conflicts fought principally between Iraq and the U.S. in 1991 and 2003. The first war resulted in the expulsion of Iraqi troops from Kuwait; the second concluded with the ouster of Saddam Hussein's dictatorial regime and the occupation of Iraq by the U.S. and its allies.

Background.

Saddam Hussein became president of Iraq in 1979, at a time when an Islamic fundamentalist theocracy hostile to the U.S. had just taken power in neighboring Iran. Although the U.S. remained officially neutral in the Iran-Iraq war (1980–88), in practice the U.S. tilted toward Iraq, providing Hussein's secular government with intelligence information and military support. The U.S. also eased restrictions on exports to Iraq, allowing the Baghdad regime to purchase controlled items, including strains of anthrax, from American suppliers. Even after it became known that Hussein had used poison gas in 1988 against Iran and to subdue a Kurdish uprising in his own country, the U.S. continued to seek closer relations. This U.S. policy reflected the hope—stated in a 1989 national security directive approved by President George H. W. Bush—that “economic and political incentives” would lead Iraq to “moderate its behavior.”

War of 1991.

U.S. policy changed abruptly in August 1990, when Hussein invaded and annexed Kuwait, a conquest that left Iraq in position to threaten Saudi Arabia, a longtime U.S. ally, and in control of a large share of Middle East oil. Between August and November the United Nations (UN) Security Council passed a series of resolutions that culminated in the demand that Iraq withdraw unconditionally from Kuwait by Jan. 15, 1991. By that time, some 500,000 allied ground, air, and naval forces—chiefly from the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Great Britain, Egypt, Syria, and France—were arrayed against an Iraqi army estimated at that time to number at least 540,000.

Under Operation Desert Storm, commanded by U.S. Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the multinational coalition began intensive aerial bombardment of military targets located in Iraq and Kuwait within 24 hours after the UN deadline expired, using advanced weaponry such as laser-guided bombs and cruise missiles, as well as conventional weapons. After establishing air superiority, coalition forces disabled Iraq's command and control centers, especially in Baghdad and Basra; cut lines of transport and communication between Baghdad and the troops in the field; and relentlessly attacked Iraq's infantry, which was dug in along the Saudi-Kuwaiti border, and the 125,000-man Republican Guard in southeastern Iraq and northern Kuwait. Some Iraqi aircraft were shot down; many more were bombed in shelters or fled to Iran. Iraq retaliated by using mobile launchers to fire Scud missiles at Saudi Arabia and Israel, a noncombatant; the U.S. countered this threat with Patriot antimissile missiles.

In mid-February, with its military and civilian casualties rapidly mounting, Iraq signaled its willingness to withdraw from Kuwait. A series of conditional Iraqi offers, mediated by the Soviet Union, were rejected by the coalition. Instead, allied forces began a coordinated air-land offensive, breaching Iraq's main line of defense at the Saudi-Kuwaiti border and swiftly advancing through southern Iraq to outflank the main Iraqi force and cut off the Republican Guard's principal avenue of retreat. Within 100 hours, the city of Kuwait had been liberated, and tens of thousands of Iraqi troops had deserted, surrendered, or been captured or killed. Coalition combat losses were astonishingly light: as of February 28, when offensive operations were suspended, only 149 allied troops had been killed and 513 wounded. Damage to Kuwait was extensive, however, as retreating Iraqi forces looted the capital and set fire to most of Kuwait's oil wells.

Iraqi representatives accepted allied terms for a provisional truce on March 3 and a permanent cease-fire on April 6. Iraq agreed to pay reparations to Kuwait, reveal the location and extent of its stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and eliminate its weapons of mass destruction.

Containment Policy.

In the immediate aftermath of the 1991 war, Kurds in northern Iraq and Shiites in the south staged uprisings against the Hussein regime. The U.S., fearing the breakup of Iraq, and consequent instability in the region, chose not to intervene, allowing Baghdad the opportunity to crush the rebellions.

For the remainder of the 1990s, while Bill Clinton was president, the U.S. relied on a policy of isolating and containing the Baghdad government. U.S. and British aircraft patrolled “no fly” zones in the north and south, to prevent Hussein from taking further action against the Kurds and Shiites. International sanctions kept Iraq from rebuilding its economy, and UN weapons inspectors sought to prevent Iraq from developing and deploying weapons of mass destruction. When Iraqi intransigence made effective inspections impossible, the UN inspectors withdrew, and British and U.S. warplanes in December 1998 hit hard at suspected nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons facilities and other targets. These and subsequent air strikes were accompanied by a shift in U.S. policy goals from containment of Hussein to “regime change” in Baghdad.

