Comment: Iraq after the Gulf War. (1992, 20 Marks)
The ceasefire of 28 February 1991 ended the war but not the Iraq question. Saddam Hussein’s regime survived defeat, and the victors chose to contain it rather than occupy it. Post-war Iraq became a laboratory of conditional sovereignty: a member state whose arms, borders, oil revenue and airspace were placed under international control for twelve years.
A regime that survived
- The uprisings of March 1991: Shias in the south and Kurds in the north rose, encouraged by American rhetoric, but received no support. The Republican Guard, allowed to fly helicopters under the ceasefire terms, crushed them.
- The refugee crisis: more than a million Kurds fled towards the Turkish and Iranian borders, producing the first post-Cold War humanitarian emergency.
- The coalition’s logic: Washington preferred a weakened Iraq to a fragmented one that might empower Iran, a classic balance-of-power choice in the Gulf.
Sovereignty under the Security Council
Resolution 687 (April 1991), the most intrusive ceasefire the UN had ever imposed, required:
- destruction of chemical, biological and nuclear programmes and missiles over 150 km range, verified by a Special Commission (UNSCOM) and the IAEA. Inspectors found a nuclear-weapons effort far more advanced than estimated;
- demarcation of the Iraq–Kuwait border and a compensation fund paid from oil revenue;
- comprehensive sanctions until compliance was certified.
Resolution 688 condemned the repression of civilians and demanded humanitarian access. On that basis the coalition created safe havens and a northern no-fly zone; a southern zone followed in August 1992. The text authorised neither, and India abstained on 688 to defend non-intervention.
The Kurdish exception
Iraqi administration withdrew from much of the north in late 1991, and Kurdish elections in May 1992 created a Kurdistan Regional Government. A de facto autonomous entity, later written into Iraq’s 2005 constitution, was born from the war’s aftermath.
The humanitarian cost of sanctions
A UN mission led by Martti Ahtisaari in March 1991 described the war’s effect on infrastructure as near-apocalyptic. Offers to let Iraq sell oil for food (Resolutions 706 and 712, 1991) were rejected by Baghdad as infringing sovereignty; the oil-for-food programme came only with Resolution 986 (1995), operating from 1996. Two UN humanitarian coordinators, Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, resigned in protest. Johan Galtung‘s argument (World Politics, 1967) that sanctions can rally a population behind its rulers was borne out: the middle class collapsed while the regime controlled scarcity. The scale of child deaths, however, was inflated: Tim Dyson and Valeria Cetorelli (BMJ Global Health, 2017) showed that the 1999 survey behind the famous figures had been manipulated by Baghdad.
Interpretations
- Liberal-institutionalist: a UN-run disarmament regime of unprecedented reach, and a first step towards the responsibility to protect.
- Realist: “dual containment” of Iraq and Iran in the 1990s preserved American primacy in the Gulf at low cost.
- Critical and Third World views: sanctions punished civilians and no-fly zones stretched UN mandates, a pattern India and other non-aligned states opposed.
The long sequel
Inspections broke down in 1998, followed by Operation Desert Fox; the unresolved file led to the 2003 invasion, sectarian civil war and the rise of ISIS. Iraq completed $52.4 billion in compensation to Kuwait in 2022, and the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq closed on 31 December 2025. Iraq is also among India’s largest crude suppliers, so its stability is an Indian interest.
Conclusion
Iraq after the Gulf War shows both the reach and the limits of the post-Cold War order. Containment kept Iraq disarmed and its neighbours safe, but it left the regime intact, impoverished the society and set up the 2003 war. Sovereignty in the new order proved conditional for the defeated and elastic for the powerful.