Persian Gulf War Essay -- essays research papers

The Persian Gulf War all started because of one country’s greed for oil. Iraq accused Kuwait of pumping oil and not sharing the benfits, and Kuwait was pumping more oil than allowed under quotas set by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, it decreased the price of oil, Iraq's main export. Iraq's complaints against Kuwait grew more and more harsh, but they were mostly about money. When Iraqi forces began to assemble near the Kuwaiti border in the summer of 1990, several Arab states tried to intervene the dispute. Kuwait didn’t want to look weak so they didn’t ask for any help from the United States or other non-Arab powers for support. Arab mediators convinced Iraq and Kuwait to negotiate their differences in Saudi Arabia, on August 1, 1990, but that meeting resulted only in charges and countercharges. A second meeting was planned to take place in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, but Iraq invaded Kuwait the next day, leading some people to think that Ira qi president Saddam Hussein had planned the invasion all along.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The Iraqi attack began shortly after midnight on August 2. About 150,000 Iraqi troops, many of them veterans of the Iran-Iraq War, easily overwhelmed the unprepared and inexperienced Kuwaiti forces, which numbered about 20,000. By dawn Iraq had assumed control of Kuwait City, the capital, and was soon in complete control of the country. The United Nation Security Council and the Arab League immediately condemned the Iraqi invasion. Four days later, the Security Council forced an economic restriction on Iraq that forbidden nearly all trades with Iraq. Any armed attempt to roll back the Iraqi invasion depended on Saudi Arabia, which shares a border with Iraq and Kuwait. Saudi Arabia didn’t have the power to fight Iraq alone .So Saudi rulers did eventually open the country to foreign forces, in mainly because they were worried by Iraq's aggressive negotiations also U.S. intelligence reports claimed that Iraqi forces were well positioned for a strike against Sa udi Arabia. Beginning a week after the Iraqi take over of Kuwait and continuing for several months, a large international force called the â€Å"international coalition† gathered in Saudi Arabia. The United States sent more than 400,000 troops, and more than 200,000 additional troops came from Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, France, Kuwait, Egypt, Syria, Sene... ...ps. The UN continued to maintain most of the economic restriction on Iraq after the war, and several coalition countries enforced other sanctions. The sanctions allowed Iraq to sell limited amounts of oil for food and medicine if it also designated some of the revenue to pay for damages caused by the war. Until December 1996, Iraq rejected this deal as an violation on its power. Hussein also complicated matters by mobilizing forces on the Kuwaiti border in late 1994 and by interfering with the work of UN inspectors. This interference almost led to new military conflict in 1998, but a UN binding agreement allowing the inspectors to resume work averted the immediate crisis. Reports that Iraq was continuing to block inspections prompted the United States and Britain to launch a four-day series of air strikes on Iraqi military and industrial targets in December. In response, Iraq stated that it would no longer comply with UN inspection teams, called for an end to the sanctions, and t hreatened to fire on aircraft patrolling the no-fly zones. Through early 1999, Iraq continued to challenge the patrols, and British and U.S. planes struck Iraqi missile launch sites and other targets.