Highway of Death

Highway 8

Iraqi forces including the elite Iraqi Republican Guard's 1st Armored Division Hammurabi were trying to either redeploy or escape on and near Highway 8, the continuation of Highway 80 in Iraq. They were engaged over a much larger area in smaller groups by U.S. artillery units and a battalion of AH-64 Apache attack helicopters operating under the command of General Barry McCaffrey. Hundreds of predominantly military Iraqi vehicles grouped in defensive formations of approximately a dozen vehicles were then systematically destroyed along a 50-mile stretch of the highway and nearby desert.

PDA estimated the number killed there to be in the range of 300–400 or more, bringing the likely total number of fatalities along both highways to at least 800 or 1,000. A large column composed of remnants of the Hammurabi Division attempting to withdraw to safety in Baghdad were also engaged and obliterated deep inside Iraqi territory by Gen. McCaffrey's forces a few days later on March 2, in a post-war "turkey shoot"-style incident known as Battle of Rumaila.

Controversies

Controversy rose on the destruction of the Iraqi forces in the Highway of Death. Commentators argued that the destruction of the retreating Iraqi units was a disproportionate use of force, saying that they were retreating from Kuwait in compliance with UN Resolution 660 which was passed 2 August 1990. It had been followed by UN Resolutions 661, 662, 664, 665, 666, 667, 669, 670, 674, and 677 continuing the UN's demands that Iraq retreat for Kuwait before UN Resolution 678 authorized UN member states to use "all necessary means" to remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait.

Other criticisms levied were that the column included Kuwaiti hostages and civilian refugees with the latter reported to have included women and children family members of pro-Iraqi, PLO-aligned Palestinian militants and Kuwaiti collaborators who had fled shortly before the returning Kuwaiti authorities pressured nearly 200,000 Palestinians to leave Kuwait.

Activist and former United States Attorney General Ramsey Clark argued that the attacks violated the Third Geneva Convention, Article 3, which prohibits killing soldiers placed 'hors de combat' (out of combat) due to sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause. However other commentators point out that under current international law retreating is explicitly a military action and thus retreating soldiers are not out of combat. "Geneva Protocol I Article 41.2 defines 'hors de combat' as a person who is "in the power of an adverse Party", is expressing an intention to surrender, or is incapacitated; however it explicitly includes that hostile acts or attempting to escape (i.e. retreat) removes this protected status.

Additionally, journalist Seymour Hersh, citing American witnesses, alleged that a platoon of U.S. Bradley Fighting Vehicles from the 1st Brigade, 24th Infantry Division opened fire on a large group of more than 350 disarmed Iraqi soldiers who had surrendered at a makeshift military checkpoint after fleeing the devastation on Highway 8 on February 27, apparently killing several soldiers. The U.S. Military Intelligence personnel who were manning the checkpoint claimed they too were fired on from the same vehicles and barely fled by car during the incident. Journalist Georgie Anne Geyer criticized Hersh's article, saying that he offered "no real proof at all that such charges—which were aired, investigated and then dismissed by the military after the war—are true."

Before the U.S. Military Police were deployed to guard the wreckage, looting of functional Iraqi weapons took place.

Coalition leader General Norman Schwarzkopf stated in 1995:

The first reason why we bombed the highway coming north out of Kuwait is because there was a great deal of military equipment on that highway, and I had given orders to all my commanders that I wanted every piece of Iraqi equipment that we possibly could destroy. Secondly, this was not a bunch of innocent people just trying to make their way back across the border to Iraq. This was a bunch of rapists, murderers and thugs who had raped and pillaged downtown Kuwait City and now were trying to get out of the country before they were caught.

According to the Foreign Policy Research Institute, however, "appearances were deceiving":

Postwar studies found that most of the wrecks on the Basra roadway had been abandoned by Iraqis before being strafed and that actual enemy casualties were low. Further, opinion surveys showed that American support for the war was largely unaffected by the images. (Arab and Muslim public opinion was, of course, another matter, about which Powell may have been rightly concerned.)

Photojournalist Peter Turnley published photographs of mass burials at the scene. Turnley wrote:

I flew from my home in Paris to Riyadh when the ground war began and arrived at the "mile of death" very early in the morning on the day the war stopped. Few other journalists were there when I arrived at this incredible scene, with carnage that was strewn all over. On this mile stretch were cars and trucks with wheels still turning and radios still playing. Bodies were scattered along the road. Many have asked how many people died during the war with Iraq, and the question has never been well answered. That first morning, I saw and photographed a U.S. military "graves detail" burying many bodies in large graves. I don't recall seeing many television images of these human consequences. Nor do I remember many photographs of these casualties being published.

Time magazine commented:

The pictures were among the most stunning to come out of the gulf war: mile after mile of burned, smashed, shattered vehicles of every description—tanks, armored cars, trucks, autos, even stolen Kuwaiti fire trucks—littering the highway from Kuwait City to Basra. To some Americans, the pictures were also sickening. [...] After the war, correspondents did find some cars and trucks with burned bodies, but also many vehicles that had been abandoned. Their occupants had fled on foot, and the American planes often did not fire at them.

In popular culture

• In 1991, The Guardian commissioned British anti-war poet Tony Harrison to commemorate the war, and in particular the Highway of Death. His poem, A Cold Coming, began with an ekphrastic representation of a graphic photograph taken on Highway 8 by photojournalist Kenneth Jarecke.
• The 1992 song "Hero" by the industrial metal band Ministry directly mentions the Highway of Death at the end of its first verse.
• Iain Banks's 1993 novel Complicity has chapter 12 (of 13) called "Basra Road" and uses the imagery, although not the phrase.
• Galician band Siniestro Total recorded 'Autopista de Basora' for their 1993 album Made in Japan.
• The 2005 film Jarhead contains a scene in which a group of U.S. Marines pass through the Highway of Death.
• The 2010 video game Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction features a level where the player controls a Navy Seal fighting through the Highway of Death.
• In the 2019 video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, a fictional depiction of a similar event in the fictional middle-eastern country of Urzikstan is named the Highway of Death, with the attack carried out by Russian forces. The depiction led to criticism, including accusations of historical revisionism.
• The 2023 film Hidden Strike involves the characters driving on the Highway of Death.