A brief history of
Operation Northern Watch ...
• April 7, 1991: Operation
Provide Comfort, a humanitarian relief effort, begins after thousands of refugees pour
into northern Iraq following Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait concluding Operation
Desert Storm. The refugee influx begins after the United States and other Gulf War
coalition countries initially support, and then abandon, Kurdish uprisings in the north,
and minority Shi'ia Arab groups in the south.
Concurrent to the aid mission,
about 75 French, British and U.S. aircraft begin patrolling northern Iraq after the United
Nations issues resolutions ordering Iraq to cease attacks against Kurdish refugees in the
north, and Shi’ia Arabs in the south.
• Dec. 17, 1991:
French, British and U.S. planes fire on Iraq air defenses after Iraqi radars track a
French reconnaissance flight. Later that day, U.S. planes shoot down an Iraqi MiG. Thus
begins a de facto air war that continues today.
• September 1996:
French forces withdraw from Provide Comfort after French leaders disagree with the
expansion of the southern no-fly zone.
• Dec. 31, 1996: Provide
Comfort ends and Operation Northern Watch begins.
• Dec. 16-18, 1998:
After Saddam stops cooperating with U.N. weapons inspectors attempting to locate
Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons, President Clinton launches Operation Desert
Fox. During the 70-hour attack, rated as one of the most intense air bombardments in
history, U.S. planes from carriers in the Persian Gulf and from land bases in Kuwait and
Saudi Arabia destroy more than 100 Iraqi military sites and weapons production facilities
in Baghdad and elsewhere.
• In 1998,
Saddam declared the no-fly zones a violation of Iraqi sovereignty and began challenging
ONW flights on a nearly daily basis.
• In 1999, an
ONW spokesman acknowledged that the U.S. is using precision guided "inert" bombs
— bombs filled with concrete — against Iraqi air defense positions in order to
reduce injuries to noncombatants.
— By
Terry Boyd
THE OPERATION NORTHERN WATCH SERIES:
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