Highway of Death
As Highway of Death ( English for Road of Death ) air attacks on roads between Kuwait and Basra respectively. There, during the Second Gulf War, on the night of February 26th to 27th, 1991, Iraqi troops retreating from the previously occupied Kuwait were bombed.
course
The main roads affected are Highway 80 alongside Highway 8 to Basra. It runs from Kuwait City to the cities of Abdali (Kuwait) and Safwan in southern Iraq. Then the road continues to Basra . 1400–2000 vehicles were hit and abandoned on Highway 80 north of al-Jahra in the al-Jahra governorate of the same name , 400–700 on the lesser-known Highway 8 to Basra. The roads were restored in the late 1990s and were used by British and US forces during the 2003 invasion of Iraq .
background
On February 26, Iraqi troops officially began withdrawing from Kuwait after Iraq had previously let several ultimatums pass. They had previously set fire to the Kuwaiti oil fields as they left and opened the locking bars at Kuwaiti oil terminals, so that huge amounts of oil spilled into the Persian Gulf and triggered an environmental disaster. A long convoy of Iraqi troops - including many civilian vehicles and Palestinian collaborators who had to leave Kuwait - withdrew along the main Iraq-Kuwait route. Most of the civilian vehicles on display had been requisitioned by the Iraqi army in Kuwait.
The coalition forces' air and ground war, beginning on February 24, 1991, had first been carried out on Iraqi territory. Hussein's troops then withdrew in accordance with the UN's demand, after dictator Hussein had previously resorted to hostage-taking and the involvement of, for example, the Israeli occupation areas.
Technically, these mines, laid with the help of US marines , were brought to a standstill at the beginning and end of the convoy . The convoy built up in this way was then subjected to air strikes for several hours. The inmates also had time to flee, which reduced the number of deaths. Project on Defense Alternatives Research estimates the fatality of at least eight hundred to one thousand people.
consequences
The American President George HW Bush offered a unilateral ceasefire the following day, to which international reports on the extent of the destruction on the highway had contributed. Through this ceasefire, the rulers in Iraq were able to bloodily suppress the uprising in Iraq in 1991 with the remaining troops that were no longer involved in combat operations and the use of poison gas .
The destruction of a large convoy of the Iraqi Hammurabi division a few days later by General McCaffrey's ground troops and army aviators within Iraqi territory was nevertheless controversial. Another 700 vehicles were destroyed and almost 1,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed.
In addition to Kuwaiti hostages, those involved in the Highway of Death also included high-ranking members of the Palestinian Liberation Organization who fled Kuwait. These were to follow in the coming days as part of the expulsion of the Palestinians from Kuwait in 1991, almost 450,000 more Palestinians who were expelled from Kuwait because of the collaboration of their leader Yasser Arafat with Hussein and his approval of the war.
Aftermath
An article by Seymour Hersh and the replay of related interviews with the military by the journalist became known and controversial . General McCaffrey alleged that Iraqi troops had disregarded requests to surrender and attacked his ground forces. The Americans lost a main battle tank and a troop carrier in the incident, and McCaffrey was acquitted.
Ramsey Clark , who later assisted Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milošević as defense counsel, criticized the approach as a violation of the Geneva Convention and war crimes.
Movie
A scene in the war drama Jarhead - Welcome to the Dirt is also about the Highway of Death .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b The Wages of War: Iraqi Combatant and Noncombatant Fatalities in the 2003 Conflict. Appendix 2: Iraqi Combatant and Noncombatant Fatalities in the 1991 Gulf War
- ^ A b Hammurabi Division , GlobalSecurity.org
- ↑ [1] , BBC News, March 30, 2001
- ↑ The New Yorker, May 22, 2000, pp. 49-82. ANNALS OF WAR OVERWHELMING FORCE What happened in the final days of the Gulf War ?, by SEYMOUR HERSH
- ↑ Ramsey Clark et al .: War Crimes. A Report on United States War Crimes Against Iraq to the Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal. ( Memento of April 2, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) see foreword.