Operation Desert Storm and the End of the 1991 War
17 January 1991 — The War Begins
The 15 January deadline expired with Iraqi forces still in Kuwait. At about 2.30am Baghdad time on 17 January 1991, coalition aircraft began the air phase of Operation Desert Storm. The opening night sent F-117 stealth fighters, Tomahawk cruise missiles and B-52 bombers against Iraqi command bunkers, air defences and the electricity grid. Television viewers around the world watched live as anti-aircraft tracer fire arced over Baghdad — the first war broadcast in real time.
Coalition commander General Norman Schwarzkopf had built his plan around five weeks of air supremacy followed by a short, decisive ground campaign. Air supremacy was achieved within days. Iraq’s Soviet-supplied air defences proved no match for stealth aircraft and electronic warfare; many Iraqi pilots simply flew their aircraft to Iran rather than fight. By the start of the ground war on 24 February, the coalition had flown around 100,000 sorties and the much-vaunted Iraqi army had been bombed for 38 consecutive days.
Operation Desert Storm ran from 17 January to 28 February 1991. The air phase lasted 38 days and roughly 100,000 sorties. The ground phase lasted just 100 hours, ending in a ceasefire on 28 February. Coalition military deaths totalled around 392, many of them caused by accidents and friendly fire; Iraqi military deaths are estimated in the tens of thousands.
Scuds, Patriots and the Israel Question
Saddam knew he could not win an air war, so he tried to fracture the coalition. Iraqi Scud missiles rained on Tel Aviv, Haifa and Riyadh from the second night of the war. Around 42 Scuds hit Israel; another 46 hit Saudi Arabia, including a missile that struck a US barracks at Dhahran on 25 February killing 28 American soldiers.
The Israeli question was the war’s greatest political danger. If Israel retaliated, the Arab partners in the coalition might feel forced to leave. Bush’s administration begged Israel to hold back, sending Patriot anti-missile batteries and crews to Tel Aviv as a gesture. Patriot effectiveness was patchy — many missiles missed, some intercepts caused additional damage as debris fell — but politically the symbolism worked. Israel did not strike back. The coalition held.
Live television coverage from CNN journalists in Baghdad gave the conflict an immediacy no previous war had carried. Pentagon press conferences showed gun-camera footage of laser-guided bombs hitting bunker doorways and ventilation shafts. The reality was that precision-guided munitions made up only around 7–9% of the bombs dropped — the rest were unguided ‘dumb’ bombs — but the imagery shaped the world’s impression that this was a clean, technological war. The Amiriyah shelter strike on 13 February 1991, which killed several hundred Iraqi civilians sheltering from air raids, complicated that image.
100 Hours: The Ground War and the Highway of Death
The ground campaign began at 4am local time on 24 February 1991. Schwarzkopf’s plan, the so-called ‘left hook’, sent VII Corps and XVIII Airborne Corps wide to the west into Iraqi territory while marines pinned Iraqi forces at the Kuwaiti border. Within 36 hours coalition forces had cut the Iraqi army’s line of retreat and were destroying Republican Guard armoured units in southern Iraq.
As the rout developed, Iraqi columns retreating from Kuwait City along the road to Basra were caught by coalition aircraft on the night of 26–27 February. The result, the so-called Highway of Death, was a column of burnt-out vehicles, military and civilian, stretching for kilometres. Photographs of the wreckage, broadcast worldwide, raised concerns even within the Bush administration that the war was tipping from liberation into slaughter. Bush ordered a ceasefire on 28 February at 8am local time, after exactly 100 hours of ground combat.
The Safwan Ceasefire and the Decision Not to March on Baghdad
On 3 March 1991, Schwarzkopf met Iraqi generals at Safwan airfield to set ceasefire terms. Iraq accepted the UN resolutions, agreed to stop firing and pull back. Bush had already taken the larger decision: not to march on Baghdad. The UN mandate covered the liberation of Kuwait, not the overthrow of Saddam. Removing him would have shattered Arab support, risked Iraq fragmenting into civil war, and left coalition troops responsible for an occupation no one had planned. Within days, however, that calculation began to look different.
Encouraged by Bush’s rhetoric inviting the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands, Shia communities in the south and Kurdish communities in the north rose against the regime in March 1991. Saddam’s Republican Guard had survived the war largely intact and now turned on the rebels. Helicopters that the ceasefire had allowed Iraq to keep flying for ‘internal’ reasons were used to gun down Shia fighters in Basra and Najaf. The uprisings were crushed within weeks, with tens of thousands killed. The coalition had stopped at the border; its absence was the difference between the rebels’ victory and their slaughter.
A common error is to assume that ‘winning the Gulf War’ meant removing Saddam. He stayed in power for another twelve years. The military victory expelled Iraq from Kuwait but left the regime intact, the Republican Guard largely undamaged, and the chemical-weapons stocks unaccounted for. Britain, France and the United States imposed no-fly zones over northern Iraq from April 1991 (Operation Provide Comfort) and southern Iraq from August 1992 (Operation Southern Watch) to protect Kurds and Shia. UN sanctions tightened. Twelve years of containment, weapons inspections and intermittent air strikes followed — until 2003.
Arab Reactions and the Politics of Victory
The Arab world was divided. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the smaller Gulf states celebrated the liberation of Kuwait and the discrediting of Saddam. Jordan, Yemen and the Palestine Liberation Organisation had sided with Iraq, partly because of Saddam’s rhetoric linking Kuwait to the Palestinian cause. Their populations, fed by anti-American media coverage, were sympathetic to Saddam even as their states were not. The fault lines exposed in 1990–91 — pro-Western Gulf monarchies versus poorer republics with restive populations — would shape regional politics for decades.
Desert Storm achieved its UN mandate — Kuwait was liberated — but it left enormous problems unresolved: Saddam still in power, Shia and Kurdish uprisings crushed, the Republican Guard intact, chemical weapons unaccounted for and Arab populations split between celebration and resentment. The military victory was complete; the political settlement was thin.