The 100-Hour Ground War Viewed From the US and the Gulf

By Richard H. Curtiss

The Feb. 23 Saturday noon deadline passes as I start packing my bags in Washington, DC, eyes on the television. There is a last-minute flurry of hope that a ground war can be avoided when the Soviet delegate at the United Nations claims Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, as he left Moscow to return to Baghdad, agreed to a Soviet plan for withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait.

An interview by ABC's Peter Jennings with Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov minutes later kills the hope. Iraqi President Saddam Hussain has agreed to withdraw his forces to positions they occupied on Aug. 1, the day before his invasion of Kuwait, as called for by UN Security Council Resolution 660. President George Bush, however, insists he agree to all 12 Security Council resolutions. The two sides also are two weeks apart on the timetable.

The Iraqi negotiator has agreed to have Iraqi forces out of Kuwait in three weeks. The US insists on withdrawal within one week and, to make its point, launches one of the heaviest air raids of the war against Baghdad. Eight hours after the deadline expires, the ground war begins, at 8 pm in Washington, DC, and 3 am Feb. 24 in Saudi Arabia.

Ambassador Glaspie's Story

At lunch on Sunday in Washington, most of the guests have been involved in the seven month leadup to the ground war. Since she is one of the guests, the subject of US Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie's July 25 conversation with Saddam Hussain arises. The State Department has never refuted transcripts released by the Iraqi government indicating she allowed Saddam Hussain to believe the US would take no position in Iraq's dispute with Kuwait. Now Secretary of State James Baker has said in a televised interview she is free to meet the press to present her version of the conversation.

Journalists seeking interviews, however, are being told she does not wish to talk with them. In fact, she's ready to meet the press or Congress whenever she is authorized to do so. She's already told colleagues that the taped excerpts released by the Iraqi government have been doctored to present a greatly abridged, and therefore highly misleading, version of the conversation. Her quoted remarks pertained only to claims by the Iraqi government concerning the proper location of the border and that while Iraq was preoccupied with its war with Iran, Kuwait literally moved its border posts, police posts, and drilling rigs forward to enable it to pump far more than its share of oil from Iraqs Rumaila field, which extends under the border into Kuwait.

She told Saddam Hussain that although the US takes no position in such Arab vs. Arab border disputes in the Gulf, the US is deeply concerned that they not be settled by force and that in such a case the US would defend its vital interests.

The entire conversation was much longer than the released transcripts imply. It also was interrupted by a telephone call the Iraqi president took from President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, and Saddam's recounting of some of the contents of that call, Glaspie said. None of that was included in the transcript released by Iraq.

Why didn't the State Department refute the Iraqi claims? Perhaps because it has no tape of the talk itself, since only the Iraqis surreptitiously recorded it, on audiotape and possibly on videotape as well.

Glaspie, however, remembers the talk vividly, since it was called on short notice and Saddam Hussain did not see ambassadors, except when they accompanied visiting dignitaries. Glaspie has heard enough speculation that, deliberately or inadvertently, her comments led Saddam Hussain to believe the US would not oppose his subsequent invasion of Kuwait. She is ready to refute publicly what she considers outrageous Iraqi disinformation. (Since this discussion took place, Ambassador Glaspie, in televised "conversations" with Senate Foreign Relations and House Foreign Affairs Committee members, told her side of the story. Her superb performance left only one question unanswered: Why didn't the State Department give her permission to refute the Iraqi disinformation months earlier?)

Different Viewpoints in Moscow and Washington

The conversation moves from the week before the crisis began to yesterday, when the ground war began. Another guest, seen regularly on ABC television, was present when, after their telecast interview, Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Primakov, in Moscow, told Peter Jennings, in New York, more about the Soviet negotiations with Tariq Aziz. The Iraqis would be willing to withdraw sooner to secure Bush's acceptance of the Soviet plan, Primakov said.

