Discrimination

War

On August 2nd, 1990 Iraqi military forces invaded and occupied
the small Arab state of Kuwait. The order was given by Iraqi
dictatorial president Saddam Hussein. His aim was apparently to take
control Kuwait’s oil reserves (despite its small size Kuwait is a huge
oil producer; it has about 10 per cent of the world’s oil reserves ).
Iraq accused Kuwait, and also the United Arab Emirates, of breaking
agreements that limit oil production in the Middle East. According
to Saddam Hussein, this brought down world oil prices severely and
caused financial loss of billions of dollars in Iraq’s annual revenue.
Saddam Hussein had the nearly hopeless task of justifying the
invasion. He plead the fact that Kuwait had been part of the Ottoman
province of Basra, a city in the south of Iraq. However, the Ottoman
province collapsed after World War I and today’s Iraqi borders were
not created until then. There was also a further and more obvious
blunder in...