Iraq and Desert Storm aftermath

The documentaries / interviews etc come from sources like the BBC and are pooled into the PBS website under the section of Fronline. The section I chose "voices in the storm" is especially interesting as it recounts eye witnesses accounts of the failed kurd uprising and the road to basra (became the "highway of death" for the iraqi soldiers). The information provided on this website is very diverse but I chose this section as it illustrates some real life events in Desert Storm like the failed uprising though the uprisings we see in the film are in southern shiite iraq. We also saw dead corpses of iraqi troops in the desert which showed the intensity and devastation of the US's aerial bombing leading up to the Ground War.

Aftermath of Operation Desert Storm

Author Daniel Pipes wrote this article for the Jewish Exponent soon after the end of Operation Desert Storm in 1992. So what changed after four months of war in the Middle East? Not much according to Pipes: "much remains surprisingly as it was." His article explains that even though the war produced never before seen events such as the U.S. and Russia being on the same side for the first time in nearly fifty years, there were almost no political and economical developments in the middle east. It mentions that "Saddam Husayn [remained] in power, barbaric, truculent, and deceitful as ever" and the Syrian Government continued to rule Lebanon, dominate Palestine, and traffic drugs. So why did almost nothing change? Pipes goes on to explain how the fall of the soviet Union is partially responsible.