Friendly fire

Reluctant soldiers

Killing the wounded

Surrendered soldiers killed

Frustrated soldiers who didn't get to shoot something

Looting that led to casualites

Surrendering villagers shot

The first attack

The second attack

"We didn't need to kill more people -- we'd proved our point." But "McCaffrey had to have his armor battle."

"People got out of their cars and ran away. We shot them."

"We've blown away a busload of kids"

C.I.A. analyst says "no way" the retreating Iraqi forces opened fire

　

• Aggression is fine if it's in U.S. interests. It's bad only if it's opposed to U.S. interests. The U.S. invaded Panama and imposed a puppet regime still under U.S. control. The world objected so we vetoed two UN Security Council resolutions.

• Turkey invaded northern Cyprus, broke it up, killed two thousand people, tried to destroy relics of Greek civilization, drove out 200,000 people. That was fine. Turkey is our ally.
  
  
• Israel attacked Lebanon, killed about 20,000 people, bombarded the capital, and still occupies southern Lebanon. The U.S. vetoed a series of UN Security Council resolutions to terminate that aggression. Israel holds on to the occupied territories. It has annexed some of them. Fine. The U.S. supports Israel.

• Morocco invaded the Western Sahara, annexed it. The U.S. thinks that's fine.

• Indonesia invaded East Timor. Two hundred thousand killed. The worst slaughter relative to the population since the Holocaust. The U.S. gives them aid.

• Iraq attacked Iran. The U.S. assisted them. Iraq gassed the Kurds in the north of Iraq. Fine. After all, the Turks are having problems with the Kurds too and the Turks are our ally.
  
  
• Iraq invades Kuwait. Outrage. Cries of Hitler reborn. Send 400,000 troops. Bomb Baghdad.
  
  
• The United States can claim it's opposed to aggression on ABC News without ridicule because we have a disciplined intellectual class who look the other way and/or lie as a matter of course. In the Third World, however, the claim is seen as ludicrous. People there consider the U.S. the major violator of the principle that aggression is wrong.

Does the U.S. oppose proliferation of super-weapons? No.

• In April 1990, Saddam Hussein, then still the U.S.'s friend and ally, offered to destroy his chemical and biological weapons if Israel agreed to destroy its non-conventional weapons--- including its nuclear weapons. The State Department welcomed Hussein's offer to destroy his own arsenal, but rejected the link "to other issues or weapons systems."
  
  
• Acknowledgment of the existence of Israeli nuclear weapons would raise the question why all U.S. aid to Israel is not illegal under 1970s congressional legislation that bars aid to any country engaged in clandestine nuclear weapons development.
  
  
• In December 1990, speaking at a joint press conference with Secretary of State Baker, then Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze proposed a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East if Iraq withdraws form Kuwait. Baker gave "qualified support," the press observed, but "carefully avoided using the words nuclear-free zone" -- for the reason just noted.
  
  
• A week later, Iraq offered to "scrap chemical and mass destruction weapons if Israel was also prepared to do so," Reuters reported. The offer seems to have passed in silence here. Weapons proliferation for our allies -- including Iraq before August 2 -- is fine.
  
  
• Iraq's more recent call for "the banning of all weapons of mass destruction in the region" as part of a negotiated settlement of its withdrawal from Kuwait evoked no Western support.

What is the New World Order all about? Same as the old, with an ominous new wrinkle.

• In the London Financial Times of November 21, 1990, a respected commentator describes the Gulf crisis as a "watershed event in U.S. international relations," which will be seen in history as having "turned the U.S. military into an internationally financed public good." In the 1990s, he continues, "there is no realistic alternative [to] the U.S. military assuming a more explicitly mercenary role than it has played in the past."
  
  
• The financial editor of the Chicago Tribune recently put the point less delicately: we must exploit our "virtual monopoly in the security marked...as a lever to gain funds and economic concessions" from Germany and Japan. The U.S. has "cornered the West's security marked" and will therefore be "the world's rent-a-cops."
  
  
• Some will call us "Hessians," he continues, but "that's a terribly demeaning phrase for a proud, well-trained, well-financed and well-respected military" and whatever anyone may say, "we should be able to pound our fists on a few desks" in Japan and Europe, and "extract a fair price for our considerable services," demanding that our rivals "buy our bonds at cheap rates, or keep the dollar propped up, or better yet, pay cash directly into our Treasury." "We could change this role" of enforcer, he concludes, "but with it would go much of our control over the world economic system."

http://www.lol.shareworld.com/zmag/articles/chomgulfalb.htm

On the scale of the War:

About 120,000 sorties were flown by coalition air forces during the 43-day war, of which 60 percent were combat, or attack, missions, according to the Pentagon; the balance were support missions. Over 35,000 combat sorties were flown against targets in the Kuwait-Iraq military theater, leaving approximately 32,200 attack missions presumably executed against targets in "Iraq's heartland." Nearly 60 percent of the sorties were carried out by the U.S. Air Force. Of the total number of U.S. air strikes, 23 percent were conducted by aircraft from the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marines, according to Adm. Frank B. Kelso, the chief of naval operations.

Military briefers in Saudi Arabia reported on February 4 that the allies had been flying one bombing mission per minute against Iraq, on average, since the war began, a tempo that continued until the ceasefire. Some 84,200 tons of ordnance were dropped -- but only 7,400 tons of it precision or "smart" bombs, 90 percent of which was dropped by U.S. aircraft. In addition, 288 sea-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from surface ships and submarines in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP2.htm

March 6, 1992: The Washington Post reports that the U.S. Census Bureau demographer assigned to estimate the number of Iraqis killed during the Gulf War will be fired. Beth Osborne Daponte estimates that 86,000 men, 40,000 women and 32,000 children died at the hands of American-led coalition forces, during the domestic rebellions that followed and from postwar deprivation. After various protests, the Bureau rescinds the firing but rewrites the report, lowering the death toll and removing the data on women and children. The following month, the Pentagon published its three-volume official history of the war, but a draft chapter on casualties is deleted and there is no mention of Iraqi deaths. (The London Independent, April 23, 1992) - AUTOPSY OF A DISASTER: THE U.S.
SANCTIONS POLICY ON IRAQ

"[W]e are doing absolutely everything we possibly can in this campaign to avoid injuring or hurting or destroying innocent people. We have said all along that this is not a war against the Iraqi people." [Gen. Schwarzkopf]

It is worth noting that Gen. Powell chose his words carefully, stating that "principally military targets" in Baghdad were being attacked. He did not mention at this time, for example, that the supply of electricity to civilians in Baghdad -- and elsewhere throughout Iraq -- was being systematically destroyed in allied attacks. A Harvard University on-site investigation established that in the first days of the air war 13 of Iraq's 20 electricity-generating facilities were destroyed or incapacitated. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP2.htm

...A journalist who was in Baghdad during the early days of the air war wrote that the city after the first night of bombing "did not show much destruction," but added that Iraq's infrastructure appeared to be under systematic attack:

[I]t was clear that a major objective of the allied raids --in addition to undermining the Iraqi military capability -- was to shatter normal life. In the first two days, the allied forces destroyed, or at least hit, all the power stations and the telecommunications centres. Telephone lines went dead, there was no electricity and many districts in Baghdad ran short of tap water. Even the central post office was considered "a strategic target." The systematic bombardment of public facilities confirmed that the objective was to destroy the country's infrastructure.

This early analysis was supported by a Washington Post correspondent who was in Baghdad toward the war's end:

In crippling Iraq's infrastructure, the allies paved the way for an overwhelming military victory. But the strategy, familiar to guerrilla armies the world over, also has had the effect of demoralizing Iraq's civilian population.

An experienced war correspondent who was based in Baghdad prior to and during part of the air war told Middle East Watch: "Early on I had the impression that the aim was to destroy the infrastructure, to destroy the country economically."

Statements by Pentagon officials give weight to these journalists' views. One official told The Washington Post that the bombing of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities was "a way of letting the [Iraqi] leadership know that we care about them and want to bring the war home to them." He also said that military planners hoped that the unrelenting aerial bombardment would provoke a coup against Saddam Hussein. Gen. Schwarzkopf alluded to the same goal when he said in a television interview with CBS that "the entourage around" Saddam may "crack when they see the devastation that's being wrought on the country and on the armed forces." Information obtained by Middle East Watch suggests that at least two Baghdad neighborhoods may have been attacked by allied bombers in part because top Baath party officials and Saddam Hussein's two sons had homes there.... In addition, U.S. military briefers refused to provide details, during and after the war,about the targets in Baghdad that were the objects of continued bombing raids in the city ...

One experienced British journalist noted: "The bombing of ministries in Baghdad quite unrelated to the war effort seemed to many to ram home that message, which is in essence that there will be no Iraq left to govern and no means by which to govern it unless Saddam is removed soon."

These views were reinforced by President Bush's remarks on February 15, in reply to the Iraqi Revolution Command Council (RCC) statement about the readiness of Iraq to deal with U.N. Security Council Resolution 660, which demanded that Iraqi military forces withdraw from Kuwait. In rejecting the RCC proposal, the President said: "[T]here's another way for the bloodshed to stop, and that is for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside...." After the war, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker said [on March 17]: "We would like to see a change in that Government. We've made no bones about it."

The goal of encouraging the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime apparently was adopted in August 1990, when President Bush signed a secret authorization that permitted the Central Intelligence Agency and other U.S. civilian agencies to engage in covert intelligence operations to "destabilize" the Iraqi government. President Bush at a National Security Council meeting on August 3 reportedly instructed the CIA to begin work on a plan:

Bush ordered the CIA to begin planning for a covert operation that would destabilize the regime and, he hoped, remove Saddam from power. He wanted an all-fronts effort to strangle the Iraqi economy, support anti-Saddam resistance groups inside or outside Iraq, and look for alternative leaders in the military or anywhere in Iraqi society. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP2.htm

In its July 1991 preliminary report on the conduct of the war, the Department of Defense noted that one of the "five overarching goals" of the air war campaign was to "isolate and incapacitate the Iraqi regime." The report states, for example, that if Saddam and other members of the Iraqi leadership were rendered unable "to maintain a firm grip on their internal population control mechanisms, they might be compelled to comply with Coalition demands." In this respect, it is noteworthy that in the opening hour of the air war, U.S. Stealth bombers struck the headquarters of the internal security and intelligence organizations in Baghdad. The report also notes that the early targeting of Iraq's telecommunications system disrupted the leadership's ability to communicate with the civilian population:

Saddam Hussein's internal telecommunications capability was badly damaged so that, while he could broadcast televised propaganda to the world via satellite, he was limited in the use of telecommunications to influence the Iraqi populace. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP2.htm

The widespread disruption of civilian life clearly had the effect of destabilizing the Iraqi government. The Washington Post reached a similar conclusion, based on interviews after the war with U.S. military officers involved in planning the air war, when it concluded that many of the targets in Iraq "were chosen only secondarily to contribute to the military defeat of Baghdad's occupation army in Kuwait." One Air Force planner interviewed by the Post bluntly stated that the attacks on the country's electrical system were intended to send a message to the Iraqi people: "We're not going to tolerate Saddam Hussein or his regime. Fix that, and we'll fix your electricity."

