The Making of the Gulf War Origins of Kuwait's Long-Standing Territorial Dispute With Iraq

Kuwait's long-standing territorial dispute with Iraq, culminating in the 1991 Gulf War, should properly be viewed within an extended historical context dating back to the Ottoman period. Tracing the origins of this dispute through a detailed chronological account of events, Dr Rahman describes how Anglo-Ottoman manoeuvres in the 1890s were to have repercussions on Kuwaiti-Iraqi relations for generations to come. He considers the effect of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent redefinition of many of the boundaries of the Empire's former provinces in the Middle East. Mesopotamia, now Iraq, became a kingdom under British mandate, and in 1932 it attained independence.;The boundaries of Kuwait - already a British protected state - were defined in 1922-3, but as soon as the Emirate gained independence in 1961, Iraq tried to annex it under the misconception that Iraq, as the successor to the Ottoman Empire in Mesopotamia, had a claim on Kuwait. Studied within this historical context, and from a geopolitical perspective, it can be seen as something of an inevitability that Saddam Hussein of Iraq should want to fulfil a long-standing ambition to take Kuwait and become the unrivalled leader of the Arab world.