The Human Shield - Allies or All Lies

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Key Skills Communications Level 3, Part B3.3. Extended Document

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Allies or All Lies

Cliff Lindley


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Dedications

I am aware that this document is for the purpose of examination; however, the writing of this

document meant that I had to relive a difficult episode of my life that enhanced traumatic

memories which time had eroded. In those dark days, there were people who unselfishly helped

me and other hostages; none of them had to do what they did. They were not seeking glory,

what they did was from the heart; each of them knew that they were jeopardising their own

lives and two of them paid the ultimate price.

Yet had it not been for the invisible driving force of my two sons, perhaps none of these

people would have played any significant part in my life for surely, as so many others had done,

I would have given up at the start.

My sons were at home in UK not knowing if their father was dead or alive but yet excelled intheir education. Perhaps they were drawing strength from me.

To my sons, Darren and Richard who suffered more anguish

from my downfall than I did.

To Theresa, a Filipina who unselfishly risked her life to assist

British women.

To Yousef Al Hoss, a Palestinian who cared enough to help

British people.

To my dear Kuwaiti friend, Mundah Monday Al Rabiyah, a

brave resistance fighter. RIP Monday.

To the Iraqi (Kurdish) lieutenant who captured me and lost his

life sparing mine.

To Dave, a dear friend. I could not have had a better buddy in

those desperate times.

During the time that we were running and hiding from the Iraqi soldiers, Dave and I spent days

hiding in complexes that they were searching. We talked only when we had to and then only in

whispers. On a subject of which has long since been forgotten, Dave and I had an argument and

whispering was essential; soldiers were often on the other side of the wall. So frustrating was it

arguing in that manner, that we ended up laughing aloud potentially revealing our location. We

said sorry and then toasted each other with G & T.

I have not seen or spoken to Dave since December 1990. My third colleague in hiding, Don, I

never saw again after the release flight. Such is the power of PTSD.

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Index

Title page ....................... Page i

Dedications..................... Page ii

Index............................... Page iii

Chronicle ........................ Page iv

Mahboula ....................... Page vi

Preface ........................... Page vii

Prologue ......................... Page 1

The Beginning................. Page 5

The Build-up ................... Page 6

The Invasion ................... Page 8

The Occupation .............. Page 10

Liberation ...................... Page 16

Epilogue ......................... Page 17

Diagrams

Ottoman Empire Maps... . Page 18

Kuwait Shifting Borders... Page 19

Kurdistan......................... Page 20

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Chronicle of Iraq

Human Shield

10,000

- Mesopotamia Earliest Records

340 - Byzantine Empire (Christian) Encompass Mesopotamia

2 - Iraq formed in part of Mesopotamia

The Year of Christ

7 - Iraq conquered by Arabians forming three provincial areas of Mosul, Baghdad, Basra

1300 - Ottomans take over Byzantine Empire

1534 - Ottomans take Iraq and extend into Arab peninsula on coast of Persian Gulf

1672 - Bedoun families settle in peninsula of bay south of Basra. The area eventually

becomes known as Al Qurain (Al Grain), (Later to become Kuwait).

1752 - Al Sabah family, non-merchants, appointed to oversee and protect Al Qurain whilstmerchant families fished and traded with India

1756 - Al Sabah contact British for help after Persians attack Basra which was governing AlQurain. Britain establishes base in the area.

1773 - Plague in Al Qurain kills most inhabitants.

1881 - Ottomans demand Al Qurain and Qatar pay additional revenue as Ottoman Empiredeclines

1846 - Sheikh Muhammad Al Sabah assassinated by his half brother, Mubarak Al Sabah.

1897 - Mubarak Al Sabah recognised by Ottoman Sultan as the provincial sub-governor of Al

Qurain.

1897 - Al Qurain crisis. Ottoman demand British stop interfering with their empire. Ottomansback down to avoid war they could not afford.

1899 - Mubarak Al Sabah signs agreement with British which gave Britain control of AlQurains foreign policy and their national security. In return, Britain gives annualsubsidy of 1500.

c1900 - Under British supervision, wall built around Al Qurain town. Al Qurain becomes knownas Kut, later Kuwait, meaning little fort in Arabic.

1913 - Anglo-Ottoman Convention. British concur in defining Kuwait as an autonomouscaza of the Ottoman Empire. Sheikhs of Kuwait not independent but qainmaqams(provincial sub-governors) of the Ottomans.

1914 - World War 1

1915 - Mubarak Al Sabah dies. His son, Jaber II Al Sabah takes over

1917 - Jaber II dies. Succeeded by his brother, Sheikh Salem Al Mubarak Al Sabah

1918 - World War 1 ends with British victory over Ottomans. Anglo-Ottoman Conventioninvalidated by British.