Although Middle East Watch's mandate allows it to take no position on the propriety of the U.S. effort to destabilize Saddam Hussein's regime, the laws of war outlined in Chapter One, which MEW does seek to uphold, require a critical examination of the means used to pursue this goal. Those laws require as their "basic rule" that all parties to a conflict distinguish the civilian population from combatants, and civilian objects from military objectives, and direct their operations only against military objectives. Deliberately creating hardships for civilians so that they might rise up against their dictatorial leader would violate that essential distinction. This customary-law principle is set forth in Article 51(2) of Protocol I, which states: "The civilian population as such,as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited." - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP2.htm

THE MEANS AND METHODS OF ATTACK

Middle East Watch found that in some cases during the war, allied forces fell short of their duty to utilize means and methods of attack to minimize the likelihood of civilian casualties. This failure was particularly evident in decisions to execute daytime attacks on bridges in cities used by civilian pedestrians and motorists and on targets located near crowded urban markets. In such cases, it was inevitable that the civilian casualty toll would be higher than if the same targets were bombed at night when Iraqis typically were at home or in shelters.

More generally, Middle East Watch believes that numerous unanswered questions remain regarding the type of munitions used by the allied forces to attack targets in close proximity to Iraqi civilians and civilian objects. During the war, allied spokespersons fostered the public impression that in populated areas the war was being fought with high technology and precision-guided "smart" bombs. However, as we note in this chapter, over 90 percent of the total tonnage of munitions used by the allies was unguided "dumb" bombs, with a substantially greater likelihood known to fall wide of their targets, especially when delivered from medium or high altitudes, as was the case during Operation Desert Storm.

Throughout the war, Bush Administration and Pentagon spokesmen repeatedly acknowledged the duty to protect civilian life, emphasizing that the means and methods of attack in Operation Desert Storm were carefully chosen to minimize civilian casualties and damage. U.S. Defense Secretary Cheney stated at a news briefing on January 23 that, in contrast to Iraq's use of "highly inaccurate" Scud missiles, "we've carefully chosen our targets and we've bombed them with precision."

...At a briefing on January 27, Gen. Schwarzkopf said:

I think we've stated all along that we're being absolutely as careful as we can not only in the way we are going about executing our air campaign, but in the type of armament we're using. We're using the appropriate weapon against the appropriate targets. We're beingvery, very careful in our direction of attacks to avoid damage of any kind to civilian installations. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP3.htm

Daytime bombing of infrastucture increased civilian risk.

[B]ombing by coalition forces during daytime hours of bridges and other targets in populated areas of Iraq suggests a failure to use all possible means to spare the civilian population, particularly because allied aircraft had the capacity to, and did, fly sorties at night. ...[A] greater number of civilians reasonably could have been expected to be using bridges and shopping in market areas during the day. The lack of electricity in most of Iraq during the war, coupled with the difficulty of securing gasoline for private automobiles, meant that by the time darkness fell most civilians were at home or in air-raid shelters. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP3.htm

One Hundred Killed in Daytime Attack on Bridge in Southern City
A daytime attack on a bridge in Nasiriyya in southern Iraq in mid-afternoon killed scores of civilians who were crossing the bridge at the time. Dr. Rajha Thamer, who worked in Nasiriyya during the war, told The New York Times that his hospital treated 180 casualties from the bombing, 100 of whom died. He noted that many civilians were crossing the bridge when the bomb fell:

"I was in my office" at 3 pm, he said, just as thousands of civilians were walking home, many of them trekking across the bomb-cratered Euphrates River bridge because it would no longer support vehicles, when the bomb struck. "By the time I got there, there were hundreds of people in the river," Dr. Thamer said.

Describing the same incident, one journalist wrote during the war:

At 3 pm, when traffic was heavy, several fighter bombers appeared from nowhere and began to nosedive. By the time the sirens let out their warning wail, it was too late. The arch of the bridge, torn from the support of its metal pillars, fell into the muddy waters of the Euphrates, taking with it lorries, cars and people. Witnesses said 47 bodies have been found. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP3.htm

Scores of Civilians Killed in Flawed Attack on Bridge in Western Iraq
Middle East Watch interviewed three eyewitnesses to the bombing of a bridge in Falluja, a city on the Euphrates River west of Baghdad, that left scores of civilians dead. According to a Sudanese worker, 26, who had lived in Falluja for 14 months and worked at a poultry company, there are no air raid shelters in the city. He told MEW that in Falluja a new concrete bridge for vehicles was attacked a week or more before the February 14 bombing raid in which local residents said some 200 civilians were killed. The concrete bridge was about one km from the market. This bridge was bombed at night and there were no civilian casualties, he said.

A steel bridge for vehicles and pedestrians spanned the Euphrates not far from the market; a post office tower was nearby. (The post office was bombed three days later, he said.) The market had hundreds of vendors, mostly women, selling a variety of products: vegetables, food, clothes, shoes, and spare parts. Two bombs fell in the center of the market, according to the Sudanese.

He said it was "a terrible sight" -- people had lost hands, legs, or eyes; others "had their internal organs outside their bodies." There were hundreds of dead and injured, "too much people," he said. The market building's zinc roof had collapsed; some walls were completely destroyed and others were still standing. About 200 to 300 meters from the market were homes with damaged doors and windows; civilians had been injured from shrapnel and flying glass.

In a separate interview a week earlier, Middle East Watch talked with two Palestinian truck drivers who had arrived in Falluja from Baghdad shortly after the market was bombed. They had come to the city to deliver medical supplies to Falluja hospital. They arrived at the hospital, located about one km from the market, shortly after the market was bombed. They found the hospital filled with injured and dead civilians, the floors covered with blood. Among the injured were people who had lost arms or legs; others had head injuries. The doctors told them that there were 450 injured and there was no space for all of them. The hospital only had about 50 beds, and lacked electricity and water, the doctors said. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP3.htm

Scores of Civilians Killed in Daytime Attack on Bridge near Market in Southern City
During a daytime attack on one of the bridges in Samawa, a city on the Euphrates River in southern Iraq, bombs fell near a crowded market, in an open area at the edge of the river, killing over 100 civilians and injuring others.

A Sudanese driver who had lived in Samawa for 18 months told MEW that he was in the main market in the city center about 20 to 22 days after the war began when there was an airstrike on the bridge over the Euphrates River that links the market with the residential al-Baath neighborhood, where he lived. (According to testimony taken by MEW, the largest bridge in Samawa, a steel bridge for cars and trucks, was bombed four times. The bridge could no longer be used by vehicles because one attack left a large hole in the middle of the span. The steel bridge is 500 meters from a floating wooden bridge for pedestrians. The steel bridge was bombed before the pedestrian floating bridge was attacked.)

He said that the bridge had collapsed in the water and disappeared. He saw "too many" dead floating in the water and on both sides of the bridge. He saw many ambulances and civilian cars helping the wounded to the hospital. He was told that over 200 people had been killed.

Residents of Samawa make their purchases in the market during the day and the area was crowded. The Sudanese saw bodies on the side of the bridge near the market. There is an open area from the bridge to the market of about 10-15 meters before the covered portion of the market begins. Most of the fatalities he saw were in this open space on the street, near the bridge. He estimated that he saw about 80 people --children, men and women; some had lost hands or legs and some were severed in two parts. The injured were nearer to the market. All over there were women and children crying. The Sudanese said that this was the first time this area was bombed; there was a siren 15 minutes before the attack.

[Another Sudanese] saw many injured and many dead, "human pieces," as he put it. This spot was about 1.5 km from another bridge which had been totally destroyed before the bombing. There were no military installations near the area between the market and the riverside where the women and children were killed, he told MEW. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP3.htm

Scores of Workers Killed in Market Area of Southeastern City
A Sudanese mechanic interviewed by MEW described a daytime attack on February 5 which killed many civilians in a market area in al-Kut, a city 200 km southeast of Baghdad in Wasit province. The city is six km off the main highway from Baghdad to Basra, and about 3 km from the Tigris River. The mechanic worked at the al-Kut weaving factory, which produced cotton cloth.

The mechanic saw a crater in the middle of the area about five meters wide and two meters deep. He also observed that some of the buildings in the market, cinderblock with concrete roofs, had been damaged. He talked to people who had helped evacuate the injured the day before; they told him that 150 people had been killed and over 70 injured, all of whom were taken to the local hospital.

The yard had stands for coffee and tea in one corner. Workers also bought food at the stalls in the market; the workers were accustomed to sitting in the open area and eating between shifts. There were no tall buildings anywhere near the area; all the buildings were one or two stories. The post office was "far away. There were no government or military buildings or emplacements...there was nothing but a market there," the Sudanese said. He said that the weaving factory -- the only factory in al-Kut -- employed 3,000 workers in three shifts. The factory itself, a one-story building, is located about six km from the site of the bombing. The tallest building in al-Kut is three stories. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP3.htm

Morning Bombing Near Crowded Market Area in Basra
Chapter Five [of the Human Rights Watch Report] contains testimony about two missiles that landed in the Ashshar market near downtown Basra in January: the first at night and the second just before noon the next day. MEW also obtained testimony from Tunisian workers about bombing in the same area on or about February 6 and 7. Both attacks of these attacks took place at about 10:30 am.

During the first raid, the market was full of people shopping for vegetables, food, clothing, jewelry. Although they insisted that there were no military installations near the market, the Tunisians had a theory: they thought that the planes were aiming at an unfinished construction site in the market whose columns might have appeared to be rockets. They had seen the site before it was bombed. The construction had commenced four years ago but was never completed. The vegetable market was across the street from this site. Other than this construction site there was no bridge, post office or other conceivable military target or governmental structure anywhere in the vicinity.

There was no one in the abandoned construction site itself when the attack took place. The columns at the site were destroyed and the foundations were heaved up. The damage to civilians was less than might be expected because the construction site was surrounded by a concrete wall, about two meters high, which contained some of the blast. But pieces of concrete and shrapnel flew into the market; the blast also blew off doors and the zinc roof of the structure. Vegetables, meat, and other products were scattered everywhere. Worst hit were the street vendors, according to the Tunisians, who saw blood on the sidewalk after the bombing. They heard there were injured and dead, but they did not see any casualties. The market cleared out and no one was there when bombs dropped the next day, at the same location, they told MEW.

