1979 and All That

Why the most important year of the modern world is the one nobody remembers

Ask the average person on the street who has a passing interest in history if the dates 1066, 1789, 1914 and 1945 mean anything, and the answer will inevitably be in the affirmative. However, push them on 1979, and blank faces will likely greet you. This essay will attempt to demonstrate that, to understand the modern world, it is imperative to have a working knowledge of the last year of the 70s. Forewarning: an understanding of the Islamic schism and a geographical understanding of the Middle East will help. Oil will also play a significant role.

A Very Old Quarrel

Islam was founded in the 7th century by the Prophet Mohammed. His death in 632 started an internal struggle between his followers that has serious ramifications for regional politics today. The majority of the world's Muslims (85–90%) are Sunni, who initially followed Mohammed's companion Abu Bakr, backed by the majority of the tribes at the time. The remaining Muslims around the world are called Shias, who descend from the followers of Ali, the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law. Ali's son Hussein was later martyred at Karbala in what is now Iraq. Theological differences between the two aren't key to this essay but, like the Catholic/Protestant schism that divided Europe in the 16th century, the ramifications are still being felt now. In essence, they don't like each other.

Iran: The Ayatollah’s Revolution

In January 1979, after a year of mass protests, the Shah of Iran fled the country. Two weeks later, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile in Paris to lead an Islamic revolution whose regime still rules today. The key point here is that Khomeini, who from now on I will simply call the Ayatollah, is from the Shia branch of Islam. Almost overnight, Iran, which had been a staunch ally of America, became its number one enemy. In November, revolutionary students stormed the US embassy in Tehran and took 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. The crisis arguably caused Jimmy Carter to lose the following year's election to Ronald Reagan, with his inability to free the hostages seen as further proof that Carter was a weak president overseeing an underperforming economy. Crucially, Iran is the world's leading Shia nation and a historical rival of Saudi Arabia and the newly independent Gulf countries.

Iraq: Enter Saddam

We now need to skip across Iran's western border to Mesopotamia, now known as Iraq. 1979 was also a tumultuous year in Iraq. A 42-year-old Saddam Hussein replaced President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr in an almost bloodless coup. Saddam was not a religious zealot but was from the Sunni branch of Islam (Iraq is majority Shia) and understood that nothing consolidates power better than creating an enemy that can be blamed for all sorts of ills. The word 'bloodless' is doing some heavy lifting here as, in his first few days in office, Saddam had dozens of political rivals, including close friends, executed on trumped-up charges of treason to prove a point about the art of ruthlessness.

Iraq is one of the world's largest oil producers and holds some of its biggest proven reserves. The oil price shock that followed the Yom Kippur War of 1973 (OPEC itself had been founded in Baghdad in 1960) saw its economy become one of the richest in the region. Indeed, by 1990, Iraq had the fourth-largest army in the world. Alongside this, the oil riches of the 70s funded a modernisation project in Iraq that genuinely saw incredible progress in education, infrastructure and healthcare, and Iraqi doctors and engineers were renowned across the Arab world. Yet Saddam was capable of utter cruelty. His treatment of the Kurds in the north of Iraq and the Shias in the (crucially, oil-producing) south can only be described as barbaric. Sensing an opportunity for territorial expansion after the Iranian revolution, and using the Shia takeover of his neighbour as an excuse to quell his own Shia majority, he launched an ill-fated invasion of Iran in 1980 that would last eight years and arguably produce no winners.

Afghanistan: The Soviet Union’s Vietnam

Next, we need to leave the Gulf and head east to the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan. We stay in 1979 but now focus on the context of the Cold War. In December, the USSR, propping up a failing communist government in Kabul and fearing an Islamic threat on its southern border (and a potential uprising in its own 'stans), launched its own Vietnam War. Afghanistan was defended by the 'Mujahideen', which roughly translates as 'holy warriors'. 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend' is a maxim as old as time. In this case, the USA, seeing an opportunity to fight a proxy war, sent weapons and money to help defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan, and the war eventually became one of the major reasons for the collapse of Soviet communism. The war lasted from 1979 until 1989 and, when the final Soviet troops left, America largely walked away too, leaving its weapons, including Stinger missiles, in the hands of the Mujahideen.