1920 - Shiite uprising. Manchester regiment all but wiped out; over 10,000 people killed.

1920 - Wahabi Bedou of Nejd (Saudi Arabia) attack southern Kuwait and then Jahra in north,declaring Kuwait as not extending beyond walls of the city.

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Chronicle continued/...

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1922 - Ottoman Empire split up by British into Turkish Republic, Iraq, Kuwait, Gulf States,

Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon. British negotiate Nejd border with substantial loss toKuwait.

1922 - Modern Iraq British protectorate. Faisel crowned king.

1923 - Britain set out the border of Iraq based on an unratified 1913 convention.

1932 - Britain grants independence to Iraq

1938 - Decline of pearl diving in Kuwait due to introduction of cultured pearls elsewhere.Kuwaitis poverty stricken. Britain gives annual financial subsistence to Kuwait.

1938 - Discovery of oil in Kuwait.

1939 - World War II

1941 - Britain takes over Iraq, Kuwait and other Gulf States. Britain and Russia take overIran.

1945 - World War II ends

1958 - Iraqs monarchy bloodily deposed by General Abd Al Karim Al Qasam.

1961 - Britain grants Kuwait independence. Official name; Dawlat al-Kuwayt State ofKuwait.

1963 - Qasem overthrown by a Baat Party take-over.

1968 - Ahmad Al Bakr takes over leadership of Iraq with Sadam Hussain his deputy.

1979 - Sadam officially takes over control of Iraq.

1980 - Iran-Iraq war

1985 - Opposition group formed in Kuwait .

1986 - Amirs motorcade attacked on city coast road. Wrong car blown up. Amirs carshot by automatic gunfire. Amir injured but survived.

1988 - Iran-Iraq war ends with Iraq victorious.

1990 - February; Arab Council meet in Amman. Sadam demands money from Kuwait andthe UAE to compensate for horizontal drilling and oil price drop.

1990 - 15 July; Sadam sends Republican Guards to Kuwait border.

1990 - 16 July; Iraqs Foreign Minister, Tarek Aziz, sets out Iraqs demands of Kuwait toChadley Klibi, Secretary General of Arab League.

1990 - 19 July; Kuwait forces stood down from alert.1990 - 24 July; Sadam assures Hosin Mubarak that he will not invade Kuwait.

1990 - 25 July; Sadam meets with April Gillespie in Baghdad and reasserts lack ofintention to invade Kuwait.

1990 - 30, 31 July, 1st August; Iraqi, Kuwaiti and Saudi delegates meet in Jeddah but fail toreach agreement. Prince Saud, Kuwait Crown Prince, hurls abuse against Sadam.Iraq delegates walk out and return to Iraq.

1990 - 2 August; Shortly after midnight, Iraqi troops advance into Kuwait

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Human Shield

vi

Scene where Kuwaitiwoman drove car bombinto Iraqi trenches

Open Space

Open Space Open Space

Open Space

Union Center [sic]

Gaza ComplexMahboula Complex(Ants Block)

W Complex

Aziwan North

Aziwan South

Sultan Ben Essa Complex

Collection Point forLemming Run

Latifa Towers

Al Madawi Complex

Alia & GhaliaComplex

Street 309

Fahaheel Expressway

To Kuwait CityTo Ahmadi & Saudi Border

Street 310

Low-income flats

Small Farm

Open Space

Unfinished Mosque

Legend

Escape routefrom soldiers

ResistanceFighters Directionof fire

Persian Gulf

Iraqi Trenches

Mahboula

Tanks Concreted inField and machineguns concreted in

Machine gunnerfacing Union Center

My First Flat

Flat 4B

Private Kuwaiti Beach Villas

N

DumpedRubbish

To Mutla Ridge

0 100

Metres

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Preface

On 2nd August 1990, the Iraqi army invaded Kuwait subsequently forming a shield of

humans around key military and civil sites to protect them from the onslaught of

Western military attack. British, American and Japanese civilians, who were trapped in

Kuwait and Iraq at the time of the invasion, formed the Human Shield. I was one of

those people.

I was born in a four-house hamlet in the Staffordshire countryside. World War 2 had

not yet started. During my childhood, I developed a love of aircraft and subsequently

took a design apprenticeship with an engineering company in Wolverhampton that

manufactured aircraft flying control systems. In 1964, I became their technical

representative operating from Heathrow serving, amongst others, BOAC and BEA. Later,

I was also appointed as Technical Liaison Engineer for the Middle East and served

Pakistan International, Kuwait Airways, Iraqi Airways and Cyprus Airways. I first

travelled to the Middle East in 1968 and over the next two years developed an affection

for the people and the area, so much so, that in mid 1971, I took up a post with Kuwait

Airways Engineer ing based in Kuwait and there I lived until 2001

On 26th July 1990, I returned to Kuwait from a summer vacation. My two young sons,

both pupils of the Kuwait English School, planned to return on 10 th August.