Yemeni students interviewed by Middle East Watch said that this market was bombed about four times before they left Basra on February 7. One student remarked that some of the craters were as large as swimming pools; in a film made of his trip to Iraq from February 2 to 8, Ramsey Clark photographed a swimming-pool-sized crater half-filled with water in the market of Basra, where it was reported that eight were killed and 40 injured. The crater size suggests that the ordnance dropped may have been a 2,000-pound guided bomb: the GBU-14, one of the 2,000-pound "smart bombs" used during Operation Desert Storm, "can blast away more than 8,500 cubic feet of material, leaving a hole the size of a large suburban swimming pool." Press reports also noted the bombing of vegetable markets in Basra. Dharm Paull, a 30-year-old accountant, was interviewed by The Washington Post after he evacuated to Jordan. He said that several bombs had hit Basra's vegetable market. Indian evacuees interviewed by The Guardian said that a vegetable market and food warehouses had been bombed in Basra, in addition to Shu'aiba refinery, military sites, roads, the port and two television towers. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP3.htm

Daytime Bombing of Bridges in Basra
MEW collected testimony about the daytime bombing of two bridges in Basra, both close to hospitals. At lunchtime on or about January 28, an Indian construction worker who lived in Basra was shopping and noticed three or four white aircraft coming in. He watched the planes dive and saw one of them bomb a 50-meter-long bridge near Basra Hospital. He told MEW he was standing about 50 meters from the bridge.

Tunisian workers described an attack on a bridge that meets al-Kornash Street near the General Teaching Hospital in Basra at around 7:30 in the morning on or about January 26. Three bombs were dropped and none of them hit the bridge, according to the Tunisians. One of the off-target bombs, which left a crater five meters wide, landed near the back of the hospital, killing three patients. The next attack on the bridge was carried out the following night at 8:30; four bombs were dropped, and once again all of them missed the bridge . - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP3.htm

Scores of Civilians, Waiting for Cooking Gas, Killed and Injured During Daytime Attack
At 3:30 in the afternoon, in the middle of the third week after the start of the war, an area east of Hilla was bombed. The apparent military targets were large grey rectangular oil storage tanks, supported on concrete columns, according to testimony taken by MEW. The site also included a distribution point where civilians queued up to purchase gas for cooking and heating. At the time of the attack, many people were at the site and some 200 civilians were killed or injured, according to what witnesses told a Sudanese poultry yard worker who had lived in Hilla for nine months. One of the witnesses was a housemate of the Sudanese, who was nearby when the attacked occurred and rushed to the site, where he saw "many injured and dead." A nearby hospital also was damaged in the attack.

The Sudanese visited the site the next day and saw a large crater 30 meters from the storage tanks. "Everything in the vicinity wascompletely burned," he said, including all eight storage tanks. The windows in some cars about 30 meters outside the station were shattered from the blast. There were no houses nearby.

In a separate interview, a 25-year-old Egyptian who worked at a cinderblock factory in Karbala confirmed aspects of the account provided by the Sudanese. He visited Hilla on or about February 17 and he, too, saw damage from bombing that had occurred, he was told, a few days before, at the gas distribution station at the entrance to the town. He said that the station had oil storage tanks on large columns. The bombs fell on the tanks, which exploded and burned, destroying much of the area. He saw about 15 to 20 charred cars. The Egyptian was told that over 75 civilians were killed and 15 injured when the site was attacked. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP3.htm

Civilian Factory in Southern City Bombed in Afternoon; Seven Killed
An allied attack on an underwear-manufacturing factory in Hilla at 2:00 in the afternoon, on the third day of the war, killed seven administrative workers. The casualty toll would have been higher, but the normal shift of 200 workers had been dismissed by management at noon on the day of the bombing and told to report back to work in five or six days. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP3.htm

Legal Standards, Conclusions and Unanswered Questions

To comply with customary law principles regarding precautionary steps to be taken to spare civilians, and their own often-stated policy about minimizing civilian casualties during Operation Desert Storm, Middle East Watch believes that coalition air forces should have refrained -- at least once their self-proclaimed air supremacy was achieved early in the air war -- from attacks during daytime hours on targets, such asbridges, and factories not being used in direct support of military operations, where civilians were likely to be present.

By way of comparison, the ICRC Commentary to Article 57 of Protocol I notes that during World War II factories in occupied German territory were bombed on days or at times when the buildings were empty, in order to destroy the structures without killing the workers. It states: "It is clear that the precautions prescribed here will be of greatest importance in urban areas because such areas are most densely populated."

Allied air forces clearly had the capability to execute attacks with precision-guided weapons at night. In fact, it was announced in mid-February that U.S. fighter-bombers, equipped with "enhanced night-vision sensors," were dropping laser-guided bombs on Iraqi military targets such as armored and mechanized Republican Guard divisions... - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP3.htm

Who was responsible for decision making about the time of day to execute attacks against specific military targets in or near cities and towns in Iraq? Were civilian casualties foreseeable in such cases, and was the varying likelihood of civilian casualties taken into account in the decisionmaking process about the time of day to attack?

In the cases of bridges used by civilian vehicular and pedestrian traffic, was consideration given to launching attacks at night? If not, why not?

Why were the attacks on the bridges in Nasiriyya, Falluja and Samawa carried out in the afternoon, particularly when aerial reconnaissance would have indicated that the bridges in Falluja and Samawa had crowded public market areas nearby? Similarly, why were daytime attacks executed near crowded market areas in Basra and al-Kut? Were pilots ordered to examine the target area visually prior to releasing their munitions to determine whether civilians were present in large numbers? If not, why not?

Why was the factory in Hilla attacked at approximately 2:00 in the afternoon? Was the likelihood of civilian casualties anticipated from this attack, given the timeof day that the mission was executed? If so, were civilian casualties deemed acceptable and, if so, why?

Regarding all daytime attacks launched by allied air forces against fixed targets in or near populated areas, did the circumstances permit prior warning of the attack in order to protect the civilian population? If not, what specific circumstances were prevailing that would have jeopardized the success of the attacks, had warnings been given?

The critical question is whether the allied air forces did everything feasible in choosing means and methods of attack to minimize civilian casualties and damage, as required by the laws of war. Given the well-publicized technologically advanced munitions available to the allied forces in this conflict, Middle East Watch believes that the most discriminating weapons should have been used in attacks against military targets in populated civilian areas. However, although U.S. military spokespersons fostered the public impression during the war that only precision bombing was being used in these cases, no hard facts have emerged from the Pentagon to substantiate this view. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP3.htm

The Need for a Definition: What Constituted a "Successful" Attack on a Target?

In the early days of the war, allied spokespersons consistently claimed an 80 percent "success rate" for combat sorties over Iraq. "Success," however, was not necessarily a measure of the accuracy an aircraft achieved in destroying or even hitting an assigned target and --importantly -- did not foreclose the possibility of civilian casualties and damage from such an attack. The Independent reported from Saudi Arabia that the 80 percent success rate was not an indication that a target had been destroyed:

The 80 per cent is the statistic for the number of times aircraft unload their bombs over the target -- not the accuracy of the hit. Air force personnel in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province...state this bluntly enough when they are certain of anonymity.

And in a story the same day from Washington, The Independent noted that the use of the word "effective" did not mean that a target was destroyed, explaining that the terms used by military briefers were technical concepts, capable of creating false impressions for an uninformed public:

They have been using military jargon, and in that case, words such as "performance" and "effective" are strictly technical terms. A different set of accounting words assess actual damage to the targets.

For a missile, for example, good performance means it got off the ground, flew faultlessly to its target and landed on or around the target. Each missile has what is called "circular error probable" or CEP, a circle within which it is supposed to land. But, that does not mean it destroyed the target, or even disabled it.

Further, U.S. military officials interviewed by The Washington Post admitted that the "success rate" of bombing missions was a reflection of "the judgment of returning pilots that they correctly sighted their targets and released their munitions." Several sources told the Post that the assessment of targets successfully destroyed was "much lower" than the reported success rates. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP3.htm

The effects of and costs of the weapons used

It is not yet known, for example, the extent to which cost and availability were factors in the choice of weapons used in civilian areas. Precision munitions are costly, ranging from $50,000 to $100,000 each, while each Tomahawk cruise missile has a price tag of $1.6 million. In contrast, conventional high-explosive bombs are less expensive and available in "vast quantities." One Pentagon officialsaid a dumb bomb "costs less than $1 a pound--it's cheaper than hamburger."

Whether precision-guided or conventional, high-explosive munitions of the type used in Operation Desert Storm have enormous destructive power at the point of impact. One-thousand-pound bombs can create craters 35 feet wide and blast shrapnel in a 600-foot radius. Two-thousand-pound bombs are capable of blasting a crater 50 feet wide and 36 feet deep, and throwing deadly shrapnel within a 1,200-foot radius. One precision bomb in use was the GBU-15, a 2000-pound bomb which can be guided by an infrared system or an electro-optical system that includes a television camera in its nose. The bomb "can blast away more than 8,500 cubic feet of material, leaving a hole the size of a large suburban swimming pool." The reports of journalists in Iraq and the accounts of former residents of Iraq interviewed by Middle East Watch indicate that bombs with similar cratering power fell in populated areas of Basra, Iraq's second-largest city.

One factor in evaluating the likelihood of civilian casualties is a bomb's "lethal blast range," which varies with the weight of the bomb's explosive material. For example, a 200 kg bomb has a lethal range of 9.7 meters -- that is, 100 percent mortality can be expected for anyone withinthis range. Beyond the immediate lethal range, there is the additional danger of secondary injuries from shrapnel travelling at high velocity:

Secondary blast injuries are those that result from projectiles set in motion by the blast. Many types of material may act as missiles, including stones, splinters of wood or glass, and pieces of metal. The pieces may range in size from fine dust to large chunks. These projectiles may or may not penetrate the body.

