Battle of Khafji
The
Battle of Khafji was the first major ground engagement of the
Gulf War. It took place in the
Saudi Arabian city of
Khafji, from
January 29 to
February 1,
1991.
The battle began when
Iraqi troops unexpectedly invaded Khafji. Forces from
Saudi Arabia and
Qatar, backed by
American artillery and air strikes, evicted Iraqi troops and tanks, and freed two trapped
U.S. Marine reconnaissance teams.
The Iraqi advance caught the U.S.-led Coalition almost completely by surprise, and the initial hours of the battle were marked by confusion and disarray on the Coalition side. Numerous U.S. Marine and
Special Forces positions along the
Kuwait-Saudi Arabian border were overrun by the Iraqi forces, and the city of Khafji, which had been largely abandoned by the Coalition, fell with little resistance.
By taking Khafji, the Iraqis trapped (but did not capture) two U.S. Marine reconnaissance teams of the
U.S. 3rd Marine Regiment inside the town.
Corporal Lawrence Lentz led one team with corporal Chuck Ingraham leading the other. The presence of the Marine teams complicated the recapture effort, although the two teams reported on Iraqi activities inside the town and directed numerous effective artillery and
airstrikes on the occupying Iraqis. After an intense day-long counter-attack, the city was retaken by Saudi and Qatari troops, coordinated by U.S. Special Forces liaison teams.
The ill-fated Iraqi foray into Khafji is believed to have been ordered to forestall the coming Coalition attack on Iraqi positions in Kuwait and to test Coalition strength. Many observers saw the Iraqi Army, and especially its
Republican Guard units, as the best military force in the Gulf region, after its performance in the
Iran-Iraq War and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Observers also had doubts about how the U.S. military would perform, after not having been seriously tested since the
Vietnam War almost 20 years earlier.
The success of the Marines at Khafji was seen as proof that the Iraqi war machine had been vastly overrated, and it led Coalition commanders to change their offensive plans to allow for large-scale prisoner collection. As one U.S. veteran of the battle put it, "Get in the first shot at [an Iraqi soldier] and the rest will run away." (When the time for battle in Khafji actually came the Saudis were very unorganized, drowning every building they came to in a pool of lead(Bullets). In Saudi Arabia it is disgraceful to return from battle with any ammunition left. Therefore the Saudis wasted a lot of ammunition. They were even seen expelling rounds directly into the air at random times near the end and after the battle. The Marines that were trapped inside of Khafji afraid that if they tried to leave they would be engaged by the Saudis. Lentz recalls, "Those damn Saudis shot at anything that moved. At least the Iraqis are predictable."
The battle was the deadliest and most intense firefight that U.S. forces had seen since the
Vietnam War. Some Gulf War
veterans point to Khafji as an engagement that refutes the commonly-held notion that the war was a push-button,
video game-like enterprise. It was the largest military engagement on Saudi Arabian soil since that nation gained independence.
The battle of Khafji saw the worst cases of
friendly fire between U.S. forces since Vietnam. A total of 11 U.S. Marines were killed in two separate incidents on
January 29 1991 at a position known as Observation Post 4, some thirty miles west of Khafji. Both involved
Light armored vehicles, one was destroyed by friendly surface fire killing 4, the other by an errant
AGM-65 Maverick missile launched by an
A-10 killing 7.
[Titus, James. [https://research.au.af.mil/papers/ay1996/ari/titusj.pdf The Battle of Khafji: An Overview and Preliminary Analysis]. 1996.] The battle was also notable for the capture of
Melissa Rathbun-Nealy, the first female U.S.
prisoner of war since
World War II. She was captured in a manner virtually identical to Private
Jessica Lynch twelve years later at
An Nasiriyah, Iraq. Rathbun-Nealy was released on
March 4,
1991 after spending over a month in a
Baghdad prison.
Some media critics (including
Chris Hedges, then of the
New York Times) complained that the battle of Khafji demonstrated the flawed U.S. press pooling policy of the time and that it prevented the full story of the battle from being widely reported upon. Indeed, the first fratricidal incident of the battle was largely covered up by the U.S. high command in part due to this dearth of press coverage of the battle. The only published photos of the battle were taken by two
French journalists that defied U.S. press controls and entered the battlefield without official authorization.
*
Iraq: more than 2,000 dead, more than 400 taken prisoner
*
United States: 25 dead, two taken prisoner
*
Saudi Arabia and
Qatar: 10 dead, 32 wounded
* Hedges, Chris.
War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning. New York : Anchor Books, 2003. ISBN 1400034639.
* Morris, David J.
Storm on the Horizon: Khafji-The Battle that Changed the Course of the Gulf War. New York : Free Press, 2004. ISBN 0743235576.
* Pollack, Kenneth M.
Arabs at war : military effectiveness, 1948-1991. Lincoln, NE : University of Nebraska Press, 2002. ISBN 0803287836.