This writing is an account of my personal observations of the invasion of Kuwait by the

Iraqis and to some extent, of my despair. It is an account of what I believe lay behind

the invasion and how the Human Shield was promulgated. It is based on my time in

Kuwait during the Iraqi occupation of 1990 which I spent, for the first part, in hiding in

the Kuwaiti suburb of Mahboula and later, after capture, being processed as part of the

Human Shield located in a specially built prison camp at a munitions factory in the

ancient Babylonian area of Iraq. It is supplemented by my personal knowledge of the

area and of the people, which I acquired during my visits 1969 to 1971 and my

residence in Kuwait from 1971 to 2001. My job with Kuwait Airways also put me in a

position to know all aircraft movement, their flights and their destinations and who was

flying, particularly with regard to the VIP aircraft. I have written without bias and

without guidance or influence of any other documents other than established bona fide

historical facts.

The document is not intended as an account on the grief and strife of what I or any of

the other hostages suffered or of the stories within stories that we have to tell. Neither

have I included the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians and the Arabs,

even though argument may have it that this is the primary cause of unrest in the Middle

East.

Although I state that I do not take into consideration historical conflicts, I have

included recent historical events, circa 1900 1922, which shaped Mesopotamia into

the new Iraq and the new Kuwait at the fall and demise of the Ottoman Empire. I have

included it because, in my opinion, it had a great bearing on the events that led up to

the three invasions by the Iraqis during my time there and in particular, the invasion

that lay behind the first Gulf War.

Whilst in Western world writings, the spelling of Sadam Hussains name is commonly

Saddam Hussein: Arabic is purely phonetic and bears no direct relativity to the English

language; therefore, I choose to use the Gulf Arabic translations, that is on the

pronunciation, viz, Sah-dam Hussane, hence Sadam Hussain, the h is relatively silent

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and softens the pronunciation of Sa. It will be observed that there are other variations

in my writing. The word emir as used by writers in English is always spelt and

pronounced, Amir in Kuwait and the prefix of a name indicating family is never As (or

as), it is always Al, hence, Al Sabah, not as Sabah or As Sabah. I also use the Arab

names for the nomadic Arabs, those of Bedou and Bedoun, rather than the French

derivation, Bedouin.Those who constituted the human shield were never given counselling for PTSD and

such was the impact on them that several have since committed suicide. My counselling

was done on my own initiation by returning to Kuwait soon after liberation.

In reality, seeing such devastation of a country that I loved, I sometimes wonder if

that was the right way to go about it. To see the immense destruction that had been

carried out by Iraqis and Allies alike. Where buildings had been blown apart or burnt

out. Of seeing the burning oil fires that were spewing out dense, black acrid smoke

blotting out the sun, where day was night and night was utterly silent and black; where

blackened sands replaced the golden

desert and I would no more see, in those

magic moments of springtime, the

beauty of the carpets of blue-purple

desert orchids and the myriads of yellow

dahlias. Where eye-catching domino

beetles clamber between the stems of

sporadic self-seeded plants and green

and yellow dab scurry across the plains. Where now destroyed

military vehicles, incinerated by missiles and rockets, their metal

bent and distorted by heat that cannot be imagined, clutter roads

and sands alike. But worse, seeing the fate of those poor wretches at Mutlah as they

attempted to return to Iraq, the unnecessary destruction of the life of thousands * of

people who would have gladly given themselves up without so much as firing a bul let

and in all probability with deep gratitude. Most were civilians and those that werent,

were conscripted Kurds.

I at least was able to reflect that as a prisoner of Sadam Hussain, I had not suffered

the horrors that these people had, for should Sadam have chosen, this same fate could

so easily have been mine.

Of one thing there is no doubt, my life and attitude changed significantly because of

the invasion and occupation of Kuwait, but why, I do not know; perhaps because I had to

suffer from the lies and deceit of the West, particularly my own country, or perhaps

because that is what war does to a foreign civilian caught up in someone elses war.

Human Shield

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Desert Orchid

An oil lake burns in the KuwaitDesert

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Human Shield

*The figure is contentious between amounts of people 1,000 and 20,000.

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THE HUMAN SHIELD

Prologue

As the steel clad doors clattered closed and clanking chains manacled doors to posts, my hope of

freedom had gone. I could see that there would be no escape except by death, which now seemed

inevitable and imminent.

With the light of hope now extinguished, my thoughts turned to my family who were safe at

home in England. Uncharacteristically I said a silent prayer for them that they would not suffer by

my demise. For myself I asked only that death would be painless and quick.

