21
March 2003
2. "The Kurds: a catastrophe waiting to happen", of all the eruptions that a U.S.-led war on Iraq may unleash, none is more urgent to address than that between Iraqi Kurds and their Turkish neighbor.
3. "Protests at Turkish mobilisation", US withdraws aid plan as Ankara claims humanitarian motive
4. "Kurdish fighters awaiting orders", as war to oust Saddam Hussein from power began, the military power aligned against him in northern Iraq was almost nonexistent Thursday, a tiny showing of poorly equipped indigenous gunmen sitting opposite a large Iraqi force.
5. "Turkish Fears of a Kurdish State Discussed in Washington", the United States Thursday restated its long-standing warning to Turkey not to send Turkish troops into northern Iraq.
6. "Imperialist plunder of Iraq has long history", since the demise of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century, control over Iraq has been at the center of the rivalry of imperialist powers to dominate the vast oil reserves of the Middle East.
1. - The Washington Post - "Mideast Witnessing 'Hours of Destiny'":
By Nora Boustany
Friday, March 21, 2003
Aside from a few cartoons, one depicting President Bush in cowboy duds dunking a scrawny Saddam Hussein wearing tattered combat fatigues into an oil barrel, the Arab media largely began looking ahead yesterday to an Arab world transformed after hostilities end.
"The Iraq War Has Been Launched and the Arab World Faces the Unknown," said a front-page headline in An Nahar, an independent daily newspaper in Beirut. "One thing is certain," wrote Gebran Tueni, An Nahar's publisher and lead columnist. "The phase after the war in Iraq is going to be radically different from the one preceding it."
"We are witnessing hours of destiny and history, we are in need of men and policies that measure up to these times so we can be partners and key players, so modern versions of Mr. Sykes and Mr. Picot do not revisit us to redraw our borders and decide on our fate," he wrote, referring to the Sykes-Picot agreement, which Britain and France used to carve out contemporary Arab states from the Ottoman empire after World War I based on oil and other geo-strategic interests.
"We should all move on from protesting the war and crying over the ruins to bolstering our positions and stands with a clear idea of what we want for the future of our countries in the Middle East," Tueni said. "We should start out with the conviction that the necessary evolution . . . the pillars and means of change should be democratic and emanate from the will of our people. We have had enough coups, revolutions and counterrevolutions."
The United States tried to placate certain Arab governments and those opposed to military action by offering a roadmap for settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with "the road passing through Baghdad," he added.
The Saudi daily Al-Watan said in a front-page story that the future of the Iraqi president and his family was limited to two possibilities: "death or detention." If Hussein is not killed, he will be referred to an Iraqi tribunal, the newspaper said, with the United States offering a large dossier on his human rights violations. In an unsourced report, Al-Watan said the United States had agreed with Iraqi opposition groups that Hussein and his senior advisers would not be referred to the International Criminal Court to avoid an adverse reaction among the Arab public.
Several newspapers in Persian Gulf countries gave front-page billing to reports from northern Iraq that Iraqi Kurds and key tribal figures believed to have been allied with Hussein had switched sides and put their men at the disposal of U.S. commanders.
Al-Sharq al-Awsat, another Saudi newspaper, quoted Iraqi opposition sources as saying that a former army chief of staff, Nizar Khazraji, who had gone into exile in Denmark, had reached Kurdistan via Turkey with eight of his officers to take part in military operations against Hussein.
Shafik Ghabra, a Kuwaiti academic who until recently had served as head of Kuwait's Information Bureau in Washington, said that one can "predict that the United States' descent with all its might into Iraq will tip the balance in [the United States'] favor, but that will be for the short term and only help it temporarily."
In an opinion piece written before the war started but published yesterday in the Arabic-language Al Hayat daily, Ghabra wrote that most Arab countries were in the role of "silent objectors" to the war. "While most of them fear the Iraqi regime, they do not see it as threatening to them and would prefer for the war not to take place out of concern about the changes it will bring and the unpredictable scale of instability that will follow."
In the same newspaper, under the headline "There Is Nothing Embarrassing About Reforms," Jordanian writer Mahmoud Rimawi said: "If there was anything embarrassing, it was the failure to deliver on the imperatives of development, including political development, which in a way allows American and non-American right-wing hawks to hold on to these shortcomings and portray them as chronic and incurable backwardness, for which the last remedy . . . is surgical (war)."
