Latin Latin abecedarium
Type	Alphabet
Languages	Latin
Time period	~700 BC–present
Parent systems	Egyptian hieroglyphs Proto-Sinaitic Phoenician alphabet Greek alphabet Etruscan alphabet Latin Latin abecedarium
Child systems	Numerous Latin alphabets; more divergent derivations such as Osage
Sister systems	Cyrillic Coptic Armenian Runic/Futhark
ISO 15924	Latn, 215
Direction	Left-to-right
Unicode alias	Latin
Unicode range	See Latin characters in Unicode
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols.

Calligraphy

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The classical Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome. The Etruscan alphabet was in turn adopted and further modified by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language.

During the Middle Ages, the Latin alphabet was adapted to Romance languages, direct descendants of Latin, as well as to Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, and some Slavic languages. With the age of colonialism and Christian evangelism, the Latin script was spread overseas, and applied to indigenous American, Australian, Austronesian, Austroasiatic, and African languages. More recently, western linguists have also tended to prefer the Latin script or the International Phonetic Alphabet (itself largely based on Latin script) when transcribing or creating written standards for non-European languages, such as the African reference alphabet.

The term Latin alphabet may refer to either the alphabet used to write Latin (as described in this article), or other alphabets based on the Latin script, which is the basic set of letters common to the various alphabets descended from the classical Latin one, such as the English alphabet. These Latin-derived alphabets may discard letters, like the Rotokas alphabet, or add new letters, like the Danish and Norwegian alphabet. Letter shapes have changed over the centuries, including the creation for Medieval Latin of lower case forms which did not exist in the Classical period.

History[link]

Origins[link]

The Duenos inscription, dated to the 6th century BC, shows the earliest known forms of the Old Latin alphabet.

It is generally believed that the Romans adopted the Cumae alphabet, a variant of the Greek alphabet, in the 7th century BC from Cumae, a Greek colony in Southern Italy. (Gaius Julius Hyginus in Fab. 277 mentions the legend that it was Carmenta, the Cimmerian Sibyl, who altered fifteen letters of the Greek alphabet to become the Latin alphabet, which her son Evander introduced into Latium, supposedly 60 years before the Trojan War, but there is no historically sound basis to this tale.) The Ancient Greek alphabet was in turn based upon the Phoenician alphabet. From the Cumae alphabet, the Etruscan alphabet was derived and the Romans eventually adopted 21 of the original 26 Etruscan letters:

The letter ⟨C⟩ was the western form of the Greek gamma, but it was used for the sounds /ɡ/ and /k/ alike, possibly under the influence of Etruscan, which lacked any voiced plosives. Later, probably during the 3rd century BC, the letter ⟨Z⟩ — unneeded to write Latin properly — was replaced with the new letter ⟨G⟩, a ⟨C⟩ modified with a small vertical stroke, which took its place in the alphabet. From then on, ⟨G⟩ represented the voiced plosive /ɡ/, while ⟨C⟩ was generally reserved for the voiceless plosive /k/. The letter ⟨K⟩ was used only rarely, in a small number of words such as Kalendae, often interchangeably with ⟨C⟩.

After the Roman conquest of Greece in the 1st century BC, Latin adopted the Greek letters ⟨Y⟩ and ⟨Z⟩ (or readopted, in the latter case) to write Greek loanwords, placing them at the end of the alphabet. An attempt by the emperor Claudius to introduce three additional letters did not last. Thus it was that during the classical Latin period the Latin alphabet contained 23 letters:

The apices in this first-century inscription are very light. (There is one over the ó in the first line.) The vowel I is written taller rather than taking an apex. The interpuncts are comma-shaped, an elaboration of a more typical triangular shape.

The Latin names of some of these letters are disputed. In general, however, the Romans did not use the traditional (Semitic-derived) names as in Greek: the names of the plosives were formed by adding /eː/ to their sound (except for ⟨K⟩ and ⟨Q⟩, which needed different vowels to be distinguished from ⟨C⟩) and the names of the continuants consisted either of the bare sound, or the sound preceded by /e/. The letter ⟨Y⟩ when introduced was probably called "hy" /hyː/ as in Greek, the name upsilon not being in use yet, but this was changed to "i Graeca" (Greek i) as Latin speakers had difficulty distinguishing its foreign sound /y/ from /i/. ⟨Z⟩ was given its Greek name, zeta. For the Latin sounds represented by the various letters see Latin spelling and pronunciation; for the names of the letters in English see English alphabet.

The primary diacritic was the apex used to mark long vowels, which had previously been written double. However, in place of taking an apex, the letter i was written taller: ⟨á é ꟾ ó v́⟩. For example, what is today transcribed lūciī was written ⟨lv́ciꟾ·a·filiꟾ⟩ in the inscription at right.

The primary mark of punctuation was the interpunct, which was used as a word divider, though it fell out of use after 200 CE.

Old Roman cursive script, also called majuscule cursive and capitalis cursive, was the everyday form of handwriting used for writing letters, by merchants writing business accounts, by schoolchildren learning the Latin alphabet, and even emperors issuing commands. A more formal style of writing was based on Roman square capitals, but cursive was used for quicker, informal writing. It was most commonly used from about the 1st century BC to the 3rd century, but it probably existed earlier than that. It led to Uncial, a majuscule script commonly used from the 3rd to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Greek scribes.

