Unknown number of soldiers killed Unknown number of air defense systems destroyed 1 MiG-25 Foxbat shot down 1 MiG-23 Flogger shot down 2 Su-22 Fitters shot down
1,400 Iraqi civilians killed (Iraqi government claim)[3]
The Iraqi no-fly zones conflict was a low-level conflict in the two no-fly zones (NFZs) in Iraq that were proclaimed by the United States, United Kingdom, and France after the Gulf War of 1991. The United States stated that the NFZs were intended to protect the ethnic Kurdish minority in northern Iraq and ShiiteMuslims in the south. Iraqi aircraft were forbidden from flying inside the zones. The policy was enforced by the United States and the United Kingdom until 2003, when it was rendered obsolete by the 2003 invasion of Iraq. French aircraft patrols also participated until France withdrew in 1996.[4]
The Iraqi government claimed 1,400 civilians were killed by Coalition bombing during the NFZ.[5] The Kurdish-dominated north gained effective autonomy and was protected from a feared repeat of the Anfal genocide in 1988 that killed tens of thousands of civilians. Over 280,000 sorties were flown in the first 9 years of the NFZs.[6]
From March to December 2002 the number of bombs dropped increased by 300%.[10] This was recognised as "a clear indication that the no-fly zone is being used to destroy the country's air defence systems in anticipation of an all-out attack".[10]Whitehall officials privately admitted to the Guardian that the no-fly zones were being used to weaken Iraq's air defence systems instead of the stated aim of defending the Marsh Arabs and the Shia population of Iraq.[10]
The commander of the USS Abraham Lincoln's air wing said that the NFZ "makes any potential action infinitely easier ... to fly over the same territory you're going to attack is a real luxury".[11]
Civilian deaths
The United Nations reported that in 1999 alone 144 civilians were killed during Coalition bombing raids.[5] By 1999 over 1,800 bombs had been dropped on Iraq,[12] while Iraq stated that 1,400 civilians died due to bombing during the NFZ.[5]
The United States and coalition countries denied these allegations and cited popular Kurdish and Shia demands for no-fly zones, in order to protect against Saddam Hussein, who unhindered had committed numerous atrocities a few years earlier, such as the infamous 1988 Anfal genocide that killed 50,000 to 182,000[13] Kurdish civilians. The establishing of no-fly zones effectively cut off Saddam Hussein from much of the north and secured the Kurdish population, who gained effective autonomy directly following the intervention. This autonomy has continued to thrive and even avoided the chaos and bloodshed that characterized the rest of Iraq during the 2003 Iraq war.
When Operation Desert Storm ended in 1991, the safety of Kurds who were fleeing during the uprising from Iraqi persecution became an issue, and Operation Provide Comfort began. This operation essentially created a Northern NFZ to Iraqi military aircraft. The operation provided the Kurdish population with humanitarian aid and reassurance of safe skies.
On 26 June 1993, the U.S. conducted a cruise missile attack on the Iraqi Intelligence Service's (IIS) principal command and control complex in Baghdad, publicly announced as retaliation for the assassination attempt by the IIS on former President George H. W. Bush while he was visiting Kuwait in April of that year to commemorate a coalition victory over Iraq in the Gulf War. Fourteen cruise missiles were launched from USSPeterson and nine of them launched from USSChancellorsville. Sixteen hit the target, while three struck a residential area, killing nine civilians and wounding 12 others. Four missiles were unaccounted for.[16]
In October 1994, Baghdad once again began mobilizing around 64,000 Iraqi troops near the Kuwaiti border because of their expressed frustrations of economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).[17][18] In response, the U.S. begins to deploy troops in the Persian Gulf to deter Iraqi aggression against Kuwait. Code-named Operation Vigilant Warrior, 1st Brigade of the Fort Stewart, Georgia-based 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized) deployed and drew pre-positioned equipment in Kuwait. The 23rd Wing's (Flying Tigers) 75th Fighter Squadron (Tigersharks) and its full complement of A-10s initially deployed from Pope AFB, North Carolina to Dhahran Air Base, Saudi Arabia, followed by the first forward deployment to Ahmad al-Jaber Air Base, Kuwait. This allowed better face-to-face coordination with tactical air control parties (TACP) assets further forward deployed at Camp Doha, Kuwait and points north. Iraq would later withdraw troops near the Kuwaiti border in response to a massive U.S. military build-up.
