All Necessary Measures: The United Nations and Humanitarian Intervention

2. The Emergence of Human Rights Discourse in the Security Council: Domestic Repression in Iraq, 1990–1992

C h a p t e r 2 The Emergence of Human Rights Discourse in the Security Council: Domestic Repression in Iraq, 1990–1992 Between March and August 1988, the government of Iraq launched a series of lethal poison gas attacks against Kurdish villages in northern Iraq. Western media covered the effects of the chemical weapons attack on the town of Halabja: ‘‘Ghastly scenes of bodies strewn along Halabja’s streets, families locked in an embrace of death, lifeless children, doll-like with blackened mouths, eyes, and nails, and the upended carcasses of domestic animals.’’1 The international human rights organization Middle East Watch characterized the Iraqi attacks against its Kurdish population as genocide.2 The U.S. State Department publicly condemned Iraq’s use of chemical weapons, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee issued a report concluding that there was ‘‘overwhelming evidence’’ that Iraq had used chemical weapons against Kurdish citizens. The United States, the Soviet Union, and at least eleven other states petitioned the UN Secretary-General, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, to investigate Iraq’s possible use of chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds, but both Iraq and neighboring Turkey, where large numbers of Kurdish refugees had fled, rejected the UN’s request for access to Kurdish survivors.3 The UN deferred to the sovereign authority of both states and refrained from further interference in their domestic affairs—no formal condemnation of Iraq by the Security Council was forthcoming. In contrast, during that same period, Iraq also was accused of using chemical weapons in its ongoing war with Iran. On 26 August 1988, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 620 (1988) condemning the use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq War, which violated the 34 Chapter 2 1925 Geneva Protocol and Security Council Resolution 612. Though both Resolutions 620 and 612 condemned use of chemical weapons in interstate warfare, neither resolution criticized or even mentioned Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against its domestic population. Yet three years later in March 1991, army troops loyal to Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and his elite Republican Guard used helicopter gunships, tanks, and artillery to indiscriminately attack northern Iraqi Kurds and Muslim Shi’a in the south. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis panicked, fled the country, and became stranded in the mountains between Iraq and Turkey and along the border with Iran, creating a humanitarian crisis. This time, only one month later, the UNSC passed Resolution 688 defining the effects of Iraq’s human rights violations as a threat to international peace and security, and France, the UK, and the U.S. enforced a no-fly zone in northern Iraq to prevent the Iraqi regime from attacking the Kurdish people. Between 1988 and 1991, there was a dramatic shift in Security Council responses to Iraqi government attacks against its own population. In 1988 the council concerned itself solely with interstate threats and aggression, but by 1991 it began considering the domestic practices within states and their effects on international peace and security. Human rights considerations lacked legitimacy in Security Council deliberations in 1988, but a series of decisions in 1991 allowed for the limited consideration of human rights concerns in the Iraq case with the unintended consequence of both legitimizing human rights norms as a subject of council debate and laying the groundwork for future humanitarian intervention. This initial deviation in Security Council practice was made possible by a dramatically changed historical and political context and contingencies specific to the Iraq case. In August 1990, Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait. Within hours, the UNSC held an emergency meeting and passed Resolution 660, which condemned the Iraqi invasion and demanded an immediate and complete withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait. This was how the Security Council was designed to work—to respond quickly and decisively to acts of aggression. Yet during the Cold War, the council had rarely exercised its enforcement powers under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.4 In fact, only 7 percent of all Chapter VII resolutions passed by the Security Council between 1946 and 2002 occurred during the Cold War, which means an astonishing 93 percent were adopted after 1989.5 Indeed, it was the Security Council’s perceived ability to respond effectively, and in concert, to Iraq’s aggression against Kuwait in August 1990 that ushered in a new era of optimism about Emergence of Human Rights Discourse 35 the role...