In a cartoon by Shujaat Ali that appeared on the Web site of al-Jazeera,
a satellite television network based in Qatar, a destitute family
appears in a charred Iraqi wasteland being buzzed by military planes.
A crying baby laments his empty bottle while his mother holds up a
dish, mistaking a plummeting missile for U.N. humanitarian relief.
Scattered on the ground are pamphlets about antiwar demonstrations,
Chinese and German opposition to the U.S.-led war and French and Russian
threats.
2. - The International Herald Tribune - "The Kurds: a catastrophe waiting to happen":
by Gareth Evans and Joost Hiltermann IHT
BRUSSELS / March 20, 2003
Of all the eruptions that a U.S.-led war on Iraq may unleash, none is more urgent to address than that between Iraqi Kurds and their Turkish neighbor. Turkey stands poised to enter Iraq with military might to prevent the Kurds from making any move toward statehood, with control of the city of Kirkuk and its oil-rich environs seen as the key. The Kurds, in turn, have threatened to transform their native land into a graveyard for Turkish soldiers. Whether the United States will be able to keep them apart is an open question.
For both sides the stakes are enormous. Turkey fears that the emergence of a sovereign Kurdish entity across the border may inflame its own Kurds, a sizable minority that has long sought greater recognition of its national identity.
Turkey has brought its own troops into a state of preparedness, both to keep Iraqi refugees out and pre-empt a Kurdish dash for Kirkuk. It already has several thousand troops stationed at a small airfield in northern Iraq - over the Kurds' vociferous protests - and tens of thousands more are set to pour into the area.
To the Kurds, the road to independence - or at least a much enhanced degree of autonomy in a post-Saddam Iraq - runs through Kirkuk.
Their sense of entitlement is immensely strong and needs to be better understood in the West. Denied statehood after the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire and spread among a number of countries, the Kurds became an instrument in the hands of more powerful players, led along a trail of broken promises and agreements with many attempts to assert their nationhood brutally suppressed.
Iraq's 1988 Anfal counter-insurgency campaign, in which an estimated 100,000 Kurdish men, women and children were systematically murdered by the Iraqi regime, is barely known to anyone but regional experts.
Nearly another 7 000 died in Saddam's much better known chemical strike on Halabja in March 1988, but the historical record has been contested by revisionists, despite the evidence, and the extent of the suffering not fully acknowledged.
The international community's inability to comprehend the transformative significance of Anfal and Halabja to the Kurds is roughly equivalent to failing to grasp how the events of Sept. 11 affected the American psyche.
It is out of such deep emotions and national traumas that identities are forged or reinforced and, sometimes, nations are born. If in the chaos of war the Kurds make a sprint for Kirkuk, it will be less out of an opportunistic calculation of probable gain than out of a profound urge for national survival.
Between Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds stands the United States. The Bush administration has publicly expressed its commitment to the territorial integrity of Iraq, making it abundantly clear that independence for the Kurds is not for the United States an acceptable outcome.
But having now brought on the war, Washington must address two big challenges: to prevent a potentially catastrophic confrontation between Kurds and Turks while the war goes on, and to help put together a post-war structure for the Iraqi state that, while preserving its territorial integrity, really does address the legitimate aspirations of the Kurdish people.
To meet these challenges, three things must happen, all made extremely urgent by the imminence - as we write this - of not only war in Iraq but votes in the Turkish Parliament authorising the deployment both of US troops into Turkey and more Turkish troops into Iraq.
First, it is imperative that U.S. forces get to Kirkuk fast - before the Turks and before Kurdish forces.
Second, the United States must make abundantly clear to Turkey that it has to show restraint, avoiding any unilateral military moves in northern Iraq.
Third, Washington must simultaneously make clear to the Kurds that they should take no action that risks provoking Turkey: that they must refrain from unilateral military steps and consent to a temporary international presence in Kirkuk.
In exchange, America needs to give an explicit, public guarantee to the Kurds that it will protect them from attack (from either Turkey or a post-Saddam regime in Baghdad) and support their fair expectation of greater freedom to govern themselves during negotiations over the future of Iraq, including - crucially - an active Kurdish role in the central government.