I looked out of the small barred window of my cell where I could see but a high wall of

unpainted corrugated steel sheets topped with barbed wire onto which the December Tauz * had

blown numerous plastic bags. Entangled on the barbs, the jaded bags fluttered wildly as if in a

forlorn and hopeless bid of a saddened truce on my behalf. Weary, I turned away and lay on the

hard wooden bed; I closed my eyes and remembered...

I had not been aware that the invasion of Kuwait by theIraqis had taken place that morning, Thursday 2nd August 1990.

The two low flying military aircraft that had awoken me from

my sleep at 5.20 a.m. as they skimmed the roof of my villa, I

had thought were Kuwaiti. More Talks Needed, Says The Amir,

read the headlines of the local English language newspaper

that morning. I was unaware that the troops and war machines

around me were Iraqi. In five short hours as the citizens slept,

the Iraqis had captured Kuwait.

If only the borders had not been closed so quickly by the Iraqis as we had been informed by the

British and American Foreign Offices. If only the Kuwait army and air force had not fled to Saudi

Arabia but had stood and fought; if only the wardens had not hidden away but instead had stoodto their posts and kept us informed; then I could have fled to Saudi just forty minutes south so

near, yet so far.

I suppose I must have been lucky. How easily I could have been picked up at the checkpoints

as I drove around looking for untrashed shops; after all the embassies said that the Iraqis were

lifting all Brits, they had urged that we stay in doors. When the soldiers came to the flat asking for

water they could have taken me prisoner, particularly the two red bereted Republican Guards who

came into the flat with rifles at the ready; perhaps they would have done had they not been

looking for Resistance Fighters that day.

How I laughed when the two Kuwaiti Resistance fighters, (the ones who the two Republican

Guards were looking for), had fired shots from the eighteenth floor of Alhia and Ghalia Towers into

the soldiers dug in close to the beach as they prepared for an assault by the Allies from the sea:when those soldiers had then turned and, not knowing where the shots had come from, fired

wildly inland. Then, believing that the Allied invasion had begun, the dug-in inland troops fired

bullets and mortar back at them. Yousef said eight Iraqis had been killed in that exchange and the

two Kuwait Resistance fighters had escaped. Perhaps I should not have laughed; war is not funny.

Perhaps I should have taken my chances with the planned escape convoy that day on the 16 th

August. Perhaps I would have been lucky enough to get across the border at Selmi but without a

four-wheel drive vehicle, I would not have got far through the soft sands. Even those with four-

wheel drives did not make it; either the Iraqis had turned them back, or had taken their vehicles

and in some cases, taken them prisoner. No, I stick to my name for that convoy, the Lemming

Run; it was doomed to failure from the start. Im glad I didnt go.

British women and children will be allowed to leave Kuwait, I must admit, I did not believe thatwhen I first heard it; so many promises made, so many broken. When was that, 26 th August no,

that was when it was announced 28th is when they were allowed to leave but Yousef, my

Human Shield

*Seasonal

MIG 29s prepare for takeoff.

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Palestinian friend was right, the Iraqis in the field would not have been notified: another British

Foreign Office cock-up. I wonder what happened to the young Filipina. What was her name? Ah,

yes, Theresa -- Saint Theresa of the Roses I called her, the British women being the Roses -- such

a courageous woman. The Iraqi officer commanding the Iraqi troops in the southern part of Kuwait

had claimed her as his only the previous day, before she had managed to escape and flee. It was

the habaya that Yousefs wife had given her which hid her identity. She did not have to do it, she

didnt know any of us, there was no need for her to volunteer to drive our women and children to

Salmiya, she knew how risky it was helping British citizens for which the penalty was death. What

a brave woman, she could so easily have been recognised when the four vehicles transporting our

women and children were picked up at the checkpoint just round the corner. What was it that she

had said when I suggested that this was not her responsibility when we were so desperate for a

fourth driver? Ah yes, it was when she had looked at the two mothers with their children and then,

in her Tagalog English accent said, They are four, I am only one. I will be the one to drive

them, and then she made a Hail Mary across her chest; such faith, she knew the risk she was

taking.

Thank God that Yousef had managed to convince the Iraqis to contact Baghdad to verify the

authorised release of British women and children. I wonder what happened to Theresa after she

dropped the women and children off at the Iraqi bus. Yousef said he had last seen her driving

away into the backstreets of Salmiya.