Jennings said it was Saddam Hussain's unwillingness to accept all 12 UN Security Council resolutions, rather than the length of the pullout, that was probably most important to Bush. Primakov seemed bewildered.

"What difference do the extra resolutions make after he is out?" Primakov asked.

"All the difference, I believe," Jennings responded.

By then, however, Tariq Aziz was returning to Baghdad, the deadline had passed, and Saddam Hussain apparently still didn't understand that Bush was ready, and perhaps eager, to launch the ground war for which he had been preparing at least since Nov. 8. As I drive to the airport, I find myself hoping that the next Soviet-US venture in establishing a "new world order" will involve better understanding of each nation's goals.

Saudi Arabia Under Scud Attack

The Saudia jumbo jet is far from full and the flight, after a stop in New York, is comfortable, but long. It had been close to freezing when I embarked on a sunny Sunday afternoon in Washington. As I disembark in Jiddah 16 hours later in real time and 23 hours later on the clock, it's a sunny Monday afternoon so warm that my glasses steam up as I leave the plane.

The driver who meets me, an Eritrean refugee from his province's rebellion against Ethiopia, assures me that life is unchanged in Jiddah, out of range of Iraqi Scuds.

My flight to the Saudi capital the next day is crowded. The number of people on the aircraft with children seems extraordinary. Clearly many families are returning from Jiddah and nearby Taif and Mecca, all out of Scud range, to their homes in Riyadh and the Eastern Province, where people are getting used to the risks.

It is only upon arrival in Riyadh that I learn that Scuds aimed at the capitals of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar the previous night did no damage, but one that fell on Dhahran, in the Eastern Province, killed 28 American servicemembers. That one Scud, fired in Saddam Hussain's grand finale, killed more people than all of the other 69 fired by the Iraqis at targets in five countries. In fact, it killed as many Americans as died in ground combat.

Illustrating the Islamic belief that no one can escape the time appointed for death, Saudi newspapers are carrying the story of a family from Riyadh who decided to wait out the Scud scare in Taif. Their house in Riyadh was heavily damaged by parts of an exploded missile after their departure.

Neighbors rejoiced at their escape until they learned that the entire family had been wiped out in a terrible automobile accident in Taif on the same night their house was destroyed in Riyadh.

Perhaps that fatalism explains the matter of-fact way in which a young Saudi friend points out, during the long drive from the airport into the city, several places in which pieces of falling missiles have caused extensive damage. A Riyadh school, fortunately empty at the time, was virtually destroyed. One end of a residential apartment was sheered off, killing one and injuring several of the occupants.

The friend is a Saudi born some 25 years ago in the Iraqi town of Zubeir, close to Saudi Arabia, who spent his school years in Kuwait. An Iraqi cousin about his age is one of Saddam's victims.

The young Iraqi was arrested three years ago. When his parents received no word of his fate, they proceeded higher and higher through Saddam's bureaucracy until they were told: "You must forget that you ever had this son. Do not think of him ever again." It was a stern warning that Saddam's state would kill them as casually as it had killed their son.

In an American oil company's guest apartment, I ask the Yemeni in charge where he goes when the alarm announces the arrival of a Scud. "Out there," he says with a grin, pointing to a wide rooftop terrace. "At first we stayed inside. Now everyone goes outside to watch."

That night, not Scuds but rain, thunder and lighting provide sound and light. Saudis, I discover, are also watching the war on CNN. Large swatches, with commercials removed, are carried on the foreign language channel available throughout the Kingdom. CNN reports reveal that Baghdad is having the same bad weather as Riyadh. I feel pity for the soldiers of both sides exposed to such weather in Southern Iraq, where rain can transform deserts to quagmires in minutes.

The next day, everyone in Riyadh has a story to tell me about Scuds or pieces of them that have fallen in the city over the past six weeks. The Iraqis apparently were making a political statement and also unsuccessfully trying to hit the military airport. It is the old civilian airport, located near the center of the city and presently jammed with US and Saudi aircraft.

