‘Second-Class’ Kuwaiti POWs Straggle Home

Hundreds of women squatted in the dust here late Friday, their jet-black chadors almost invisible in the dark of a damp and cloudy night.

But at a time of expected joy--the release of their husbands and sons from nearly eight months in Iraqi military prisons--their anger was white hot.

“We’ve been running from corner to corner since early morning,” complained Zainab Balushi. “Here, there is not one official to meet them. . . . What is the sin of these soldiers?”

The answer is that they are stateless Kuwaitis, called bedoon or “without,” and they and their families were being treated as always: worse than the Kuwaiti citizens in whose army they serve.

The homecoming Friday of 1,135 Kuwaiti and bedoon soldiers, most of whom were captured hours after Iraq’s invasion of the emirate on Aug. 2, was clouded by the difference in their welcomes, a discrimination that marks most aspects of life in Kuwait.

In a society that recognizes first- and second-class citizens, Kuwait’s 260,000 bedoon, many descended from nomadic Bedouin tribes, are barely recognized at all. They carry separate identity cards, have no passports and are the last to receive the largess of what once was a generous welfare state.

“A bedoon now cannot go to schools, public or private,” said Leila Moussa, 24, a Red Crescent volunteer waiting for her bedoon husband. “He cannot go to public hospitals. He cannot get a job. All he can do is join the army.”

Waiting nearby, Nidhah Fowderi, 30, said her bedoon husband served as a Kuwaiti military intelligence officer for 24 years. “But when I get a baby daughter, I say ‘Thank you, God,’ because a boy will have problems like his father,” she said.

“It’s just like South Africa,” said a British army chaplain who has begun trucking military rations to bedoons refused food at government cooperatives. “These people get the worst of everything.”

That seemed apparent Friday when the first prisoners of war came home from Tikrit, Iraq. After flying from Arar, Saudi Arabia, about 220 Kuwaiti troops were bused from the Kuwait city airport to a plushly carpeted and chandeliered wedding hall in the Surra district.

Kuwaiti Radio had announced their return, and hundreds of families were on hand to fire guns in the air, throw confetti, kiss the ground and scream with delight as the hollow-cheeked men emerged in the sun.

“Of course, I am very happy,” said Monir Ibrahim, 28, after his release. “The Iraqis tell my mother they tore my eyes out. Then later, they said I was dead.”

“It’s the happiest day of my life!” exulted Hasan Mutairi, 32, a sergeant captured hours after the invasion. “My mother, all the time, she is crying, crying.”

Not everyone was so happy. Dozens who waited up to 12 hours, weak from daylong fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, complained that government and officials of the Red Crescent--the Musliem equivalent of the Red Cross--would not release the names of the freed prisoners.

“I have five men in my family,” said Nabila Abugaith, 25. “All disappeared. All gone. But no one tells me anything.”

“Mohammed, did you see my boy, Mohammed?” one woman beseeched each prisoner who arrived. An elderly woman wailed aloud, tears streaming down her face, when her son did not appear and no one could say if he would. Iraqis had killed her two other sons, she said.

“There’s no one in charge!” one well-dressed man shouted angrily to the crowd. “The officials are sleeping. How long are you going to take this? There’s no water, no electricity. This is worse than the Third World.”

And Saad Emtairy, 32, and a friend waited anxiously on a couch inside. No one had told their families they were coming home. “We have no way to go home,” he said.

Over in a far corner, Yousef Khawari, 24, a volunteer from the Kuwait Human Rights Committee, attempted to explain the confusion, saying the government still doesn’t know how many Kuwaitis are missing.

“Most people don’t know where to go to report missing children,” he said. “And we don’t know how many are missing until people come and tell us.”

Iraq promised Friday to release nearly 4,000 more Kuwaiti prisoners. But Khawari said his organization now has names of at least 10,000 missing people in a computer data base, with 50 new names coming in every day.

“The situation is very bad,” Khawari said, throwing up his hands.

But the bedoon families had it worse. At midafternoon, rumors suddenly swept the crowd that their loved ones, who had shared the same prisons with the Kuwaiti soldiers, were not coming to Surra after all. They were at a military college on the city’s outskirts.

But soldiers there told them, no, the bedoon were at the Jahra hospital, 20 miles north of the city.

By 7 p.m., hundreds of men, women and children were still squatting in the dust outside the locked hospital gates. A total of 221 former prisoners had arrived late in the afternoon, and more buses were still expected.

Ikla Msalla Rashid, 50, sat with seven children, waiting for his 24-year-old son, Ouda. No one had told him Ouda was coming, but he said he would wait all night, or longer, if necessary.

“Until morning,” he said. “Until God brings him.”

The women seemed less patient, however. Rabab Hussein complained that she had gone from airport to wedding hall to military college and finally to Jahra, searching for her bedoon son, Hussein Ali. He was captured Aug. 2 at Kuwait’s Ali Salem air base.

“For (nearly) eight months, they were Kuwaiti, held in one prison,” she said angrily. “Why are they dividing them now?”

“In Iraqi prisons, they spent time together as brothers,” she added. “Now, we Kuwaiti mothers are lost. We don’t know where to look for our sons.”

Four buses carrying about 200 more bedoon finally arrived at 8:30. Women ululated, tracer bullets lit the night sky and soldiers armed with assault rifles fired a deafening barrage of welcome.

Upstairs, soldiers checked each man’s yellow card, marked with a thumbprint. In the space for nationality was written “non-Kuwaiti” or “unidentified.”

“I hope I can return to the army,” said Soud Nasser Adwani, 39, a flight sergeant who appeared dazed, if happy. “But I do not know. I am only bedoon. “