When they had picked up our women that same day, the Iraqis acquired our location from the

Civil IDs that they had taken from them and then four platoons of Republican Guards stormed our

complex with guns blazing and boots flaying; that was terrifying.My friend Dave and I escaped by

hiding in a cupboard. They captured the other British men, eighteen in all. Four motionless hours

cramped up in a cupboard barely big enough for the two of us. In the cupboard oxygen became

rare and breathing difficult and our fears were high with the expectation of bullets splintering

through the wooden doors when soldiers came near. How relieved I was when stepping out of the

cupboard after two hours of silence had indicated that the soldiers had gone; the satisfaction I felt

after beating the soldiers was exulting; the loss of my colleagues, depressing.Nevertheless, they were still searching for us and several times, we came close to capture as

we fled from flat to flat and complex to complex. How relieved I felt when finally we shook them

off and settled in a flat on the fourth floor of a walled complex of four blocks that surrounded a

large courtyard, just two hundred metres from the coast. All we had to do then was sit back and

wait for the allies to liberate Kuwait as they constantly said they would. Of course there was still

looting to be done, we needed food and cotton clothing for protection from bomb blast; helmets

were required to protect from falling debris and knives for defence against desperate soldiers, who

too may have been hiding in the concrete fire escape where we planned to take cover.

We were anxious but we became complacent; reading and writing, when there was enough

light, and waiting and that was to be our final undoing. The Iraqis commandeered the building and

commissioned it as their Southern Operations HQ with us still on the fourth floor completely cutoff. Why had we not heeded the warnings of Yousef who had told us that the Iraqis planned to

clear the entire area of civilians and prepare for an assault by the allies from the sea? But it was

too late now, with two hundred soldiers below us we were going nowhere.

What awful days those were, three months of living with the Iraqis, living in total silence and

often in total darkness. And when our food reserves ran out, raiding the apartments on the lower

floors and stealing theirs by sliding on our bellies in the early hours of the morning, dragging black

plastic bags of spoils with us slowly and silently within yards of their night-watch platoons. I was

fearful of making the slightest noise, expecting hot metal to tear into my flesh at any moment;

such relief I felt when I was finally back inside flat 4B battening the door.

I suppose it was inevitable that we were lifted; we had held on for three months and had

survived several attempt of looting soldiers trying to kick and prise the door open. Then with sixty-one of the sixty-two apartments trashed, it was only a matter of time before our battens yielded

and that time came at 3 a.m. on 27th November, just ten days ago.

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That night when the Iraqi soldiers battered the door down I expected choleric reaction from

them as they found two Englishmen sat at a table drinking gin and tonic in total defiance.

Thankfully, I suppose, we had been captured by a Kurdish lieutenant, had it have been an Iraqi

officer I know we would have been shot. Hiding British citizens was punishable by death and we

had lived with them for three months; how did that look?

What were those soldiers thinking as we were led down the steps and across the courtyard?

This was the very courtyard where daily I had inspected my troops through a gap in the curtains.

Now we were the curiosity as more than a hundred soldiers were bustling around to get a better

view of us, wondering just whom we were and how we had lived amongst them for three months

undetected.

As men dressed in black suits, blue shirts and

black ties, thrust me into the back seat of a large

black American limousine, I chanced to look back

and see the sergeant that had given the command

for a firing squad to execute a young Kuwaiti

resistance fighter. I wondered if this time he felt

cheated.

It was too late now, but why hadnt I tried to

escape when I was held at the Mansour Meliah

Hotel in Baghdad, I had my chance? After

persistent pestering, I had persuaded them to let

me take exercise by walking around the gardens. I

had no immediate guard that day and those on

duty at the gates would not have seen me get

through the chain-link fence that separated the

gardens from the banks of the Tigris. There were

small boats on the banks, I could have reached the

British Embassy, perhaps, or even have drifteddownstream with the current, a mere five days to

the Persian Gulf and into Kuwait waters. Perhaps

that was not a good idea, but why had my defiance

suddenly waned? Had I succumbed to circumstance and inevitability?

I wait, as on my bed I lie, not now afraid. I accept the inevitable for death is part of life and I thank

God that mine was meaningful. My sons I know will grieve, but they are strong and they will

prosper. Come allies I am ready, drop your bombs and guide your missiles. Now I sleep. I am tired,

very tired. It has been a long five months. I dream...

Good morning, Mr Cliff, wake up, you go now.

My guard is nice to me, he is pleasant and he has no guns. I am in heaven.Good morning, Mr Cliff, you go now, you go to Baghdad.

Baghdad, where are we? Heaven has no Baghdad, no London, no anywhere, only heaven?

You go to Baghdad, you go home, Sadam release you. Get ready, the bus is waiting.

As I walk across the small yard towards the steel clad gates now wide open, chains hanging

limply, a guard calls, Mr Cliff, you forget this. I turn and he tosses a football to me, I catch it.

The ball is grazed and scuffed from contact with the fine-gravel of the exercise yard and it

reminds me of the kindness of this guard when I had asked for a football and in response he had

driven to the town and, using his own money, bought it for me to kick around the yard.

Shukeran, Habibi, I say, thanking him as I toss the ball back to him, Give it to your son, soon

he will play for Iraq in the Gulf Cup.

