The Emir and his ministers fled to Saudi Arabia where they set up a government-in-exile. A week later Saddam announced the annexation of Kuwait as Iraq’s nineteenth province. He declared that the child had been restored to its mother, regardless of the fact that the Kuwaiti emirate had been born some two centuries before its supposed parent – the Iraqi state.

If Saddam had successfully taken the world by surprise, he had also miscalculated the extent of its opposition. The UN Security Council unanimously imposed mandatory sanctions against Iraq that, following a series of resolutions, became almost totally effective in blocking Iraq’s foreign trade and freezing its foreign assets. The first major crisis of the post-Cold War era offered the extraordinary spectacle of a country of eighteen million people defying the two superpowers and most of the world. As Iraqi troops advanced to the Saudi Arabian border there arose the alarming prospect that Saddam would seize the Saudi oilfields which, in conjunction with those of Iraq and Kuwait, would make him master
of more than half the world’s oil reserves. The United States, which had regarded an Iraqi victory in the Gulf War as preferable to the triumph of Ayatollah Khomeini, now denounced Saddam Hussein as an international outlaw. President Bush immediately responded to King Fahd of Saudi Arabia’s urgent invitation to send troops to defend the kingdom. Even after the initial threat had receded with the arrival of airborne forces, there was a continued build-up of naval, land and air forces totalling some six hundred thousand personnel, and carrying the most advanced weapons. The great majority were American but Britain and France sent substantial contingents and no less than fifty-four countries contributed either military forces or financial support. Of the greatest political importance to the United States was the addition, apart from the troops of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, of Arab forces from Egypt, Syria and Morocco, and others from Muslim Pakistan and Bangladesh. It was vital to demonstrate that this was not one more Western crusade against the Arabs and Islam.

In fact opinion among the Arabs was divided and confused on the issue. While the governments of the Arab League declared with varying emphasis that Iraq should withdraw from Kuwait, there were those, such as Jordan, Sudan, Libya and Algeria as well as the PLO, that showed some degree of sympathy with the Iraqi position. These governments gave priority to announcing the danger to the Arabs and Islam presented by the huge influx of infidel Western armies. King Hussein of Jordan and Yasir Arafat tried urgently to negotiate an ‘Arab solution’ to the crisis.

All Arab leaders had to take some account of public opinion, which often tended towards a simplistic view of Saddam Hussein as a twentieth-century Saladin who would defy the West and unite the Arabs. The great majority of Arabs who are poor felt little sympathy for the Gulf Arabs with their vast recently inherited wealth. Demonstrators in Jordan and the Israeli-occupied territories cheered Saddam as a hero while even some Islamic militants who had known him as a ruthless secular dictator felt some response to his appeal for
jihad
or Islamic holy war against the Western invaders.

President Saddam acted with some guile but also made gross miscalculations, which were partly due to his ignorance of the world and partly to his insulation from the advice and criticism of his colleagues, whom he had so intimidated. He shrewdly linked the Gulf crisis with the Palestinian cause by contrasting the West’s instant reaction to his seizure of Kuwait with its failure to end Israel’s occupation of Arab lands. He made some headway with his appeal to popular Arab and Islamic sentiment, although he would never overcome the suspicion and hatred of those who had direct experience of his ruthlessness, such as the hundreds of thousands of Egyptian
fellahin
who were forced to leave their livelihood in Iraq. Two weeks after the invasion he took the risk of offering peace to Iran and formally abandoning all the aims for which he had gone to war, in order to ensure Iran’s neutrality. This enabled him to withdraw vital troops from the Iranian border and reinforce his Kuwait defences. The Iraqi people seemed to accept the necessity for this drastic action.

Saddam’s efforts to win over opinion outside the Middle East were grossly misconceived. Outrage was caused by his detention of hundreds of foreigners as hostages, mostly Westerners caught in Kuwait or Iraq; some were used as human shields by being confined close to potential military targets. Bad feeling was not assuaged by the release of selected groups of women, children, the sick and aged in a charade of humanitarian gestures. As news trickled out of the Iraqi troops’ pillage of Kuwait and atrocities committed against the remaining third of the Kuwaiti population that had not fled, there were calls in the West for Saddam to be tried as a war criminal and for Iraq to pay war reparations.