The Kurdish parties have much deep suspicion to overcome, born of their historical dealings with the United States and the wider international community. If they are ever to live in peace and security and in full enjoyment of their human rights, they must agree to work with both for a better post-war Iraq.
But Iraqi Kurds can reasonably ask to be given some clearer and firmer grounds for confidence about the outcome than have so far emerged from Washington.
Gareth Evans is president and Joost Hiltermann is Middle East project
director of the International Crisis Group. ICG's new report on Iraq's
Kurds is available on its website, www.crisisweb.org.
3. - The Guardian - "Protests at Turkish mobilisation":
US withdraws aid plan as Ankara claims humanitarian motive
ANKARA / March 21, 2003
by Helena Smith
Turkey said yesterday it was determined to dispatch tanks and troops deep into northern Iraq, despite irate protests from Britain and the US and the threat of retaliation from Kurdish forces in the region.
The deputy prime minister, Mehmet Ali Sahin, announced Ankara's intention to flex its military muscle as parliament approved a government motion authorising troops to be sent abroad.
The long-awaited resolution also gave US warplanes the right to use Turkish airspace on missions to Iraq, although the fighter jets will not be able to refuel on Turkish soil or use the sprawling US Incirlik airbase - a decision which strained relations with Washington.
After the vote, the US ruled out reviving a economic aid package for Turkey. "There had been discussion of a package of aid for Turkey that was contingent on Turkey's... total cooperation. That did not develop," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
The US had offered $6bn (£3.8bn) in direct aid and up to $24bn (£15.4bn) in US-backed loans if Turkey allowed 62,000 troops into the country.
Mr Sahin said the government was entitled to order the intervention in northern Iraq "once parliament approves the motion". He said: "Our soldiers will cross the border only for humanitarian purposes. If there is a refugee wave towards our frontier, our plan is to stop them on the other side and accommodate them in humanitarian support centres."
Western diplomats not only questioned Ankara's legal right to cross the border but openly doubted the sincerity of its motives. Unlike the first Gulf war, when up to 500,000 hungry and impoverished Iraqi refugees fled across the border, a fraction of that number is expected this time.
In recent weeks Turkey has amassed thousands of heavily armed troops along the 205-mile frontier.
Although Turkish officials have persistently argued that any intervention would be to provide humanitarian aid, it is also viewed as a pretext to forestall a Kurdish rush for Iraqi oil fields in areas outside the autonomous region.
Ankara fears that should Iraqi Kurds seize control of the wells it would lend economic might to their dream of winning independence, although all main Kurdish parties have denied that they want either.
Iraqi Kurdish groups, meeting in Ankara, said that while local forces would resist the move with "all their might", Turkey's powerful military had presented it "as a fact of life that we will have to accept".
"We have told them that Turkish military intervention is not warranted," said Barham Salih, prime minister in the part of northern Iraq controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). "It can only complicate the transition towards a democratic federal Iraq."
A senior US official said Washington had implored its longtime Nato ally not to take the step, saying it would face the most serious consequences. "We hope they see sense."
Any aspirations Turkey might have of joining the EU would be scuppered if it unilaterally went ahead with the move, other sources said.
Even worse, the deployment raised the alarming spectre of a stand-off between Turkish and American troops. That, say analysts, could detract from efforts to topple the Baghdad regime.
While such a move was indicative of Turkey's "bunker mentality", diplomats said they feared Turkey's general staff was determined to use the US-led attack on Iraq as the best chance yet to deal with its own "Kurdish problem".
A separatist guerrilla war by Kurds in the south was quashed several
years ago but Turkish officials still have vivid memories of Kurdish
militants unleashing their campaign after the first Gulf war.
4. - The New York Times - "Kurdish fighters awaiting orders":
by C.J. Chivers with David Rohde
CHAMCHAMAL, Iraq / March 20, 2003
As war to oust Saddam Hussein from power began, the military power aligned against him in northern Iraq was almost nonexistent Thursday, a tiny showing of poorly equipped indigenous gunmen sitting opposite a large Iraqi force.
Kurds were still waiting to see whether the United States would open a conventional northern front, which remained a possibility Thursday after the Turkish Parliament voted to allow American planes to fly through Turkish air space into Iraq. The vote would allow the Pentagon to airlift troops into Kurdish territory, should it choose to do so.
