In the years between the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the start of its successor in 2003, the United States and its allies set up no-fly and no-drive zones for Iraq, imposed economic sanctions, bombed Iraqi military forces and otherwise engaged in actions that look a lot like the limited war the Obama administration is helping wage against Gaddafi’s regime today.
The 2003 invasion of Iraq and the debacle that followed make this interwar period seem a distant curiosity. But it was the frustrations and failures of those efforts that set the stage for the eventual decision to invade. Remembering the failures of the 1990s can help the Obama administration avoid similarly disastrous decisions in Libya — in the midst of an operation that, as it endures, can become unpopular at home, lose support abroad and require constant political energy to maintain.
The dictator may not fall.
After the Gulf War ended in 1991, Hussein began massacring Iraqi Kurds and Shiites who, with U.S. encouragement, had risen up against him. As in Libya, the massacres were blamed in part on the Iraqi leader’s air superiority, including helicopters. To counter this, and to send a message that the world would not stand idly by, the United States and its allies enforced a no-fly zone over northern Iraq. Hussein pulled back in the north but continued to slaughter Iraqi Shiites, leading to the creation in 1992 of a similar no-fly zone in southern Iraq. In 1994, concerned about Iraqi military aggression against Kuwait, the United States established a no-drive zone in southern Iraq. During this time, the United States also bombed Iraq’s air defenses that threatened patrolling allied aircraft, hoping to shake its foundations and topple its dictator.
No one imagined that Hussein would still be in charge a decade after the no-fly zone began. He seemed sure to fall in 1991, after the Gulf War humiliated him and defeated his armies. But in the 1990s he survived coup attempts, tribal revolts and religious opposition. The Iraqi dictator, like other successful tyrants, did one thing well — secure his power.
The initial push for a no-fly zone over Libya appeared to be based on hope that the dictator there would fall soon. Gaddafi’s grip on power, like Hussein’s in 1991, is tenuous, but he appears to have stopped the waves of defections and is now consolidating his position. Or, as he so eloquently put it, “I am here, I am here, I am here.”
He is there, and his purges in Tripoli will continue, even if his efforts against the Benghazi-based opposition falter in the face of international attacks. His cash hoards and brutal security services will be used together to ensure loyalty, particularly among his military forces and key tribal allies. All this makes a coup or revolt less likely to succeed. The hope that the intervention would last for days, not weeks or months, will be tested.
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