| Highway of Death | |||||||
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| Part of the Gulf War | |||||||
Crashed and abandoned vehicles line Highway 80, April 19, 1991 |
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| Belligerents | |||||||
| United States | Iraq | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| None | Unknown number of killed (estimates range from some 300 to "tens of thousands") Estimated 1,800-2,700 vehicles |
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The Highway of Death refers to a six-lane highway between Kuwait and Iraq, officially known as Highway 80. It runs from Kuwait City to the border town of Safwan and then on to Basra.
During the United Nations coalition offensive in the Gulf War, retreating Iraqi military personnel and others escaping Kuwait were attacked on Highway 80 by American aircraft and ground forces on the night of February 26–27, 1991, resulting in the destruction of hundreds of vehicles and the deaths of many of their occupants. The scenes of devastation on the road are some of the most recognizable images of the war, and were publicly cited as a factor in President George H. W. Bush's decision to declare a cessation of hostilities on the next day.[1] Many Iraqi forces however successfully escaped across the Euphrates river and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that upwards of 70,000 to 80,000 troops from defeated divisions in Kuwait might have fled into the city of Basra.[2]
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. Previously it had been also used during the 1990 Invasion of Kuwait by the Iraqi armored divisions.
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U.S. attacks against the Iraqi columns were actually conducted on two different roads: about 1,400-2,000 vehicles were hit or abandoned on the main Highway 80 north of Al Jahra (the "actual" Highway of Death) and another 400-700 on the much-less known road to Basra, the major military stronghold in southern Iraq.
On Highway 80, the U.S. Marine aircraft blocked the road with anti-tank mines, and then bombed the rear of a massive vehicle column of mostly Iraqi Regular Army forces, effectively boxing-in the Iraqi forces in an enormous traffic jam and leaving sitting targets for many further airstrikes. Over the next 10 hours, scores of Marine, Navy and Air Force pilots (many from USS Ranger (CV/CVA-61) aircraft carrier) attacked the convoy using a variety of ordnance. Some survivors of the air attacks were later engaged by arriving coalition ground units, while the vehicles that managed to evade the traffic jam and continued to drive on the road north were often targeted individually. One portion of the road at the bottle-neck near the Mutla Ridge police station has been reduced to a long uninterrupted line of more than 300 stuck and abandoned vehicles; this point is sometimes called the Mile of Death. The wreckage found on the highway consisted of a relatively few military vehicles (including at least 28 tanks and other armored vehicles) and many more commandeered civilian vehicles such as cars and buses; many of these vehicles were filled with stolen Kuwaiti property.
The death toll from the attack is unknown and still remains a controversial issue. Some independent estimates go as high as 10,000 or even "tens of thousands" of casualties, but this is highly unlikely. According to a 2003 study by the Project on Defense Alternatives Research, there were probably about 7,500-10,000 people who rode in the cut-off main caravan to begin with, but once the bombing started, most of them are believed to have simply left their vehicles in panic and escaped through the desert or into the nearby swamps (where 450-500 of them were taken prisoner). The often repeated low estimate of the numbers killed in the attack is 200-300 (as reported by Michael Kelly among others), but the actual figure was probably higher, and a minimum toll of at least 500-600 dead seems to be more plausible.[3]
On and near Highway 8 to the east, Iraqi forces trying to either redeploy to stand and fight or simply escape, many of them belonging to the elite Iraqi Republican Guard's 1st Armored Division "Hammurabi",[2] were engaged over a much larger area in smaller groups by the U.S. ground forces consisting of nine artillery battalions and a battalion of AH-64 Apache helicopter gunships operating under the command of General Barry McCaffrey. Hundreds of Iraqi vehicles, predominantly military in type, were then systematically destroyed in smaller clusters of 10-15 spread along a 50-mile stretch of the highway and at scattered points across the desert.
