Kuwait Diary: Shock Lingers Even After the Smoke Clears

Victor Mallett, a correspondent for the Financial Times in London, was in Kuwait city at the time of the Iraqi invasion Aug. 2 and kept a diary. He escaped Monday and filed this personal account.

Aug. 2--Iraq invades Kuwait before dawn, taking the population completely by surprise despite the collapse of negotiations between the two countries in Jidda the day before. People are still commuting to work in the city center hours after Iraq forces had crossed the border and taken the capital.

I am among thousands of civilians caught in the fighting, and I am kept under guard out in the open by Iraq soldiers before being released. At first it seems that Kuwaiti troops have only fought back in the city center, particularly at the royal palaces of the ousted Sabah family, but the burned-out tanks and armored cars I saw later in Jahra area to the west show that there were battles outside the capital as well.

Kuwaitis are shocked and can hardly believe that their country has been overrun. Some of them assume that President Saddam Hussein of Iraq is simply making a show of force to extort money from Kuwait. Thousands of foreign workers from the Arab world, Asia and the West are also caught unawares and trapped in Kuwait. “It’s chaos,” said one British diplomat during the morning fighting.

Later in the day a radio broadcast on an unfamiliar wavelength claims that the free provisional government has overthrown Sheik Jabbar, the emir, and invited the Iraqis. No one believes it, and those suspicions are later confirmed by Iraq’s annexation of Kuwait.

Meanwhile, the Kuwaiti television airwaves are still in the hands of the old regime, and the television broadcasts an appeal for resistance by Sheik Saad, the crown prince. “They have come to kill the sons of Kuwait and its women,” he says. “Our patriotic army is repelling the aggression. Kuwaitis should stand behind them.” In fact, the army has all but fled, and the television is apparently broadcasting from a secret location, although isolated pockets of resistance will continue to trouble the Iraqis for several days to come.

Senior members of the ruling family have escaped to Saudi Arabia.

Aug. 3--Iraqi troops consolidate their hold on the country, but resistance continues and there is further fighting both at the emir’s Dasman Palace and at the military barracks near Shuwaikh. Near the conference center for the Gulf Cooperation Council, we see three shot-up Iraqi pickups which have evidently just been ambushed. Four corpses lie by the roadside. The Iraqis appear to have chosen the Sheraton Hotel as their headquarters, and they position tanks along the sea front next to Arabian Gulf Street. Residential areas are largely left alone.

Baghdad Radio announces that the new government, declaring the Sabahs to be corrupt, has confiscated all their wealth, but there is still no indication as to who is in the new leadership. They later turn out to be Iraqis.

Some shops, including the Sultan Centre supermarket, are open by the afternoon, and only milk and bread are in short supply. Queues form at petrol stations, and muezzin call the faithful to Friday prayers from the mosque minarets. Kuwaitis are still stunned by the Iraqi attack. “They cannot just do this, even if they oppose the Kuwaiti government,” says one civil servant. “A country has its dignity.”

International telecommunications are cut in the evening, although telex lines to Saudi Arabia function intermittently until Saturday.

Aug. 4--The fiasco of the Iraqi-imposed government becomes more pronounced. Kuwaitis scoff at the fact that their supposed new leaders have not shown their faces and that the announcers of the new Iraqi-controlled TV station speak in Iraqi accents and do not know how to wear the ghutra-- the traditional Kuwaiti headdress. Even Kuwaitis with grievances against the royal family are now completely alienated by Iraq’s crude propaganda. “I think this is nonsense,” says one Kuwaiti newspaper publisher.

The first reports of looting--later to be confirmed--surface in Kuwait. Residents say the gold souk (market) has been ransacked, although it is not clear who did it. Civilians mount a resistance campaign in the Keifan district of the capital. The Iraqis, meanwhile, have opened prison gates, apparently taking away a group of Kuwaiti Shiite Muslims convicted of bombing Western embassies.

For the first time there is an eyewitness report of Westerners being driven away in buses by the Iraqis. Frenzied shoppers continue to empty the shelves of the Sultan Centre. Tinned foods--except for quail’s eggs--are running out, but cherries from the U.S. and cabbages from Holland are still available. I am astonished when the cashier accepts my credit card and gives me tickets for a lucky draw. Such is the unreality of war. The prize for the draw, a car, was later stolen.

In the afternoon a helicopter circles around the Holiday Inn hotel where guests with nothing to do and nowhere to go sunbathe by the pool. Even after the fighting began, the hotel’s telex machine cheerfully and automatically answers back to desperate callers: “Welcome to a new age of elegance.”

