The Persian Gulf War

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The Persian Gulf War

On August 2nd, 1990 Iraqi military forces invaded and occupied
the small Arab state of Kuwait. The order was given by Iraqi
dictatorial president Saddam Hussein. His aim was apparently to take
control Kuwait’s oil reserves (despite its small size Kuwait is a huge
oil producer; it has about 10 per cent of the world’s oil reserves ).
Iraq accused Kuwait, and also the United Arab Emirates, of breaking
agreements that limit oil production in the Middle East. According
to Saddam Hussein, this brought down world oil prices severely and
caused financial loss of billions of dollars in Iraq’s annual revenue.
Saddam Hussein had the nearly hopeless task of justifying the
invasion. He plead the fact that Kuwait had been part of the Ottoman
province of Basra, a city in the south of Iraq. However, the Ottoman
province collapsed after World War I and today’s Iraqi borders were
not created until then. There was also a further and more obvious
blunder in a bid to justify this illegal invasion. Baghdad, the
capital of Iraq, had namely recognized Kuwaiti independence in 1963.
Furthermore, Hussein claimed that Kuwait had illegally pumped oil from
the Iraqi oil field of Rumaila and otherwise conspired to reduce
Iraq’s essential oil income.

By invading Kuwait, Iraq succeeded in surprising the entire
world. The USA ended her policy of accommodating Saddam Hussein, which
had existed since the Iran-Iraq war. Negative attitude toward Iraq was
soon...

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Submitted by: digitalessays
Date Submitted: 03-31-2002
Category: History
Words: 1991
Pages: 7.96