Page 155 - NS-2 Textbook

148 MARITIME HISTORY

by any measure: 89 combat deaths, 38 missing in action, northern Iraq. In response President Clinton ordered a
and 212 wounded. Ultimately more than 527,000 U.S. joint U.S. Navy-Ail' Force strike against Iraqi air defense
military personnel were in the theater of operations, in- systems and bases in the southern part of the country. On
cluding 82,000 U.s. Navy men and women and 94,000 3 and 4 September some forty-four land-attack Toma-
marines. hawk cruise missiles (TLAMs) were launched from four
surface ships and an SSN in the Persian Gulf, and two B-
52 bombers from Guam. The bombers also launched thir-
AFTERMATH OF DESERT STORM
teen air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs). All Iraqi air
Following the end of hostilities in Operation Desert defense targets were hit, but no target was completely
Storm in Iraq in February 1991, Iraqi leader Saddam destroyed. Nevertheless, Hussein appeared to have" got-
Hussein devoted much effort to reestablishing control ten the message," and the troops and tanks were with-
over his country. Part of this effort involved the suppres- drawn shortly thereafter. Hussein, howevel~ continued to
sion of ethnic Shiite Moslems in southern Iraq. order occasional threatening troop movenlents, and
In August 1992 U.S., British, and French warplanes provocative behavior within the no-fly zones, through-
began enforcing a UN-imposed 110-fly zOlle (an area over out the rest of the 1990s and beyond. In response to sev-
which hostile aircraft are prohibited from flying) over the eral of the latter incidents, coalition forces conducted
southern part of Iraq, designed to protect the Shiites from several small-scale air attacks on various Iraqi au'-
further attacks by Hussein. This no-fly zone continued to defense sites, using planes from Navy carriers operating
be enforced into the ne'\v rnillemuuffi, along "vith eco- in the area.
nomic sanctions and trade embargoes. The purpose of
both was to try to force Hussein to treat the Iraqi people CONFLICT IN THE BALKANS
better and to force him to comply with terms of the 1991
cease-fire agreement regarding UN inspections of sus- Unfortunately, after the demise of the Soviet Union, con-
pected munitions plants and CBR (chemical, biological, flict broke out in several of the countries formerly under
radiological) weapons sites. Access for these inspections its control. h,1991 a civil war began in the Baltic counh'y
had been a persistent problem. of Yugoslavia, which was once a client state of the Soviet
In August 1996 there was much concern over a Union. Yugoslavia's six republics-Slovenia, Croatia)"
threatening movement of some 45,000 troops and 300 Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedo-
tanks toward UN-protected Kurdish-held territory in nia-began to break apart for two reasons: (1) economic

A Tomahawk cruise missile is launched by the cruiser USS Shiloh (CG 67) operating in the Persian Gulf as part of Operation Desert Storm against
Iraqi air-defense installations in September 1996.