Mashkour, Inshallah, Mr Cliff, he replies, if God wills it, thank you.I turn to leave as the guard calls out, Mr Cliff he hesitates and then he says, Mahbrouk.

Human Shield

A Kuwaiti Resistance fighter is executed justbelow the window of the writers flat. Sketchby writer.

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I look back at him and he is smiling. Yallah, Habibi. Allah Akhbar! I reply (Let us go now my

friend. God is great].

As the small blue bus pulls slowly away, this time with curtains drawn open, I look through the

dirty window and through the open gates into the yard. A lonely figure stands immaculate in his

military issue black suit, blue shirt and black tie, legs apart, one arm dropped at his side and the

other clutching the ball; I cannot really tell, but I think he is confused; he is happy, but he is sad.

Like most Iraqis, he had not wanted this military issue promulgated by two desperate and

misguided men, Sadam Hussain and George H W Bush.

The three main players in the Middle East conflict

Human Shield

Margaret Thatcher.British Prime Minister

George H W Bush.American President.

Sadam Hussain.Iraq President.

The victims

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The Beginning

There are many reasons that led to the Iraqis invading Kuwait in 1990, but was Sadam a tyrant, an

evil man hell-bent on destruction of those around him, as his critics would have us believe, or as

some might have it, as shown in history? On the other hand, was Sadam essentially a good leader

doing the best that could be done in a difficult country, in a difficult part of the world the centre

of two major religions and the centre of the worlds greatest oil reserves? Had Sadam once again

become the victim of duplicity by the Americans and British? Sadams regime is accredited with

mass genocide of his own people, the Kurds, but even on this, there is evidence to suggest that

the Iranians, under Americans influence, were involved. So how accurate are the accounts of the

history of Mesopotamia or new Iraq? Are they historical, historic or merely histrionic?

Many accounts of the invasion and occupation of Kuwait have been produced with most of

these being included in comprehensive writings of modern Iraq, or of Sadam Hussain. Whilst the

core history of Iraq is well chronicled, interim periods are left to authors interpretations and to

some extent, imagination and readers naivety.

The entire Middle East region has been subject to wars and conflict for millenniums by empire

builders. Since the end of the nineteenth century, Western countries, primarily Great Britain,

France and the USA, have interfered endlessly with the domestic politics of the region albeit most

of that at the end of the two World Wars. It is not my intention to go into any depth of the

historical and degenerate conflicts that have occurred in the area over the centuries. However, the

invasion of Kuwait was rooted by British political activity in the southern parts of the Ottoman

Empire at the beginning of the Empires decline, circa 1890, when the British afforded a small

group of trading families protection from marauding Bedou in the interests of trade routes and

later, the search for oil. This area, known as Al Qurain, (pronounced Al Grain), which lay on a

peninsula of a sheltered bay south of Basra, was given autonomy by the British and protection

given by the building of a wall around the dwelling area circa 1899, parts of which remain topresent day. The area became known by the Arabs as little fort, (in Arabic, Kut or Kuwayt). A few

years later, the British proclaimed the surrounding areas as the territory of Kuwait but this was not

ratified until the British defined the new area boundaries after World War 1 which has caused

contempt, disagreement, resentment and uprisings ever since. In reality, ratification is

questionable; the British merely cancelled the 1913 agreement with the Ottomans, which was

never agreed to by the Iraqis. Now, under the (involuntary) control of the British, they had no say

in the matter.

During the First World War, the British conquered the Ottoman regions of Iraq, Palestine and

Syria and then, after the war, created and transformed the area into Transjordan (later Jordan),

Iraq and the Gulf States. The whole issue was complicated by underhand deals that Britain struck

with France including the Sykes-Picot agreement, which gave Lebanon and Syria to the Frenchwhile Britain took control of Iraq, Palestine, Kuwait and other Gulf States.

To placate Sharif Hussein of Mecca, the leader of Hejaz (later Saudi

Arabia), the British wanted to make his sons heads of Transjordan, Syria

and Iraq. The old king refused to sign Churchills agreement that set out

structure of the new Middle East, but the kings sons had no such qualms

in assuming their new positions. In Baghdad this meant that Faisel

Husseins third son became the first king of Iraq.

This was not a popular move with the newly liberated citizens of Iraq

most of whom were opposed to the creation of a new state. When it had

first been proposed in 1919 that the provinces of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra be joined together to

form one nation, most British politicians had argued that it was a ludicrous idea. Arnold Wilson,the Civil Administrator in Baghdad, said it was a recipe for disaster because it meant trying to

Human Shield

King Faisel 1. Firstking of Iraq

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force three distinct groups the Shiite, Sunnite and Kurds to work together, even though it was

well known that they detested each other.

Tension amongst the tribes at the time was so great that in July 1920 the country suffered the

greatest revolt in history. The revolt was caused by a combination of factors, but Britains failure

to fulfil a wartime promise of allowing the Arab leaders self-determination was significant.

