Ancient civilizations-2

The 1991 Persian Gulf War

Following the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988, President Saddam Hussein of Iraq faced massive economic problems, including debts owed to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The Iraqi president also viewed himself as the leader of Pan-Arab nationalism and socialism, two ideologies firmly opposed by the conservative monarchies that controlled most of the Arabian Peninsula outside of Yemen.

Claiming that Kuwait had historically been part of Iraq and that Kuwaiti oil policy had robbed Iraq of much-needed revenue, Saddam Hussein ordered an invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990. Kuwait itself fell quickly to the Iraqis, but the Kuwaiti royal family established a government-in-exile in Saudi Arabia, while hundreds of thousands of Kuwaitis fled to several gulf countries. Many Kuwaiti citizens remaining in the emirate engaged in guerrilla warfare against the invaders.

Initially, Saudi Arabia and the other GCC countries reacted cautiously, but, when the United States suggested that Iraq might next invade Saudi Arabia, most Arabian Peninsula countries took a firm stand against the Iraqi annexation of Kuwait. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and many warships and aircraft from a wide variety of countries acted under the authority of United Nations resolutions as they assembled in Saudi Arabia.

Since Yemen held a seat on the United Nations Security Council, its reluctance to authorize force to oust Iraq from Kuwait was particularly noteworthy; Saudi Arabia in retribution compelled hundreds of thousands of Yemeni workers to leave the kingdom. The GCC countries provided military facilities for the coalition armed forces. The military contingents coming from the various Islamic countries acted together under the command of Saudi generals; troops from Western nations ultimately coordinated their activities under U.S. command.

Iraq attempted to link a solution of the Kuwait question to the resolution of the Palestinian Arab issue, but the coalition countries insisted on unconditional Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait. After Iraq rejected this demand, the coalition launched an air war against Iraq and Iraqi-occupied Kuwait on January 16–17, 1991. A ground campaign that began on February 24 lasted only four days and secured the eviction of Iraq from Kuwait. Iraqi military and civilian casualties were heavy, but the coalition armed forces suffered fewer than 1,500 killed or wounded in action.

The Arabian Peninsula countries had not seen such a far-reaching external military intervention in their affairs since the days of Muḥammad ʿAlī and the first Saʾūdī kingdom. As a result, the diplomatic, military, and political structures and patterns created after the withdrawal of the British imperial presence in the early 1960s were placed in question. William L. Ochsenwald

Citation Information

Article Title: History of Arabia

Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica

Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.

Date Published: 23 January 2019

URL: https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-Arabia

Access Date: August 10, 2019

Additional Reading

Archaeology and early history are described in Richard Le Baron Bowen, Jr., and Frank P. Albright, Archaeological Discoveries in South Arabia (1958); G. Lankester Harding, Archaeology in the Aden Protectorates (1964); F.V. Winnett and W.L. Reed, Ancient Records from North Arabia (1970); and Brian Doe, Southern Arabia (1971). General historical studies include J. Wellhausen, The Arab Kingdom and Its Fall (1927, reprinted 1973; originally published in German, 1902), covering the Islāmic empire ad 622–750, still useful though some views are now disputed; and Hermann V. Wissmann, Zur Geschichte und Landeskunde von Alt-Südarabien (1964). The study of more recent history should begin with the brilliant but controversial analysis of Khaldoun Hasan al-Naqeeb, Society and State in the Gulf and Arab Peninsula: A Different Perspective (1990; originally published in Arabic, 1987). Useful surveys also include R.B. Serjeant, Studies in Arabian History and Civilisation (1981); and Ian Richard Netton (ed.), Arabia and the Gulf: From Traditional Society to Modern States (1986). More specialized works are Nigel Groom, Frankincense and Myrrh: A Study of the Arabian Incense Trade (1981); M.J. Kister, Studies in Jāhiliyya and Early Islam (1980); R.B. Serjeant, The Portuguese off the South Arabian Coast: Hadrami Chronicles, with Yemeni and European Accounts of Dutch Pirates off Mocha in the Seventeenth Century (1963, reprinted 1974); Zāmil Muḥammad al-Rashīd, Suʿūdī Relations with Eastern Arabia and ʿUmān, 1800–1870 (1981); William Ochsenwald, Religion, Society, and the State in Arabia: The Hijaz Under Ottoman Control, 1840–1908 (1984); and John C. Wilkinson, Arabia’s Frontiers: The Story of Britain’s Boundary Drawing in the Desert (1991).