New Roman cursive script, also known as minuscule cursive, was in use from the 3rd century to the 7th century, and uses letter forms that are more recognizable to modern eyes; ⟨a⟩, ⟨b⟩, ⟨d⟩, and ⟨e⟩ had taken a more familiar shape, and the other letters were proportionate to each other. This script evolved into the medieval scripts known as Merovingian and Carolingian minuscule.

Medieval and later developments[link]

Jeton from Nuremberg, ca. 1553

De chalco graphiae inventio (1541, Mainz) with the 23 letters. W, U and J are missing.

It was not until the Middle Ages that the letter ⟨W⟩ (originally a ligature of two ⟨V⟩s) was added to the Latin alphabet, to represent sounds from the Germanic languages which did not exist in medieval Latin, and only after the Renaissance did the convention of treating ⟨I⟩ and ⟨U⟩ as vowels, and ⟨J⟩ and ⟨V⟩ as consonants, become established. Prior to that, the former had been merely allographs of the latter.

With the fragmentation of political power, the style of writing changed and varied greatly throughout the Middle Ages, even after the invention of the printing press. Early deviations from the classical forms were the uncial script, a development of the Old Roman cursive, and various so-called minuscule scripts that developed from New Roman cursive, of which the Carolingian minuscule was the most influential, introducing the lower case forms of the letters, as well as other writing conventions that have since become standard.

The languages that use the Latin script today generally use capital letters to begin paragraphs and sentences and proper nouns. The rules for capitalization have changed over time, and different languages have varied in their rules for capitalization. Old English, for example, was rarely written with even proper nouns capitalized; whereas Modern English of the 18th century had frequently all nouns capitalized, in the same way that Modern German is written today, e.g. "Alle Schwestern der alten Stadt hatten die Vögel gesehen" (All of the Sisters of the old City had seen the Birds).

Spread[link]

The Latin alphabet spread, along with the Latin language, from the Italian Peninsula to the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The eastern half of the Empire, including Greece, Turkey, the Levant, and Egypt, continued to use Greek as a lingua franca, but Latin was widely spoken in the western half, and as the western Romance languages evolved out of Latin, they continued to use and adapt the Latin alphabet.

Latin alphabet world distribution. The dark green areas show the countries where this alphabet is the sole main script. The light green show the countries where the alphabet co-exists with other scripts.

With the spread of Western Christianity during the Middle Ages, the script was gradually adopted by the peoples of northern Europe who spoke Celtic languages (displacing the Ogham alphabet) or Germanic languages (displacing earlier Runic alphabets), Baltic languages, as well as by the speakers of several Uralic languages, most notably Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian. The alphabet also came into use for writing the West Slavic languages and several South Slavic languages, as the people who spoke them adopted Roman Catholicism.

See also[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Latin alphabet

• Beghilos (Calculator spelling)
• Calligraphy
• Collation
• Euboean alphabet
• Keyboard layout
• Latin characters in Unicode
• Latin-derived alphabet
• Latin-1
• Legacy of the Roman Empire
• List of Latin letters
• Palaeography
• Penmanship
• Phoenician alphabet
• Pinyin
• Roman letters used in mathematics
• Typography
• Western Latin character sets (computing)

Further reading[link]

• Jensen, Hans (1970). Sign Symbol and Script. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd. ISBN 0-04-400021-9. . Transl. of Jensen, Hans (1958). Die Schrift in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart. Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften. , as revised by the author
• Rix, Helmut (1993). "La scrittura e la lingua". In Cristofani, Mauro (hrsg.). Gli etruschi - Una nuova immagine. Firenze: Giunti. pp. S.199–227. 
• Sampson, Geoffrey (1985). Writing systems. London (etc.): Hutchinson. 
• Wachter, Rudolf (1987). Altlateinische Inschriften: sprachliche und epigraphische Untersuchungen zu den Dokumenten bis etwa 150 v.Chr. Bern (etc.). : Peter Lang.
• W. Sidney Allen (1978). "The names of the letters of the Latin alphabet (Appendix C)". Vox Latina — a guide to the pronunciation of classical Latin. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-22049-1 (Second edition). 
• Biktaş, Şamil (2003). Tuğan Tel. 

External links[link]

• Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary on the letter G
• Latin-Alphabet
• Latin alphabet at omniglot.com

vep:Latinan kel'

Persian Gulf War
Clockwise from top: USAF aircraft flying over burning Kuwaiti oil wells; British troops in Operation Granby; Camera view from a Lockheed AC-130; Highway of Death; M728 Combat Engineer Vehicle
Date 2 August 1990 – 28 February 1991 (210 days) (Operation Desert Storm officially ended 30 November 1995)[1] Location Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Israel Result Coalition Victory Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait; Emir Jaber III restored Heavy casualties and destruction of Iraqi and Kuwaiti infrastructure
Belligerents
Coalition forces:  Kuwait  Saudi Arabia  United States  United Kingdom  Egypt  Syria  Morocco  Qatar 22x20px Oman  United Arab Emirates  France  Spain  Italy  Denmark[2]  Belgium  Pakistan  Canada  Australia  New Zealand  Argentina  Bangladesh  Niger  Poland  Czechoslovakia  Greece  South Korea  Hungary  Senegal  Sierra Leone Peshmerga and others	Iraq
Commanders and leaders
Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah George H. W. Bush Richard (Dick) Cheney Colin Powell Norman Schwarzkopf Charles Horner Frederick Franks Calvin Waller John A. Warden III John Major Patrick Hine Andrew Wilson Peter de la Billière John Chapple King Fahd Prince Abdullah Prince Sultan Turki Al-Faisal Saleh Al-Muhaya Khalid bin Sultan[3][4] Michel Roquejoffre Hosni Mubarak Mohamed Hussein Tantawi Hafez al-Assad Mustafa Tlass Mirza Aslam Beg	Saddam Hussein Ali Hassan al-Majid Salah Aboud Mahmoud
Strength
956,600[5]	Total:650,000 soldiers
Casualties and losses
Coalition: 248 killed 458 wounded[6] 776 wounded[7] Kuwait: 12,000 killed[citation needed]	20,000–35,000 killed 75,000+ wounded[7]
Kuwaiti civilian losses: Over 1,000 killed[8] Iraqi civilian losses: About 3,664 killed[9] Other civilian losses: 2 Israeli civilians killed, 297 injured[10] 1 Saudi civilian killed, 65 injured[11]

