Operation Pacific Haven / Quick Transit
In Operation Pacific Haven / Quick Transit , the United States Air Force evacuated around 6,500 Kurds from Iraq in a humanitarian operation in the fall of 1996 .
The occasion was the fighting between the two Kurdish organizations, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) in August 1996, in which a ceasefire brokered by the USA had been broken. In the course of the fighting, Masud Barzani , the leader of the KDP, asked for help from Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army on August 31, 1996 . The Iraqi troops destroyed the city of Erbil , which was in the no-fly zone of Operation Provide Comfort and was previously ruled by the Iran-backed PUK. The intervention of the Iraqi army resulted in the implementation of Operation Desert Strike against the forces of Saddam Hussein in retaliation .
In addition, Operation Pacific Haven / Quick Transit was launched, in which Kurds allied with the United States were evacuated from Northern Iraq in several transports via Turkey and Guam to the United States. The operation was supported by troops from the coalition associations of Operation Provide Comfort, who first flew the people at risk to the Turkish military airfield Incirlik Air Base . There the refugees boarded planes for Guam, the name Pacific Haven (Pacific port) refers to the Andersen Air Force Base on the island of Guam. The three evacuation phases were designated as Quick Transit 1-3 and were carried out in September, October and December 1996.
| Quick Transit Name sub-operation |
Period | Number of people flown out |
|---|---|---|
| Quick Transit I | September 15-18, 1996 | 2,106 |
| Quick Transit II | October 15-22, 1996 | 604 |
| Quick Transit III | December 7-13, 1996 | 3,783 |
| All in all | 6,493 |