Following a short ground campaign against an Iraqi army already defeated by 39 days of bombing, a theatrical and photogenic ceasefire is declared after 100 hours. On the orders of President Bush, offensive operations against Iraq end at 0801 local Riyadh time (one minute after midnight in Washington, DC (EST) and at 0501 GMT). CENTCOM says in its SITREP: “Effective 280500Z Feb, all forces ceased offensive operations. All units are prepared for a potential resumption of hostilities.”
The ostensible reason for the ceasefire is that Iraqi forces had been ejected from Kuwait, and indeed the last of the occupation forces stream north, where the “Highway of Death” forms on the highway to Basra. Though the theater is covered in a dense fog, Army Mohawk (OV-1D) aircraft with side-looking airborne radars detect major Iraqi unit movements into and north of Basra.
But Saudi King Fahd and President Bush also have a telephone call in which the Saudi leader insists that hostilities end, that the United States minimize is presence on Iraqi territory, and the U.S. military not march on Baghdad or seek regime change.
In Washington, the State Department begins drafting a U.N. Security Council resolution with all of the conditions of a ceasefire. Israel reportedly demands that Iraq be prohibited from having missiles or any weapons of mass destruction, but the “arms control” presumption of Cold War experienced drafters is already to emulate their experiences in U.S.-Soviet negotiations. So an elaborate arms control inspection and verification regime is set up, one that demands full accounting of WMD from Baghdad but also allows short-range missiles to continue to exist, both leading to two decades of wrangling and stand-off.
All of that – and the brutal Iraqi military campaign that starts almost immediately to suppress the Shi’a in the south and the Kurds in the north (the Iraqi army wasn’t defeated) – results in the continued presence of American military forces in Saudi Arabia (and parts of Iraq) and the imposition of a no-fly zone. In other words, the Americans never leave. And a young Saudi millionaire and popular fighter from the Afghanistan war – Osama bin Laden – is outraged over the continued “occupation” of Islam’s holiest center.
Day: February 28, 2021