It essentially was an accident. Saddam Hussein had been whipped in the 1991 Gulf War, President George H.W. Bush called on Iraq’s Kurds and Shia to rise up. They did – but Bush was all talk; there was no U.S. military help and they were slaughtered.
So as Kurdish refugees clung to the freezing mountains in northern Iraq and pushed to the border of a panic-stricken Turkey a guilt ridden U.S. — along with Britain and France and Turkey’s acquiesence — established a no-fly zone in northern Iraq. That gave the Iraqi Kurds breathing space and some protection and – most importantly – the chance to build their own government.
And their own home.
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