Part of a series on
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Literature Ba'ath Constitution On the Way of Resurrection The Battle for One Destiny The Genius of Arabic in its Tongue
History Syrian Committee to Help Iraq Ramadan (8 February) Revolution 8 March Revolution November 1963 Iraqi coup d'état 1966 Syrian coup d'état 17 July Revolution Corrective Revolution Iran–Iraq War Ba'athist Iraq Ba'athist Syria Gulf War Iraq War Syrian uprising
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The Persian Gulf War (2 August 1990 – 28 February 1991), codenamed Operation Desert Storm (17 January 1991 – 28 February 1991) commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a UN-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.

The war is also known under other names, such as the First Gulf War, Gulf War I, or the Iraq War,^[12][13][14] before the term "Iraq War" became identified instead with the 2003 Iraq War (also referred to in the U.S. as "Operation Iraqi Freedom").

The invasion of Kuwait by Iraqi troops that began 2 August 1990 was met with international condemnation, and brought immediate economic sanctions against Iraq by members of the UN Security Council. U.S. President George H. W. Bush deployed American forces into Saudi Arabia, and urged other countries to send their own forces to the scene. An array of nations joined the coalition. The great majority of the military forces in the coalition were from the United States, with Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom and Egypt as leading contributors, in that order. Around US$36 billion of the US$60 billion cost was paid by Saudi Arabia.^[15]

The war was marked by the beginning of live news on the front lines of the fight, with the primacy of the U.S. network CNN.^[16][17][18] The war has also earned the nickname Video Game War after the daily broadcast images on board the American bombers during Operation Desert Storm.^[19][20]

The initial conflict to expel Iraqi troops from Kuwait began with an aerial bombardment on 17 January 1991. This was followed by a ground assault on 23 February. This was a decisive victory for the coalition forces, who liberated Kuwait and advanced into Iraqi territory. The coalition ceased their advance, and declared a cease-fire 100 hours after the ground campaign started. Aerial and ground combat was confined to Iraq, Kuwait, and areas on the border of Saudi Arabia. However, Iraq launched Scud missiles against coalition military targets in Saudi Arabia and against Israel.

Background[link]

Throughout much of the Cold War, Iraq had been an ally of the Soviet Union, and there was a history of friction between it and the United States. The U.S. was concerned with Iraq's position on Israeli–Palestinian politics, and its disapproval of the nature of the peace between Israel and Egypt. The United States also disliked Iraqi support for many Arab and Palestinian militant groups such as Abu Nidal, which led to its inclusion on the developing U.S. list of State Sponsors of Terrorism on 29 December 1979. The U.S. remained officially neutral after the invasion of Iran in 1980, which became the Iran–Iraq War, although it provided resources, political support, and some "non-military" aircraft.^[21] In March 1982, however, Iran began a successful counteroffensive — Operation Undeniable Victory, and the United States increased its support for Iraq to prevent Iran from forcing a surrender. In a U.S. bid to open full diplomatic relations with Iraq, the country was removed from the U.S. list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. Ostensibly this was because of improvement in the regime’s record, although former United States Assistant Secretary of Defense Noel Koch later stated, "No one had any doubts about [the Iraqis'] continued involvement in terrorism... The real reason was to help them succeed in the war against Iran."^[22] With Iraq's newfound success in the war, and the Iranian rebuff of a peace offer in July, arms sales to Iraq reached a record spike in 1982. When Iraqi President Saddam Hussein expelled Abu Nidal to Syria at the United States' request in November 1983, the Reagan administration sent Donald Rumsfeld to meet President Hussein as a special envoy and to cultivate ties. By the time the ceasefire with Iran was signed in August 1988, Iraq was heavily debt-ridden and tensions within society were rising.^[23] Most of its debt was owed to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Iraq pressured both nations to forgive the debts, but they refused.^[24]

Map of Kuwait

The Iraq-Kuwait dispute also involved Iraqi claims to Kuwait as a territory of Iraq.^[21] After gaining independence from the United Kingdom in 1932, the Iraqi government immediately declared that Kuwait was rightfully a territory of Iraq, as it had been associated with Basra until the British creation of Kuwait after World War I and thus stated that Kuwait was a British imperialist invention.^[25] Kuwait had been a part of the Ottoman Empire's province of Basra, something that Iraq claimed made it rightful Iraq territory.^[26] Its ruling dynasty, the al-Sabah family, had concluded a protectorate agreement in 1899 that assigned responsibility for its foreign affairs to Britain. Britain drew the border between the two countries in 1922, making Iraq virtually landlocked.^[21] Iraqi attempts to secure further provisions in the region had been rejected by Kuwait.^[26]