Kuwait: Saddam’s Revenge

It's time to return to the Gulf. The end of the war between Iran and Iraq in 1988 was catastrophic for both nations. For Saddam and Iraq, a once-thriving economy had been reduced to debts of around $80 billion, much of it owed to his Gulf neighbours. Looking for a favour from his Gulf cousins, he asked Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to write off his debts and to cut production within the OPEC cartel so that the price of oil would rise. Saddam's argument was that he had been protecting his fellow Sunni Arabs from the Shia Islamic revolution. His neighbours didn't buy this argument, and oil prices stayed low. Saddam, in a vengeful mood, decided to act. He declared that Kuwait had been siphoning oil from Iraq's Rumaila oilfield across the border and demanded compensation. Kuwait, aghast at the accusation, stood its ground and refused Saddam's demands. The result, on 2 August 1990, was an invasion which, from a military standpoint, was an utter mismatch. A nation of around 18 million people against one of barely 2 million saw Iraq storm the border and conquer Kuwait in a matter of hours.

A Quick Guide to the Gulf

We now need to take a little break and explain the makeup of the Gulf and why it plays such an important role in global affairs. Situated at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and Africa, the countries of the Gulf have always occupied an important geo-strategic position for global trade. The discovery of oil in the region in the first half of the 20th century transformed this desert area into arguably the most disputed place on the planet. The six Gulf countries, which since 1981 have formed the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain. Yemen is geographically part of the Arabian Peninsula but has comparatively little oil and is not a GCC member. Between them, the six hold roughly a third of the world's proven oil reserves. They also share a sea which, depending on your persuasion, is either the Arabian or the Persian Gulf. This is arguably the most lucrative stretch of water anywhere on the planet. The problem for the Gulf countries, and more significantly for the USA, is that Iran controls the entire northern shore, including one side of the Strait of Hormuz. If this waterway were ever blockaded, the global economy would soon feel it. The six Gulf countries are, to all intents and purposes, monarchies: tribal fiefdoms that were successfully conquered by the now-ruling families. In Saudi Arabia, you have the Al Sauds, who made their own Faustian pact with the Wahhabi clerics: political control for the Sauds, religious control for the Wahhabis. In the UAE, the emirate of Abu Dhabi (which holds over 90% of the country's oil) is in de facto control under the Al Nahyan family, currently led by Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed. Qatar is ruled by the dominant Al Thani family. Bahrain is an interesting story. Essentially a Saudi vassal state, its Shia majority is ruled by a Sunni royal family that is beholden to Saudi wishes. Oman is a bit of an outlier, geographically positioned on the edge of the Indian Ocean, and has always been the Switzerland of the Middle East in terms of remaining neutral in regional squabbles.

Desert Storm

Today, we know Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar are major players on the world stage. In 1990, following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, this wasn't the case. A genuine fear at the time was that Saddam would repeat on his southern border what he had done in Kuwait. Enter George H.W. Bush, the 41st president, former director of the CIA and, crucially, a Texas oilman by background, whose Defence Secretary, Dick Cheney, would later run the oil-services giant Halliburton. He understood the importance of the region in terms of American interests. Combined with the Gulf countries' fears of an Iraqi takeover, the conditions were set for a marriage of convenience. Fearing one man controlling close to half of the world's known oil reserves, America committed itself to its largest military deployment since the Vietnam War. This was no small feat; the Vietnam Syndrome was real in the psyche of both Washington and the American public at large. However, after a five-month build-up (Operation Desert Shield), Operation Desert Storm was launched on 17 January 1991 and was so successful that President Bush declared the spectre of Vietnam buried forever in the sands of the Arabian desert. Crucially, however, Saddam was allowed to retreat to Baghdad. Regime change was considered one step too far for the Western powers and would have invoked memories of colonisation and Sykes–Picot among fellow Arab countries.

Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda

With the threat of Saddam diminished, a pragmatic pact was made between America and the GCC. America would stay in the region and provide military assistance against further aggressors and, in return, would have privileged access to the black gold that lay beneath the sand. This suited all parties involved except a young Saudi, the son of a billionaire construction magnate whose family had close business connections with the Bush dynasty in Texas. Osama Bin Laden was a pious man who found an American military presence in the land of the two holiest sites in Islam, Mecca and Medina, unpalatable. To remove what he considered the infidel, he turned on America the network he had founded in 1988, at the end of the Afghan war: Al-Qaeda, which in Arabic literally means 'The Base'. However, he fell foul of the Saudi government, which decided it needed American military support more than a radical group. Bin Laden and his followers were banished from the desert kingdom and found sanctuary (via Sudan) in Afghanistan.

9/11 and Afghanistan

Between the Taliban's capture of Kabul in 1996 and 11 September 2001, the nation of Afghanistan was pretty much ignored. Outrage over the destruction of the 1,500-year-old Buddha statues at Bamiyan aside, this opium-producing mountainous outpost warranted little media scrutiny. That all changed the day the Twin Towers were destroyed. Within days, Afghanistan became the most infamous name in the West. Bin Laden, although wanted by the CIA for years, had used his time to recruit and train fighters to strike back against America. Within weeks, the might of the American military descended upon Afghanistan and, without too much fighting, saw the Taliban removed from power and forced to retreat into the mountains and across the border into Pakistan. In terms of military operations, the invasion was an unqualified success. The state-building that followed was a different matter. Democracy as a concept might be the darling of the liberal West, but it doesn't always translate into societies that have been built on tribal allegiances and loyalties for centuries. Twenty years and hundreds of billions of dollars spent training the Afghan army and backing a corrupt government came undone in spectacular style in the summer of 2021 when, almost as soon as President Biden confirmed that American troops were leaving, the Taliban swept back into power. 'You may have the watches, but we have the time.'

Iraq, 2003 and the Rise of ISIS

President George W. Bush saw the attack on New York as a chance to finally end Saddam's rule in Iraq once and for all. Declaring Iraq, alongside North Korea and Iran, part of an 'Axis of Evil', he set plans in place to overthrow the Iraqi leader and install a democratic regime in the heart of the Middle East. In the neo-conservative thinking that ruled Washington, this would set off a domino effect, acting as a catalyst to remove fellow autocrats across the region. Citing claims that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) (across the Atlantic, Tony Blair's government claimed some could be deployed within 45 minutes), he launched an invasion in March 2003 without the backing of the UN Security Council and in the face of fierce international opposition.

As in 1991 and 2001, the initial military onslaught saw a comprehensive victory. However, as in Afghanistan, the nation-building that followed was nothing short of disastrous. Seemingly not understanding the difference between Shia and Sunni, the Bush administration ignored the sectarian hatred that existed because of Saddam's Sunni-dominated rule. With militias backed by Iran, Al-Qaeda and other actors unleashed, Iraq descended into utter chaos. Whichever government was ruling in Baghdad couldn't get a grip on the rife graft and sectarian violence that became a feature of everyday life. Saddam's army was also disbanded and, in echoes of Afghanistan in the late 1980s, its soldiers weren't forced to hand in their weapons. As a result, many angry and unemployed former officers joined the insurgency, and some rose to senior positions in the group that became the Islamic State (ISIS). ISIS took advantage of the chaos in Iraq and, after the Arab Spring, the civil war in Syria. In 2014 it declared a caliphate and, until 2017, controlled large parts of both countries (and their oil supplies), unleashing barbaric behaviour and 'justice' on the people who lived under its control.

Conclusion

So, to conclude, and I appreciate this essay could be (and probably needs to be) ten times longer to do real justice to every event, I hope this short introduction to the affairs of the region and to global history since 1979 gives the reader a new understanding of why '1979 and all that' should be studied in every school.