The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait: The end of pan-Arabism

The death blow to pan-Arabism

According to Prof. Baram, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, was a death blow to the idea of secular pan-Arabism, which had dominated the Arab world since the 1950s. He explains that there were previous blows to the idea, such as the dissolution of the union between Egypt and Syria in 1961 and the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1979, which removed Egypt from pan-Arab solidarity. However, the invasion of Kuwait was particularly fatal because it replaced the vision of a voluntary and idyllic union with a forceful Arab imperialism of one Arab state against another. The dream of unity out of free will was shattered.

The shock in the Arab world was so deep that Arab countries like Syria and Egypt sent military forces to fight alongside the United States against the Iraqi army. In addition, the war led Syria, under the leadership of Hafez al-Assad, to enter into direct negotiations with Israel at the Madrid Conference in 1991. In doing so, Syria also abandoned pan-Arab solidarity in favor of Syrian national interest. Prof. Baram argues that as secular pan-Arabism declined, the power of political Islam rose.

The reasons for the invasion

Prof. Baram details a series of reasons that led Saddam Hussein to the decision to invade Kuwait.

• Economic distress: The Iran-Iraq War ended in an Iraqi victory, but it was a Pyrrhic victory. Iraq emerged from the war with a debt of 80 billion dollars, a ruined economy, soaring unemployment, and destroyed infrastructure, especially in the Shiite areas in the south. The state’s oil revenues dropped dramatically.
• Kuwait’s conduct: Saddam was desperate for money. He asked Kuwait to forgive a 10 billion dollar debt that Iraq owed it, but the Kuwaitis refused. At the same time, Kuwait and the Emirates flooded the oil market, thereby lowering its prices, which further harmed Iraq’s revenues. Saddam saw this as a personal insult and a hostile act.
• Strategic considerations: Saddam saw the occupation of Kuwait as a solution to two strategic problems. First, he aspired to obtain a serious deep-water port on the Persian Gulf, as Iraq’s coastline was narrow and vulnerable. Second, he planned to take control of Kuwait’s assets, then estimated at about 100 billion dollars, and thus solve his country’s debt crisis.
• A supposed green light from the United States: In a meeting with the United States ambassador in Baghdad, April Glaspie, shortly before the invasion, Saddam told her that if diplomacy failed, he would use force against Kuwait. According to Prof. Baram, the ambassador replied that the United States does not interfere in border disputes between Arab states. Saddam apparently interpreted this as permission for military action.
• Saddam’s personality: Prof. Baram describes Saddam as an evil genius who solves problems violently. He recounts how in a psycho-historical profile of Saddam he conducted back in 1988, he and the psychiatrist Eli Weiztum concluded that Saddam would soon seek a new war.

The war and the defeat

Saddam planned the invasion in absolute secrecy. He did not share the plan with the minister of defense or the chief of staff, but only with the commander of the Republican Guard, the elite force of his army. The forces were sent to the border under the guise of an exercise and conquered Kuwait in about 36 hours.

The invasion led to an international intervention headed by the United States. Prof. Baram notes that the Americans refrained from continuing to Baghdad and toppling Saddam’s regime for two main reasons, as former U.S. Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger explained to him: fear of a long military entanglement in Iraq, and the lack of international legitimacy for such a move, which exceeded the UN mandate to liberate Kuwait.

The Shiite rebellion and the Islamic turn

Immediately after the defeat, a massive Shiite uprising broke out in southern Iraq. The rebels, who heard a false report on the BBC that Saddam had fled the country with its treasures, believed the regime had collapsed. Saddam suppressed the rebellion with immense brutality, and between 100,000 and 200,000 people, mostly Shiites, were killed in the massacre.

The deep rift with the Shiite population, along with the economic crisis and international isolation, led Saddam to abandon the secular ideology of the Ba’ath Party and launch a new faith campaign, a campaign of Islamization in the country. His goal was mainly to appease the Shiites and find a new common basis for his rule. Prof. Baram believes that this turn did not stem from Saddam’s genuine religious faith, but was an instrumental move. He offers as evidence a secret document in which Saddam wrote a personal letter to God, while at the same time he was documented drinking a beverage that looked like arak with senior officials of his regime, to signal to his secular friends that he was still one of them.