In September 1996, the U.S. conducted Operation Desert Strike, and ships from the USSCarl Vinson Battle Group, including USSLaboon, and USSShiloh, in conjunction with B-52 bombers escorted by F-14D Tomcats from USS Carl Vinson, launched 27 cruise missiles against Iraqi air defense targets in southern Iraq.[19] A second wave of 17 was launched later that day.[20] The missiles hit targets in and around Kut, Iskandariyah, Nasiriyah, and Tallil.[21] This was done in response to Saddam Hussein, the dictator of Iraq, attempting to launch an Iraqi military offensive campaign in the Kurdish town of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Operation Provide Comfort officially ended on 31 December 1996. Following Operation Provide Comfort, the United States continued to watch over the northern skies with the launching of Operation Northern Watch on 1 January 1997. Operation Northern Watch continued to provide air security to the Kurdish population in the north. By 1999, the Department of Defense had flown over 200,000 sorties over Iraq.[22]
American and British aircraft continuously enforced the NFZ, receiving anti-aircraft fire from Iraqi forces almost daily.[23] The operation ran until its conclusion on 1 May 2003. In the south, Operation Southern Watch was underway to watch over the persecuted Shi'ite populations. This operation was launched on 27 August 1992 with the mission of preventing further human rights abuses against civilian populations. Iraq challenged the no-fly zone beginning in December 1992 when a USAF F-16 fighter plane shot down an Iraqi MiG-25 Foxbat fighter which had locked onto it in the Southern no-fly zone. The next month Coalition planes attacked Iraqi SAM sites in the South.[citation needed] Baghdad eventually halted firing on patrolling Coalition aircraft after August 1993.
In December 1998, Operation Desert Fox was conducted by the USAF and the Royal Air Force, which was a major four-day bombing campaign on Iraqi targets from 16 December to 19 December 1998. The contemporaneous justification for the strikes was Iraq's failure to comply with United Nations Security Council resolutions and its interference with United Nations Special Commission inspectors.
In the aftermath of Operation Desert Fox in December 1998, Iraq announced it would no longer respect the no-fly zones and resumed its efforts in shooting down Coalition aircraft. Saddam Hussein offered a $14,000 reward to anyone who could accomplish this task, but no manned aircraft were ever shot down by Iraq. Air strikes by British and American aircraft against Iraqi claimed anti-aircraft and military targets continued weekly over the next few years. In the early 2000s (decade), the U.S. developed a contingency plan, Operation Desert Badger for dealing with pilots shot down over Iraqi no-fly zones.[24]
Still photograph from a videotape of an Iraqi surface-to-air missile, believed to be an SA-3, launched at a Coalition aircraft in July 2001.
The operation continued until it transitioned to Operation Southern Focus in June 2002. They began to carry out offensive sorties, not only against targets that had fired on them, but upon installations that had demonstrated no hostile intent. The U.S. claimed that these increased attacks were the result of increasing Iraqi provocations, but later, in July 2005, the British Ministry of Defense released figures showing that the number of provocations had actually dropped dramatically prior to and just after the increase in allied attacks. Their records indicate that in the first seven months of 2001, there had been 370 provocations on the part of Iraq. In the seven months from October 2001 into May 2002, only 32 such provocations were recorded.[25] General Tommy Franks later acknowledged that the dramatic increase in offensive sorties was an attempt to destroy the Iraqi defenses in much the same way as the air strikes at the beginning of the Gulf War had.[26]
In purported retaliation for the Iraqis' now-daily air defense attacks on Coalition aircraft, the September attacks included a 5 September 100-aircraft attack on the main air defense site in western Iraq. According to an editorial by Michael Smith for the New Statesman, this was "Located at the furthest extreme of the southern no-fly zone, far away from the areas that needed to be patrolled to prevent attacks on the Shi'a; it was destroyed not because it was a threat to the patrols, but to allow allied special forces operating from Jordan to enter Iraq undetected."[27]
The NFZs effectively ceased to exist with the beginning of the Iraq War in March 2003, since air superiority over the country was quickly attained by the coalition. The NFZs were officially deactivated right after Saddam Hussein's overthrow.[citation needed]
The Gulf War was an armed conflict between Iraq and a 42-country coalition led by the United States. The coalition's efforts against Iraq were carried out in two key phases: Operation Desert Shield, which marked the military buildup from August 1990 to January 1991; and Operation Desert Storm, which began with the aerial bombing campaign against Iraq on 17 January 1991 and came to a close with the American-led liberation of Kuwait on 28 February 1991.
