Abstract
After a war, there is always a need to examine the application of the laws of war by the various parties concerned. In the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, and the war of January—February 1991 which brought it to an end, the importance of various international rules about the conduct of occupations and armed conflicts was evident — as were many problems associated with those rules.1
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Notes
I am particularly grateful to Dr Françoise Hampson for her pertinent comments on an earlier draft. Fuller expositions of many aspects of jus in bello in the 1991 war, including chapters by Dr Hampson on ‘Means and Methods of Warfare in the Conflict in the Gulf’, and one by myself on environmental aspects, appear in Peter Rowe (ed.), The Gulf War 1990–91 in International and English Law (London: Routledge, 1993).
See for example the Institute of International Law’s 1971 Zagreb Resolution on ‘Conditions of Application of Humanitarian Rules of Armed Conflict to Hostilities in which United Nations Forces May Be Engaged’, Annuaire de Πnstitut de Droit International 54 (1971) pp. 465–70.
Air Vice-Marshal R.A. Mason, ‘The Air War in the Gulf’, Survival 33 (1991) p. 214.
ICRC, The Gulf 1990–1991: From Crisis to Conflict (Geneva: ICRC Publications, 1991) pp. 4–5,10–13 and 43–4. This publication summarizes the following ICRC press releases stressing the applicability of international humanitarian law in this crisis: 1640 of 2 August 1990; 1657 of 14 December 1990; 1658 of 17 January 1991; and 1659 of 1 February 1991. These public appeals were reported in some newspapers at the time: see for example report of the previous day’s ICRC press release in the Independent, 18 January 1991.
US Department of Defense, Conduct of the Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Congress (Washington DC, 1992) p. 0–7. (Hereafter Final Report to Congress.)
Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, It Doesn’t Take a Hero (London: Bantam Press, 1992) p. 421.
Oscar Schachter, ‘United Nations Law in the Gulf Conflict’, American Journal of International Law 85, (1991), p. 466.
On the Amiriya bunker attack, see Final Report to Congress, pp. 0–14 and 15; and General Sir Peter de la Billière, Storm Command: A Personal Account of the Gulf War (London: Harper Collins, 1992) p. 261.
US Department of Defense, Conduct of the Persian Gulf Conflict: An Interim Report to Congress (Washington DC: July 1991) p. 12–3; and the April 1992 follow-up, Final Report to Congress p. 0–10.
Confirmed in ICRC, The Gulf 1990–1991: From Crisis to Conflict — The ICRCat Work (Geneva: ICRC Publications, 1991) p. 40.
For coalition claims of discrimination in attacking nuclear and biological production and development facilities, see House of Commons, Defence Committee, Tenth Report, Preliminary Lessons of Operation Granby (London: HMSO, 1991) pp. 10–11; Statement on the Defence Estimates, 1991, vol. 1 (London: HMSO, 1991) p. 17.
US Department of the Navy, The Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations (Washington DC: 1987, NWP 9) p. 5–1.
Jonathan T. Howe, ‘NATO and the Gulf Crisis’, Survival 33 (1991), p. 247.
A point remarked upon by Gene I. Rochlin and Chris C. Demchak, ‘The Gulf War: Technological and Organizational Implications’. Survival 33 (1991) p. 261.
For a definition of reprisals and a fine general survey see Françoise Hampson, ‘Belligerent Reprisals and the 1977 Protocols to the Geneva Conventions of 1949’, International and Comparative Law Quarterly 37 (1988), pp. 818–43.
See for example Glen Plant (ed.), Environmental Protection and the Law of War: A ‘Fifth Geneva’ Convention on the Protection of the Environment in Time of Armed Conflict? (London: Belhaven Press, 1992).
For a strong attack on all aspects of US policy in the 1990–91 conflict see Ramsey Clark, The Fire This Tïme: US War Crimes in the Gulf (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1992).
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© 1994 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Roberts, A. (1994). The Laws of War. In: Danchev, A., Keohane, D. (eds) International Perspectives on the Gulf Conflict, 1990–91. St Antony’s. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23231-4_11
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