Following the ceasefire of 3rd March 1991 which brought the Gulf War to an end, demonstrations began immediately in the southern cities of Basra, Najaf and Karbala, which quickly flared into open rebellion. The methods employed by the regime to put down the rebellion were ruthless. Helicopter gunships were used to dreadful effect against indiscriminate targets.¹

The attacks on civilians and civilian targets such as mosques and schools suggest strongly that the extraordinary brutality of the countermeasures taken by the regime were designed to crush the Shi'ite identity as much as the rebellion itself.

Basra

• mass executions of civilians.

• civilians were tied to tanks and used by government forces as human shields.

• civilians were reportedly drowned in the Shatt al-Arab waterway by tying them to rocks and pushing them in.

Najaf

• randomly bombarded residential areas.

• murdered hospital staff and patients.

• publicly executed suspected rebels and destroyed their homes.

• people were told by loudspeaker to evacuate the city for their own safety within 24 hours and head north. When the people of the city had concentrated in its northern suburbs, helicopters opened fire.

Karbala

• artillery and helicopter bombardment of the city by Iraqi government forces began the next day.

• some of Shi'a Islam's holiest shrines were destroyed. Other shrines were used as centres for murder, torture and rape.

• there was deliberate concentration of fire on Al-Husseini hospital and many of its doctors and nurses were executed. Patients were thrown out of windows.

• there were mass executions of suspected rebels in stadiums.

The Uprising spread quickly to the North. Suleimaniyeh was the first major city captured by Kurdish opposition forces and the last to fall to government forces. The counter-offensive began on 31st March, 1991 and the city fell on 3rd April, 1991.

In Kirkuk, a government curfew was imposed on 10th March, 1991. On 11th March, 1991, peshmerga guerrillas attacked from the north. The young men of the city were rounded up and transported to vast compounds outside the city at Tubzawa military base and al-Ramadi. They were held in appalling conditions, perhaps with the intention of preventing any uprising. Most were not released until mid-April, and then were told not to return to Kirkuk. Most went to Turkey, Iran or Kurdish-held areas. Kirkuk rose in rebellion on 18-19th March and rebels captured it by 20th March, 1991. The bombardment started next day with helicopters and artillery shelling the city. There were further deliberate attacks on the hospital; patients' throats were slit, and they were hurled from the roof. The city fell on 27th March, 1991. Helicopters attacked the fleeing columns of refugees.

Refugees began to head for the Turkish and Iranian borders to avoid the Iraqi forces. By mid-April approximately 450,000 refugees had reached the Turkish border and approximately 1.4 million had reached Iran. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, this "mass exodus represented the highest rated influx of 40 years of the UNHCR's history".²

United Nations Security Council Resolution 688, submitted by Belgium and France and co-sponsored by the UK and the USA condemning the brutal repression of the Iraqi government was adopted in April 1991. The resolution stated that the internal repression conducted by the Iraqi regime constituted a threat to international peace and security in the region. This allowed the Security Council to address the issue of the internal affairs of Iraq.

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva had already decided to appoint a Special Rapporteur to investigate human rights abuses in Iraq.

The establishment of the Safe Haven

Six "zones of protection" were to be established inside Iraq; protected by ground troops; supplies would be brought in from Turkey. Approximately 20,000 allied troops were involved at the height of the operation. Iraqi fixed or rotary wing aircraft were prohibited from flying north of the 36th parallel. A "no-fly" zone therefore covered roughly half of the current Kurdish Autonomous Area.

By September 1991, 90% of the Iraqi Kurds had returned to Iraq "marking the fastest rate of return in the UNHCR's experience".⁴

Iraqi Kurds continued to leave their home areas whenever the Iraqi forces made fresh attacks. For example, in October and December 1991, 200,000 people were displaced in Suleimaniyah and Arbil governorates, and a further 40,000 from the Arbil area in the following March.⁵

¹Information in this section is partly taken from Endless Torment - The 1991 Uprising and its Aftermath, Middle East Watch, June 1992

²UNHCR Report on Northern Iraq, April 1991 - May 1992, para 1.7

³Information in this section is mostly taken from The Safe Haven in Northern Iraq, International Responsibility for Iraqi Kurdistan, Helena Cook, Kurdistan Human Rights Project, London, 1995

⁴UNHCR Report on Northern Iraq, April 1991 - May 1992, para 1.11

⁵Ibid, para 1.14