Another factor that can be used to assess likely civilian casualties is the "effective casualty radius" -- ECR -- of a bomb or missile. The U.S. Army defines ECR as "the radius of a circle about the point of detonation in which it may normally be expected that 50 percent of the exposed personnel will become casualties." Based on the ECR, a "safety zone" can be calculated for each type of munitions -- the area beyond the detonation point in which civilians or friendly forces can be considered safe from harm. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute described the safety-zone range for a bomb of 250 kilograms as follows:

[A] typical 250 kg bomb has an effective casualty radius of about 30 meters against troops in the open (i.e., it is expected to incapacitate 50% of persons within 30 meters of the explosion), but individual fragments may travelmuch further. To cope with the dispersion of fragments and aiming errors, a safety zone of about 1000 to 3000 meters is required, depending on bombing tactics (high or low level), type of aircraft and other factors." - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP3.htm

The Inaccurate Bombing of Bridges in Iraq: Avoidable Civilian Losses

Iraqi civilians may have paid a high price for the allies' initial attempts to destroy bridges in Iraq with unguided, general-purpose bombs. During the air war, Middle East Watch obtained testimony from former residents of Iraq who described residential buildings and other civilian objects, including hospitals, destroyed or damaged by bombs that missed bridges by 200 to 400 meters or more, often resulting in civilian deaths and injuries. These accounts are included in Chapters Three and Five. Middle East Watch does not know the type of munitions that were used to attack each of these bridges. We believe that in each case the United States and other allied forces should disclose information about the type of bombs used to attack bridges that were located in proximity to civilian structures and the civilian population. If precision weapons were not used, MEW calls on the Pentagon and allied commands to explain why the choice of unguided munitions in a populated area was deemed compatible with the legal duty to take a feasible precautions to avoid civilian casualties.

Iraq's bridges were attacked early in the air war: the bombing of the bridges, particularly across the Euphrates River, was a key tactic in the allies' effort to disrupt or sever supply lines to Iraqi troops massed in Kuwait and north of the Kuwait-Iraq border. In the war's first week,however, The Washington Post reported that "relatively few" precision bombs were used to attack bridges:

Many Navy "dumb" bombs dropped by F/A-18 and A-6 bombers flying from the Persian Gulf to the Basra area missed their targets, a senior Pentagon official said, and as a result supplies continued to pour into Kuwait until early [February].

Gen. Schwarzkopf reported at a briefing on January 30 that 36 bridges in Iraq were targeted and 33 of them had been attacked with over 790 sorties. "Obviously," he said, "by shutting off the bridges, we shut off the supply lines that supply the forces in southern Iraq and Kuwait." He then showed a video of an attack on a railroad bridge. "We try to hit right near the shore," he said, "because that's the most difficult to repair and does the most damage if you get in at that point."

What Gen. Schwarzkopf failed to mention was that pilots' instructions to hit "right near the shore" must be balanced against the greater likelihood of civilian casualties in such attacks in the event that ordnance fell wide of the intended target. Since over 20 sorties were launched per bridge, it is obvious that a fair number of the bombs missed their targets. For example, in the daytime attack on a bridge near the bank of the Euphrates River in Samawa -- described in the previous section of this chapter -- over 100 women and children who were washing clothes and playing "right near the shore" are believed to have been killed.

The evidence collected by Middle East Watch about the inaccurate bombing of bridges -- while not comprehensive -- indicates that the initial decision to use unguided, general-purpose bombs against these targets when they were in close proximity to Iraqi civilians caused avoidable casualties and damage. Given the U.S. Air Force's knowledge that "dumb" bombs lack the accuracy of precision weapons, the choice of this ordnance for attacking bridges in populated areas should be explained, particularly in view of the Air Force's own rules that requiring "all feasible precautions" to be undertaken in the choice of means and methods of attack to avoid or minimize the incidental loss of civilian life and damage to civilian objects. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP3.htm

THE LACK OF WARNING PRIOR TO ATTACK: THE AMERIYYA AIR RAID SHELTER

The bombing of the air raid shelter in the residential Ameriyya quarter of western Baghdad took place at approximately 4:30 am on February 13, killing between 200 and 300 civilians, according to various Iraqi reports -- the highest reported death toll from a single allied attack during the entire air war. Under the principles established in international humanitarian law, the U.S. should have taken steps to ensure that what at least previously was known to be a civilian defense shelter was no longer considered a safe haven by the civilian population. Specifically, under the principles of the laws of war, the Ameriyya shelter should have been protected from attack until such time as U.S. forces gave a warning to the Iraqi civilian population that the facility was no longer considered a protected shelter and provided sufficient time to elapse so that warning could be heeded.

The air raid shelter was located in the Ameriyya district of western Baghdad, in what journalists have described as a middle-class neighborhood. A nursery school, a supermarket and a mosque were located in the immediate vicinity. The structure was built as a civilian bomb shelter in 1984 and, according to the U.S. military, later reinforcedwith a concrete and steel roof ten feet thick. Peter Arnett of CNN reported that at the building's entrance was a sign: Department of Civilian Defense Public Shelter No. 25. Television footage also showed a sign marked "shelter" in Arabic and English.

The building was attacked with two 2,000-pound bombs from F-117A aircraft: the first reportedly hit the air vent of the facility, weakening the structure; the second tore through the roof and exploded inside. Dr. Fayek Amin Bakr, the director of the Baghdad Forensic Institute, put the death toll at 310, some 130 of whom were children. In a report to the United Nations Human Rights Committee in June 1991, Iraq stated that 204 citizens were killed in the attack.

After the attack, Abdel Razzaq Hassan al-Janabi, who identified himself as a supervisor of the shelter, described how the building was used by civilians:

Each evening since the start of the war, local people would come along with their food, blankets, pillows and their things to the bunker. Nothing had ever fallen on [al-Ameriyya], but people preferred to spend the night down there for safety's sake. Last night, there must have been at least 400 people inside....There are shelters like this in lots of parts of Baghdad. They have room for2,000 people. We always thought they were the best civilian shelters in the city.

Middle East Watch interviewed former residents of Baghdad who provided testimony indicating that women and children used the facility since the war began, even prior to the end of January. Whether some of these individuals were family members of Baath party officials is not known, but at least one family that used the shelter had recently arrived in Baghdad from Kuwait. Of course, even if the users of the shelter were family members of Iraqi government officials, that would not change their status as civilians who are exempt from attack.

Middle East Watch interviewed Fawzi Muhtasseb, whose entire immediate family -- his wife and five children, aged six to 15 years, four sons and a daughter -- perished in the attack.115 Mr. Muhtasseb, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin, had lived in Kuwait for 16 years, where he owned a small retail textile business. He and his family relocated to Iraq on January 10 because his business was no longer profitable in Kuwait, and rented a house in the Ameriyya neighborhood. According to Mr. Muhtasseb, two or three days after the aerial bombardment of Baghdad began, he and his family began to spend the night in the Ameriyya shelter because the bombing was so intense.

He told Middle East Watch that he spent the first few nights at the shelter with his family, but that he and other men soon stopped going, in order to afford greater privacy to the women and children. (It is uncomfortable for Muslim men and women to share, and sleep together in, close quarters with individuals who are not related to them by blood or marriage, particularly in a space where there are no partitions to separate families and to provide privacy.) Mr. Muhtasseb would take his family to the building at about 5 pm and they would return at about 7 am the next day. Mr. Muhtasseb said that the building was a public shelter, with a sign outside describing it as a shelter; other signs in the neighborhood gave directions to the building. He described the building as a three-story structure: one above ground and two underground. The top floor contained the sleeping area, configured as one large hall without partitions. There were triple bunkbeds for children, enclosed areas for bathrooms, a kitchen and a television. Food and water were kept on the middle floor; food was not prepared at the building, and families would eat at home during the day. They would, however, bring sandwiches in case the children became hungry.

Mr. Muhtasseb said that on the night of February 12, he stayed at home and his wife and children went to the shelter. When they did not return home the next morning, he went to the shelter, knowing that the neighborhood had been bombed the night before. He said that he was never able to identify his family members because the bodies of the victims were charred beyond recognition.

A Sudanese student of veterinary medicine at Baghdad University told Middle East Watch that he had lived in the Ameriyya neighborhood because it was close to his college, where he had studied since 1986.118 He said that he had never been inside the building, but that "everyone knew it was a shelter." He said the sign outside, marking it as a civilian shelter, was very old; the same sign was there during the Iran-Iraq war. The building was concrete and square-shaped, and looked like a very large hall. He told Middle East Watch that the wife and six children ofone of his neighbors were killed in the bombing, and that he visited the homes of other neighbors in mourning.

The videotape of the victims pulled out of the Ameriyya shelter was sanitized by television stations before it was aired. An American journalist who is a medical writer said that charred and severely burned bodies were evident in the unedited tapes:

[T]hey showed scenes of incredible carnage. Nearly all the bodies were charred into blackness; in some cases the heat had been so great that entire limbs were burned off. Among the corpses were those of at least six babies and then children, most of them so severely burned that their gender could not be determined. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP3.htm

Legal Standards and Conclusions

• a warning should have been given prior to the attack: Middle East Watch recognizes that civilian objects may lawfully lose their immunity from direct attack if they are used to make an effective contribution to enemy military action, although civilians in those objects are still protected. However, to strengthen the customary law principle of civilian immunity, Protocol I contains certain specific rules giving special protection to civilian defense shelters. As noted in Chapter One, the U.S. supports the principle in Protocol I that civilian defense organizations and their personnel should be respected and protected as part of the civilian population.

...Article 65 of Protocol I builds on these principles by providing that the special protection afforded civil defense structures ceases in the event that a shelter is used for military purposes "only after a warning has been given setting, whenever appropriate, a reasonable time-limit, and after such warning has remained unheeded."

...the United States should have issued a public warning that it considered the one-time civil-defense shelter to be a military target and should have provided time for civilians to heed that warning. Because such a warning was not given in the case of the attack on the Ameriyya facility, despite conceded U.S. knowledge that the building had at least in the past been used as a civil defense shelter, between 200 and 300 civilian lives were needlessly lost.

• neither iraq's failure properly to mark the shelter, nor the presence per se of military personnel at the site, deprived it of its protected status: Protocol I recommends that civil defense facilities be clearly marked with an internationally recognized symbol. Article 66 instructs parties to the conflict to "endeavour to adopt and implement methods and procedures which will make it possible to recognize civilian shelters as well as civil defence personnel, buildings and materiel on which the international distinctive sign of civil defence is displayed." The international civil defense symbol is an equilateral blue triangle placed on an orange ground. Annex I of Protocol I recommends that the symbol "shall be as large as appropriate under the circumstances. The distinctive sign shall, whenever possible, be displayed on flat surfaces or on flags visible from as many directions and from as far away as possible....At night or when visibility is reduced, the sign may be lighted or illuminated; it may also be made of materials rendering it recognizable by technical means of detection."

Middle East Watch is not aware that Iraqi civilian shelters have been marked with the international blue-and-orange symbol; regarding the Ameriyya building in particular, one U.S. official said that three black circles, resembling bomb holes, had been painted on its roof, to suggest that it already had been attacked.129 However, Iraq's failure properlyto identify civilian civil defense buildings in itself did not relieve the U.S. military of its obligation to take appropriate precautions to avoid harming civilians who had taken refuge in the facility because the U.S. military admitted knowledge of the building's prior use as a strictly civilian shelter.

