Hakumat al Tayarrat 1: The Role of Air Power in the Enforcement of Iraq's Boundaries

Abstract

Much has been written recently about the territorial integrity of Iraq and its problematic invocation and violation by the US, the UK and their allies since the 1991 Gulf War. Little work however, has considered the effects upon Iraq's territorial preservation and territorial sovereignty of these countries’ aerial incursions into Iraq's airspace. This article seeks to address this gap in the literature. It focuses specifically on analysing the use of air power in the skies above Iraq by the US and the UK, arguing that these flights, whilst violating Iraq's territorial sovereignty did, in some cases, paradoxically help to enforce and maintain Iraq's boundaries. The article develops a theoretical framework melding recent work on vertical- and techno-geopolitics, notions of aerial mobility, power projection and air power theorising. This is used to analyse the use of foreign air power to undertake ‘air policing’ and ‘persistent presence’ missions in Iraq, focusing upon the northern no-fly zone in the 1990s and post-2003 operations. This article illustrates the importance of acknowledging and critically analysing the vertical and technological aspects of geopolitics and the aerial aspects of a state's territorial integrity.