The uprising, which lasted until 1921, was suppressed, but not before almost an entire

battalion of the Manchester Regiment was wiped out by the Shiite guerrillas. At least 10,000

people died in the revolt and, if nothing else, it persuaded the British that it would be far better to

establish a puppet regime to run the country for them, rather than burden themselves with the

huge cost in men and resources that would be required to subdue warring tribes.

The rival warlords in Baghdad and Basra made efforts to patch up their differences and

presented the British with a viable local leadership in Sayid Talib, the pre-eminent local leader of

Basra, but Britain had already resolved that Faisel would be king.

The emergence of a genuine secular contender caused alarm in the British government. The

resourceful Sir Percy Cox, the British Resident in Baghdad, who invited Talib to afternoon tea at

the British Residence to discuss his plans, resolved the crisis. When Talib arrived at the Residence

Sir Percy was nowhere to be seen and so Lady Cox entertained him. As Talib left the Residence

party, other guests, acting on the advice of Sir Percy, arrested him. Talib was then exiled to the

island of Ceylon (Sri Lanka), leaving Faisel free to ascend the throne. His coronation took place in

Baghdad on 23rd August 1922. Add to this, the creation of Israel in 1947 at the expense of Arab

land and the subsequent desecration and occupation of Palestine that had American support, the

cauldron of wrath was bubbling to the rim.

The Build-up

Factually, despite popular Western belief, there is not an Emirate or Kingdom in Arabia that

practices democracy. All, at some time or other even up to present-day, have committed genocide

by executing opposition members and insurgents. Each country is ruled by a dictator, either as a

sheikh or emir (Amir in Kuwait), or a king and that is the way that the people want it; they are

tribal and each tribe is headed by its own sheikh. Tribal disputes cause most of their conflicts and

beyond that, religion. A few countries have a government in place, but in all instances these are

puppet governments and they are there only to appease the West. If they attempt to exercise any

authority, they are quietly disbanded.

Kuwait, up to the time of the Iraqi invasion, was involved in the genocide of an opposition

group, most of who came from the area in which I resided, Mishrif. In 1988, this group was

banned from meetings or gatherings of more than twelve people and consequently they set up

their operating base in Cyprus and used a facsimile system for means of communication. In 1989

the ruling family, the Al Sabah, formed a special security police group to counter the opposition

who rounded up members of the opposition group imprisoning many. At the time of the 1990

invasion, more than 600 members of the opposition had disappeared. The Iraqis immediately

released those still in gaol. The opposition group had approached Iraq for help; a coup or civil war

was imminent. In view of the fact that the Kuwait Military was made up almost entirely of foreign

nationals, mostly from Pakistan and Bangladesh, it is highly unlikely that they would have played

any significant part in civil strife, one way or another.

The build up to the 1990 invasion of Kuwait had many contributory factors. Certainly, the result

of the extended Iraq-Iran war bore significance in as much that Iraq was left in a state of virtual

economic disaster and was now entirely dependant on oil revenue to supplement the economy

and to pay off their war debts. As the oil prices stood then even that would cause them to struggle

to balance their payments. In response to a request from the American and British governments

who were planning between them to undermine the Iraqi economy as an assurance against

acquisition of military weapons, the Kuwaitis added fuel to the fire by deliberately over-producing

oil causing a considerable drop in international oil-price, from $30 per barrel to less than $20. The

Anglo-American plan had backfired as Kuwaiti greed ran amok and they produced even more oil

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than they had been asked to do which resulted in them being expelled from OPEC. As a direct

consequence of that action, the Iraqis were unable to produce enough oil to meet their

obligations. Added to that, the Kuwaitis were performing horizontal drilling taking oil from the Iraqi

oil reserves. Nevertheless, as dire as those issues were, they alone were not the direct cause of

the invasion.

I had experienced two previous Iraqi invasions of Kuwait during my residence there in the

early seventies. Both of those invasions were to fulfil claims that the Iraqis had been making since

the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the reformation of Iraq and Kuwait in 1921-22. From

when I first visited Kuwait and Iraq in 1968, the Kuwait-Iraq border had been moved north from

Mutlah Ridge, slightly north of the city, a few years previously. Using this as a natural border

divide, Mutlah ridge was still operative as the Kuwaiti border post even though the new border had

been established some forty miles north. The information that I had from good and reliable Kuwaiti

sources was that when Kuwait was granted independence from Britain in 1961, Britain re-

established the border to its new and present position. Taking it from Iraq, this gave Kuwait part

control of the largest oilfield in the world, but at the same time, the relocation of the border had a

much greater effect on Iraq by passing ownership of the strategic and disputed islands of Bubiyan

and Al Warbah to the Kuwaitis. Whilst the low-lying barren desert of the islands is virtually

worthless and effectively uninhabitable except for mudskippers, flamingos, and an occasional

shepherd and his flock, it has a value to Iraq much higher than the Rumaylah oil field.