Iraq also accused Kuwait of exceeding its OPEC quotas for oil production. In order for the cartel to maintain its desired price of $18 a barrel, discipline was required. The United Arab Emirates and Kuwait were consistently overproducing; the latter at least in part to repair losses caused by Iranian attacks in the Iran–Iraq War and to pay for the losses of an economic scandal. The result was a slump in the oil price – as low as $10 a barrel – with a resulting loss of $7 billion a year to Iraq, equal to its 1989 balance of payments deficit.^[27] Resulting revenues struggled to support the basic costs of the government, let alone repair Iraq's damaged infrastructure. Jordan and Iraq both looked for more discipline, with little success.^[28] The Iraqi Government described it as a form of economic warfare,^[28] which it claimed was aggravated by Kuwait slant-drilling across the border into Iraq's Rumaila oil field.^[29] At the same time, Saddam looked for closer ties with those Arab states that had supported Iraq in the war. This was supported by the United States, who believed that Iraqi ties with pro-Western Gulf states would help bring and maintain Iraq inside the US' sphere of influence.^[30]

In 1989, it appeared that Saudi-Iraqi relations, strong during the war, would be maintained. A pact of non-interference and non-aggression was signed between the countries, followed by a Kuwaiti-Iraqi deal for Iraq to supply Kuwait with water for drinking and irrigation, although a request for Kuwait to lease Iraq Umm Qasr was rejected.^[30] Saudi-backed development projects were hampered by Iraq's large debts, even with the demobilization of 200,000 soldiers. Iraq also looked to increase arms production so as to become an exporter, although the success of these projects was also restrained by Iraq's obligations; in Iraq, resentment to OPEC's controls mounted.^[31]

Iraq's relations with its Arab neighbors – in particular Egypt – were degraded by mounting violence in Iraq against expatriate groups, well-employed during the war, by Iraqi unemployed, amongst them demobilized soldiers. These events were not picked up on outside the Arab world because of fast-moving events in Eastern Europe. The United States did, however, begin to condemn Iraq's human rights record, including the well-known use of torture.^[32] Britain also condemned the execution of Farzad Bazoft, a journalist working for the British newspaper The Observer.^[21] The assassination of Gerald Bull, a nuclear scientist, and the arrest of several men at London's Heathrow Airport on charges of attempting to smuggle parts required for a nuclear capability to Iraq, were symptomatic of a slide in Iraqi relations with the West.^[33] For its part, Iraq attacked the alleged smugglers' arrest as part of a "Western–Zionist plot" to facilitate an Israeli attack on Iraq. Following a declaration by Saddam that "binary chemical weapons" would be used on Israel if it used military force against Iraq, Washington halted part of its funding.^[34] A UN mission to the Israeli-occupied territories, where riots had resulted in Palestinian deaths, was vetoed by the United States, making Iraq deeply skeptical of US foreign policy aims in the region, combined with the US' reliance on Middle Eastern energy reserves.^[35]

In early July 1990, Iraq complained about Kuwait's behavior, such as not respecting their quota, and openly threatened to take military action. On the 23rd, the CIA reported that Iraq had moved 30,000 troops to the Iraq-Kuwait border, and the U.S. naval fleet in the Persian Gulf was placed on alert. Saddam believed an anti-Iraq conspiracy was developing– Kuwait had begun talks with Iran, and Syria (Iraq's rival) had arranged a visit to Egypt.^[36] On 15 July 1990, Saddam's government laid out its combined objections to the Arab League, including that policy moves were costing Iraq $1 billion a year, that Kuwait was still using the Rumelia oil field, that loans made by the UAE and Kuwait could not be considered debts to its "Arab brothers".^[36] Discussions in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, mediated on behalf of the Arab League by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, were held on 31 July and led Mubarak to believe that a peaceful course could be established.^[37]

On the 25th, Saddam Hussein met with April Glaspie, an American ambassador, in Baghdad. According to an Iraqi transcript of that meeting, Glaspie told the Iraqi delegation, "We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts."^[38] According to Glaspie's own account, she stated in reference to the precise border between Kuwait and Iraq, "(...) that she had served in Kuwait 20 years before; 'then, as now, we took no position on these Arab affairs'."^[39] Glaspie similarly believed that war was not imminent.^[37]

Invasion of Kuwait[link]

M-84 main battle tanks of the Kuwaiti Armed Forces

Kuwait Air Force A-4KU Skyhawks

The result of the Jeddah talks was an Iraqi demand for $10 billion to cover the lost revenues from Rumaila; the Kuwaiti's bullish response was to offer $9 billion, so as not to give Saddam everything he wanted. The Iraqi response was to immediately order the invasion.^[40]

On 2 August 1990 Iraq launched the invasion by bombing Kuwait City, the Kuwaiti capital. In spite of Iraqi saber-rattling, Kuwait did not have its forces on alert; the army had been stood down on 19 July.^[41] At the time of the invasion, the Kuwaiti force was believed to have numbered 16,000 men, arranged into three armored, one mechanised infantry and one artillery under-strength brigade.^[42] Iraqi commandos infiltrated the Kuwaiti border first to prepare for the major units which began the attack at the stroke of midnight. The Iraqi attack had two prongs, with the primary attack force driving south straight for Kuwait City down the main highway, and a supporting attack entering Kuwait farther west, but then turning and driving due east, cutting off the capital city from the southern half of the country. The commander of a Kuwaiti armored battalion, 35th Armoured Brigade, deployed them against the Iraqi attack and was able to conduct a robust defense (The Battle of the Bridges), near Al Jahra, west of Kuwait City.^[43]

