Crisis in the Arabian Gulf

Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ), Spring, 1996 by Laura Drake

The above work by Omar Ali, an Iraqi national, provides the unique combination of historical, conceptual, and spatial depth that is missing from most accounts of the Gulf War, and indeed, from a significant portion of scholarship in modern institutional relations. Ali invites us to step into a multidimensional environment, contextualising the crisis and war from a variety of regional-spatial and functional spheres, all of which are intricately woven together to form a rich mosaic of international political interaction.

Ali's chapters are organized around these different spheres, each of which is embedded in the perceptual apparatus of the actors themselves and within the recent historical context of Middle East politics as a whole. Thus, the reader is provided with a longer and much broader view than is common in most of the usual renditions - some of which are characterized by an obsessive focus on the person of President Saddam Hussein, and others of which are of the instant techno-war variety that de-personalize and even de-politicize the conflict, thus epitomizing the "Desert Storm" mentality (i.e., an enormous force that swoops down from nowhere, systematically destroys everything in its wake, and quickly departs).

Two of Ali's chapters link the Gulf crisis to the geostrategic environments in which Iraq was an integral player, including: the Iraq-Iran sphere, Arab-Turkish relations, and the Arab-Israel conflict, especially Iraq's widely-perceived role as the primary strategic counterweight to Israel in the Middle East. Similarly, two chapters are devoted to the superpowers; one is devoted to the United Nations; one to the economic dimension of oil and one to the military dimension of unconventional warfare. Finally, and most importantly, Ali devotes three chapters to internal events in Iraq and Kuwait both before and after the actual war. Since Iraq and Kuwait constitute both the pretext for the war and the theater in which it was conducted, it is only natural that the best analyses, Ali's among them, would be centered conceptually around these two countries. However, such grounded perspectives are, only too often, totally absent from Gulf war analyses.

The author begins by outlining the origins and rationale behind Turkey's involvement in the war, carried out by Turgut Ozal despite internal opposition, in the hope of Turkey replacing Israel as America's number one ally in the Middle East. This is followed by an extensive account of the gradual downward spiral of Iraqi-Kuwaiti relations in the year or so before the Iraqi invasion on 2 August 1990. In his expansive history of the Iraq-Kuwait border dispute, Ali provides insights into Baghdad's perspective on the establishment and consolidation of the Kuwaiti emirate and its consistent opposition to a Kuwaiti state separate from Iraq. We are reminded of the narrowly aborted attempt by the first post-revolutionary regime of Abdel Karim Qassem to restore Kuwait by force in 1961 and informed that the only Iraqi government to recognize Kuwait's separate status was the regime that rose to power through the first Ba'thist coup of February 1963, only to be overthrown later that same year. This regime's recognition of Kuwait, to which Iraq was now committed, was tacitly accepted by subsequent governments; however, the continued separateness of Kuwait was not viewed by any of them as historically legitimate.

Therefore, when Kuwaiti behavior toward Iraq began to exhibit a pattern of defiance - one characterized by an "in-your-face" attitude - the Iraqis became particularly irritated. This pattern consisted of Kuwait's cross-drilling at the Rumaila oilfield and overproducing its OPEC quota, thus depriving Iraq of $1 billion per year of desperately needed revenues in the aftermath of the Iraq-Iran war, as well as demanding repayment of loans extended to Iraq during that conflict at a time when Baghdad was hardly in a position to re-pay them. As these actions began to add up, and as Kuwait began to exhibit a particularly uncompromising stance, Baghdad finally invaded, though nobody expected the Iraqi army to seize the entire emirate.

Ali provides detailed accounts of Jordanian and Saudi attempts to reverse the crisis and arrive at a solution. Arab League efforts for an outcome in which Iraqi troops would be withdrawn in return for a resolution of the above issues, one that would be acceptable to both parties, including some Kuwaiti concessions on leasing the Warba and Bubiyan islands to Iraq in order to provide it with better access to the sea are also described. We also read about how the effort by Arab states, including the oil-rich southern Gulf monarchies, to pursue these initiatives was deliberately frustrated by Washington - seemingly bent on fighting a war even though the region's own diplomatic avenues had not yet been exhausted. The author also provides important insights into the mode of thinking inside the top echelons in Iraq: apparently underestimating the repercussions of the East Bloc collapse and the extent of the transformations that had already occurred in the Soviet Union itself. Baghdad failed to foresee the lack of Soviet opposition to Washington's war-related initiatives within the United Nations.