Article 65 of Protocol I states that the protection afforded to civilian civil defense buildings, shelters and personnel terminates if "they commit or are used to commit, outside their proper tasks, acts harmful to the enemy." However, the presence of military personnel at civil defense facilities -- which the U.S. claims was the case at al-Ameriyya --does not per se lift the immunity of such buildings from attack unless the military personnel are engaged in military activity unrelated to civil defense. Article 65 states in pertinent part: "The following shall not be considered as acts harmful to the enemy: (a) that civil defence tasks are carried out under the direction or control of military authorities; (b) that civilian civil defence personnel co-operate with military personnel in the performance of civil defence tasks, or that some military personnel are attached to civilian civil defence organizations...."

The need for such precautions is underscored by the doctrine that, in the case of any uncertainty that a civilian object is being used for military purposes, it should be presumed to be used by civilians. This principle is reaffirmed in Article 52 of Protocol I, which provides:

In the case of doubt whether an object which is normally dedicated to civilian purposes, such as a place of worship, a house or other dwelling or a school, is being used to make an effective contribution to military action, it shall be presumed not to be so used.

• the use of civilians to shield military targets is prohibited: U.S. military and civilian spokesmen claimed that the shelter was a legitimate military target because they believed it was being used as a military command center. Iraqi military command-and-control facilities were targeted and attacked since the first days of the air war. Gen. Kelly said on February 13 that the Iraqis moved their command centers to alternative facilities as a result of the allied bombing campaign: "What you are seeing on TV today [the Ameriyya building] is one of those alternate command-and-control facilities that we knew was active."

This implicitly raises the issue of shielding, a violation of the rules of war. In order to give effect to the principle of civilian immunity, Article 28 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, ratified by all parties to the Gulf conflict, effectively enjoins the parties from using civilians "to render certain points or areas immune from military operations." This means that civilians may not be used to shield a defensive position, to hide military objectives, or to screen an attack. These principles are reaffirmed and codified in Article 58 of Protocol I. By using foreign civilians and prisoners-of-war to shield military targets from attack, Iraq violated its obligations under the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions. Iraq thus would have borne the primary responsibility for civilian casualties that might have resulted from legitimate attacks by coalition forces against shielded military objectives. However, even if it were shown that the Ameriyya building was in part a military facility, civilians in the shelter still retained protection under the rule of proportionality.

• the continuing relevance of the rule of proportionality: A statement by Gen. Schwarzkopf in the context of the Ameriyya bombing raises concern about whether U.S. forces applied the rule of proportionality in selecting targets. On February 13, after the shelter bombing, he said in reference to Iraqi efforts to shield military forces behind civilians:

[R]ight now they've dispersed their airplanes into residential areas, they've moved their headquarters into schools, they've moved their headquarters into hotelbuildings, they've put guns and things like that on top of high-rise apartment buildings. Under the Geneva Convention, that gives us a perfect right to go after those things if we want to do them. We haven't done it.

Gen. Schwarzkopf was correct when he stated that legitimate military targets, even when shielded by civilians, are subject to direct attack. However, he was incorrect when he suggested that the legitimacy of a target provides unlimited license to attack it. Individual civilians and civilian objects located within or near the target still retain the benefits of the rule of proportionality as it applies to collateral civilian casualties and damage to civilian objects. Article 51 (4) and (5)(b) of Protocol I, in codifying customary law, characterizes and prohibits as "indiscriminate" an attack that may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.

Similarly, the customary principles embodied in Article 57 (2)(a)(iii) and (b) of Protocol I bound Gen. Schwarzkopf and his subordinates to refrain from launching, or to cancel, such a disproportionate or indiscriminate attack. In this respect, Gen. Schwarzkopf's February 13 comment was an erroneous interpretation of the principles of customary law. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP3.htm

Deprivation of utilities and services

Electricity deprivation: Persons affected
Severe 5,766,000
Moderate 14,520,000
Total 20,286,000

Gas deprivation:
Severe 12,402,000
Moderate 6,018,000
Total 18,420,000

Water deprivation:
Severe 7,692,000
Moderate 10,254,000
Total 17,946,000

- http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP4.htm

The allies' air war wreaked major destruction on Iraq's oil industry and modern infrastructure. For example, by the end of the war only two of Iraq's 20 electricity-generating plants were functioning, generating less than four percent of the pre-war output of 9,000 megawatts. The report of the United Nations mission that visited Iraq in March 1991 concluded:

The recent conflict has wrought near-apocalyptic results upon the economic infrastructure of what had been, until January 1991, a rather highly urbanized and mechanized society. Now, most means of modern life support have been destroyed or rendered tenuous. Iraq has, for some time to come, been relegated to a pre-industrial age, butwith all the disabilities of post-industrial dependency on an intensive use of energy and technology.

Estimates about the extent of damage in Iraq vary wildly. Then-Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Saadoun Hammadi in February put the cost of repairing the damage in Iraq from the air war -- to roads, bridges, electrical-generating plants, oil refineries and other facilities -- at $200 billion. One U.S. official interviewed by Reuters indicated that such a figure was not off the mark:

The Iraqis spent at least $160 billion on infrastructure projects in the 1980s. Assuming that most of them have been damaged or destroyed, reconstruction would cost considerably more in 1991 dollars. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP4.htm

...if we look back to the last U.S. war with Iraq, we know that the Pentagon planned and carried out knowing and documenting the likely impact on civilians. In one case, Pentagon planners anticipated that striking Iraq's civilian infrastructure would cause " Increased incidence of diseases [that] will be attributable to degradation of normal preventive medicine, waste disposal, water purification/ distribution, electricity, and decreased ability to control disease outbreaks…." The Defense Intelligence Agency document (from the Pentagon's Gulflink website), "Disease Information -- Subject: Effects of Bombing on Disease Occurrence in Baghdad" is dated 22 January 1991, just six days after the war began. It itemized the likely outbreaks to include: "acute diarrhea" brought on by bacteria such as E. coli, shigella, and salmonella, or by protozoa such as giardia, which will affect "particularly children," or by rotavirus, which will also affect "particularly children." And yet the bombing of the water treatment systems proceeded, and indeed, according to UNICEF figures, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, "particularly children," died from the effects of dirty water. - http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0802-02.htm

Perspective on pre-war life in Iraq

In the months prior to the war, the attention of the Bush Administration and the media was focused on Iraq's brutal occupation of Kuwait, the formidable power of the Iraqi military, and the regime's abysmal human rights record. The public learned practically nothing else about the Republic of Iraq, a highly urbanized and developed nation of 168,000 square miles, slightly larger than the state of California, and thus had little appreciation of the damage to be wrought.

Iraq's population was estimated at almost 18.8 million as of July 1990. Over 46 percent of the population is under the age of 16; some 5 million Iraqi children are under five years old. Iraq's economy also absorbed over one million third-country nationals -- workers and their dependents -- prior to the outbreak of the Gulf crisis. By January 1991, approximately 750,000 foreigners remained, including 80,000 Palestinians. Three cities had a population of over a half-million by 1980: Baghdad, Basra and Mosul. By 1987, seventy percent of Iraq's residents lived in urban areas, compared to 64 percent in 1977 and 44 percent in1965. Even harsh critics of the Ba'athist regime acknowledge its accomplishments in transforming Iraq into a modern state:

The Iraqi Baath not only built up the fifth largest army in the world and an enormous, pervasive secret police; it also transformed Iraq's physical infrastructure, its educational system, social relations, and its technology, industry, and science. The Baath regime provided free health and education for everyone, and it also revolutionized transport and electrified virtually every village in the country. Iraq has today a proportionately very large middle class; its intelligentsia is one of the best educated in the Arab world.

The petroleum industry was the source of 95 percent of Iraq's export earnings. Oil fueled Iraq's economy, accounting for two-thirds of the gross domestic product prior to the disruptions of the Iran-Iraq war, which included the bombing of facilities in Basra in the south. The largest and richest oil fields are located in northern Iraq, near Mosul and Kirkuk; smaller fields are near Basra. Before the Gulf war, Iraq's refineries and petrochemical plants met the country's domestic needs for refined petroleum products. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP4.htm

REPORTS OF ATTACKS ON FOOD, AGRICULTURAL AND WATER-TREATMENT FACILITIES

Middle East Watch collected eyewitness testimony and other information about allied attacks on food and grain warehouses, flour mills, a dairy factory and several water-treatment facilities in Basra. In light of any evidence that these objects were being used solely by or in direct support of Iraq's military forces, these attacks appear to violate the rules of war, particularly in the context of the severe deprivations of food faced by the Iraqi civilian population due to the United Nations embargo. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP4.htm

Reports of Attacks on Civilian Food Warehouses
During the second week of the war, four government food warehouses in Diwaniyya, a city south of Baghdad, were bombed at about 9:30 in the evening, according to a Sudanese mechanic, 30, who had lived in the city for two years. He told Middle East Watch that the warehouses were located in an isolated area about eight kilometers northof the entrance to Diwaniyya. He said that there was no military installation or activity in the immediate area, or any obvious military targets such as a bridge, telecommunications tower or anti-aircraft artillery. The warehouses were steel-framed, zinc-covered buildings, the main storage area for Diwaniyya's food.

The Sudanese saw the warehouses three days after they were bombed. He said that two of the buildings had sustained direct hits, collapsing the walls and half of the roofs; bomb craters some 15 meters (50 feet) in diameter were inside each of the buildings, suggesting that the structures may have been hit with 2,000-pound bombs. He saw large quantities of sugar, rice, flour and milk in the rubble. Civilians were not killed or injured during this bombing, he said, but local food prices subsequently rose, presumably due to shortages.