War of 2003.

A further change in American policy developed after the inauguration of George W. Bush in January 2001. Some high officials of the new administration had been directly involved in the 1991 conflict; for example, Vice-President Dick Cheney had been secretary of defense during the first Gulf conflict, fought while Bush's father was U.S. president. Especially after the terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001 (see Terrorism), U.S. policy makers were determined to be more preemptive in dealing with perceived threats to national security. Hussein's deplorable human rights record, his previous attacks on other Middle East nations, his documented use of chemical and biological weapons, his repeated attempts to acquire nuclear armaments, and his suspected ties with terrorist groups combined, along with Iraq's strategic location and vast petroleum resources, to make the nation a high-priority U.S. target.

The 2003 war differed from the 1991 conflict in many ways. Military action in 2003 could not be justified as a direct multinational response to the conquest of a sovereign state, as had been the case when Iraq annexed Kuwait in 1990, and international support for action was limited. Although Great Britain and Australia committed troops to support the U.S. against Iraq in 2003, a majority of nations, including France, Germany, and Russia, opposed the war. A resolution demanding Iraqi compliance with UN weapons inspections under threat of “serious consequences” won unanimous approval from the Security Council in November 2002; however, the Security Council was not willing to endorse the use of military force four months later.

By the end of February 2003, the U.S. had more than 150,000 troops in the Persian Gulf region, and British forces numbered about 35,000; allied ground forces, much less numerous but more mobile and more technologically sophisticated than in 1991, were arrayed against a foe that was much weaker than in the first Gulf war. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops were still moving into position when, on March 17, President Bush demanded that Hussein and his sons leave Iraq within 48 hours. When Iraq failed to heed the ultimatum, the U.S. and its allies launched Operation Iraqi Freedom two days later, under the command of Gen. Tommy Franks (1945–    ). American and British ground troops and special forces moved rapidly to secure oil fields and other key objectives, while allied air strikes used precision weaponry to knock out Iraq's antiaircraft defenses, attack concentrations of Iraqi vehicles, artillery, and personnel, and strike buildings where top Iraqi leaders had reportedly gathered. Although a few Iraqi units put up fierce resistance, especially near the southern cities of an-Najaf and an-Nasiriyah, a more persistent threat to allied forces came from Ba'ath party militia members, suicide bombers, and other irregulars who harassed U.S. supply lines, which within two weeks extended from the Kuwaiti border to the outskirts of Baghdad. In early April, American tanks and armored vehicles overcame the last concerted Iraqi resistance and rolled into the capital; by April 9 the Hussein government had vanished. Subsequently, Kurdish fighters and American forces entered the key northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul, and Hussein's stronghold of Tikrit also capitulated to the U.S. On April 15 President Bush declared that the Hussein regime was “no more,” and on May 1 he proclaimed that “major combat operations” had ended.

Aftermath of the 2003 War.

After the Hussein regime collapsed, the coalition faced opposition from Hussein loyalists, radical Shiite Muslims, Sunni militants, and resistance fighters from other Islamic countries. Using a variety of tactics, including suicide bombings, kidnappings, videotaped executions, improvised explosive devices (such as roadside bombs), and more conventional acts of sabotage, the guerrillas carried out coordinated attacks against U.S. and allied troops, their Iraqi supporters, international aid workers and contractors, oil pipelines, and other Iraqi infrastructure. Neither the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003 nor the establishment of a sovereign interim Iraqi government in June 2004 appeared to weaken the insurgency. The U.S. launched several large counteroffensives against the rebels, notably in Falluja in November 2004.

By early 2005, more than 175,000 coalition troops remained in Iraq. Of these, U.S. troops numbered about 152,000, and British troops totaled 9000. Several original coalition partners had already pulled their troops out of Iraq; others were in the process of withdrawing their forces, as the war became increasingly unpopular in their own countries. By April, coalition casualties exceeded 1700, the vast majority of them during the insurgency period. Prior to May 2003, U.S. losses in Iraq included 138 dead and 542 wounded; since then, some 1700 U.S. service members have been killed in Iraq, and more than 13,000 have been wounded. No comprehensive accounting of Iraqi military and civilian casualties has been made, although the total is believed to exceed 20,000.