This engagement, which wasn't even known to media and the public at all until almost two weeks later, still remains relatively obscure even as most of the graphic images of scorched corpses, commonly attributed to the Highway of Death attacks and often considered among the iconic images of the war, were actually taken on Highway 8 and not on Highway 80.[4] The Project on Defense Alternatives Research estimated the number of these killed there to be in range of 300-400 or more, bringing the likely total number of fatalities in both incidents to at least 800-1,000.[3] A large column of remnants of the Hammurabi Division attempting to withdraw to safety in Baghdad were also engaged and obliterated few days later (March 2) deep inside the Iraqi territory by Gen. McCaffrey's forces in a controversial post-war "turkey shoot"-style incident known as Battle of Rumaila.[2]
The offensive action for which Highway 80 is infamous became a controversial point, with some commentators alleging that the use of force was disproportionate, as the Iraqi forces were retreating from Kuwait (and thus leaving the country in compliance with the UN Resolution 660 of August 2, 1990), and the column included Kuwaiti captives (apparently to be used as hostages[5]) as well as some civilian refugees including women and children (mostly family members of pro-Iraqi Palestine Liberation Organization militants and Kuwaiti collaborators who had fled shortly before a wholesale Palestinian expulsion from Kuwait in early March). Former United States Attorney General Ramsey Clark alleged that these attacks violated the Third Geneva Convention, common article 3, which outlaws the killing of soldiers who "are out of combat."[6] It was also alleged that the American combat vehicles opened fire on a large group of more than 350 disarmed Iraqi soldiers who had surrendered at a U.S. military checkpoint after fleeing the devastation on Highway 8 on February 27; these allegations were publicised by Seymour Hersh.[1]
General Norman Schwarzkopf commented in 1995:[7]
| “ | The first reason why we bombed the highway coming north out of Kuwait is because there was a great deal of military equipment on that highway, and I had given orders to all my commanders that I wanted every piece of Iraqi equipment that we possibly could destroy. Secondly, this was not a bunch of innocent people just trying to make their way back across the border to Iraq. This was a bunch of rapists, murderers and thugs who had raped and pillaged downtown Kuwait City and now were trying to get out of the country before they were caught. | ” |
According to Colin Powell, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the future Secretary of State, the "shooting gallery" scenes carnage was the reason to end the Gulf War hostilities after the Liberation of Kuwait campaign. He wrote later in his autobiography My American Journey that "the television coverage was starting to make it look as if we were engaged in slaughter for slaughter's sake."
According to the Foreign Policy Research Institute, however, "appearances were deceiving":[8]
| “ | 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. | ” |
Photojournalist Peter Turnley published photographs of mass burials at the scene.[9] Turnley wrote:
| “ | I flew from my home in Paris to Riyadh when the ground war began and arrived at the “mile of death” very early in the morning on the day the war stopped. Few other journalists were there when I arrived at this incredible scene, with carnage that was strewn all over. On this mile stretch were cars and trucks with wheels still turning and radios still playing. Bodies were scattered along the road. Many have asked how many people died during the war with Iraq, and the question has never been well answered. That first morning, I saw and photographed a U.S. military “graves detail” burying many bodies in large graves. I don’t recall seeing many television images of these human consequences. Nor do I remember many photographs of these casualties being published. | ” |
| “ | After the war, correspondents did find some cars and trucks with burned bodies, but also many vehicles that had been abandoned. Their occupants had fled on foot, and the American planes often did not fire at them. That some Kuwaiti civilians who had been kidnapped by the fleeing Iraqis probably also perished on what became the highway of death is a true tragedy. Which proves once more that even in an era of precision weapons, war is hell; it can be civilized to some extent by rules of conduct, but the most humane thing to do is to end it as quickly as possible. | ” |
Another, relatively minor, controversy regarded the unopposed looting of still-working Iraqi weapons after the battle, including not only by the U.S. soldiers but also by Saudi civilians (some of whom then allegedly sold assault rifles on the black market to buyers in the broader Middle East), as there were no military police units deployed to guard the wreckage.[10]
