HIGHWAY OF DEATH

The 'Highway of Death' refers to a road between Kuwait and Basra on which retreating units of the Iraqi army were attacked and completely destroyed by American aircraft during the United Nations Coalition offensive in the Gulf War, on the night of February 26 - February 27, 1991.
Officially it's known as the 'Highway 80', and it runs from Kuwait City to the border towns of Abdali (Kuwait) and Safwan (Iraq), and then on to Basra. The road was repaired during the late 1990s, and was used in the initial stages of the 2003 invasion of Iraq by U.S. and British forces.

Contents

Aerial strikes

Controversy

Attack controversy

Application of the Geneva Conventions

In popular culture

External links

References

Aerial strikes

Airstrikes took place on two different sections of highway: some 1,400 vehicles on the main highway north of Al Jahra (the "actual" Highway of Death) and another 400 or so on the much-less known coastal road to Basra. The U.S. soldiers reportedly described the action as a "turkey shoot".^[1]
On the main highway aircraft bombed the front and rear of the massive column, trapping the convoy, and leaving sitting targets for later strikes. When visited by journalists the main highway had been reduced to a long uninterrupted line of destroyed, damaged, and abandoned vehicles. The wreckage predominantly consisted of stolen civilian vehicles (such as cars, trucks, and buses) which were manned by the Iraqi Regular Army conscripts and allied Palestinian militiamen. Most of the vehicles were abandoned prior to the main attack, and many were found only slightly damaged.
On the coastal road, known as the place of the 'Battle of the Junkyard', vehicles of the Hammurabi Division had been destroyed over a much larger area in smaller groups, and attacking Allied ground forces played a role in the attack, including elements of the U.S. 3rd Armored Division. The vehicles, practically every one of which was destroyed, were predominantly military and had belonged to the Iraqi Republican Guard's ''Hammurabi'' 1st Armored Division.

Controversy

Attack controversy

The offensive action for which the road is infamous became a controversial point, with some commentators alleging that the use of force was disproportionate, as the Iraqi forces were retreating and the column included Kuwaiti political prisoners as well as the Palestinian civilian refugees.
Although no reporters were present during the action, and media accounts did not appear for almost a month, photographs taken afterwards showed dramatic scenes of burned and broken vehicles. The bombings were cited by some observers as a "war crime" — the deliberate bombing of a stretch of highway where fleeing and out-of-combat Iraqi troops were stuck in a frenzied traffic jam.
The U.S. military, however, stated that few dead bodies were found in the wreckage and that most had abandoned their vehicles when the road became impassable. According to a PBS Frontline interview with American journalist Rick Atkinson, when asked whether we know how many Iraqis were killed on the Highway of Death, he answered:

I don't think we'll ever know how many Iraqis were killed there. There were about 1,500 vehicles on the highway of death, counted, destroyed vehicles after the war. And another 400 or so on another road, a spur that ran parallel to the coast. Those who wandered through this wreckage right after the Iraqi surrender found relatively few bodies. Certainly some, and many that were terribly incinerated of those that were found. But the prevailing view is that many of the Iraqis had simply gotten out of their vehicles and ran. And it's difficult to believe that deaths on the highway of death probably exceeded more than a couple of hundred perhaps.

Robert Fisk of ''The Independent'' got there in the aftermath of the allied bombing. In his book ''The Great War for Civilisation'', Fisk describes the scene of kilometers of damaged military and civilian vehicles that were bombed as they were stuck in the traffic jam, and the burnt out remains of the occupants of the many vehicles: "I had seen hundreds of dead here; there must have been thousands. Shouldn't we have been referring back then, not to the Highway of Death, but to the Massacre at the Mutla Ridge?"
According to the former Secretary of State Collin Powell, the "shooting gallery" scenes of carange was the reason to end the Gulf War hostilities after the liberation of Kuwait. "The television coverage was starting to make it look as if we were engaged in slaughter for slaughter's sake," Powell wrote later in ''My American Journey''.
According to the Foreign Policy Research Institute, however, "appearances were deceiving":[1]

Postwar studies found that most of the wrecks on the Basra roadway had been abandoned by Iraqis before being strafed and that actual enemy casualties were low. Further, opinion surveys showed that American support for the war was largely unaffected by the images. (Arab and Muslim public opinion was, of course, another matter, about which Powell may have been rightly concerned.)

Application of the Geneva Conventions

Article 17 of the First Geneva Convention is concerned specifically with the burial of the battlefield dead. It states:

Parties to the conflict shall ensure that burial or cremation of the dead, carried out individually as far as circumstances permit, is preceded by a careful examination, if possible by a medical examination, of the bodies, with a view to confirming death, establishing identity and enabling a report to be made. One half of the double identity disc, or the identity disc itself if it is a single disc, should remain on the body...Bodies shall not be cremated except for imperative reasons of hygiene or for motives based on the religion of the deceased. In case of cremation, the circumstances and reasons for cremation shall be stated in detail in the death certificate or on the authenticated list of the dead...They shall further ensure that the dead are honourably interred, if possible according to the rites of the religion to which they belonged, that their graves are respected, grouped if possible according to the nationality of the deceased, properly maintained and marked so that they may always be found. For this purpose, they shall organize at the commencement of hostilities an Official Graves Registration Service, to allow subsequent exhumations and to ensure the identification of bodies, whatever the site of the graves, and the possible transportation to the home country.

This article's protocol was not observed on Highway 80, where Iraqi soldiers were interred in mass graves.

In popular culture

★ The film ''Jarhead'' contains a scene of the Highway of Death.

★ Footage of the Highway was seen in the music video of Iron Maiden's ''Afraid to shoot Strangers'' from their album Fear of the Dark.

External links

★ The Unseen Gulf War - A DigitalJournalist Multimedia Exposure by Peter Turnley

★ PBS Frontline's "The Gulf War"

★ An article in the Baltimore Sun, just before the second Gulf War, including a description of Highway 80

★ An article in The Daily Telegraph, during the war, including a map

★ An article in Stars and Stripes, contrasting the condition of the road in 1991 and 2003

★ Photographs of destroyed military equipment taken by a contemporary American serviceman

★ A high-resolution map of Kuwait. Highway 80 leads north from Kuwait city, via al-Jahra

★ Clip from a CBC news broadcast depicting the incident's aftermath

References

1. US armed forces conduct during the Iraqi retreat. Rutgers University, November 2000. Accessed December 21, 2006