Invasion of Kuwait

August 2, 1990, the day Iraq invaded Kuwait, will go down in the annals of Kuwaiti history as a black day. It was a day that shattered lives and the nation. It marked the beginning of over seven-month long occupation during which survival itself became a nightmarish ordeal.

International telephone lines were snapped. Local television and radio stations were taken over. Attempts to make contacts abroad involved the risk of capture and execution. Most information about conditions inside Kuwait came from those who had managed to flee the country and find refuge elsewhere. Their reports were chilling.

reedom’, ‘Civil Rights’, ‘Human Rights’ — were words that had lost their meaning. While waking up alive was reason enough to give thanks, it also meant not knowing what new horrors the day might bring. Those who left home did so with the knowledge that they might never return — the entire city was crawling with snipers and landmines. Not that home provided a haven of safety and security. The Iraqi forces had the free run of the country. They barged into private homes to loot, plunder, torture, rape and execute at will. Any resistance was met with a merciless display of strength of superior numbers and weapons.

Water desalination and purification plants were destroyed. Food and water supplies to the Kuwaiti people were cut off as Saddam Hussein diverted them to his own armies. The ever-present possibility of chemical weapons attacks meant having to sew home-made gas masks.

As in any war, the children were the worst victims. Their world had changed overnight. The invasion and subsequent occupation of their tiny nation came as a bolt from the blue. Before the invasion, Kuwait’s crime rate ranked among the lowest in the world. Now they were surrounded by images of death and destruction. Even the sun didn’t seem to shine as before. The oil wells set afire by the Iraqis belched thick black smoke that clouded their lives like a bad dream they couldn’t seem to wake up from. Sleep provided no respite, not with the constant raging of machine guns and tanks so perilously close.

The invaders gutted all that they could not kill or take with them. Parliamentary institutions, government buildings, the airport, major hotels, clubs, playgrounds and recreation centres were ransacked and destroyed. The beaches were used as arsenals for Iraqi arms. Some of the most fashionable residential suburbs were taken over by the Iraqi troops. Those that did not suit their purposes were torched. Even mosques and places of worship were not spared.

The atrocities did not begin and end with the local populace. Foreigners living in Kuwait were forced into hiding when the Iraqis began using them as human shields. The penalty for aiding a foreigner was death by hanging. The Kuwaiti people immediately issued a statement through the Kuwaiti Resistance: under no circumstances would they turn in a single foreigner. On the contrary, they would do everything in their power to help them.

The Kuwaitis devised an intricate system of supplying foreigners with food and basic necessities. Many expatriates were moved to safe houses in different Kuwaiti suburbs. The Resistance did this despite the tremendous risks involved, and some of its members paid with their lives.

As the weeks dragged into months of carnage and plunder, it seemed as though the war would never end. But the aggressors had reckoned without the reaction of the international community. The initial shock gave way to outrage and disgust. Kuwait would not fight alone. It would not lie ravaged and forgotten. The world was on Kuwait’s side, and the end of the torture much nearer than anyone would expect.