Lawrence Freedman: Lessons from the bombing of Baghdad, 1991

The curious opening salvo of the new Gulf war was explicitly opportunistic. The temptation was obvious. It would make regime change simplicity itself. One well-aimed shot would blow away key figures in the Iraqi leadership, perhaps including Saddam himself, before the country as a whole need be touched by war.

Even with limited results, as appears to have been the case, at least a signal was sent of a coalition intention to find the least painful way of achieving its objectives, the stress levels on Saddam and his coterie should increase, and there is always some military value in knocking out command centres. Exactly how a transfer of power would have been managed, with Allied forces days away from Baghdad, if the Iraqi state had suddenly been successfully decapitated is an interesting question.

As operations moved on yesterday to the larger scale always envisaged, the possibility of catching Saddam will still influence plans for the air war. It has become an article of faith in the US Air Force that a well-designed air campaign can undermine an enemy state without causing massive death and destruction. Despite talk of a "blitz" and "carpet bombing", contemporary air campaigns rely largely on the accuracy of munitions rather than their volume. Rather than terrorise whole populations into submission, the intention is to pick out targets directly relevant to the enemy war effort, such as air defences, command bunkers and military stores.

This was also the philosophy of Desert Storm, in 1991. Then the objective was to liberate Kuwait, rather than Iraq, and the bulk of the bombing was directed against front-line Iraqi forces. None the less, Baghdad and other cities were attacked, although not to the extent that is often supposed. The pyrotechnic displays that accompanied the air raids were mainly the result of frantic and largely ineffectual air defence activity.

Baghdad received 244 laser-guided bombs and 86 Tomahawk cruise missiles – a fraction of the total ordnance delivered by the US Air Force. The US analyst William Arkin, who has made intensive critical studies of the air campaign, has compared the 287 tons of ordnance that hit Baghdad over 43 days with the infamous Christmas 1972 bombing of Hanoi, which was hit by 15,000 tons of bombs over 11 days. The US planners were anxious not to hand Iraq propaganda victories by causing substantial civilian casualties. Those possibilities were indicated when 401 civilians were caught by bombs that penetrated what the US thought was a command bunker at al-Amiriyah, but was in fact an air-raid shelter.

In all, on Iraqi figures, less than 3,000 civilians were killed in Iraq as a result of the bombing – a substantial number, but far fewer than implied when casualties rising to 100,000 are conjured up. The real problems for the local population in 1991 were not the result of direct bombardment – visitors to the city after the war confirmed just how precise many of the strikes had been – but in the long-term consequences of the attacks on infrastructure, affecting power supplies, water and sanitation and transport.

Claims are now made that the more advanced weaponry can disable key facilities, such as electrical power stations, without actually having to destroy them. This was in fact achieved when Belgrade was attacked during the 1999 Kosovo war. Minimising the disruption to civilian life has been set as a key priority. This is in part because the task of post-war reconstruction is going to be hampered if the social and economic infrastructure suffers yet more damage; but also because of the insistence that the Iraqi people are victims of a tyranny and should not be made to suffer even more.

With the objective now regime change, it can be expected that so-called "leadership targets" will become a high priority. Yet the record from 1991 is not hopeful. That war began with an official position that the removal of Saddam could not be an explicit war aim. The standard line was that if he were by some chance hit, then no tears would be shed. Instead the idea was to isolate the regime from the Iraqi people. There were, however, no obvious means of achieving this other than attacking targets believed to be directly related to the regime, such as Ba'ath party headquarters or the ministries most associated with repression, along with communication links.

The trouble was that these buildings were essentially irrelevant. The sources of the regime's power lay in its networks of patronage and terror. Aware of the American plans, the Iraqis evacuated the relevant buildings of anything important, including key personnel, and moved into buildings normally used for more innocent pursuits. The last day of the war saw the empty Ba'ath party HQ pulverised pointlessly by 21 bombs.

Just before the war's end, an effort was made to catch Saddam by attacking a command bunker at an air base close to Baghdad where it was thought he might be hiding. The bunker was destroyed but Saddam was not there.

The Iraqi leader's well-developed survival instincts had him moving around the residential suburbs of Baghdad during the Allied bombing. He is likely to adopt the same tactics this time, at least until the coalition forces get close to the suburbs.

There is no evidence that in 1991 Allied bombing made any difference at all to Saddam's hold on power. Moreover, one awkward conclusion from that campaign is that once the Allies had confirmed that the bulk of the population were safe at home and were not directly under attack, the psychological impact of the war eased tremendously. The 1999 air campaign against Kosovo also suggested that while it is undoubtedly the case that the initial impact of being bombed unites a population in solidarity against those attacking them, at some point, as the pressure starts to become unbearable, this anger turns against those responsible for getting them into the position where they are being bombed.

Even this anger may make little difference, if the population has no means of toppling the regime. One of the reasons why Slobodan Milosevic capitulated in June 1999 in the face of Nato bombing is that he realised domestic support was seeping away as city life became more miserable. But Milosevic, at least then, had a reasonable hope of clinging to power. Saddam has nowhere to go, and so no reason to respond to public feeling.

So even if the Americans and British were in a position to put pressure on Saddam through hurting the population of Baghdad, which for good humanitarian and political reasons they are not, it is by no means clear that the people would feel confident about taking on the regime – at least until they saw that Saddam's own forces had turned against him, or coalition forces were close at hand.

The regime is more vulnerable now than in 1991. It has little legitimacy and many of those who have done Saddam's bidding in the past will be looking anxiously for the right moment to jump ship.

It would be best if they were to do so when coalition forces are close at hand. This would ensure that no power vacuum develops, public order can be maintained and basic human needs met. It would be hard not to cheer the sudden demise of Saddam, which would cause his regime to crumble at once, and could bring military operations to a quick conclusion. But, paradoxically, this would not necessarily make the aftermath any easier to manage.

The writer is Professor of War Studies at King's College, London