The pre-war strength of the Kuwait Air Force was around 2,200 Kuwaiti personnel, with 80 aircraft and forty helicopters.^[42] Aircraft scrambled to meet the invading force, but approximately 20% were lost or captured. An air battle with the Iraqi helicopter airborne forces was fought over Kuwait City, inflicting heavy losses on the Iraqi elite troops, and a few combat sorties were flown against Iraqi ground forces.^[44]

The main Iraqi thrust into Kuwait City was conducted by commandos deployed by helicopters and boats to attack the city from the sea, while other divisions seized the airports and two airbases. The Iraqis attacked the Dasman Palace, the Royal Residence of the Emir of Kuwait, Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, which was defended by the Emiri Guard supported with M-84 tanks. In the process, the Iraqis killed Fahad Al-Ahmed Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, the Emir of Kuwait's youngest brother.

Within 12 hours, most resistance had ended within Kuwait and the royal family had fled, leaving Iraq in control of most of Kuwait.^[40] After two days of intense combat, most of the Kuwaiti Armed Forces were either overrun by the Iraqi Republican Guard, or had escaped to neighboring Saudi Arabia. The emir and key ministers were able to get out and head south along the highway for refuge in Saudi Arabia. Iraqi ground forces consolidated their control on Kuwait City, then headed south and redeployed along the border of Saudi Arabia. After the decisive Iraqi victory, Saddam Hussein initially installed a puppet regime known as the "Provisional Government of Free Kuwait" before installing his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid as the governor of Kuwait on 8 August.

Run-up to the war[link]

Diplomatic means[link]

Within hours of the invasion, Kuwaiti and U.S. delegations requested a meeting of the UN Security Council, which passed Resolution 660, condemning the invasion and demanding a withdrawal of Iraqi troops.^[45] On 3 August the Arab League passed its own resolution, which called for a solution to the conflict from within the League, and warned against outside intervention; Iraq and Libya were the only two nations in the Arab League which opposed a resolution for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait. The PLO opposed it as well.^[46][47] The Arab nations of Yemen and Jordan – a Western ally which bordered Iraq and relied on the country for economic support^[48] – also opposed military intervention from non-Arab nations.^[49] The Arab nation of Sudan also aligned itself with Hussein.^[48]

On 6 August, UN Resolution 661 placed economic sanctions on Iraq.^[50] United Nations Security Council Resolution 665 followed soon after, which authorized a naval blockade to enforce the economic sanctions against Iraq. It said the “use of measures commensurate to the specific circumstances as may be necessary ... to halt all inward and outward maritime shipping in order to inspect and verify their cargoes and destinations and to ensure strict implementation of resolution 661.”^[51]

President Bush visiting American troops in Saudi Arabia on Thanksgiving Day, 1990.

From the beginning, U.S. officials insisted on a total Iraqi pullout from Kuwait, without any linkage to other Middle Eastern problems, fearing any concessions would strengthen Iraqi influence in the region for years to come.^[52]

On 12 August 1990, Saddam Hussein called for compromise via Baghdad radio and the former Iraqi News Agency. Hussein "propose[d] that all cases of occupation, and those cases that have been portrayed as occupation, in the region, be resolved simultaneouly [sic]". Specifically, he called for Israel to withdraw from occupied territories in Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon, Syria to withdraw from Lebanon, and "mutual withdrawals by Iraq and Iran and arrangement for the situation in Kuwait." He also called for a replacement of US troops that mobilized in Saudi Arabia in response to the invasion of Kuwait with "an Arab force", as long as that force did not involve Egypt. Additionally, he requested an "immediate freeze of all boycott and siege decisions" and a general normalization of relations with Iraq.^[53] From the beginning of the crisis, President Bush was strongly opposed to any "linkage" between the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait and the Palestinian issue.^[54]

On 23 August Saddam Hussein appeared on state television with Western hostages to whom he had refused exit visas. In the video he asks a young British boy named Stuart Lockwood whether he is getting his milk, and goes on to say, through his interpreter, "We hope your presence as guests here will not be for too long. Your presence here, and in other places, is meant to prevent the scourge of war."^[55]

Another Iraqi proposal communicated in August 1990 was delivered to National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft by an unidentified Iraqi official. The official communicated to the White House that Iraq would "withdraw from Kuwait and allow foreigners to leave" provided that the UN lifted sanctions, allowed "'guaranteed access' to the Persian Gulf through the Kuwaiti islands of Bubiyan and Warbah", and allowed Iraq to "gain full control of the Rumailah oil field that extends slightly into Kuwaiti territory". The proposal also "include[d] offers to negotiate an oil agreement with the United States 'satisfactory to both nations' national security interests,' develop a joint plan 'to alleviate Iraq's economical and financial problems' and 'jointly work on the stability of the gulf.'"^[56]

In December 1990, Iraq made a proposal to withdraw from Kuwait provided that their forces were not attacked as they left, and that a consensus was reached regarding the banning of WMD in the Palestinian region. The White House rejected the proposal.^[57] Yasser Arafat of the PLO expressed that neither he nor Hussein insisted that solving the Israel-Palestine issues should be a precondition to solving the issues in Kuwait, though he did acknowledge a "strong link" between these problems.^[58]

Ultimately, the US stuck to its hard line position that there would be no negotiations until Iraq withdrew from Kuwait and that they should not grant Iraq concessions, lest they give the impression that Iraq benefited from its military campaign.^[52] Also, when Secretary of State James Baker met with Tariq Aziz in Geneva for last minute peace talks in early 1991, Aziz reportedly made no concrete proposals and did not outline any hypothetical Iraqi moves.^[59]

On 29 November 1990 the U.N. passed security council resolution 678 which gave Iraq until 15 January 1991 to withdraw from Kuwait and empowered states to use "all necessary means" to force Iraq out of Kuwait after the deadline.