In the interim, Kurdish fighters were a portrait of both confusion and restraint.
The shooting Thursday was light and sporadic, and in places there was no firing at all. But some Kurds worried that their side of the lines, almost empty, left them vulnerable to Iraqi action and unprepared to check the potential for opportunism, looting and vengeance killings by civilians as the war goes forward.
"The problem is that nobody knows what is going on," said one senior Kurdish official and guerrilla veteran, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified. "To fight you need a plan. Right now no one knows the plan."
The contrast with the southern front in Kuwait, where the United States and Britain have assembled powerful columns of armor, infantry and artillery, could not have been stronger.
The two principal Kurdish political parties, which have administered a region that broke away from the Baghdad government in 1991, have long claimed as many as 50,000 regular fighters between them, and almost as many in reservist militias. The fighters are called pesh merga, meaning "those who face death."
But for all of the pesh merga's considerable reputation as guerrillas, they hardly showed up for the first day of the war, a turnout suggesting that the Kurds have exaggerated their strength.
Those who appeared were operating with no apparent supervision and little ammunition. They mostly milled about.
In this front-line city, for instance, only three fighters could be found at a hilltop fortress that faced the forward elements of an Iraqi corps.
The defense of the city was otherwise left to 250 police officers and customs agents, who were armed with nothing more than rifles and a few light machine guns. They sat in clusters talking, wondering what to do and assuming that American pressure would make the Iraqi government fall.
One senior Kurdish military official said he had not given his fighters instructions except to stay in garrisons, typically miles from the front.
"We didn't move them forward because we don't know yet what is going to happen," said Gen. Mustafa Said Qadir, the military commander for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which controls the eastern half of the Kurdish zone.
Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which controls the western zone, described similar instructions earlier this week. "Their movement will depend on the developments that take place," he said. "Right now, their orders are to stay in place."
Barzani left open the possibility that his forces might play a larger role. "Where there is a vacuum, whether political or not, our forces will act," he said. "Our forces are not only confined to the Kurdish areas."
Kurdish officials said the reasons for the pesh merga's absence from battle Thursday were political and practical.
Kurds are wary of disobeying the United States, which has asked them not to go on the offensive and risk provoking Turkey. The Turkish government worries that Kurdish successes in Iraq could fuel nationalist Kurdish feelings among the Turks' own large Kurdish minority.
Of particular concern is the city of Kirkuk, just a 20-minute drive
from here, on the Iraqi side of the front.
5. - Voice of America - "Turkish Fears of a Kurdish State Discussed in Washington":
WASHINGTON / 21 MARCH 2003
by Barry Wood
The United States Thursday restated its long-standing warning to Turkey not to send Turkish troops into northern Iraq. Turkey is worried that the war across its southeastern border could lead to the emergence of the Kurdish state it has long opposed.
Middle East Institute visiting scholar Meliha Altunisik says the Turkish military is particularly focused on developments in Kirkuk, the Iraqi oil producing center some 300 kilometers south of the Turkish border.
Professor Altunisik, who is Turkish, spoke at Washington's National Press Club Thursday. "Turkey's interest in Kirkuk is always related to prevent Iraqi Kurds from taking over Kirkuk because in their belief, this is the latest step, this would be the latest step towards statehood because what [the Iraqi Kurds] are currently lacking is the financial aspect of state formation. And the fear is that by acquiring Kirkuk they would complete that," he said.
Kirkuk is Iraqi's second richest oil producing center. Turkey has a large and restive Kurdish minority and fears for its own territorial integrity if a Kurdish state is proclaimed.
Both Professor Altunisik and Abdullah Akyuz of the Turkish Industrialist Association say Washington and Ankara mishandled the negotiations leading up to the March 1 vote in which the Turkish parliament narrowly rejected the U.S. request to use Turkey as a base for an attack on Iraq. Mr. Akyuz says Turkey not only lost $6 billion in U.S. aid, but also lost an opportunity for greater influence in a post-Saddam Iraq. Mr. Akyuz said the Americans miscalulated in taking Turkey's support for granted. "[Washington] assumed that Turkey would side with the U.S. simply because it has always been there as demonstrated in Korea in the early 50s, as well as in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, most recently," he said.