Aug. 5--Resistance continues. I and some colleagues have to stop our car and dive for cover as gunfire is exchanged across the main road. From where we lie in the dust, it seems that resistance forces are attacking a passing Iraqi convoy. Such ambushes seem to be common. Just beyond the shooting, an Iraqi soldier flags us down and asks, over-optimistically, for whiskey.

Anti-Iraq graffiti is now widespread. Kuwaiti flags and pictures of Sheiks Jabbar and Saad are plastered over road signs and hung from bridges. The Holiday Inn, however, decides that discretion is the better part of valor and finally takes down the pictures of the two sheiks in the lobby.

Aug. 6-- Confusion reigns. Embassies--sometimes without telephones--are struggling to find out how many of their citizens are in the country during the summer holidays. Some embassies are having problems with their short-wave transmitters, which they use to keep in contact with their capitals. A 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. curfew has been declared, but many Kuwaitis ignore it.

Aug. 7--Refugees continue to head for the border with Saudi Arabia, but it is closed. We encounter a washing machine which has fallen off a vehicle in the middle lane of the highway to Al Salmy in the west. We are turned back by an Iraqi roadblock.

More looting is reported in the city center, and there are reports that ration cards are being issued in some areas. The days are becoming quieter, but resistance fighters continue to snipe at the Iraqis by night. Soldiers at roadblocks are friendly. At least one reported rape is confirmed by diplomats.

A resistance leaflet appears calling Saddam Hussein “The Hitler of the gulf.”

Aug. 8--During the night, Kuwaitis have assembled on rooftops and shouted defiance at the Iraqis together with cries of “God is great!” They are encouraged by the belief that their demonstration will be seen by American spy satellites.

I meet a resistance leader, a younger member of the Sabah family, who says: “We have a political and military undercover structure now. We are in contact with our leadership outside.” He says the Iraqi soldiers have been fed lies about a supposed Israeli attack on Kuwait which they have come to beat back. The 38-year-old man, part of an amateurish but courageous anti-Iraqi network, says: “My place is in Kuwait. Saddam Hussein will leave, whether by force or voluntarily. It may be today, tomorrow or in a month’s time, but he will leave.”

The resistance is urging people not to report to work and to ignore the Iraqi-controlled media. “We are not taking too many prisoners,” says the resistance leader I meet.

Aug. 9--The Iraqis force shopkeepers to accept that one Iraqi dinar offered by a soldier is equivalent to one Kuwaiti dinar, although before the invasion one Kuwaiti dinar was worth 10 Iraqi dinars on the free market. The Iraqis are buying everything from cans of Pepsi to tea cups to take home to Iraq.

The Iraqi army is beginning to dig in to defensive positions in Kuwait. The soldiers are filling sandbags or sitting under beach umbrellas and makeshift shelters in the heat of the day at their seaside bivouacs. Most of Kuwait’s Egyptian population has come down firmly on the side of the West and the former Kuwaiti regime, but Palestinians are divided. Many of them resented the arrogance of Kuwaitis and their refusal to grant citizenship to Palestinians who had lived in the country all their lives. Palestinians also see Saddam Hussein as a strong leader who stands up for their rights against Israel and the rest of the world.

Aug. 10--Iraq has ordered embassies to move to Baghdad, further raising fears among foreigners about their protection. Travelers see large missiles--possibly Scud-Bs or upgraded Scuds--on the road to the south. Some residents have also seen face-masks and mobile equipment which appears to be for decontamination after a chemical attack.

Foreigners are increasingly afraid of the possibility of chemical war, although the immediate horizon is clouded by the possibility that they may be used as hostages.

Aug. 11--Women demonstrate outside the Rumasiya Mosque. Four resistance fighters are said to have been killed in an attack upon Iraqi positions. Iraqi soldiers are becoming increasingly nervous and no longer sit relaxed by the roadside or in their vehicles.

Aug. 12--A Briton is reported to have been shot while trying to escape over the Saudi border. There are increasing reports of desertions and mutiny among the Iraqi troops. . . .

Most Iraqi tanks and heavy equipment have now left the city center and seem to be concentrated at Jahra, which gives easy access in all directions. A diplomat sees a group of Iraqi civilians being bused in for a pro-Iraqi demonstration which will later be shown on Iraqi television. The city is looking increasingly shabby, even if the damage from the fighting is not extensive. Damaged vehicles and garbage litter the once-immaculate streets.

Aug. 13--I escape with friends.