Operation Provide Comfort - Operation Provide Comfort II

Operation Provide Comfort II

Operation Provide Comfort II began on 24 July 1991, the same day Provide Comfort ended. This operation was primarily military in nature, and its mission was to prevent Iraqi aggression against the Kurds.

Partly as a result of Western commitment to the Kurds, Iraqi troops were withdrawn from the Kurdish regions in October 1991 and these areas assumed de facto independence.

On 5 April 1992, the Iranian Air Force bombed bases in northern Iraq belonging to the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran. Iraqi jets were scrambled to intercept the intruders while Coalition aircraft did not interfere.

On 15 January 1993, Iraqi air defense sites opened fire on two USAF F-111 bombers. On 17 January, Iraqi Su-22s fired on two F-16 jets, and a US F-4 Phantom destroyed an Iraqi radar which had been targeting French reconnaissance aircraft. Around a half hour later, an American F-16 shot down an Iraqi MiG-23 Flogger which had crossed into the no-fly zone. The next day, American F-16s bombed Bashiqah Airfield and F-4 Phantoms attacked Iraqi air defense sites. Over the next few days and months, more Iraqi sites fired on the American patrols, and several were attacked. That August, the USAF deployed the F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft to Turkey, and on 18 August, these aircraft dropped four laser-guided bombs on an Iraqi SA-3 site near Mosul.

On 14 April 1994, two United States Air Force F-15 Eagle fighters on a Provide Comfort patrol mistakenly downed two United States Army Black Hawk helicopters carrying twenty-six Allied personnel, killing all aboard.

For more details on this topic, see 1994 Black Hawk shootdown incident.

On 9 December 1995, F-4G Phantom aircraft of the Idaho Air National Guard finished their tour of duty with Combined Task Force Provide Comfort at Incirlik Air Base. This was the last operational use of the F-4 Phantom by the USAF.

In August 1996, Iraqi troops intervened in the Kurdish regions of Iraq, and the United States responded with Operation Desert Strike against targets in southern Iraq. As a result, some incidents occurred in northern Iraq, and the United States launched an operation to evacuate certain pro-American Kurds from northern Iraq.

The operation ended officially on 31 December 1996 at the request of the Government of Turkey who wanted to improve relations with Iran and Iraq. It was followed by Operation Northern Watch, which began on 1 January 1997 with the mission of enforcing the northern no-fly zone. France declined to participate in Operation Northern Watch.

Read more about this topic:  Operation Provide Comfort

Famous quotes containing the words operation, provide and/or comfort:

    An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis. We call intuition here the sympathy by which one is transported into the interior of an object in order to coincide with what there is unique and consequently inexpressible in it. Analysis, on the contrary, is the operation which reduces the object to elements already known.
    Henri Bergson (1859–1941)

    There is a lot of difference between tempting and leading into error. God tempts but does not lead into error. To tempt is to provide opportunities for us to do certain things if we do not love God, but putting us under no necessity to do so. To lead into error is to compel a man necessarily to conclude and follow a falsehood.
    Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)

    We try to go back. You know I’ll probably die just a few miles from where I drew my first breath. That would have seemed like a horrible prospect to me, back when I was young and ambitious and gonna set the world on fire. But there’s comfort in knowing you’re gonna go full circle, end up where you started out. I’ve said before that I want to live my last days where folks know when you’re sick and care when you die.
    Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)