On 14 January 1991, France proposed that the U.N. Security Council call for "a rapid and massive withdrawal" from Kuwait along with a statement to Iraq that Council members would bring their "active contribution" to a settlement of other problems of the region, "in particular, of the Arab-Israeli conflict and in particular to the Palestinian problem by convening, at an appropriate moment, an international conference" to assure "the security, stability and development of this region of the world." The French proposal was supported by Belgium (at the moment one of the rotating Security Council members), and Germany,Spain, Italy, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and several non-aligned nations. The U.S., Great Britain, and the Soviet Union, rejected it. American U.N. Ambassador Thomas Pickering stated that the French proposal was unacceptable, because it went beyond previous U.N. Security Council resolutions on the Iraqi invasion.^[60][61][62]

Military means[link]

One of the main concerns to the West was the significant threat Iraq posed to Saudi Arabia. Following the conquest of Kuwait, the Iraqi army was within easy striking distance of Saudi oil fields. Control of these fields, along with Kuwaiti and Iraqi reserves, would have given Hussein control over the majority of the world's oil reserves. Iraq also had a number of grievances with Saudi Arabia. The Saudis had lent Iraq some 26 billion dollars during its war with Iran. The Saudis backed Iraq, as they feared the influence of Shia Iran's Islamic revolution on its own Shia minority. After the war, Saddam felt he should not have to repay the loans due to the help he had given the Saudis by fighting Iran.

F-15Es parked during Operation Desert Shield.

Soon after his conquest of Kuwait, Hussein began verbally attacking the Saudi kingdom. He argued that the U.S.-supported Saudi state was an illegitimate and unworthy guardian of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. He combined the language of the Islamist groups that had recently fought in Afghanistan with the rhetoric Iran had long used to attack the Saudis.^[63]

Acting on the policy of the Carter Doctrine, and out of fear the Iraqi army could launch an invasion of Saudi Arabia, U.S. President George H. W. Bush quickly announced that the U.S. would launch a "wholly defensive" mission to prevent Iraq from invading Saudi Arabia under the codename Operation Desert Shield. Operation Desert Shield began on 7 August 1990 when U.S. troops were sent to Saudi Arabia due also to the request of its monarch, King Fahd, who had earlier called for U.S. military assistance.^[64] This "wholly defensive" doctrine was quickly abandoned when, on 8 August, Iraq declared Kuwait to be the 19th province of Iraq and Saddam Hussein named his cousin, Ali Hassan Al-Majid as its military-governor.^[65]

The United States Navy dispatched two naval battle groups built around the aircraft carriers USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and USS Independence to the Gulf, where they were ready by 8 August. The U.S. also sent the battleships USS Missouri and USS Wisconsin to the region. A total of 48 U.S. Air Force F-15s from the 1st Fighter Wing at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, landed in Saudi Arabia, and immediately commenced round the clock air patrols of the Saudi–Kuwait–Iraq border areas to discourage further Iraqi military advances. They were joined by 36 F-15 A-Ds from the 36th TFW at Bitburg, Germany. The Bitburg contingent was based at Al Kharj Air Base, approximately 1 hour southeast of Riyadh. The 36th TFW would be responsible for 11 confirmed Iraqi Air Force aircraft shot down during the war. There were also two Air National Guard units stationed at Al Kharj Air Base, the South Carolina Air National Guard (169th Fighter Wing) flew bombing missions with 24 F-16's flying 2,000 combat missions and dropping 4 million pounds of munitions, and the New York Air National Guard 174th Fighter Wing from Syracuse flew 24 F-16's on bombing missions. Military buildup continued from there, eventually reaching 543,000 troops, twice the number used in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Much of the material was airlifted or carried to the staging areas via fast sealift ships, allowing a quick buildup.

Creating a coalition[link]

A series of UN Security Council resolutions and Arab League resolutions were passed regarding the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. One of the most important was Resolution 678, passed on 29 November 1990, which gave Iraq a withdrawal deadline until 15 January 1991, and authorized “all necessary means to uphold and implement Resolution 660,” and a diplomatic formulation authorizing the use of force if Iraq failed to comply.^[66]

H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr. and President George H. W. Bush visit U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia on Thanksgiving Day, 1990.

The United States assembled a coalition of forces to join it in opposing Iraq's aggression, consisting of forces from 34 countries: Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, France, Greece, Italy, Kuwait, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Niger, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Portugal, Qatar, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Spain, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States itself.^[67] US Army General Norman Schwarzkopf was designated to be the commander of the coalition forces in the Persian Gulf area.

Although they did not contribute any forces, Japan and Germany made financial contributions totaling $10 billion and $6.6 billion respectively. U.S. troops represented 73% of the coalition’s 956,600 troops in Iraq.

