Transcript US involvement in the ME

United States Involvement
in the Middle East
IRAQ-IRAN WAR
FIRST PERSIAN GULF WAR

Iraq invaded Iran in 1980 following a long history of
border disputes and fears of Shia insurgency among
Iraq's long-suppressed Shia majority influenced by the
Iranian Revolution. For the next six years the war
came at a great cost in lives and economic damage - a
half a million Iraqi and Iranian soldiers as well as
civilians are believed to have died in the war with
many more injured and wounded.
PERSIAN GULF WAR-OPERATION DESERT
STORM
 Iraq invaded Kuwait
 Claimed Kuwait was
stealing oil
 money owed to other
countries for previous
Iran-Iraq War.
 Saddam Hussein thought
no one would stop him
Claimed Kuwait
was stealing
oil
Iraq claimed the land

Hussein
thought no
one would
stop him
Persian Gulf War
owed money to other
countries for previous
Iran-Iraq War.
Draw a 3rd
copy of this
graphic
organizer on
the right side
of your
notebook.
(OPERATION DESERT STORM)
Iraq invaded Kuwait in August of 1990, under the direction of
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi army took control of
Kuwait in a very short amount of time. The United nations
responded to the Iraqi invasion by demanding that Iraq withdraw
its troops from Kuwait. The United nations asked other countries
to cut off trade to Iraq (Embargo) in an attempt to force them to
withdraw, that attempt failed.
The United States and thirty other countries formed a coalition and
began sending military troops into Saudi Arabia over the next few
months.
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The united Nations set a date for Iraq to leave
Kuwait, Iraq rejected the date and refused to leave.
The U.S. and their allies began attacking Iraq through
the use of air power then by a ground assault. After a
devastating battle resulting in many Iraqi deaths, the
Iraqi’s were driven out of Kuwait.
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Although the war was a decisive military victory
for the coalition, Kuwait and Iraq suffered
enormous property damage, and Saddam
Hussein was not removed from power. In fact,
Hussein was free to turn his attention to
suppressing internal Shiite and Kurd revolts,
which the U.S.-led coalition did not support, in
part because of concerns over the possible
breakup of Iraq if the revolts were successful.
Coalition peace terms were agreed to by Iraq,
but every effort was made by the Iraqis to
frustrate implementation of the terms,
particularly UN weapons inspections.
AFGHANISTAN
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On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacked two targets in
the U.S. Al-Qaeda is a group of Islamic terrorists that were
largely based in Afghanistan. They hijacked four
airplanes and intentionally crashed two of them into the
World Trade Center in new York. The third plane was
crashed into the Pentagon in Virginia and the fourth
crashed in rural Pennsylvania in route to its target, the
White House in Washington, D.C. The terrorist attacks on
that day killed nearly 3,000 people.

Osama bin Laden was blamed for the attacks, U.S.
President George Bush called on other countries to help
wage a war on terrorism to crush al-Qaeda. In October
2001, U.S., British, and Canadian forces invaded
Afghanistan in search of bin Laden and to destroy al-Qaeda
and their allies the Taliban (Operation Enduring Freedom).
Although bin Laden was never found the grip of the
Taliban and al-Qaeda on Afghanistan was broken. The
U.S. let forces still struggle to control portions of the
country.
THE IRAQ WAR 2003
(OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM)
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Saddam Hussein was still president of Iraq at the time of
the Afghanistan invasion. Officials in the U.S government
feared connections between Hussein and al-Qaeda and the
allegations that Iraq was building Weapons of Mass
Destruction (WMD’s) in the form of Nuclear, Biological, and
Chemical weapons. The United Nations sent inspectors
to Iraq to check for WMD’s however Iraq failed to allow them
to complete their inspections. In response the U.S. Congress
passed an Iraq War Resolution that authorized the president
to go forward with a war in Iraq.

In March 2003, the U.S. began bombing targets in the capital
of Baghdad. British, Australian, Polish, and American
soldiers invaded Iraq and defeated the Iraqi army. Saddam
Hussein was captured, put on trial for crimes against
humanity by the Iraqi’s, and later executed
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Weapons of Mass Destruction were never found in Iraq. It
is difficult to determine how many Iraqis have died since the
invasion, but as of 2007, more than 500,000 Iraqis may have
died according to one study. Many deaths are due to
sectarian violence. Over 4,000 American soldiers have been
killed and over 20,000 have been wounded in Iraq thus far.
WHY IS THE U.S. INTERESTED IN THE M.E.?
Oil
 Stop Terrorists
 Spread democracy
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AL-QAEDA
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The group is wanted by the United
States for its September 11, 2001,
attacks on the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon, as well as a host of
lesser attacks.
To escape the post-9/11 U.S.-led war
in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda’s central
leadership is believed to have fled
eastward into Pakistan, securing a
safe haven in loosely governed areas
there.

WHAT IS AL-QAEDA?
Al-Qaeda seeks to rid Muslim countries of what it sees as the
influence of the West and replace their governments with
fundamentalist Islamic regimes.
After al-Qaeda’s September 11, 2001, attacks on America,
the United States launched a war in Afghanistan to destroy
Al-Qaeda’s bases there and overthrow the Taliban, the
country’s Muslim fundamentalist rulers who harbored bin
Laden and his followers.

“Al-Qaeda” is Arabic for “The Base.”
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WHAT ARE AL-QAEDA’S ORIGINS?
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Al-Qaeda grew out of the opposition to the 1979 Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan. In the 1980s, Bin Laden and the
Palestinian religious scholar Abdullah Azzam, recruited,
trained, and financed thousands of foreign mujahadeen, or
holy warriors, from more than fifty countries. Bin Laden
wanted these fighters to continue the "holy war" beyond
Afghanistan. He formed al-Qaeda around 1988.
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U.S. officials say several top al-Qaeda leaders are
in their custody. These include a senior lieutenant,
Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in Pakistan in
March 2002, and Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, a senior
commander in Afghanistan. In March 2003, the
alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks,
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and al-Qaeda's
treasurer, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, were also
captured in Pakistan. They, along with four others
detained at Guantanamo Bay, were charged with
murder, terrorism, and violating rules of war in
February 2008.
WHERE DOES AL-QAEDA
OPERATE?
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There is no single headquarters. From 1991 to 1996, al-Qaeda
worked out of Pakistan along the Afghan border, or inside Pakistani cities. AlQaeda has autonomous underground cells in some 100
countries, including the United States. Law enforcement has
broken up al-Qaeda cells in the United Kingdom, the United States, Italy, France,
Spain, Germany, Albania, Uganda, and elsewhere.
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To escape the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda’s leadership once again
sought refuge in Pakistan’s tribal areas after September 11, 2001. Bin Laden,
along with some other members of the organization, is thought to be hiding in
Pakistan along the Afghan border.
WHERE DOES
AL-QAEDA
OPERATE?
HOW BIG IS AL-QAEDA?
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It’s impossible to say precisely, because al-Qaeda is
decentralized. Estimates range from several hundred to
several thousand members.