In spite of the overwhelming array of force deployed against Iraq, the United States and its allies were faced with an acute dilemma. Their prime objective was clear: to force Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait to enable the legitimate government to be restored. But from the outset it was clear that other decisions would be necessary. There was a question whether, even in the event of an Iraqi withdrawal, it would be reasonable to leave Saddam with his
formidable military machine intact (including chemical weapons) and with the continuing capacity to threaten the Middle East with his power. It also had to be considered whether the destruction of this power would not drastically unbalance the region. A more immediate decision had to be made as to how long it would be possible to wait to see if the sanctions decreed by the UN would be enough to weaken Iraq and force its withdrawal, before using military force. There was a danger that, as the weeks stretched into months, the motley coalition of the international force opposing Iraq would break apart – especially if Iraq were to offer a compromise such as a partial withdrawal from Kuwait or propose that the Palestine problem should be solved simultaneously with that of the Gulf. But the unity of the international force might be even more strained if a lightning strike to destroy Iraq’s air force and cut off its forces that were dug in behind formidable defences should fail in its objective and lead to a prolonged and costly campaign.

However, none of these immediate fears was realized. Saddam miscalculated the determination of his opponents and overestimated his own military power and ability to inflict on them unacceptable losses. When the US obtained UN Security Council authorization for the use of force if he failed to evacuate Kuwait by 15 January, he continued to prevaricate. He suddenly released all foreign ‘guests’ (i.e., hostages) but still gave no hint of leaving Kuwait. Shortly after the deadline the coalition launched a devastating air assault on Iraq and its forces in Kuwait. With its air force grounded or in refuge in Iran, Iraq was unable to respond except by firing Scud missiles against Saudi and Israeli targets. These caused some damage but failed in their chief objective of involving Israel in the war to split the West from its Arab allies.

The land attack launched after five weeks’ bombing outflanked the 42 Iraqi divisions in the Kuwait field, and these were destroyed or immobilized. Before fleeing, the Iraqis sabotaged 90 per cent of Kuwait’s oil wells in revenge, seriously damaging the Gulf’s ecology. Saddam Hussein seemed doomed by his catastrophic defeat. Iraq’s Kurds in the north and Shiites in the south rose in rebellion, seizing
control of many towns. But they lacked strategy and heavy weapons, and with the remaining half of his armed forces Saddam brutally suppressed the uprisings. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds and Shiites fled for refuge to the Turkish and Iranian mountain borders.

Iraq was forced to agree to heavy and stringent peace terms, which included elimination of all its potential for weapons of mass destruction and payment of heavy reparations. The US and Britain insisted on Saddam Hussein’s departure before the removal of UN sanctions and Iraq’s resumption of normal relations with the world. But the motley Iraqi opposition groups failed to remove Saddam and no internal coup succeeded; Western powers were not prepared to occupy Baghdad. Promising to liberalize his regime, a weakened but still inadequately chastened Saddam seemed able to survive for a time the consequences of his colossal errors.

The devastation of Iraq was proof – if proof were needed – that the collapse of the Soviet Union had left the United States as the unassailable global power. The struggle for the region had lasted about forty years – or a similar period to the Anglo-French interregnum which preceded it. But with the end of the East–West conflict, those Middle East leaders long seen as Russian clients rushed to realign with Washington, before they succumbed to the fate of their fellow-dictators in Eastern Europe. Those that refused to submit to the American yoke – Libya, Iraq and Iran – were punished with UN or US sanctions. The Soviet satellite in South Yemen, the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, was wiped from the map altogether, and swallowed by its North Yemen neighbour.

The vacuum left by the collapse of the Soviet Union impelled Washington to a new activism in the region. For the next decade, the key official decisions affecting the Middle East would be taken either in Western capitals or at the UN headquarters in New York. In his victory address to Congress in March 1991, President George Bush unveiled a four-point plan to bring his new world order to the Middle East. The United States, he said, would strengthen its military ties to the Gulf, rid Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction, end the Arab–Israeli conflict on the basis of land for peace, and embark on a drive for ‘economic freedom’ and ‘human rights’.

Buttressing what amounted to a programme for reformatting the region was the most powerful show of foreign armoury the Middle East had seen since the height of the British Empire. Bush had claimed that Washington’s mobilization of half a million troops to the Gulf ‘did not mean stationing US ground forces in the Arabian Peninsula’ for the long term, but there was no rush to decamp. One decade after the Gulf War, the US still kept 25,000 troops in the region, 10,000 of
them based in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Stashes of hardware were stockpiled in other Gulf emirates ready to equip an army ten times the size. In addition, the Pentagon positioned an armada in the Persian Gulf comprising two aircraft carrier groups armed with 15 warships and 350 fighter-jets. Several thousand more US troops and a squadron of US fighter planes were stationed in south-eastern Turkey at Incirlik Base, which for the next decade was to be one of the most strategically important footholds for the US in the Middle East. Incirlik lay in striking distance not only of Iran and Syria, but also the oil- and gas-rich former Soviet republics. In addition, Washington oversaw the supply of billions of dollars in military aid and arms to Israel, Egypt, Turkey and the Gulf states. In short, the United States had the Middle East encircled.