Word: safwan
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...March 3, 1991, under a hastily pitched tent at Safwan air base in southern Iraq, General Norman Schwarzkopf gazed across the table at two grim-faced Iraqi generals and calmly dictated cease-fire terms that put an end to the six-week Gulf War. Stunned to learn that the U.S.-led forces had captured more than 60,000 of his soldiers, Iraqi Lieut. General Sultan Hashim Ahmad al- Jabbari acceded to each and every condition. "His face went completely pale," Schwarzkopf later recounted. "He had had no concept of the magnitude of their defeat...
...some of the nightmarish recollections of the more than 18,000 people crammed into two huge, dusty tent camps along the Iraq-Kuwait border, one of them run by U.S. troops near the site where the Iraqi military accepted the allied cease-fire. The residents are the refugees of Safwan, most of them Shi'ites, who fled from Saddam Hussein's vengeful army when it recaptured several rebellious cities in the south after...
Though their living conditions are not as grim as those of the Kurds, the Safwan refugees have for weeks been reliving their worst dreams, fearing for their lives. Protected by U.S. troops, the camp residents have begged the soldiers not to depart, sometimes even vowing to lie down in the path of withdrawing tanks. "Everyone here believes we will be killed when the Americans leave," says Mustafa Jafar. "The Iraqis will send the secret police...
Last week as American troops turned over an observation post north of Safwan to U.N. observers, both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia tried to assure the refugees that their worst dreams were not coming to pass. Colonel William Nash, commanding officer of U.S. forces in Safwan, told General Gunther Greindl, head of the U.N. observer force, "We will continue to protect the refugees in this area." In Saudi Arabia, General Khalid bin Sultan al-Saud, head of the Saudi forces during the war, announced that his government would accept and shelter the stranded Iraqis by building a $30 million camp...
Among the Safwan refugees, news of the aid met with mixed emotions. Many of the better-educated refugees are wary about moving to what could become a permanent camp in the Saudi desert. Still, as a Baghdad professor put it, "Any country in the world is better than Iraq...