Both Turkish analysts say before the March 1 vote the new government in Ankara was particularly sensitive to public opinion surveys showing that 80 to 90 percent of all Turks oppose a war with Iraq.
Turkey Thursday opened its airspace to U.S. warplanes attacking Iraq,
but the White House says the aid package for Turkey is no longer being
offered.
6.
- The Militant(Minnesota) - "Imperialist plunder of Iraq has
long history":
BY SAM MANUEL / 31 March 2003
Since the demise of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century, control over Iraq has been at the center of the rivalry of imperialist powers to dominate the vast oil reserves of the Middle East. The rulers in London, in particular, looked with greedy eyes on both the oil wealth and the maritime role of the entire Arab-Persian Gulf region, strategically located between the British "jewels in the crown" of India and its north African possessions.
In the years leading up to World War I, German companies constructed rail lines from southwest Turkey to Basra in southern Mesopotamia, as Iraq was then known. The British government, then the dominant imperialist power, feared such a presence by its rival threatened its trade routes to India and the broader region and its growing oil interests. London sought control of the newly discovered oil fields under Ottoman rule, and concluded exclusive oil pacts with local governments. In 1913, for example, the British government secured an agreement with Kuwait, receiving the promise that Kuwait would only sign oil contracts with those appointed by London.
With the opening of the war British forces landed at the Shatt-al-Arab waterway and advanced against Turkish troops at Basra. By the spring of 1918 Britain had extended its rule over all but a narrow strip of Mesopotamia. London gained leverage over its imperialist rivals in the war by promising Arab nationalist movements post-war independence in return for siding with Britain against Germany, which was allied with the Ottoman empire. Three major anticolonial societies had been formed in Iraq--the League of Islamic Awakening, the Muslim National League and the Guardians of Independence.
At the 1919 Versailles "peace" conference, however, where Washington, London, Paris, and Rome imposed settlements on their defeated rival in Berlin, and established the League of Nations to legitimize their domination, Mesopotamia was declared a protectorate of the United Kingdom.
In spite of promises of granting independence, London had, in fact, with the agreement of czarist Russia, signed a secret agreement with Paris on dividing up the Ottoman empire. The Sykes-Picot agreement between the imperialist powers allotted southern Mesopotamia to Britain, and awarded Syria to France. This pact was brought to light after workers and peasants came to power in the Russian revolution and the Bolshevik government published its terms along with other secret treaties.
By July 1920 a popular rebellion in Iraq threatened continued foreign occupation. The British Royal Air Force suppressed the revolt with a massive aerial bombardment of Arab villages, including the use of poison gas. Responding to a proposal to use chemical weapons as an experiment on "recalcitrant" Arabs, Winston Churchill, then secretary of state for war, said, "I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes."
In the wake of the 1920 rebellion and hoping to disguise its colonial
rule over Iraq, the British replaced its military regime in Baghdad
with a provisional Arab government subordinate to a British high commissioner.
At the 1921 Cairo Conference, London installed Faisal ibn Husayn as
Iraq’s first king.
A protectorate of London
In 1922, London imposed the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty, to last for 20 years, instructing the king to "heed British advice" on all matters affecting British interests and on all fiscal policy as long as Iraq remained in debt to London. British officials would be appointed to posts in 18 departments to act as advisors and inspectors. To insure Iraq’s continued debtor status, the treaty required the protectorate to pay half the bill for British resident officials, among other expenses. London agreed to provide various kinds of "assistance" and to propose Iraq for membership in the League of Nations "at the earliest moment."
British interests in the new Arab protectorate mainly centered on the oil-rich former Ottoman province of Mosul. Prior to the fall of the Ottoman empire the British-controlled Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC) held concessionary rights in Mosul. London rebuffed the Iraqi government’s insistence on a 20 percent equity in the company as had been the agreement with Ottoman-ruled Turkey. Fearing that without British backing the League of Nations might return Mosul to Ankara, the monarchy submitted to the terms of the British colonial masters. The final agreement contained none of the Iraqi demands and granted the TPC, now renamed the Iraq Petroleum Company, a concession for 75 years.