On the outskirts of Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, a large zinc-roofed government food- storage warehouse, the General Establishment for Food, was bombed on or about February 6, according to a 26-year-old Yemeni student who had lived in Basra for 18 months while studying at the Academy of Marine Sciences. He said the building was located near Amar Mohatab Street and Amar Khattab Street, about four kilometers from the al-Moakal railroad station. He lived about four kilometers from the warehouse and visited it two days after it was bombed. He said the building had been completely burned; he saw charred food, cardboard food boxes and fork lifts inside the structure, which was surrounded by a fence. He said that Basra was usually bombed between 8 pm and 4 am and that the destruction was widespread. Rice and bread were scarce, food was rationed and there was little water in the city; he left for Baghdad on February 9. An Iraqi exile who arrived in Basra from Iran on March 1 told MEW that the tin-food (canned food) factory near the al-Ma'qil quarter had been bombed. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP4.htm

Report of Attack on Dairy Products Plant
A Sudanese truck driver, 28, who had lived in Iraq for over two and a half years, told MEW that a new dairy factory, some 30 kilometers north of Basra, had been bombed about two weeks after thewar began. The factory, a two-story building constructed of steel beams and zinc, was about 50 meters off the road, located in an area of flat desert. A poultry-raising farm with three medium-sized sheds was 500 meters to a kilometer away. The Sudanese was driving past the building at about 9 am and saw fire and smoke pouring from the structure. However, he said he did not hear any explosions or see any dead or injured civilians near the site. All that remained of the building were the beams, which were still standing; delivery trucks parked nearby had not been damaged. The Sudanese was familiar with the plant through other Sudanese who worked there as drivers. Iraqi army camps with anti-aircraft artillery emplacements, located about a kilometer away, were the nearest unambiguous military target known to be in the vicinity. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP4.htm

Reports of Attacks on Water-Treatment Facilities
During a visit to Basra in May, journalist Ed Vulliamy reported that water-treatment plants in Iraq's second-largest city had been bombed, and that the allies targeted both the transformers and the turbines of these facilities. "It was not merely the transformers in the water plants that were bombed," he wrote, "but the giant Japanese-built turbines themselves, which cannot be repaired under the embargo." An Iraqi exile who arrived in Basra from Iran on March 1 told MEW that the main water-supply facility in the densely populated Bratha'iyya quarter of the city had been damaged beyond repair. He said that the system in nearby Tenuma "was only hit by machine guns from the planes, so we were able to repair it." British journalist Patrick Cockburn told MEW that the water facilities near the al-Khalij Hotel were partially destroyed. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP4.htm

Agricultural Sector Facilities: Reports of Attacks and Effects
Despite Iraq's dependence on both imported wheat and rice for 82 percent of total consumption, these and other grains, such as barley and corn, were also planted and harvested locally. Wheat is planted from November to mid-December and harvested from May to mid-June. Wheat seeds are distributed to farmers by the Ministry of Agriculture at seed distribution centers through the Iraqi Company for Seed Production. For the winter wheat planting, farmers were asked to submit their applications for seeds to local Agriculture Ministry offices beginning in mid-September.

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) reported that flour milling facilities and grain storage warehouses were destroyed during the air war, and predicted that the 1991 grain harvest would suffer from the effects of the war:

Even if the wheat yield is substantially increased, Iraq will have trouble harvesting and delivering it....[W]ith limited fuel available commercially, farmers will have difficulty operating the farm tractors, combines, and trucks to get the grain out of the fields and to the mills.

United Nations representatives who visited Iraq in March reached a similar conclusion:

This year's grain harvest in June is seriously compromised for a number of reasons, including failure of irrigation/drainage (no power for pumps, lack of spare parts); lack of pesticides and fertilizers (previously imported); and lack of fuel and spare parts for the highly-mechanized and fuel-dependent harvesting machines.

The team warned that if the 1991 grain harvest fails or falls short, "widespread starvation conditions become a real possibility."

Iraq's agricultural sector relied on imported vegetable seeds. During the March visit, the U.N. representatives inspected seed warehouses that were destroyed during the air war, and Iraqi agricultural authorities told them that all stocks of potato and vegetable seeds in the country were depleted. The U.N. team also reported that Iraq's only laboratory that produced veterinary vaccines -- an FAO-funded facility -- was destroyed during the war. The team inspected the center and said that the bombing had destroyed all stocks of vaccines at the complex. By March 1991, Iraq was judged to be in urgent need of imported seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, veterinary drugs, and agricultural machinery, equipment and spare parts. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reported in July that Iraq required some $500 million to rebuild or replace damaged or destroyed agricultural sector facilities and supplies, including machinery, irrigation systems, fertilizers and animal feed.

One physician who participated in the Arab American Medical Association delegation to Iraq in May recorded in her notes that there was "a shortage of essential food items throughout Iraq." The food thatwas available was high-priced and beyond the reach of the average family. Rationed food items, distributed by the government, "are not enough for the average family and are of inferior quality." In Saddam City, the densely packed Shiite quarter of Baghdad, "malnutrition is rampant," the doctor wrote. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP4.htm

Legal Standards
Civilian objects may not be attacked. Allied attacks on food- and agriculture-related facilities in Iraq raise serious questions about whether the destruction of these objects was a legitimate military objective under the rules of war or whether the objects were entitled to special protection deriving from the customary law principle that starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited, a principle which the United States accepts.

The only exception to the rule set forth in Article 54 is if the objects are used "as sustenance solely for the members of [an adverse Party's] armed forces" or "in direct support of military action." Even if this is the case, attacks are prohibited if they "may be expected to leave the civilian population with such inadequate food or water as to cause its starvation or force its movement." - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP4.htm

THE CRIPPLING OF THE ELECTRICAL SYSTEM

The targeting and destruction of Iraq's electricity-generating plants, including four of the country's five hydro-electric facilities, was little-discussed and never questioned during the war. To Middle East Watch's knowledge, Pentagon and Bush Administration officials never publicly offered a justification during the war for attacking and crippling most of Iraq's electrical power system -- destruction which continues to have devastating consequences for the civilian population.

After the war, in its July 1991 report, the Pentagon states that attacks on "electricity production facilities that power military and military-related industrial systems" were related to the goal of isolating and incapacitating the Iraqi regime. The report's only mention of the impact of these attacks on the civilian population is as follows:

It was recognized at the outset that this campaign would cause some unavoidable hardships for the Iraqi populace. It was impossible, for example, to destroy the electrical power supply for Iraqi command and control facilities or chemical weapons factories, yet leave untouched thatportion of the electricity supplied to the general populace.

As a modern, electricity-dependent country, Iraq was reliant on electrical power for essential services such as water purification and distribution, sewage removal and treatment, the operation of hospitals and medical laboratories, and agricultural production. Iraq's electricity consumption had quadrupled between 1968 and 1988, and rural electrification projects brought electricity to 7,000 villages throughout the country during this 20-year period. In 1981, Iraq contracted $2 billion worth of construction work to foreign companies to build hydroelectric and thermal electricity generating plants and transmission facilities. Some 30 percent of Iraq's electric power was generated by hydroelectric facilities. By 1983, Iraq produced more electricity than it consumed, and in December 1987 it became the first country in the region to export electric power. Newly constructed power lines to Turkey were expected to generate initial electricity sales of $15 millionannually; plans called for expanded transmission to Turkey and the eventual sale of electricity to Kuwait.

A Harvard University group that visited Iraq for nine days in April and May found that electricity was supplied at only 23 percent of the pre-war level, up from a mere 3 percent to 4 percent immediately after the war. By the end of June, the figure apparently had not changed; in an interview with The New York Times, Iraq's Minister of Industry, Amer Asadi, said that the level of electricity generated at that time was about 20 percent of the pre-war level, with repairs hampered by a lack of spare parts.

Hydro-electric generating plants were attacked by the allies. Investigators from Harvard University reported that four of the country's five dams were attacked; two in the first days of the war and two others in early February, with the level of damage at each facility ranging from 75 to 100 percent. Middle East Watch interviewed a filmmaker who visited northern Iraq in March and saw bomb damage to the 400-megawatt Dukan Dam on the Zab River, north of Suleimaniyya and east of Arbil in northern Iraq, which was bombed in early February. Looking up at the dam from the south, he saw a three- to four-foot wide hole on the left part of the dam's main wall. Located beneath this section of the wall are the electricity-supplying generators.

...Gen. Schwarzkopf stated that civilian needs were a consideration in limiting the scope of the destruction:

I think I should point out right here that we never had any intention of destroying all of Iraqi electrical power. Because of our interest in making sure that civilians did not suffer unduly, we felt we had to leave some of the electrical power in effect, and we've done that.

But, contrary to Gen. Schwarzkopf's words, civilians did suffer unduly as electrical power to most of the country was severed during the early allied attacks. Middle East Watch interviewed former residents of Iraq who described the lack of electricity throughout Iraq, from north to south, soon after the war began:

• Sudanese laborers who lived in al-Qayyara, an agricultural village 60 kilometers south of Mosul in northern Iraq, told Middle East Watch that the electricity and water supplies in their village were severed after the bombing started.101 They said that their village began to use diesel-powered back-up generators to pump water, but even then, water was available only every three days.
  
  
• MEW interviewed a Mauritanian woman who left Baghdad with her family two days after the bombing started for the safety of Dawaya, a small village in southern Iraq, near Nasiriyya on the Euphrates River. The family stayed with the relatives of Iraqi neighbors in a small house in Dawaya. But, the woman reported, the villagers had no electricity because of the bombing and carried water from the river to their homes, boiling it before drinking it.
  
  
• Kashmiri workers who lived in a compound in Kifl, a village near Najaf in southern Iraq, recounted that the electricity cut-off severed the village's water supply. Theysaid they helped bring water to civilians in the village from a water-purification plant they had built six months previously for their own use.
  
  
• A resident of Najaf in southern Iraq told MEW that the city's power station was attacked in the early days of the war, severing the civilians' water supply and sewage-removal facilities as well as electricity.
  
  
• In Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, there was no electricity after the first two or three days of the air war, according to a former resident. He said that the government brought water trucks into neighborhoods, and women and children lined up with buckets. He also saw people collecting water from puddles in the roads, and others drawing water from the river running through the city. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP4.htm

Looking back to WWII bombing of Germany and the connection to Iraq's case:

By the time the air war was over, Iraq was left with less than five percent of its pre-war electrical-generating capacity. This resulted in severe deprivation of clean water and sewage removal for the civilian population and paralyzed the country's entire health care system, exceeding the deprivations experienced by German civilians as a result of allied bombing during World War II.

Effects of Allied Attacks on the Electrical System
The immediate and longer-term consequences of denying almost the entire civilian population of an energy-dependent country an essential service such as electricity are grave indeed and should have been readily anticipated by the U.S. military planners of the air war. Almost a half-century ago, the consequences for civilian health of bomb damage of water, sewer and refuse disposal facilities in Germany and Japan during World War II was documented in meticulous detail in the United States Strategic Bombing Survey. The Survey -- a comprehensive studyby U.S. military and civilian experts of the effects of the air war on Germany -- was ordered by President Roosevelt and established by the U.S. Secretary of War on November 3, 1944.

