From 1992 to the United States-led coalition
invasion of Iraq in 2003, there were two NFZs in Iraq. The NFZ in the north of Iraq was established shortly after the Gulf War, extending from the
36th parallel northwards. In August 1992 the NFZ in the south to the
32nd parallel was established, but in 1996 it was expanded to the
33rd parallel. The northern NFZ was initially part of
Operation Provide Comfort relief operations to a persecuted
Kurdish minority in Iraq, and was followed on by
Operation Northern Watch. The southern NFZ was maintained by
Operation Southern Watch. When
Operation Desert Storm ended in 1991, the safety of Kurds who were fleeing during the
uprising from Iraqi persecution became an issue, and
Operation Provide Comfort began. This operation essentially created a Northern NFZ to Iraqi military aircraft. The operation provided the Kurdish population with humanitarian aid and reassurance of safe skies. On 26 June 1993, the U.S. conducted a
cruise missile attack on the Iraqi Intelligence Service's principal command and control complex in Baghdad. The U.S. public justification was retaliation for Iraqi Intelligence's assassination attempt on former president
George H. W. Bush while he was visiting Kuwait in April of that year to commemorate a coalition victory over Iraq in the Gulf War. Fourteen cruise missiles were launched from and nine of them launched from . Sixteen hit the target, while three struck a residential area, killing nine civilians and wounding 12 others. Four missiles were unaccounted for. In October 1994,
Baghdad once again began mobilizing around 64,000 Iraqi troops near the Kuwaiti border because of their expressed frustrations of economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Nations Security Council. In response, the U.S. begins to deploy troops in the Persian Gulf to deter Iraqi aggression against Kuwait. Code-named
Operation Vigilant Warrior, the 1st Brigade of the
Fort Stewart, Georgia-based
24th Infantry Division (Mechanized) deployed and drew pre-positioned equipment in Kuwait. The
75th Fighter Squadron of the
23rd Wing and its
Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt IIs were also sent. They initially deployed from
Pope AFB,
North Carolina to
King Abdulaziz Air Base,
Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, followed by the first forward deployment to
Ahmad al-Jaber Air Base, Kuwait. This allowed better face-to-face coordination with
forward air controllers further forward in Kuwait. After the U.S. brigade deployed, Iraq withdrew its troops from the border. On 14 April 1994, two
United States Air Force F-15 Eagle fighter planes
mistakenly shot down two
United States Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, killing 26 U.S. military and civilian personnel. In September 1996, the U.S. conducted
Operation Desert Strike, and ships from the Battle Group, including , and , in conjunction with
B-52 bombers escorted by
F-14D Tomcats from USS
Carl Vinson, launched 27 cruise missiles against Iraqi air defense targets in southern Iraq. A second wave of 17 was launched later that day. The missiles hit targets in and around
Kut,
Iskandariyah,
Nasiriyah, and
Tallil. This was done in response to
Saddam Hussein, the dictator of Iraq, attempting to launch an Iraqi military offensive campaign in the
Kurdish town of
Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. Operation Provide Comfort officially ended on 31 December 1996. Following Operation Provide Comfort, the United States continued to watch over the northern skies with the launching of Operation Northern Watch on 1 January 1997. Operation Northern Watch continued to provide air security to the Kurdish population in the north. By 1999, the Department of Defense had flown over 200,000 sorties over Iraq. American and British aircraft continuously enforced the NFZ, receiving anti-aircraft fire from Iraqi forces almost daily. The operation ran until its conclusion on 1 May 2003. In the south, Operation Southern Watch was underway to watch over the persecuted Shi'ite populations. This operation was launched on 27 August 1992 with the mission of preventing further human rights abuses against civilian populations. Iraq challenged the no-fly zone beginning in December 1992 when a USAF
F-16 fighter plane shot down an Iraqi
MiG-25 Foxbat fighter which had locked onto it in the Southern no-fly zone. The next month Coalition planes attacked Iraqi SAM sites in the South. Baghdad eventually halted firing on patrolling Coalition aircraft after August 1993. In December 1998,
Operation Desert Fox was conducted by the
USAF and the
Royal Air Force, which was a major four-day bombing campaign on Iraqi targets from 16 December to 19 December 1998. The contemporaneous justification for the strikes was Iraq's failure to comply with United Nations Security Council resolutions and its interference with
United Nations Special Commission inspectors. In the aftermath of Operation Desert Fox in December 1998, Iraq announced it would no longer respect the no-fly zones and resumed its efforts in shooting down Coalition aircraft.
Saddam Hussein offered a $14,000 reward to anyone who could accomplish this task, but no manned aircraft were ever shot down by
Iraq. Air strikes by British and American aircraft against Iraqi claimed anti-aircraft and military targets continued weekly over the next few years. In the early 2000s (decade), the U.S. developed a contingency plan,
Operation Desert Badger for dealing with pilots shot down over Iraqi no-fly zones.The operation continued until it transitioned to
Operation Southern Focus in June 2002. They began to carry out offensive sorties, not only against targets that had fired on them, but upon installations that had demonstrated no hostile intent. The U.S. claimed that these increased attacks were the result of increasing Iraqi provocations, but later, in July 2005, the
British Ministry of Defense released figures showing that the number of provocations had actually dropped dramatically prior to and just after the increase in allied attacks. Their records indicate that in the first seven months of 2001, there had been 370 provocations on the part of Iraq. In the seven months from October 2001 into May 2002, only 32 such provocations were recorded. General Tommy Franks later acknowledged that the dramatic increase in offensive sorties was an attempt to destroy the Iraqi defenses in much the same way as the air strikes at the beginning of the Gulf War had. In purported retaliation for the Iraqis' now-daily air defense attacks on Coalition aircraft, the September attacks included a 5 September 100-aircraft attack on the main air defense site in western Iraq. According to an editorial by Michael Smith for the
New Statesman, this was "Located at the furthest extreme of the southern no-fly zone, far away from the areas that needed to be patrolled to prevent attacks on the Shi'a; it was destroyed not because it was a threat to the patrols, but to allow allied special forces operating from Jordan to enter Iraq undetected." The NFZs effectively ceased to exist with the beginning of the
Iraq War in March 2003, since air superiority over the country was quickly attained by the coalition. The NFZs were officially deactivated right after Saddam Hussein's overthrow. == Legality ==