Iraqis Were Brutal, Not Bright, Envoy Says : Diplomacy: The former U.S. ambassador to Kuwait describes the hardships of living 110 days under siege.

As an occupation army, the Iraqis showed military strength and “naked brutality”--but not much smarts, former U.S. ambassador to Kuwait W. Nathaniel Howell said Thursday,

“They weren’t very sophisticated,” said Howell, who got an up-close look at the enemy while under siege for 110 days in the American Embassy in Kuwait. “They weren’t very efficient.”

Howell, in remarks to Scripps College students and faculty in Claremont, and in an interview beforehand, described the successful efforts of besieged American diplomats to maintain communications with hundreds of Americans in hiding, despite a blockade by Iraqi soldiers between Aug. 24 and Dec. 14.

He spoke as well of a makeshift supply effort for as many as 58 refugees in the embassy, including a jerry-rigged well, turnips and radishes grown in a hastily laid out vegetable garden and dates from the ambassador’s own trees.

When Iraqis cut power and telephone service to the embassy in August, Howell said, American engineers, who had fled to the embassy after Iraq’s Aug. 2 invasion, quickly spliced lines back together and set up a “telephone tree” to send daily messages to people in hiding.

“We were sending messages from people’s families,” said Howell, a stocky man with a curly gray beard who has already been dubbed by his hometown of Portsmouth, Va., as “the first American hero of the Gulf War.”

“We sent advice,” Howell said. “In certain cases we were able to move people out of danger. If we knew the Iraqi sweeps were going to take place in such-and-such an area, we’d let people know.”

Using a “warden system,” with individuals assigned as leaders of subgroups, the embassy was able to stay in touch with hundreds of hidden Americans. “Eventually, we were meshing with the Irish and the Australians,” Howell said.

Howell, who left Kuwait three months ago with the last of the hidden Americans, said embassy staff had three weeks to prepare for the Iraqi siege--from the arrival of the Iraqis in Kuwait on Aug. 2 and a deadline the invaders set for embassies to close down and move to Baghdad.

He sent embassy staff to round up American travelers staying at hotels, directing them to come to the embassy. “These were people with no contacts in the city and with little ability to blend into the woodwork,” he said.

Then the Americans scoured the city for supplies, he said. “Not just food and water, but Pampers and medicine,” he said. “We had 20 kids in the compound (in the beginning). We had to find all the accouterments to entertain children of varying ages. The first thing the Iraqis did was steal the central stores of medicines. We had people with heart problems and ulcers.”

The Americans dug a well for bathing and rationed stored drinking water, he said. “Using shovels and kitchen pots, we hit what we took to be ground water at 13 feet,” he said. “There wasn’t much salt content but it was oily. So we used it for washing.”

He said a typical meal was canned tuna and canned tomato sauce, with rice or pasta, and supplemented with turnip greens or radish tops grown in the garden. Occasionally, there was rice pudding with dates instead of raisins.

A few in the compound became depressed at having to wait to be liberated. But a doctor and a minister offered counseling, and embassy staff set up morale-building pool and tennis tournaments. They held a Halloween costume party at which Howell wore military clothing from a previous assignment.

“I was the first one in Kuwait to wear desert camouflage,” Howell said.

The first days were the worst, Howell said, with temperatures often at 130 and humidity close to 100% and the worry that they would all be taken hostage, just as were the Americans who were seized by Iranian militants in 1979.

Howell is optimistic about Kuwait’s recovery. “The Kuwaitis have the will and the determination,” he said. “They have the financial capability. I think it will be a remarkably short time, a matter of a couple of years.”

Asked what kept him going during the siege, Howell said: “I don’t like to give up. I don’t like being pushed around.”