Highway of Death

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Highway of Death
Part of the Gulf War
Fragment of the "Mile of Death" in April 1991
Date February 26 – March 2, 1991 Location Between Kuwait City and Basra Result Decisive U.S. victory
Belligerents
United States	Iraq

The Highway of Death refers to a road between Kuwait and Basra on which retreating units of the Iraqi army were attacked and destroyed by American aircraft and ground forces during the United Nations Coalition offensive in the Gulf War, on the night of February 26-February 27, 1991, resulting in the destruction of hundreds of vehicles and the deaths of an unknown and disputed number of Iraqi soldiers and civilians. The scenes of carnage on the road are some of the most recognisable images of the war. According to Elaine Sciolino of the New York Times, the images suggested a turkey shoot and contributed to the war's resolution soon afterwards.^[1]

The Highway of Death is known officially as Highway 80. 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.

[edit] Attacks

American attacks were conducted on two different roads: some 1,400-2,000 vehicles hit on the main Highway 80 north of Al Jahra (the "actual" Highway of Death) and, few days later, another 400-700 or so on the much-less known coastal road to Basra.

[edit] February 26 - February 27 airstrikes

On the main highway, aircraft bombed the front and rear of the massive vehicle column of Iraqi Regular Army, trapping the convoy, and leaving sitting targets for later airstrikes. When visited by journalists the main highway had been reduced to a long uninterrupted line of destroyed, damaged, and abandoned vehicles, sometimes called the Mile of Death. The wreckage predominantly consisted of stolen civilian vehicles (such as cars, trucks, and buses) which were manned by Iraqi conscripts and the Palestinian fighters, accompanied by their family members fleeing the advancing Coalition forces.

[edit] March 2 attack

A column of bombed-out vehicles on Highway 8 to Basra

On the coastal Highway 8, known as the place of the Battle of Rumailah/Rumaylah or Battle of the Junkyard, vehicles of the elite Iraqi Republican Guard 1st Armored Division Hammurabi had been destroyed over a much larger area in smaller groups and attacking Allied ground forces (namely the U.S. 24th Infantry Division) played a key role in the attack. The vehicles, practically every one of which was destroyed, were predominantly military. The American commanding general described the carnage as "one of the most astounding scenes of destruction I have ever participated in." While the Hammurabi Division ceased to exist, only one U.S. soldier was injured and a Bradley IFV and an Abrams tank were destroyed, all of them by flying debris from exploding Iraqi vehicles.^[2] The attack took place two days after the war was officially halted by American ceasefire, when the Iraqis and the Allied coalition were scheduled to begin formal peace talks.^[3][4]

[edit] Controversies

A rusting Type 59 tank at the Highway of Death (February 2003)

Remnants of the destroyed convoy on the Highway of Death with a Type 59 in the foreground (February 2003)

Rusting wrecks from the Highway of Death in a vehicle "graveyard" north of Ali Al Salem Air Base, Kuwait (2005)

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 captives (apparently to be used as hostages^[5]) as well as civilian refugees. Some argued that the mostly Shia Iraqi regulars were on the verge of mutiny, and that the attack on them actually helped the regime of Saddam Hussein to stay in power during the 1991 uprisings in Iraq. The bombings were called by some as a war crime — the deliberate bombing of a stretch of highway where "returning home" and out of combat Iraqi troops were stuck in a frenzied traffic jam.^[6]

Also questioned was the decision by General Barry McCaffrey to attack Iraqis near the Rumailah oil fields after the official ceasefire.^[7] According to journalist Seymour Hersh,^[4]

McCaffrey's insistence that the Iraqis attacked first was disputed in interviews for this article by some of his subordinates in the wartime headquarters of the 24th Division, and also by soldiers and officers who were at the scene on March 2. The accounts of these men, taken together, suggest that McCaffrey's offensive, two days into a ceasefire, was not so much a counterattack provoked by enemy fire as a systematic destruction of Iraqis who were generally fulfilling the requirements of the retreat.

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 U.S. military, however, stated that only a few dead bodies were found in the wreckage and that most of the occupants 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.

United States Air Force Major General Mark Welsh,^[8] in a 1999 speech describing his Gulf War experiences to Air Force cadets,^[9] painted a different picture of where personnel on the ground was when U.S. aircraft began strafing and bombing the stopped convoy:

I’m sure I’d killed people before during the war, but this time I saw ’em. I saw the vehicles moving before the bombs hit. I saw soldiers firing up at me, then running as I dropped my bombs to make sure they wouldn’t get away.

According to the then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, the "shooting gallery" scenes of carnage was the reason to end the Gulf War hostilities after the liberation of Kuwait. 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":^[10]

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.)

Photojournalist Peter Turnley published photographs of mass burials at the scene;^[11] it has been asserted that this constituted a violation of the Geneva Conventions.^[12] 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.

This suggests that the lack of bodies found on the scene was due to "graves detail" as suggested by one of the first reporters on the scene.^{[citation needed]} The journalist Robert Fisk reported that he had seen a camera crew filming the consumption of bodies by wild dogs along the highway.^[13]

TIME magazine concluded:^[5]

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.

[edit] In popular culture

The 2005 film Jarhead, based on the 2003 book, contains a scene of the Highway of Death. Stock footage of destruction at the Highway is also featured in the music video of Iron Maiden's "Afraid to Shoot Strangers" from their 1992 album Fear of the Dark.

[edit] See also

• Hell's Highway
• Todesgang

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• The Unseen Gulf War - A DigitalJournalist Multimedia Exposure by Peter Turnley
• An article in the Baltimore Sun, just before the second Gulf War, including a description of Highway 80
• 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

• Highway of Death is at coordinates 29°23′03″N 47°39′06″E / 29.3842°N 47.6518°E / 29.3842; 47.6518 (Highway of Death)Coordinates: 29°23′03″N 47°39′06″E / 29.3842°N 47.6518°E / 29.3842; 47.6518 (Highway of Death)