Night Hunters: The AC-130s and Their Role in US Airpower

11. The Early 1990s: The Persian Gulf to Somalia

182 In retrospect the history of the AC-130s in the 1980s had been a dress rehearsal for the events of 1990s. No sooner were the H models returned to Hurlburt Field and the AC-130As to Duke Field than the final steps were completed for the standup of AFSOC. This completed the Air Force’s initial commitment to the new USSOCOM begun in the previous decade. In May 1990 all the gunships changed commands again, this time transferring to AFSOC. Ironically, forty-two years earlier the fledgling US Air Force had been confronted by the first great test of the Cold War, the Berlin Airlift. In 1990, the newly formed AFSOC would be plunged into the crucible of combat in the Persian Gulf.1 The Persian Gulf region of the Middle East, with its oilrich nations such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iran, had immediately after World War II been under the thumb of Western oil companies fueling the massive expansion of industrial powers such as the United States, Great Britain, France, and even rebuilding West Germany. Throughout the Cold War Iraq had grown to be a closer ally of the Soviet Union, supplied with Soviet weapons. Tension between the secularist Iraqi regimes and America grew throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Of particular concern to the United States was Iraq’s support of Palestinian radical groups fighting America’s primary ally, Israel. In 1979 the rise to power of the nonreligious Baathist dictator Saddam Hussein and the fall of the pro-western shah in Iran soon led the new fundamentalist Iranian regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini into an almost decade-long war (1981–88) with Iraq. With Hussein willing to support at least some American policies in the region, the administration of President Ronald Reagan began a process not only of normalizing relations but 11 The Early 1990s The Persian Gulf to Somalia EARLY 1990S | 183 also of providing material aid to Iraqi forces in their war with their mutual enemy, Iran.2 When leaders signed the cease-fire between Iran and Iraq in August 1988, both sides were spent. For all intents and purposes Iraq was bankrupt and owed millions to their Saudi and Kuwaiti neighbors. The next year, Kuwait made matters worse when, contrary to Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries policy, they raised their oil production by 40 percent. This caused oil prices to collapse and further damaged the Iraqi economy. Saddam Hussein publicly declared the Kuwaiti action to be economic warfare. While Hussein ’s concerns for Iraq’s economy were reasonable, his potential method of solving the problem by invading Kuwait was, as Don Oberdorfer wrote in the Washington Post, like the man who decided “to get out of bankruptcy, you rob a bank.”3 Saddam Hussein also condemned Kuwait’s method of slant drilling, which he claimed was tapping Iraqi oil reserves from the Ramaila oil field. For this and other reasons, Kuwait and Iraq soon found themselves in a very tense relationship. However, there was more to it than that. They had had a tenuous relationship since Iraqi independence.4 In 1899 the al-Sabah family in Kuwait concluded a protectorate agreement with Great Britain, removing Kuwait from the Ottoman Empire. Once the province of Basra in Iraq, Kuwait was now free to handle its own internal affairs , while Great Britain took care of its foreign policy. Following World War I, Britain dominated the entire region. As the 1920s came to an end, the British began granting the states of the Gulf full independence. In the process, the British high commissioner drew the Iraq-Kuwait border in order to restrict Iraqi access to the Persian Gulf sea lanes, thus making sure Iraq would never threaten British domination of the Gulf and the oil trade. From that time forward , Iraq refused to recognize this arrangement.5 Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm In June 1990, with Iraq’s economy in dire straits and Hussein fearful of an internal rebellion, long-standing discussions with Kuwait over a political arrangement more favorable to Iraq began in earnest. However, they soon broke down under Iraqi threats to attack its smaller neighbor if Iraqi demands were not met. In June and July, even as Hussein negotiated, thirty thousand Iraqi troops had already begun massing on the border. The next day, Hussein and US Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie met to discuss the crisis. In one of the most controversial and disputed diplomatic events in history, there was a...