Southern uprisings Many of the rebels in southern Iraq, where the uprisings began, were either demoralized soldiers of the
Iraqi Army or members of anti-regime groups, in particular the
Islamic Dawa Party and
Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Iraqi armed forces were composed largely of Shia conscripts and contained substantial anti-regime elements, and thus many of the government's troops quickly switched sides and
defected to the rebels. The turmoil first began in the towns of
Abu Al-Khaseeb and
Az Zubayr, south of
Basra, at the end of February. On March 1, 1991, one day after the Gulf War ceasefire, a
T-72 tank gunner, returning home after Iraq's defeat in Kuwait, fired a shell into a gigantic portrait of Saddam Hussein hanging over Basra's main square and onlooking soldiers applauded. The revolt in Basra was led at first by Muhammad Ibrahim Wali, an army officer who gathered a force of military vehicles to attack the government buildings and prisons in the city; he was backed by a majority of the population. The uprising in Basra was entirely spontaneous and disorganised. The news of this event and Bush's radio broadcasts encouraged the Iraqi people to revolt against the regime in the other towns and cities. In
Najaf, a demonstration near the city's great
Imam Ali Shrine became a gun battle between army deserters and Saddam's security forces. The rebels seized the shrine as Ba'ath Party officials fled the city or were killed; prisoners were freed from jails. The uprising spread within days to all of the largest Shia cities in southern Iraq:
Amarah,
Diwaniya,
Hilla,
Karbala,
Kut,
Nasiriyah and
Samawah. Smaller cities were swept up in the revolution as well. Many exiled Iraqi dissidents, including thousands of Iran-based
Badr Brigades militants of SCIRI, crossed the borders and joined the rebellion. SCIRI concentrated their efforts on
the Shia holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, alienating many people who did not subscribe to their Shia
Islamist agenda and pro-Iranian slogans, for which SCIRI was later criticized by the Dawa Party. Ranks of the rebels throughout the region included
mutinous Sunni members of the military, leftists such as
Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) factions, anti-Saddam
Arab nationalists, and even disaffected Ba'athists. Disastrously for them, all the diverse revolutionary groups, militias, and parties were united only in their desire for
regime change as they had no common political or military program, no integrated leadership, and there was very little coordination between them. In the north, the defection of the government-recruited Kurdish home guard militias, known as
jash, gave a considerable force to the rebellion. The rebellion in the north (
Iraqi Kurdistan) erupted on March 5 in the town of
Rania. Within 10 days, the
Kurdish nationalist (
Peshmerga), Islamist (
Islamic Movement of Kurdistan), and communist (from the ICP and the
Communist Party of Kurdistan; the
Kurdistan Workers' Party was also active to some extent) rebels, joined by tens of thousands of defecting militiamen and army deserters (reportedly, there were more than 50,000 of them throughout the region). In a bloody revenge, they killed several hundred of captured Ba'athist officials and security officers without a trial; reportedly, over 900 Unlike in the south, the Kurdish rebellion was preceded by demonstrations with clear political slogans:
democracy for Iraq and autonomy for Kurdistan. After Mosul was taken,
Jalal Talabani proposed to march on the capital
Baghdad. in Kuwait and that the Guard headquarters units also survived the war. In addition, the Gulf War ceasefire agreement of March 3 prohibited the Iraqi military's use of
fixed-wing aircraft over the country, but allowed them to fly helicopters because most bridges had been destroyed. This was because General
Norman Schwarzkopf accepted the request of an Iraqi general to fly helicopters, including armed gunships, to transport government officials because of destroyed transport infrastructure, acting without Pentagon or White House instructions; almost immediately, the Iraqis began using the helicopters as gunships to put down the uprisings. The outgunned rebels had few heavy weapons and few surface-to-air missiles, which made them almost defenseless against
helicopter gunships and indiscriminate artillery barrages when the Ba'athists responded to the uprisings with crushing force. According to Human Rights Watch, "in their attempts to retake cities, and after consolidating control, loyalist forces killed thousands of anyone who opposes them whether a rebel or a civilian by firing indiscriminately into the opposing areas; executing them on the streets, in homes and in hospitals; rounding up suspects, especially young men, during house-to-house searches, and arresting them with or without charge or shooting them
en masse; and using helicopters to attack those who try to flee the cities." There were several reports of
chemical warfare attacks, including of a
nerve agent being used during the assault on Basra. Following an investigation, the
United Nations (UN) found that there was no evidence that Iraq used chemical weapons to repress the uprisings, but did not rule out the possibility that Iraq could have used
phosgene gas which would not have been detectable after the attack. Sources also say the Mujahedin supported the Kurdish rebellion in Iran. On April 5, the government announced "the complete crushing of acts of sedition, sabotage and rioting in all towns of Iraq." On that same day, the
United Nations Security Council approved
Resolution 688 condemning the Iraqi government's oppression of the Kurds and requiring Iraq to respect the human rights of its citizens. ==Casualties==