In War We Trust: The Bush Doctrine and the Pursuit of Just War by Chris J. Dolan

Author:Chris J. Dolan [Dolan, Chris J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781351155748
Google: oLlHDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 38136585
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2005-05-01T00:00:00+00:00

No Fly Zones

Further questioning the need for an invasion, Iraq's military capabilities had been severely weakened by the enforcement of US-UK no fly zones between April 1991 and March 2003. Sustaining the zones, however, was a costly exercise; the price tag for the southern zone in September 2000 was $1.4 billion, up from $850 million for both the northern and southern zones in 1999. The total cost of enforcing both zones since the end of the first Gulf War in 1991 was $7 billion.21 But the rhetoric surrounding both the southern and northern zones still reiterates the formulas used to justify them since 1991. These formulas held that the no-fly zones protect civilian populations – Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south - and that they are part of an international policy of "containing Iraq" and protecting its neighbors from attack. But the actual history of these zones displayed a considerable gap between publicly declared intentions on the road to what appeared as an eventual choice for offensive war.

The original no-fly zone was first declared in the northern region by President George HW Bush in early April 1991 to protect coalition aircraft during the airdrops of aid to Kurdish refugees on the Turkish border and then to protect coalition ground troops advancing into northern Iraq as part of Operation Provide Comfort. Britain, France and the US asserted that the zone was consistent with the terms of UN Security Council Resolution 688, which called on Iraq to cease its repression of civilian populations.22 However no explicit endorsement in the form of a Security Council resolution was obtained for either Operation Provide Comfort or the zones. When UN ground troops were withdrawn in mid-1991, the no-fly zone was left in place to protect the Kurds and the international humanitarian workers based in the north. After the Iraqi government decided, in October 1991, to withdraw its ground troops from three northern provinces, the region came under Kurdish control but had no formalized status. It was part of Iraq but not under government control. The no-fly zone and the presence of international humanitarian staff may have deterred the Iraqi regime from trying to retake the northern region with military force.

In August 1992, remaining members of the Gulf War coalition announced the establishment of the southern no-fly zone south of the 32nd parallel just north of Najaf. The immediate trigger for action was the UN Human Rights Special Rapporteur's report on the increasing Iraqi military pressure on the Shiite population.23 However, the Rapporteur had envisaged some form of monitoring on the ground, rather than a no-fly zone. The announcement of the zone avoided the necessity for ground action of any kind, while it allowed the US to appear tough after one of the many disputes over weapons inspections that had occurred in July 1992. UN Resolution 688 was invoked to justify the intervention. Gradually, the US began to justify the southern no-fly zone more as a means of reassuring its allies that Iraqi planes would be kept far away from their airspace by destroying them one-by-one.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.