Among its numerous conclusions, the Survey found that there was a "reliable and striking" correlation between the disruption of public utilities and the willingness of the German population to accept unconditional surrender. The allied bombing of Germany duringWorld War II deprived over one-third of the German pre-war population of utilities: 20 million of 69.8 million. Of this number, almost 5.8 million Germans were subjected to severe electricity deprivation, and 14.5 million to moderate deprivation. The Survey noted, for example, that damage to the environmental sanitation system in Germany created a situation that "was ripe for the development of disease into epidemic proportions....disease would have become rampant had not the Germans been forced to surrender when they did. In any event, the dread of diseaseand the hardships imposed by the lack of sanitary facilities were bound to have a demoralizing effect upon the civilian population."

Similar effects have been documented following the allied bombardment of Iraq. The United Nations reported that with the destruction of electricity-generating facilities and oil refining and storage plants, "all electrically operated installations have ceased to function." Predictably, the effects of this massive destruction on Iraq's water supply, sewage-treatment system, agricultural production and food distribution systems, and public-health system were severe and continue to be felt.

• water supply: All of Iraq's urban population had enjoyed access to safe water, although only 54 percent of the rural population was similarly served. All of Iraq's water treatment plants -- seven in Baghdad, another 238 central stations in other parts of the country, and some 1,134 smaller facilities -- operated on electricity. Some 75 percent had back-up diesel generators. The destruction of the electrical power generating plants rendered water treatment plants inoperable, except if diesel generators were available. Back-up generators had limited utility because of the lack of fuel, spare parts and maintenance workers able to travel to their jobs. The World Health Organizationestimated in March 1991 that Baghdad's water supply was at five percent of its pre-war level.

A WHO/UNICEF team that visited Iraq from February 16 to 21 described the water and sanitation situation in Baghdad as "grim." Ninety-five percent of the city's daily water needs were supplied by Tigris River water. The water was first treated at seven plants operated by electricity, then each plant would pump water into a 6,000 kilometer system of pipes. The team noted that conditions in Baghdad were similar to those in other areas of the country, but that the worst conditions were in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city.

The impediments to water treatment created by the destruction of the electrical system were compounded by the destruction of the factories that had produced the chemicals used to purify water, including chlorine. The WHO/UNICEF team noted "detailed reports that the whole of the Iraqi drinking water system is in or near collapse" and that the chemical supplies needed to treat the water were dwindling: "The chemical plants which used to supply the main treatment elements, aluminum sulphate (alum) and chlorine, have been destroyed by bombing."

• sewage treatment: The lack of electricity also brought all sewage treatment and pumping stations "to a virtual standstill," the March U.N. mission found. The WHO/UNICEF team that had visited earlier described the sanitary system in Baghdad as "critically deteriorating" and "dangerous." The sewer system operated by the movement of waste to treatment plants by 252 electrically operated pumping stations, of which192 had stand-by generators. The lack of fuel and spare parts for the generators caused the pipes to back up, flooding houses with raw sewage; sewage also overflowed at the pumping stations in large pools.

Noting that warm weather was approaching, the WHO/UNICEF team warned: "If nothing is done to remedy water supply and improve sanitation, a catastrophe could beset Iraq." On March 12 two mobile water purification and packaging units and equipment were brought to Baghdad by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). It said that the Iraqi civilian population's priority needs were sanitation and medical care.

• agricultural production and food distribution: The allied attacks on electricity-generating plants countrywide also inevitably disrupted Iraq's domestic food production and distribution systems, upon which the country increasingly relied since the international embargo imposed after the invasion of Kuwait (see previous section of this chapter for additional information). Iraq's agricultural sector, which was highly mechanized and relied on pumped-water irrigation, felt the impact of the lack of electricity and fuel. The attacks also disabled irrigation, as well as harvesting and food distribution systems. Food, grain and seed warehouses and flour mills were reportedly bombed by allied forces, creating additional disruptions. And, without electricity, food requiring refrigeration could no longer be stored.
  
  
• health-care system: Hospitals and clinics in Iraq were gravely affected by the destruction of the electrical system. Two physicians from Doctors Without Borders, a private voluntary organization based in France, visited Iraq for six days in March and reported that the "lack of energy is paralyzing the whole health care system." They visited six hospitals in Baghdad, and one hospital and five clinics in Falluja, west of Baghdad. They found the facilities operating at 5 to 10 percent of capacity, treating only emergency case; vaccines had deteriorated from lack of refrigeration, medication and other supplies were scant, and medical laboratories could not function. The ICRC also identified the need to provide support and medical supplies for hospital and dispensaries in southern Iraq as another priority.

...The director of al-Qadisiyya Hospital in Baghdad, a 325-bed facility serving the low-income Saddam City suburb, reported that... an average of 20 children were dying a day fromsevere gastroenteritis. During the air war, premature infant mortality at the hospital was 100 percent because the pediatric intensive care unit could not function due to the lack of electricity. At al-Husseini Hospital in Karbala, in southern Iraq, the group saw many children with severe malnutrition; doctors at the hospital reported that the number of gastroenteritis cases "increased by three to four times the numbers usually encountered in the summer."

Investigators from Harvard University visited hospitals and other health facilities in major cities throughout Iraq from April 28 to May 6. Based on their research, the group projected that a minimum of 170,000 children under the age of five would die in the coming year -- from gastroenteritis, cholera, typhoid and malnutrition -- as a result of thedelayed effects of the Gulf crisis and war. The figure represents a 100 percent increase in infant and child mortality since August 1990:

These projections are conservative. In all probability, the actual number of deaths of children under five will be much higher. While children under five were the focus of this study, a large increase in deaths among the rest of the population is also likely.

The immediate cause of death in most cases will be water-borne infectious disease in combination with severe malnutrition....The incidence of water-borne diseases increased suddenly and strikingly during the early months of 1991 as a result of the destruction of electrical generating plants in the Gulf War and the consequent failure of water purification and sewage treatment systems.

The Harvard team found that the public-health crisis was exacerbated by the lack of public utilities and medical supplies at health facilities around the country:

Hospitals and community health centers also lack reliable clean water, sewage disposal, and electrical power. Of the 16 functioning hospitals and community health centers that the study team surveyed, 69% have inadequate sanitation because of the damage to water purification and sewage treatment plants. There is not enough electricity for operating theaters, diagnostic facilities, sterile procedures, and laboratory equipment.

Staff at every health facility visited reported severe shortages of anesthestic agents, antibiotics, intravenous fluids, infant formula, needles, syringes, and bandages. Existing stores of heat-sensitive vaccines and medicines have been depleted by the loss of electrical power for refrigeration.

Insofar as the civilian population is concerned, it makes little or no difference whether a drinking water facility is attacked and destroyed, or is made inoperable by the destruction of the electrical plan supplying it power. In either case, civilians suffer the same effects -- they are denied the use of a public utility indispensable for their survival.

This destruction is all the more problematic given the allied air forces' supremacy and control of the skies,134 which enabled them to attack with virtual impunity any production or communication facility supporting Iraq's military effort.

Col. John A. Warden III, the deputy director of strategy, doctrine and plans for the Air Force, acknowledged that the crippling of Iraq'selectricity-generating system "gives us long-term leverage." He explained it this way:

Saddam Hussein cannot restore his own electricity. He needs help. If there are political objectives that the U.N. coalition has, it can say, "Saddam, when you agree to do these things, we will allow people to come in and fix your electricity."

Another Air Force planner admitted that the attacks also were designed to put pressure on the Iraqi people to oust Saddam Hussein:

Big picture, we wanted to let people know, "Get rid of this guy and we'll be more than happy to assist in rebuilding. We're not going to tolerate Saddam Hussein or his regime. Fix that, and we'll fix your electricity." - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP4.htm

On the illegality of such attacks

The U.S. Air Force acknowledges that a legitimate military target may not be attacked if its destruction is expected to cause excessive injury or damage to civilians and civilian objects:

Attacks are not prohibited against military objectives even though incidental injury or damage to civilians will occur, but such incidental injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects must not be excessive when compared to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. Careful balancing of interests is required between the potential military advantage and the degree of incidental injury or damage in order to preclude situations raising issues of indiscriminate attacks violating general civilian protections.

Insofar as Iraq's electrical-generating facilities were targeted not because the electricity directly supported the military effort but for the purpose of harming the civilian population as part of a strategy for using this civilian suffering to further military or political goals, the attacks were in clear violation of the most basic principles of the laws of war designed to exempt the civilian population from military attack. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP4.htm

CIVILIAN VEHICLES ON HIGHWAYS

Middle East Watch obtained eyewitness testimony about apparently indiscriminate attacks on civilian vehicles on highways in Iraq. With the exception of one attack on a bus traveling from Kuwait to Iraq, in which 31 civilians were killed, these accounts described incidents that took place on the Baghdad-Amman international highway in western Iraq, the area from which missiles were being launched into Israel.

Civilian vehicles on other highways in Iraq also were destroyed in allied attacks. In a visit to southern Iraq in May, a journalist saw the bombed-out wreckage of 29 Soviet fighter-bombers on either side of the six-lane highway that runs from Basra northwest to Nassariya: "They apparently had been parked there, far from any airfield, and protected by nothing except a few berms." But civilians were not spared in the allies' attempt to destroy the aircraft: "Hundreds of burned-out trucks, cars and taxis destroyed by allied aircraft litter the road." These accounts call into question whether the allies were taking all feasible precautions to distinguish civilian objects and military targets along Iraqi highways and, if not, why public warning of this policy was not given so that civilian victims could be spared.

Middle East Watch also interviewed three eyewitnesses to cluster-bomb attacks; in one case, a cluster bomb exploded three to sixmeters from the car in which a Jordanian doctor was traveling. The U.S. military publicly confirmed that cluster bombs were dropped on highways during the war. Gen. Buster Glosson was asked at a briefing in Riyadh on January 30 if cluster bombs were being dropped on the Baghdad-Amman highway, the major evacuation route for foreign-worker residents of Iraq fleeing the war to the safety of Jordan. He replied: "Yes, we use the cluster munition to cover a wider area when the military situation dictates that." However, Gen. Glosson did not reply to the second part of the reporter's question: "How do you reconcile that with your efforts to minimize civilian casualties along this...refugee route?" - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP4.htm

Eyewitness Accounts: Attacks on Civilian Vehicles Carrying Evacuees to Jordan

Middle East Watch interviewed evacuees and truckers for Jordanian companies who saw or were traveling in cars and buses that were attacked by allied aircraft on the highway.

• two cars directly hit by diving aircraft in daytime attack, killing two families: MEW interviewed a group of Yemeni students who were eyewitnesses to attacks in broad daylight on two civilian cars between Rutba and Trebil on the Baghdad-Ammanhighway. According to the witnesses, it was unlikely that the occupants of the vehicles survived these direct hits.
  
