In the south, Shiite Muslim groups, long at odds with the regime and the country's Sunni majority, rebelled, with Iranian help. Mutinying Iraqi army units and the Shiite majority in several southern towns formed the backbone of the revolt, which began in Nasiriyeh on March 2, 1991, and reached its peak around March 7, when Shiite groups controlled Basra, Amara, Kut, Hilleh, Karbala, Najaf, and Samawa. By then, Saddam had already organized a counterattack, reassembling Republican Guard units that had escaped the coalition onslaught in Kuwait. By March 16, the tide had decidedly turned against the rebels; a week later, the revolt had all but ended.
While Saddam's attention was in the south, in northern Iraq the Kurds renewed their own rebellion. For generations the long-oppressed Kurdish tribes had considered their homeland to include parts of southern Turkey, northwest Iran, and northeastern Syria, as well as northern Iraq — Kurdistan. In the 1980s, they rebelled to make this homeland a reality. In a brutal counterattack, Saddam's forces used nerve gas and defoliants, together with more "conventional" forms of massacre, to suppress this attempt at self-determination.
The always-fractious Kurds were too splintered among tribal and political groups to present a common front against the Iraqi leader, but continued oppression brought the different groups together, and the allied campaign against Iraq provided them with another opportunity to assert their independence. On March 4, 1991, a rebellion by the Kurdish Democratic Party under Masud Barzani liberated the Kurdish town of Ranya in northern Iraq, igniting a freedom movement across the region. On March 11, the major Kurdish factions met in Beirut under the banner of the Joint Action Committee of Iraqi Opposition to discuss a coordinated rebellion. On March 14, a day after the conference ended, 100,000 members of the Fursan — a Kurdish-manned Iraqi army auxiliary in northern Iraq — rebelled. In a series of firelights with regular units, the Kurds captured a dozen major towns and a hundred-mile arc of territory. By March 21, the insurgents controlled the provinces of Suleimaniya, Arbil, and Dahuk — the so-called Autonomous Region of Kurdistan. They also controlled much of Tamim and its capital city of Kirkuk, a region with considerable oil resources. The rebel guerrilla forces called themselves "Pesh Mergas," or "those who stand in the face of death."
Just as in the south, Saddam reorganized his army and his civilian administration and launched a drive to regain control. Backed by helicopter gunships and heavy artillery, Iraqi armored and infantry units struck Kirkuk on March 28. Lacking heavy firepower and air cover, the Pesh Merga fell back in disarray.
It was the beginning of a rout. Civilians and guerrillas alike rushed into the snow-covered northern mountains, sometimes taking nothing with them but the clothes on their back. The roads north were jammed with buses, trucks, tractors hauling trailers, donkey carts, and people on foot. Earlier Iraqi actions against the Kurds had resulted in widespread atrocities; the civilians didn't stick around to see if history would repeat itself. Somewhere between half a million and one and a half million Kurds — a little less than half the prewar population — fled toward the Turkish and Iranian borders.
By April 6, the rebellion had been completely crushed, but the exodus continued. Thousands of Kurds died from starvation and disease. At the same time, Turkey — fearing its own Kurdish minority — moved to keep the refugees from crossing their border.
America and its other allies were slow to respond.
Meanwhile, on April 5, the UN passed Resolution 688, demanding that Iraq immediately end repression of civilians in the Kurdish areas and elsewhere. The UN also directed Iraq to allow humanitarian agencies to aid the civilians who had fled.
Soon after the vote, U.S. Air Force Special Operations cargo aircraft began dropping emergency supplies into the region, but Iraqi artillery and helicopter attacks on civilians continued. More fled; the narrow band of mountainous terrain near the Turkish border became crowded with people in hellishly squalid camps.
On April 10, America warned Iraq to cease operations north of the 36th Parallel (roughly the line separating Kurdish from Arab Iraqi territory). The next day, the UN announced it would send a peacekeeping force to the area. SOF ground units shipped out to Turkey to help survey and stabilize the air-relief operation.
On April 16, the United States, Great Britain, and France declared that Resolution 688 gave them authority to send troops into Iraq to help the refugees. A task force spearheaded by American Marines and U.S. fighter jets pushed back the Iraqis, preventing further atrocities. By that point, the death toll among refugees in the makeshift border camps was estimated at several hundred a day.
PROVIDE COMFORT, the allied relief mission, combined the efforts of thirteen nations under the direction of Lieutenant General John Shalikashvili. It had three aspects:
• Air interdiction to prevent Iraqi aircraft from operating above the 36th Parallel. This was primarily handled by U.S. Air Force fighters operating out of Turkey.
• A ground presence to secure northern Iraq and the refugees from attack, as well as prepare resettlement camps in Iraq. The Marine Corps 24th MEU (SOC) — Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable) — spearheaded this effort, with its 3,600 members operating approximately five hundred miles inland from their support craft in the Mediterranean.
• A rescue operation to bring supplies and medical attention to the displaced Iraqi civilians. Army Special Forces soldiers from the 10th SFG played a key role in this phase of the operation, as did the Air Force's 39th Special Operations Wing, which flew MC- 130 cargo aircraft and MH-53J helicopters. Civil Affairs troops and members of the 4th Psychological Operations Group joined the effort by the beginning of May. Numerous helicopters from Army, Navy, Marine, and Air Force units also played a vital role in the supply effort, as did a range of U.S. and allied C-130 and support aircraft.
Brigadier General Richard W. Potter, commanding general of Special Operations Command Europe, headed the SF task force charged with bringing relief to the Kurds. Potter's "Joint Task Force Alpha" would eventually add British and Italian forces, as well as small groups from other nations. A second task force organized around the 24th MEU, called "Joint Task Force Bravo" and headed by Major General Jay M. Garner, operated farther south in Iraq, preparing camps and assisting refugees near the front lines of the guerrilla war (the mission and resources of the two task forces overlapped to some extent, especially in the early and closing days). At its peak, 11,936 U.S. servicemen were involved.
General Potter provides an overview of the operation:
In November and December of 1990, in talks with the Turkish General Staff to establish the second front for Desert Storm, Major General James Jamerson, Admiral Leighton "Snuffy" Smith, and I (as commanding general of SOCEUR — Special Operations Command Europe) had represented CINCEUR in support of U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Abramowitz. These talks resulted in the establishment of Task Force Proven Force, commanded by Jim Jamerson, and my supporting JSOTF, which operated into northern Iraq out of bases in southern Turkey.
In the spring of 1991, the EUCOM staff that had put together the European reinforcement of the VII Corps for DESERT STORM was still in existence. I had stood down the JSOTE and returned to EUCOM headquarters, but the relationships we had developed before and during DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM turned out to be of tremendous benefit as we put the relief effort together and as I stood up what General Shalikashvili later designated as Combined Task Force Alpha. We returned to Turkey on April 6 to work the relief effort. Within a week, Brigadier General Tony Zinni joined us as the deputy commander.