What the Saudis I meet are even more eager to discuss, however, are not Scuds, but US intentions. They don't want to see Iraq dismembered, or even humbled, leaving the Arab states of the Gulf without a powerful potential ally against non-Arab Iran's resurgent Islamic revolutionary government.

Saudis are eager to see Saddam Hussain humbled, however. Like Americans, they have personalized the war into a battle not against Iraq, but against its ruler.

One Saudi official recalls that when American forces first arrived, Saddam tauntingly said the Saudis needed American women to defend them. Last night Saudi television showed American women pilots helicoptering coalition troops deep into southern Iraq to cut off the retreat of Iraqi units from the Kuwait area.

"Now the world can see that Saddam is being defeated by America's women soldiers, the Saudi says with glee.

Saudis offer condolences about the Americans killed in the Scud attack. One, a frequent visitor to the US, is puzzled, however, by reported attacks on "Arabs" in the United States. "Don't they know their allies in the Gulf are Arabs too?" he asks.

On my first full day in Riyadh I manage to see a number of Saudi friends in widely scattered parts of the sprawling Saudi capital because traffic is unusually light, indicating that many families are still away. Traffic piles up, however, where the police are checking cars. My Filipino driver says they are looking primarily for Jordanians, Palestinians, Sudanese and Yemenis. Because their leaders have expressed sympathy for Saddam, any whose work permits have expired will be expelled as security risks.

My last stop is to be photographed for a pass to attend press briefings. The photographer is a veteran of five years of fighting with one of the Eritrean guerrilla armies. As he prepares the Polaroid photos for me, his talk is not of the nearby war to the north, but of 30 years of Eritrean warfare against Ethiopia. He asks what, after it has brought peace to the Gulf, the United States will do to bring peace to the embattled Horn of Africa. It is an area where, as in the Gulf, the US and Israel have been working at cross purposes for a generation.

At night, back in my apartment, as the mother of dust storms rages outside, I'm watching General Norman Schwarzkopf on television while waiting to go on a radio talk show in Seattle, Washington. The telephone rings and the host's voice is apologetic.

"It looks like General Schwarzkopf's live briefing on how the war has been fought is going to pre-empt our whole hour," he explains.

It's no surprise. The last time I was to go on this same show from Washington, DC, my time was pre-empted by the beginning of the ground war. Now, only three and a half days later, but half a world away, I'm watching the general's description, with flip-chart maps, of how within that time a half-million man Iraqi army has been subdued with fewer than 100 coalition deaths. It's such a bravura performance that one can almost overlook the general's rueful comment, in answer to a question, that fast-moving coalition commanders have no way of even estimating how many Iraqi soldiers are being buried, wherever their dead bodies are found.

At midnight Wednesday, Feb. 27 in Washington, DC, and 7 am Thursday, Feb. 28 in Riyadh, President Bush's cease-fire goes into effect seven months after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, exactly six weeks after the beginning of the air war and just 100 hours after the beginning of the ground war. Already Saudis are calling it the war of Thursdays since that's the day, by Saudi time, on which it began and ended.

Since Thursday is the Islamic equivalent of Saturday, the Saudi capital is quiet but, as the day continues, the television brings moving scenes of flag-waving liberated Kuwaitis cheering the Saudi vanguard leading coalition forces into Kuwait City.

Talking into Saudi television cameras, Kuwaitis are vociferous in their thanks to "our Saudi brothers and sisters." They also express their gratitude to "American, British and all the foreign forces" and, repeatedly, to President Bush. It's a new dawn in the Gulf, where Kuwaitis did not always speak so warmly of their Saudi neighbors, and where both British and Americans were often dismissed as "imperialists."