  
• 30 killed in attack on bus: MEW interviewed Sudanese evacuees who told of three buses that loaded up with Sudanese evacuees and left Baghdad on February 13 at about noon. They said that each of the public carriers waited until it was filled before departing. The first bus reached the border crossing at Trebil that night. A second bus stayed the night in Rutba. The third bus was bombed on the road before reaching Rutba and reportedly there were no survivors. Some drivers arriving at Trebil told the Sudanese in the first two buses that the third bus was destroyed and all of the passengers, some 30 to 35 Sudanese, were killed.
  
  
• cluster bomb falls meters from two cars in dawn attack: A Jordanian doctor interviewed by MEW was injured when a cluster bomb was dropped three to six feet from his car on the Baghdad-Amman highway. Dr. Samir A. Qawasmi, an ophthalmic surgeon, was part of a medical team of 13 doctors and nurses sent to Baghdad by the Arab Medical Committee for Emergencies. The team departed from Jordan in late January to provide emergency medical services in hospitals in Baghdad. After working around-the-clock treating civilian bombing casualties for four or five days, four members of the exhausted team set out for Jordan at 11pm on the night of January 27. They traveled in two cars: a white Mercedes sedan with a Red Crescent on the hood and a four-wheel-drive gray vehicle with a Red Crescent on the front.

Dr. Qawasmi, who was in the driver's seat of the white Mercedes sedan, was injured with lacerations on his face, nose, cheek, and hands. Tossed against the side of the car, he was still suffering pain in his left shoulder when he was interviewed by MEW. The driver of the other car suffered similar injuries but the two passengers were not physically injured.

The bomb hit the side of the road, about three to six feet from the car, creating a crater about a half-meter deep and one and a half meters wide. It divided into two parts, apparently a cluster bomb. There were many small bombs inside the canister and other bomblets scattered outside. They left as quickly as they could, before any of the small bombs exploded. The badly damaged Mercedes was towed behind the four-wheel-drive vehicle which had a broken windshield and windows and damage to its left side. They passed many burned cars, and passenger vans of the type used by Kuwaiti families.

About a half-hour later, before reaching Rutba, Dr. Qawasmi through the rear view mirror saw a 40-foot refrigerator truck with a 12-foot rig hit by a rocket, and turned around to get a better look. They heard the explosion but did not stop. They later learned that the driver of the truck had been killed.

• strafing of buses on highways during daytime: MEW also took testimony about the strafing of buses on highways that left evacuees scared for their lives. Pakistani construction workers, evacuated by their company from Najaf in southern Iraq on three buses on February 15, told MEW of a strafing incident involving one of their buses. The last of the three buses was strafed 10 km west of Rutba on February 15 at about 4:10 pm. There were 36 Pakistani workers in the white bus, which had luggage piled on the top. According to several workers interviewed by MEW, there were four attacks on the bus at two- to three-minute intervals. They heard machine-gun fire and were quite sure that rockets or bombs had not been used. Bullets were fired close to the bus, but it was not hit.

The bus did not stop. It was the only vehicle on the road; there were trucks in the distance, they said. There was "only desert" aroundthem -- "no military trucks, no buildings, no gas station, no tents, nothing."

Later in the air war, bus drivers seemed to believe that traveling the Baghdad-Amman highway at night afforded more protection. A young Egyptian furniture finisher told Middle East Watch that he left Baghdad on the evening of February 19 with a cousin and some friends. They were in a bus with 50 Egyptians and three Sudanese. The two buses drove together, his bus in front. It was night, and both buses had their headlights on. A few kilometers outside of Ramadi, a plane fired bullets at the bus, hitting to the right and left side. The driver kept going, but turned off the headlights. No one was hurt and the bus was not damaged.

Similar stories of strafed civilian vehicles appeared in the press. The New York Times reported that a Jordanian Red Crescent official hadseen a Jordanian family whose two infants were killed in a strafing attack. A group of evacuees told journalists that on February 3 an Egyptian worker running toward his bus was machine-gunned and killed instantly on the road to Trebil.

• southern iraq: 31 dead in daytime attack on civilian vehicles: A Jordanian bus carrying civilians fleeing Kuwait was attacked by allied planes near the Kuwaiti border on February 9 at 2 pm, killing 27 in the bus and another four in two cars traveling with the bus. MEW interviewed the driver of the bus, Shawqi Naji, 32, a Palestinian who lives in Jordan. A bus driver for 10 years, he had made several round trips in his 1983 Mercedes model 303 luxury passenger bus from Jordan to Kuwait to pick up Palestinians, Jordanians and others evacuating Kuwait.

The highway from Kuwait City to southern Iraq traverses desert terrain, the driver told MEW. "There is nothing else there, just a highway ... no bridges, river, military fortifications ... nothing." The attack took place when the bus was an hour outside of Kuwait City, some 20 km beyond al-Metla'. The driver said he did not hear any aircraft. He was confident that the bus was identifiable as civilian because of its size, color and the baggage piled on top.

He said that he passed another bus parked on the side of the road. Some 500 meters beyond the parked bus, he heard a rocketexplode behind his bus, hitting it with shrapnel. He slammed on the brakes, quickly opened the two doors, and he and the passengers began to run off the bus. The rear of the bus was in flames. Before all of the passengers could get off, about two minutes after the first rocket, a second rocket struck, piercing the roof of the bus. The whole bus was engulfed in fire: 27 men, women and children were incinerated.

The next day, he returned with the Palestinian Red Crescent to assess the damage. They counted 25 charred bodies on the seats of the bus; another two bodies were partially burned. The bus had a large hole in the roof from the rocket and the interior of the vehicle had been badly burned. There were holes on the outside of the bus, like machine-gun fire, he thought. The Red Crescent took photos of the bus and the human remains. The newlywed passengers in the white car were dead. The driver saw their charred bodies, still inside the car, in front of the bus. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP4.htm

Legal Standards and Conclusions
It is legitimate under the laws of war to attack an enemy's transportation system, including by destroying roads and highways, if they are making an effective contribution to military action and the total or partial destruction of which would offer a definite military advantage. The use of highways and roads by Iraqi military vehicles and missile launchers made it legitimate to attempt to stop that traffic by, for example, destroying bridges or strategic passes. In addition, individual military vehicles traveling the Baghdad-Amman highway and other roadswere legitimate military targets, as were aircraft, military vehicles or missile launchers parked or hidden along the roadside.

Civilian buses and cars traveling the road, however, were not legitimate military targets. Coalition pilots therefore could not directly target them and had a duty to take precautions to avoid hitting them when attacking military targets. At a military briefing in Saudi Arabia on January 30, U.S. Brig. Gen. Buster Glosson acknowledged this, stating that only military targets along the Baghdad-Amman highway were under attack. The attacks on civilian vehicles, including in some cases strafing by low-flying aircraft, indicates that something clearly went wrong on the part of the allied air forces, who had consistently reiterated their intent to avoid civilian casualties. In the strafing incidents in particular, pilots presumably were close enough to have visual contact with the target. Eyewitnesses reported to MEW that aircraft dived once before opening fire; others were reported to be quite close to the vehicles when opening fire.

Given the known use of highways and roads by the civilian population -- there were repeated press reports of such use, and the Jordanian government filed a formal complaint with the U.S. ambassador in Amman on January 30 that Jordanian civilian vehicles on the highway had been wrongly attacked by allied aircraft -- allied pilots were under a duty to distinguish military objectives on these roads from civilian objects, such as cars and buses, and prohibited from striking military objectives and civilian objects indiscriminately. Pilots also were obliged to take "constant care" to "spare the civilian population, civilians, and civilian objects" on highways in Iraq. They were required under the laws of war to "do everything feasible to verify that the objectives to be attacked are neither civilians nor civilian objects." They further were obliged to "take all reasonable precautions to avoid losses of civilian lives and damage to civilian objects." - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP4.htm

Attacks on Jordanian Civilian Oil Tankers
In addition to the widely publicized evacuee traffic before and during the air war, Jordanian oil tankers traveled a portion of the Amman-Baghdad highway from Jordan through Rutba to a turnoff 120 km from the Jordanian border. From there, the drivers proceeded north to al-Qa'im, near the Syrian border, where they loaded up with oil and brought it back to Jordan. Gen. Kelly of the Joint Chiefs of Staffsuggested on February 2 that distinguishing civilian oil tankers from military-supply vehicles was a problem for the allies: "It's difficult to look at the ground and tell what a civilian target is and what a military target is, because, for example, oil trucks out in that area could be carrying fuel for Iraqi [military] aircraft," or for other military purposes. A senior U.S. military officer confirmed to The New York Times in early February that oil tankers on the road were being attacked, "arguing that it was impossible to tell which trucks were carrying civilian cargoes and which were carrying military material."

Despite these admissions, at no time during the air war did the allied forces publicly warn Jordanian truckers that all civilian vehicles hauling oil from Iraq to Jordan would be subject to attack. To the contrary, U.S. Maj. Gen. Robert Johnston said at a briefing on February 5 that "we are not specifically targeting Jordanian civilian tankers." Gen. Kelly sent the same message, while noting that civilian-tanker drivers assumed some risk: "If a truck chooses to operate in that environment, there is some risk. We're not purposely going after civilian vehicles. [But] if one got hit, it was certainly by mistake."- http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP4.htm

Jordan's Dilemma: Dependence on Imported Oil
The Gulf crisis had wreaked havoc on Jordan's already shaky economy: remittances from its citizens working in the Gulf states were lost, and the substantial revenues generated by Iraqi shipping through the port of Aqaba and Jordanian trucking of goods to Iraq disappeared. Jordan had imported about half its oil from Saudi Arabia, via the Trans-Arabian Pipeline (Tapline) from eastern Saudi Arabia to the Zarkarefinery in Jordan. The balance of Jordanian oil arrived by tanker truck from Iraq, at below-market rates. - http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/gulfwar/CHAP4.htm

Civilian Trucker Casualties: Eyewitness Testimony
In a February 7 letter to the U.N. Secretary-General circulated to the Security Council, Jordan stated that from January 29 to February 4, seven Jordanians and one Indian had been killed in allied attacks on trucks and tankers and another 21 injured; 42 vehicles had been partially or completely destroyed. On February 5 alone, another six had been killed, five wounded and eight vehicles destroyed. Despite these public reports about the attacks, Jordanian government high-level protests and the letter to the Security Council, the attacks continued. MEW interviewed five wounded truckers in a hospital in Amman about allied attacks involving their vehicles in Iraq, and took testimony from two evacuees who were eyewitnesses to other attacks on civilian trucks. These accounts follow.

• convoy of four tankers attacked: One Jordanian oil-tanker driver, 52, did not