Many of the coalition forces were reluctant to join. Some felt that the war was an internal Arab affair, or did not want to increase U.S. influence in the Middle East. In the end, however, many nations were persuaded by Iraq’s belligerence towards other Arab states, offers of economic aid or debt forgiveness, and threats to withhold aid.^[68]

Justification for intervention[link]

Cheney meets with Prince Sultan, Minister of Defence and Aviation in Saudi Arabia to discuss how to handle the invasion of Kuwait

The United States and the United Nations gave several public justifications for involvement in the conflict, the most prominent being the Iraqi violation of Kuwaiti territorial integrity. In addition, the United States moved to support its ally Saudi Arabia, whose importance in the region, and as a key supplier of oil, made it of considerable geopolitical importance. Shortly after the Iraqi invasion, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney made the first of several visits to Saudi Arabia where King Fahd requested US military assistance. During a speech in a special joint session of the U.S. Congress given on 11 September 1990, U.S. President George H. W. Bush summed up the reasons with the following remarks: "Within three days, 120,000 Iraqi troops with 850 tanks had poured into Kuwait and moved south to threaten Saudi Arabia. It was then that I decided to act to check that aggression."^[69]

The Pentagon claimed that satellite photos showing a buildup of Iraqi forces along the border were the source of this information, but this was later shown to be false. A reporter for the Saint Petersburg Times acquired two commercial Soviet satellite images made at the time in question, which showed nothing but empty desert.^[70] However, serious questions were raised later when it was revealed that the satellite images were actually Soviet military images, not private commercial images, and it would have been impossible for the Soviets to share original source imagery without compromising security of classified images. The images were, in fact, not different magnifications of one original source image of the area in question, but separate images taken at different times and locations. The Soviets were heavily invested in Iraq and made numerous attempts to stop the coalition from invading Iraq, through diplomacy and also through deceptive propaganda; and in this case it was the Christian Science Monitor, not the Saint Petersburg Times who broke the story, as erroneously reported in this article and other publications.^{[citation needed]}

Gen. Colin Powell (left), Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr., and Paul Wolfowitz (right) listen as Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney addresses reporters regarding the 1991 Gulf War.

Other justifications for foreign involvement included Iraq’s history of human rights abuses under President Saddam. Iraq was also known to possess biological weapons and chemical weapons, which Saddam had used against Iranian troops during the Iran–Iraq War and against his own country's Kurdish population in the Al-Anfal Campaign. Iraq was also known to have a nuclear weapons program, but the report about it from January 1991 was partially declassified by the CIA on May 26, 2001.^[71]

Although there were human rights abuses committed in Kuwait by the invading Iraqi military, the ones best known in the U.S. were inventions of the public relations firm hired by the government of Kuwait to influence U.S. opinion in favor of military intervention. Shortly after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the organization Citizens for a Free Kuwait was formed in the U.S. It hired the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton for about $11 million, paid by the Kuwaiti government.^[72]

Among many other means of influencing U.S. opinion (distributing books on Iraqi atrocities to U.S. soldiers deployed in the region, 'Free Kuwait' T-shirts and speakers to college campuses, and dozens of video news releases to television stations), the firm arranged for an appearance before a group of members of the U.S. Congress in which a woman identifying herself as a nurse working in the Kuwait City hospital described Iraqi soldiers pulling babies out of incubators and letting them die on the floor.^[73]

The story was an influence in tipping both the public and Congress towards a war with Iraq: six Congressmen said the testimony was enough for them to support military action against Iraq and seven Senators referenced the testimony in debate. The Senate supported the military actions in a 52–47 vote. A year after the war, however, this allegation was revealed to be a fabrication. The woman who had testified was found to be a member of the Kuwaiti Royal Family, in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S.^[73] She had not been living in Kuwait during the Iraqi invasion.

The details of the Hill & Knowlton public relations campaign, including the incubator testimony, were published in a John R. MacArthur's Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War (Berkeley, CA: University of CA Press, 1992), and came to wide public attention when an Op-ed by MacArthur was published in the New York Times. This prompted a reexamination by Amnesty International, which had originally promoted an account alleging even greater numbers of babies torn from incubators than the original fake testimony. After finding no evidence to support it, the organization issued a retraction. President George H. W. Bush then repeated the incubator allegations on television.

At the same time, the Iraqi army committed several well-documented crimes during its occupation of Kuwait, such as the summary execution without trial of three brothers after which their bodies were stacked in a pile and left to decay in a public street.^[74] Iraqi troops also ransacked and looted private Kuwaiti homes, one residence was repeatedly defecated in.^[75] A resident later commented, "The whole thing was violence for the sake of violence, destruction for the sake of destruction... Imagine a surrealistic painting by Salvador Dalí".^[76]

Early battles[link]

Air campaign[link]

The Gulf War started with an extensive aerial bombing campaign on 17 January 1991. The coalition flew over 100,000 sorties, dropping 88,500 tons of bombs,^[77] and widely destroying military and civilian infrastructure.^[78] The air campaign was commanded by USAF Lieutenant General Chuck Horner, who briefly served as Commander-in-Chief – Forward of U.S. Central Command while General Schwarzkopf was still in the United States.

A day after the deadline set in Resolution 678, the coalition launched a massive air campaign, which began the general offensive codenamed Operation Desert Storm. The first priority for Coalition forces was the destruction of the Iraqi air force and anti-aircraft facilities. The sorties were launched mostly from Saudi Arabia and the six Coalition aircraft carrier battle groups (CVBG) in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.

An Iraqi T-54A or Type 59 tank lies in ruins in the aftermath of an Allied bombing attack during Operation Desert Storm.