This is a timeline of the events surrounding the United States-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The United States-led invasion of the Republic of Iraq was the first stage of the Iraq War. The invasion began on 19 March 2003 and lasted just over one month, including 26 days of major combat operations, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq. Twenty-two days after the first day of the invasion, the capital city of Baghdad was captured by coalition forces on 9 April after the six-day-long Battle of Baghdad. This early stage of the war formally ended on 1 May when U.S. President George W. Bush declared the "end of major combat operations" in his Mission Accomplished speech, after which the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was established as the first of several successive transitional governments leading up to the first Iraqi parliamentary election in January 2005. U.S. military forces later remained in Iraq until the withdrawal in 2011.
The 1998 bombing of Iraq was a major four-day bombing campaign on Iraqi targets from 16 to 19 December 1998, by the United States and the United Kingdom. On 16 December 1998, Bill Clinton announced that he had ordered strikes against Iraq. The strikes were launched as a result of Iraq's failure to comply with United Nations Security Council resolutions and its interference with United Nations Special Commission inspectors who were looking for weapons of mass destruction. The inspectors had been sent in 1997 and were repeatedly refused access to certain sites, this used by the United States to begin military action.
Ali Hassan Majid al-Tikriti, nicknamed Chemical Ali, was an Iraqi politician and military commander under Saddam Hussein who served as defence minister, interior minister, and chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. He was also the governor of Kuwait during much of the 1990–91 Gulf War.
Operation Provide Comfort and Provide Comfort II were military operations initiated by the United States and other Coalition nations of the Persian Gulf War, starting in April 1991, to defend Kurdish refugees fleeing their homes in northern Iraq in the aftermath of the Gulf War, and to deliver humanitarian aid to them. The no-fly zone instituted to help bring this about would become one of the main factors allowing the development of the autonomous Kurdistan Region.
A no-fly zone, also known as a no-flight zone (NFZ), or air exclusion zone (AEZ), is a territory or area established by a military power over which certain aircraft are not permitted to fly. Such zones are usually set up in an enemy power's territory during a conflict for humanitarian or military reasons without consent of the enemy state, similar in concept to an aerial demilitarized zone, and usually intend to prohibit the enemy's military aircraft from operating in the region. Military action is employed by the enforcing state and, depending on the terms of the NFZ, may include preemptive attacks to prevent potential violations, reactive force targeted at violating aircraft, or surveillance with no use of force. Air exclusion zones and anti-aircraft defences are sometimes set up in a civilian context, for example to protect sensitive locations, or events such as the 2012 London Olympic Games, against terrorist air attack. A no-fly zone is generally not considered a form of aerial blockade due to its more limited scope compared to an aerial blockade.
This is a list of aviation-related events from 1991.
The Anfal campaign was a counterinsurgency operation which was carried out by Ba'athist Iraq from February to September 1988 during the Iraqi–Kurdish conflict at the end of the Iran–Iraq War. The campaign targeted rural Kurds because its purpose was to eliminate Kurdish rebel groups and Arabize strategic parts of the Kirkuk Governorate. The Iraqis committed atrocities on the local Kurdish population, mostly civilians.