Saudi reporters are equally emotional. Writing from Kuwait for a special Feb. 28 "Victory in the Gulf" issue of the English language Arab News, published in Jiddah, Editor Khaled Al-Maeena reports: "Saudi and Kuwait forces are moving as liberators among their own people. They and the coalition forces who joined battle against the defeated tyrant of Baghdad are, at this very moment, being given a victory parade without glamour but perhaps the most spontaneous one in history. It could be Paris or Rome during World War II ... It is Kuwait's day—V-G Day—and the scenes in the street are unstoppable, inimitable moments of history."

By contrast, Riyadh is quiet. There are dozens of reporters at the Hyatt Regency Hotel for the daily press briefings, and much coming and going of soldiers of all nations at the Defense Ministry across the street. At the Intercontinental Hotel, however, which was teeming with men and women in the uniforms of a dozen countries and hundreds of Kuwaiti refugees when I stayed there five months ago, there is not a Kuwaiti license plate in the parking lot, and some of the few people in uniform are dust-and-grime covered and carrying gas masks as they hurry to and from airplanes.

The Saudi leaders I am seeking out for interviews are pleased with themselves for dealing so generously and promptly with the Kuwaiti refugee influx, for providing extraordinarily successful logistical support to the giant armies that descended so suddenly upon their Kingdom, and for weathering within a decade massive successive threats from both of their more populous Gulf neighbors. They are also pleased with the conduct, on and off the battlefield, of American troops, and pleased with George Bush, James Baker, Richard Cheney, Colin Powell and every other US leader they can think of.

I ask whether, while the euphoria runs high in Washington, Riyadh and Cairo, all three will move to address the underlying political problems in the Middle East, including the cause of the Palestinians, no matter how people in all three countries feel about individual Palestinian leaders.

"We must and we will," one Saudi official assures me, echoing the views of every Saudi I interviewed. "But," this official continues, "we're not going to deal with Yasser Arafat. He made his choice to reject everything we have done for the Palestinians over many years. Instead, just as he was on the verge of getting his state, he chose Saddam Hussain, who split the Arab supporters of Palestine, split the Muslim supporters of Palestine, and set back all Islamic causes by a generation. Now it's our choice not to deal any longer with such inept leaders. Let the Palestinians choose better ones."

At the end of the day, another Saudi official is optimistic. The Bush administration has promised to deal next with the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, he declares, and the Saudi government has good reason to believe in this administration's promises. He is more optimistic than I am, however, about the willingness of Israel's Likud government to make peace with the Palestinians. "Of course," he adds, injecting a note of realism in the otherwise euphoric conversation, "they will only make peace if the US withholds financial aid until they do."

By nightfall of the day of the cease-fire, Saudi television has announced that Secretary Baker will visit the area within a week. The television is alternating jubilant scenes of the liberation of Kuwait with entertainment films which, I'm told, have seldom been seen in recent weeks. The evening's US military briefer is superb on every question but that of Iraqi military casualties. He isn't equipped to deal with questions by journalists on whether there are 20,000, 80, 000, or perhaps even 100,000 Iraqi dead. The Saudi briefer, too, is unable to supply any exact casualty figures.

At exactly midnight, one airplane takes off from the Riyadh military airfield, the first I've heard for the entire evening. Throughout the stormy previous night, the last of the war, so many had taken off so close together for so long that it was impossible even to guess at their numbers.

For the moment, there are no more missions to fly. Once again a cold wind has whipped up a sandstorm. Out on the deserts to the north it must be fueling the impatience of American troops to be gone from this harsh land; obscuring the fresh graves of the unknown numbers of dead Iraqis; and providing cover for living Iraqis who choose to slip through coalition lines to head for home or to fight again.

It's an ambiguous ending for the methodical, bold and clear war plan General Schwarzkopf initiated less than five days ago. The recurring desert dust storms must not become a metaphor for the manner in which the world views what follows V-G day. A Middle East peace to end the 43-year exile of the Palestinians must also be approached methodically, boldly and clearly. Otherwise, American troops will be back again and again in the Middle East until, instead of leading a coalition of virtually all of the world's powers, they may someday find themselves opposing it.