The next coalition targets were command and communication facilities. Saddam Hussein had closely micromanaged the Iraqi forces in the Iran–Iraq War, and initiative at lower levels was discouraged. Coalition planners hoped that Iraqi resistance would quickly collapse if deprived of command and control.

The third and largest phase of the air campaign targeted military targets throughout Iraq and Kuwait: Scud missile launchers, weapons research facilities, and naval forces. About one-third of the Coalition airpower was devoted to attacking Scuds, some of which were on trucks and therefore difficult to locate. Some U.S. and British special forces teams had been covertly inserted into western Iraq to aid in the search and destruction of Scuds.

Iraqi antiaircraft defenses, including MANPADS, were surprisingly ineffective against coalition aircraft and the coalition suffered only 75 aircraft losses in over 100,000 sorties, 44 of which were the result of Iraqi action. Two of these losses are the result of aircraft colliding with the ground while evading Iraqi ground fired weapons.^[79][80] One of these losses is a confirmed air-air victory.^[81]

Iraq launches missile strikes[link]

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The Iraqi government made no secret that it would attack Israel if invaded. Prior to the start of the war, Tariq Aziz, Iraq's English-speaking Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, was asked in the aftermath of the failed U.S.-Iraq peace talks in Geneva, Switzerland by a reporter. “Mr. Foreign Minister, if war starts...will you attack Israel?” His response was, “Yes, absolutely, yes.”^[82][83]

Five hours after the first attacks, Iraq's state radio broadcast a voice identified as Saddam Hussein declaring that "The great duel, the mother of all battles has begun. The dawn of victory nears as this great showdown begins." Iraq responded by launching eight Al Hussein missiles at Israel the next day. These missile attacks on Israel were to continue throughout the war. A total of 42 Scud missiles were fired by Iraq into Israel during the seven weeks of the war.^[84]

The Iraqis hoped that they would provoke a military response from Israel. It was expected that many Arab nations would withdraw from the coalition, as they would be reluctant to fight alongside Israel.^[54] Following the first attacks, Israeli Air Force jets were deployed to patrol the northern airspace with Iraq, and Israel prepared to respond with military force, as its policy for the previous forty years had always been retaliation. However, President Bush pressured Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir not to retaliate and withdraw Israeli jets, fearing that if Israel attacked Iraq, the other Arab nations would either desert from the coalition or join Iraq. It was also feared that if Israel used Syrian or Jordanian airspace to attack Iraq, they would intervene in the war on Iraq's side or attack Israel. Israel was promised that the Coalition would deploy Patriot missiles to defend Israel if it refrained from responding to the Scud attacks.^[85][86]

Israeli civilians taking shelter from rockets

The Scud missiles targeting Israel were relatively ineffective, as firing at extreme range resulted in a dramatic reduction in accuracy and payload. The missile attacks killed two Israeli civilians, and caused several others to suffer fatal heart attacks. Approximately 230 Israelis were injured. Of the injuries, 10 were considered moderate injuries, while one was considered a severe injury.^[10] Extensive property damage was also caused, and some 4,000 Israelis were left homeless. It was feared that Iraq would fire missiles filled with nerve agents or sarin. As a result, the Israeli government issued gas masks to its citizens. When the first Iraqi missiles hit Israel, some people injected themselves with an antidote for nerve gas.

Aftermath of an Al-Hussein strike on US barracks.

In response to the threat of Scuds on Israel, the United States rapidly sent a Patriot missile air defense artillery battalion to Israel along with two batteries of MIM-104 Patriot missiles for the protection of civilians.^[87] Coalition air forces were also extensively exercised in "Scud hunts" in the Iraqi desert, trying to locate the camouflaged trucks before they fired their missiles at Israel or Saudi Arabia. On the ground, special forces also infiltrated Iraq, tasked with locating and destroying Scuds. Once special operations were combined with air patrols, the number of attacks fell sharply, then increased slightly as Iraqi forces adjusted to Coalition tactics. At one point, Israeli commandos were loaded onto helicopters ready to fly to Iraq, but the mission was called off after a phone call from US Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, reporting on the extent of Coalition efforts to destroy Scuds and emphasizing that Israeli intervention could endanger American forces.^[88]

The Royal Netherlands Air Force also deployed Patriot missiles in both Turkey and Israel to counter the Scud threat. The Dutch Defense Ministry later stated that the military use of the Patriot missile system was largely ineffective, but its psychological value was high, even though the Patriot missiles caused far more casualties and property damage than the Scuds themselves did.^[89][90] It has been suggested that the sturdy construction techniques used in Israeli cities, coupled with the fact that Scuds were only launched at night, played an important role in limiting the number of casualties from Scud attacks.^[10]

Three Scud missiles and a coalition Patriot that malfunctioned hit Ramat Gan on 22 January 1991, injuring 96 people, and possibly causing the deaths of three elderly people who died of strokes.

In addition, 47 Scud missiles were fired into Saudi Arabia, and one missile was fired at Bahrain and another at Qatar. The missiles were fired at both military and civilian targets. One Saudi civilian was killed, and 78 others were injured. No casualties were reported in Bahrain or Qatar. The Saudi government issued all its citizens and expatriates with gas masks in the event of Iraq using missiles with chemical or biological warheads. The government broadcast alerts and 'all clear' messages over television to warn citizens during scud attacks.

On 25 February 1991, a Scud missile hit a U.S. Army barracks of the 14th quartermaster Detachment, out of Greensburg, PA, stationed in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 28 soldiers and injuring over 100.^[11]

Battle of Khafji[link]

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Military operations during liberation of Khafji