(MUSIC)

Coalition forces began an air war against Iraq on January seventeenth, nineteen ninety-one. They bombed Iraqi targets in Iraq and Kuwait. On February twenty-third, the Iraqis set fire to hundreds of Kuwaiti oil wells.

OBSERVER: “It looks like what I envisioned hell would look like. The country of Kuwait is burning.” [Sounds of oil well fires]

The coalition had the long and difficult task of putting those fires out.

On February twenty-fourth, the allied ground war began as part of the operation known as Desert Storm. That ground war lasted just one hundred hours.

SOUND: Desert Storm Battle

Saddam Hussein withdrew his forces from Kuwait. But he was still in control of his own country. Years later, some Americans continued to criticize the Bush administration for not trying to oust the Iraqi leader. They believed that Bush should have sent forces to capture Baghdad, the Iraqi capital.

After the war ended, Kurds in northern Iraq rebelled against Saddam Hussein. So did Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq. The Iraqi government crushed both uprisings.

The defeated Kurds fled to Iran and Turkey and into the mountains of northern Iraq. President Bush ordered American troops to help give humanitarian aid to the refugees. The troops established refugee camps for the Kurds.

As time passed, Iraqi soldiers and aircraft continued to attack the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south. Coalition forces led by the United States established "no-fly" zones barring Iraqi aircraft over northern and southern Iraq. Coalition planes enforced these no-fly zones in the years that followed.