The military history of Iraq, due to a rich archaeological record, is one of the longest in written human history. The region of Iraq, which used to be Mesopotamia, has been referred to as the "cradle of civilization", and wars of conquest have been recorded in this region as far back as the third millennium BC. Because of its geopolitical dominance and ideology based in world domination, the Neo-Assyrian Empire is by many researchers regarded to have been the first world empire in history. The area possesses strategic value, initially for the rich, fertile agricultural region in the Mesopotamian plain, and more recently for large petroleum deposits and access to the oil-rich Persian Gulf. The present territory of Iraq lacks significant strategic barriers, making it difficult to defend against foreign invasion.
The 1996 cruise missile strikes on Iraq, codenamed Operation Desert Strike, were joint United States Navy–United States Air Force strikes conducted on 3 September against air defense targets in southern Iraq, in response to an Iraqi offensive in the Kurdish Civil War.
The Iraqi Armed Forces are the military forces of the Republic of Iraq. They consist of the Iraqi Army, the Iraqi Air Force, and the Iraqi Navy. Along with these three primary service branches, there exists the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service and the Popular Mobilization Forces. The President of Iraq acts as the supreme commander as outlined by the constitution.
The 1991 Iraqi uprisings were ethnic and religious uprisings against Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq that were led by Shi'ites and Kurds. The uprisings lasted from March to April 1991 after a ceasefire following the end of the Gulf War. The mostly uncoordinated insurgency was fueled by the perception that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had become vulnerable to regime change. This perception of weakness was largely the result of the outcome of the Iran–Iraq War and the Gulf War, both of which occurred within a single decade and devastated the population and economy of Iraq.
Operation Northern Watch (ONW), the successor to Operation Provide Comfort, was a Combined Task Force (CTF) charged with enforcing its own no-fly zone above the 36th parallel in Iraq. Its mission began on 1 January 1997.
Operation Southern Watch was an air-centric military operation conducted by the United States Department of Defense from August 1992 to March 2003.
The cruise missiles strike on Iraq in June 1993 were ordered by U.S. President Bill Clinton as both a retaliation and a warning triggered by the attempted assassination by alleged Iraqi intelligence agents of former U.S. President George H. W. Bush while on a visit to Kuwait from 14–16 April 1993.
The Gulf War of 1990–1991 included an air campaign, as the air forces of the coalition carried out an extensive aerial bombing campaign from 17 January 1991 to 23 February 1991 against Iraq. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition flew over 100,000 sorties, dropping 88,500 tons of bombs, widely destroying military and civilian infrastructure. The air campaign was commanded by United States Air Force (USAF) lieutenant general Chuck Horner, who briefly served as Commander-in-Chief—Forward of U.S. Central Command while general Norman Schwarzkopf was still in the United States. The British air commanders were Air Vice-Marshal Andrew Wilson and Air Vice-Marshal Bill Wratten. The air campaign had largely finished by 23 February 1991 when the coalition invasion of Kuwait took place.
The timeline of the Gulf War details the dates of the major events of the 1990–1991 war. It began with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990 and ended with the Liberation of Kuwait by Coalition forces. Iraq subsequently agreed to the United Nations' demands on 28 February 1991. The ground war officially concluded with the signing of the armistice on 11 April 1991. However, the official end to Operation Desert Storm did not occur until sometime between 1996 - 1998. Major events in the aftermath include anti-Saddam Hussein uprisings in Iraq, massacres against the Kurds by the regime, Iraq formally recognizing the sovereignty of Kuwait in 1994, and eventually ending its cooperation with the United Nations Special Commission in 1998.
During January 1993, numerous coalition airstrikes occurred against Iraq in response to actions by the latter predominantly due to the No-Fly Zone in Southern Iraq.
↑ Lambeth, Benjamin S. (2013). The unseen war: allied air power and the takedown of Saddam Hussein. Annapolis, Md. ISBN978-1612513126.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
↑ Michael Smith, "RAF Bombing Raids Tried to Goad Saddam into War," Sunday Times, 29 May 2005
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