rights violations affect the security of other sovereign states they become relevant to Security Council deliberations. Fifteen days after this discussion, on 26 August 1992, France, the UK, and the U.S. imposed a “no-fly” zone in southern Iraq (Operation Southern Watch) below the thirty-second parallel to protect the Shi’as from further aerial attacks as those nations had done previously with the Kurds in the north in April 1991.
The Interplay of Interests and Norms During Security Council Deliberations
Human rights norms were incorporated into Security Council meetings in 1991 specifically because the Iraqi refugee crisis posed a direct threat to both the international security interests and normative values of a majority of the council members. France, the UK, and the U.S. were particularly susceptible to increasing domestic and international pressure to address the tragedy, which was directly linked to Operation Desert Storm and was vividly captured by Western media and broadcast worldwide. Because Turkey was a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, any security risk to it was a threat to the entire alliance, which was obligated to defend it. Despite these interests, however, Security Council members from Europe and the Americas also viewed the crisis as a threat to their core values—the promotion of freedom, human rights, and the rule of law. Ambassador Diego Arria of Venezuela, for example, described his country’s motivations this way: “The concern of my country in this debate is founded on its unswerving solidarity and concern in respect of a subject of primary importance for humankind, namely, the defence of human rights wherever they are violated or trampled underfoot, and on its aspiration to see peace and harmony restored in a region whose people are traditionally friends of Venezuela.”80 Failure to address the crisis threatened the shared vision of the new world order that was so anxiously anticipated by UN members at the end of the Cold War, and particularly by France, the UK, and the U.S.
Security Council members from democratic states also were susceptible to the humanitarian impulse of their populations. Growing domestic and international pressure to respond to the unfolding tragedy came from three sources: the international media; independent experts, including officials of human rights organizations; and compelling eyewitness testimony, which had a significant impact. First, the international media presence in the region was substantial because of previous coverage of Operation Desert Storm. Live television images and photographs of the utter devastation of the Kurdish community were broadcast internationally, causing the domestic populations of Coalition states to pressure their governments to respond to the crisis, in part because they believed the war was a cause of the rebellion.81 The extensive media attention to the plight of the Kurds elicited public outrage in the U.S. and threatened to overshadow the military success of Desert Storm. The U.S. government was motivated to respond, in part, because the crisis directly threatened the political aims of the war.82 In short, the humanitarian crisis threatened U.S. national interests by detracting from U.S. accomplishments in the Persian Gulf. Nonetheless, it is also true that while media coverage and popular opinion added to the pressure and urgency for the U.S. to respond, President George H. W. Bush had “declared his intention to intervene before the public could find its voice.”83
Second, independent experts like those from international human rights organizations used this opportunity to release extensive reports detailing the Iraqi regime’s past human rights violations, including the Anfal campaign. They linked ongoing Iraqi repression to its past genocidal behavior.84 At the very time that Saddam Hussein’s military was indiscriminately attacking Iraqi Kurds in northern Iraq, Middle East Watch presented compelling evidence to the international public of his past genocidal efforts to destroy the Kurdish minority. Middle East Watch chastised the allied powers and in particular the United States for failing to assist the Kurds of Halabja in 1988 or to punish the Iraqi regime until after it had invaded Kuwait.85 The pressure exerted on the U.S. and European states was twofold: they were criticized for past failures to prevent or punish human rights abuses against the Kurds in Iraq, and they were pressured to stop the Iraqi regime’s abuses against the Kurds in the present and punish it for those abuses. In short, these advocacy groups publicly urged Security Council members to make their foreign policy behavior consistent with their professed values.
Third, the eyewitness testimony of U.S. secretary of state James Baker, who visited the refugee encampments along the Turkish border, was crucial for gaining Bush administration support for Operation Provide Comfort and the creation of the no-fly zones. In early April 1991, Baker witnessed the precarious situation of the displaced Kurds after being urged by then assistant secretary of state Margaret Tutwiler to make a personal visit to the camps. Baker was hesitant to go but Tutwiler had argued that it was necessary to demonstrate in a dramatic way that the U.S. had not abandoned the region at the end of the war.86 Baker’s motives for the visit were shaped primarily by domestic and foreign policy interests. Yet these interests were threatened by the administration’s perceived failure to live up to the normative expectations of domestic and international publics who believed the U.S. had a responsibility to protect human rights and to respond to the suffering of the Iraqi population.
Talking with a delegation of Kurdish refugees who had survived Saddam Hussein’s repression and had witnessed the slaughter of family members had a visceral impact on the secretary of state. Baker later said that he had “witnessed the suffering and desperation of the Iraqi people and that their experiences of cruelty and human anguish defied description.”87 He identified his personal experience of meeting Kurdish refugees as the principal motivation for the subsequent U.S. approach to Iraq policy:
My experience on that rugged hillside was not only the catalyst for a huge expansion of American and international relief to the Kurds that came to be known as Operation Provide Comfort: it also galvanized me into pressing for a new policy, announced by the President on April 16, of establishing safe havens for the Kurds in northern Iraq-refugee camps secured by U.S. forces and administered by the United Nations…. It was the largest military relief operation ever undertaken, and delivered millions of dollars in food and supplies to more than 400,000 refugees.88
It is clear that political and military interests merged with human rights values and humanitarian concerns to produce an unprecedented U.S. and ultimately Security Council response. Compelling expert testimony, graphic television and photographic imagery, and their impact on international public opinion had a particularly strong influence on the Security Council.
The character of the military intervention itself demonstrates that both material interests and humanitarian considerations shaped Security Council decision making. If the three permanent members had been solely concerned with Turkish sovereignty and stability, sealing the Iraqi border to protect its neighbors from the negative effects of Iraq’s repression would have been sufficient. Relative to sovereignty and stability, it was unnecessary to undertake a far-reaching humanitarian relief effort deep within the borders of Iraq. Further, the initial preoccupation with the situation of the Kurds and the establishment of the no-fly zone in the north but not the south betrays the underlying national security interests of those three permanent members, yet material interests cannot explain the decision to extend that same protection to the southern Shi’as over a year later when they did not pose a cross-border security threat. Moreover, while domestic pressure and international media attention were significant factors in the establishment of the no-fly zone in the north in 1991, they were not significant factors in the decision to extend the no-fly zone to the south in 1992. Indeed, in August 1992 there was little international attention devoted to the plight of the unprotected Shi’a relative to the focus on humanitarian tragedies happening in Somalia and Bosnia-Herzegovina at that same time. Nonetheless, the Security Council expanded its protection to the southern Iraqi Shi’a. In sum, domestic security interests were necessary to produce humanitarian action by France, the UK, and the U.S.; but humanitarian values and human rights norms in turn helped to constitute those national interests.
The Competing Normative Demands of State Sovereignty and Human Rights
Defining human rights violations as a threat to international peace and security has