Mosul is located in the predominantly Kurdish region in northern Iraq. At the end of World War I, the Kurds were also promised by London and Paris that in exchange for their support against Germany, the Ottoman Sultan would be required to grant autonomy to Kurdistan. But the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty was scrapped after the young Turkish nationalist Mustafa Kamal, known as Atatürk, reestablished control over the Kurdish areas in eastern Turkey. In addition to northern Iraq, Kurdistan includes parts of Turkey, northern Iran, north eastern Syria and a small section of Armenia. The Kurdish fight for independence in Iraq and the broader region remains a pivotal issue today.
A new Anglo-Iraqi Treaty was signed June 30, 1930. It granted London the use of air bases near Basra and at Al Habbaniyah, including the right to move troops across the country. The 25-year treaty became effective with Iraq’s admission to the League of Nations in 1932.
As World War II approached, German imperialists attempted to exploit anti-British sentiment in Iraq. In 1941 the Arab nationalist prime minister of Iraq, Rashid Ali, placed conditions on British troop movements in the country and ousted members of the monarchy, who then escaped to Jordan. London retaliated by landing forces at Basra, and justifying its second occupation of Iraq on the grounds that Baghdad had violated the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty. The monarchy was once again installed on the force of British arms.
London’s colonial empire, like that of Paris, was shattered
by anticolonial movements throughout Asia and Africa during and after
World War II. In Iraq this was spurred by the British suppression
of the 1936 Palestinian revolt and subsequent partitioning of Palestine
in 1947. The "Free Officers’ Movement" in Iraq aimed
at ousting the king and ending foreign domination. In 1952 when depressed
economic conditions led to widespread protests against the monarchy,
the government responded by declaring martial law, banning all political
parties, suspending a number of newspapers, and imposing a curfew.
British colonial rule shattered
On July 14, 1958, army officers led by Brigadier Abd al Karim Qasim and Colonel Abd as Salaam Arif overthrew the monarchy. They met virtually no opposition, as Iraqis poured into the streets in support of the revolt. King Faisal II was executed along with many others in the royal family.
The July 14 Revolution, as it is known, permitted the formation of trade unions and implemented a land reform aimed at dismantling the feudal structure in the countryside. It also challenged the profit-sharing arrangement of the oil companies. Public Law 80 dispossessed the British-controlled Iraqi Petroleum Company of 99.5 percent of its concessions and restricted it to areas currently under production. The Qasim government announced the formation of the Iraqi National Oil Company to exploit any new production sites.
The new government was supported by Arab nationalists and members
of the officer corps--many of whom were adherents of Baathist movements.
The government was also backed by the Stalinist Iraqi Communist Party.
Baath was an Arab political party, first formed in Syria and Iraq
in 1941, that espoused pan-Arab unity.
Rise of Baathism
The Baathist Party came to power in a short-lived counterrevolutionary coup in 1963 that beheaded the vanguard of the 1958 revolution. A young officer named Saddam Hussein, who had participated in an earlier attempt to overthrow the Qasim government, rose in the Baath party through a bloody factional struggle. The Iraqi Baathist Party, which returned to power in 1968, is a bourgeois party that, as expediency dictates, has resorted to nationalist and anti-imperialist demagogy to rationalize its repressive and expansionist course. In 1979 Hussein became president of Iraq.
The Baathist regime halted revolutionary mobilizations of workers and peasants, while setting on a path of industrialization. In 1972 Iraq nationalized the oil industry. In response, Richard Nixon, the president of the United States, which had emerged as the main imperialist power after World War II, replacing London, placed Iraq on a list of nations supporting "terrorism."
Baghdad, however, was not on a course to challenge imperialism and the rights and prerogatives of capital. With the overthrow of the shah of Iran in 1979 by Iranian workers and peasants, one of the main pillars of imperialist domination in the region had fallen. Washington publicly encouraged Saddam Hussein to attack Iran to take back the Shatt-al-Arab waterway, which the U.S. government had forced Iraq to cede to the shah’s regime four years earlier. The Iraqi government complied, sending its army to invade Iran in 1980 for what became an eight-year war.
Prior to Hussein’s August 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Washington,
Paris, and other imperialist regimes had been cultivating their ties
with Baghdad for more than a decade. Trade with Iraq continued and
the U.S. government regularly sent top-level delegations there up
through the first half of 1990.