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 military equipment. But Iraq was burdened by debt incurred during the war and the price of oil, Iraq’s only major export, was low. By 1990 Iraq’s financial problems were severe. Saddam looked at ways to press the oil-producing states of the Gulf to force up the price of crude oil by limiting production and waive the $40 billion that they had loaned Iraq during its war with Iran. Kuwait had made some concessions over production ceilings. But Saddam blamed Kuwait for over-production. When his threats and blandishments failed, Iraq invaded Kuwait on 2 August 1990. He believed that occupying Kuwait could prove profitable.

Saddam also sought to justify the conquest of Kuwait on other grounds. Like other Iraqi leaders before him, he claimed that, as Kuwait’s rulers had come under the jurisdiction of the governors of Basra in the time of the Ottoman Empire, Kuwait should belong to Iraq. During its occupation of Kuwait, Iraq denied access to the Red Cross, which has a mandate to provide protection and assistance to civilians affected by international armed conflict. The death penalty was imposed for relatively minor “crimes” such as looting and hoarding food. In an attempt to deter military action to expel it from Kuwait, the Iraqi regime took hostage several hundred foreign nationals (including children) in Iraq and Kuwait and prevented thousands more from leaving, in direct contravention of international humanitarian law. Hostages were held as human shields at a number of strategic military and civilian sites. At the end of the Gulf War, the Iraqi army fleeing Kuwait set fire to over 1,160 Kuwaiti oil wells with serious environmental consequences. More than 600 Kuwaiti and other prisoners of war and missing persons are still unaccounted for. Iraq refuses to comply with its UN obligation to account for the missing. It has provided sufficient information to close only three case-files. Rh