Geographically, Iraq has little coastline and what they have is shallow water, worthless for

development of deep-sea ports. This necessitates transfer of oil to sea tankers through pipes

routed across Syria and Saudi Arabia, which is both expensive and politically volatile. Bubyian

could provide the deep-sea port that Iraq so desperately needed. When Sadam Hussain in 1990

responded to President George W Bushs demand to withdraw from Kuwait to the borders, he

responded cynically by asking, Which border do you mean, the walls of Kuwait City, Mutlah Ridge

or the present location?

During the Iraq Iran war, the Kuwaitis were assisting the Iranians financially and by providing

resources via Dhow across the waters of the Persian Gulf. When Sadam found out, he was angry.He pointed out how the Iraqis had historically assisted Kuwait and he threatened them with

aggression. The British were fearful of the Iranians winning the war and they advised the Kuwaitis

to put their loyalties with the Iraqis, which they did in 1988 towards the end of the conflict. There

was another way in which the Iraqis believed Kuwait owed them some form of compensation, in

fact, Sadam stated that one of his reasons for declaring war on Iran had been to defend the

interest of Kuwait, and there was a element of truth in that when prior to that war, Iran had been

threatening Kuwait with invasion. The Iranians had even fired missiles into Kuwait. I remember

once sitting on a southern beach one Friday afternoon when a missile exploded in the sea some

quarter mile away. My wife, in response to a conversation we were having about the danger from

Iran, with nothing more than a bat of her eyelids, said, See! They cant even hit Kuwait. Other

than keeping his troops occupied there was no other explanation: unless Sadam considered thatshould the Iranians occupy Kuwait then his claim for the northern oilfields and the disputed islands

would be lost.

During May 1990, top Iraqi officials visited Cairo and met with the American CIA where the

subject of the invasion was discussed. Around the same time, the CIA had met with the Kuwaitis

and the plans for evacuation of the Royal family were orchestrated along with the plans for the

removal of all monetary reserves, civil registers and banking databases that were transferred to

other countries, primarily Great Britain. On the day of the invasion at around 9 a.m., hours after

the Iraqis had captured Kuwait, I withdrew two hundred and fifty Dinars (five hundred pounds

sterling) from an ATM in Salmiya. In August 1991 after I had returned to Kuwait, my account had

been debited with the withdrawal, yet all banks in Kuwait were supposedly possessed or trashed

by the Iraqis.On the 29th and 30th July, the Kuwait Amir, Sheikh Jabir Al Ahmad Al Jabir Al Sabah, had travelled

to Saudi, subsequently staying there, taking part in discussions between delegates from Kuwait,

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Iraq and Saudi, he knew an invasion was imminent, both the British and the Americans wanted it

that way. The Amir was under strong guidance, particularly from the British government, not to

give in to the Iraqis by compensating them for their war losses. Arabic newspaper reports

indicated that the Kuwaitis wanted to settle the issue

peacefully and were on the threshold of agreeing to a

settlement with the Iraqis which they suggested was both

monetary and territorial, perhaps the leasing of Bubyan.

However, that is not what the Americans or the British

wanted. They insisted that the Kuwaitis hold out and

promised full military backing. Usually placid but now bold

with his knowledge that the British were behind him, the

Kuwaiti Crown Prince not only refused outright to

compensate the Iraqis, but on the 1st August at the meeting

table, he insulted Sadam Hussain by telling him to send his women on the streets to earn money.

This was a direct inference on Sadam and his mother. Sadam, it is believed, was an illegitimate

offspring and his mother a kahbuta [prostitute]. This was an insult worse than that of calling an

Arab, Yakmahri [donkey]. Ali Hussain Al Majid [Chemical Ali] and Uday, Sadams son, stormed out

of the meeting returning to Baghdad to report to Sadam. When Sadam was told of the Crown

Princes slur he was furious and immediately ordered the invasion to commence. He planned to

take the north of Kuwait and push the borders back to Mutlah Ridge, thus giving him the oilfields

and the Islands of Warbah and Bubyan.

However, the Americans considered that should Sadam invade and occupy only the north of

Kuwait there would be nothing they could do about it. Under such circumstances, it is highly

unlikely that they would have deployed any military at all. The Arabs did not want them in their

territories and besides, arguably, the disputed land belonged to Iraq. International support would

not be forthcoming for a full-scale war. The best that could have been hoped for would have been

UN sanctions and as I saw, they certainly did not work. The only way that the Americans could get

involved and bring the oil wealth of the Arab nations under their control would be if the Iraqisoccupied all of Kuwait and they could convince other Arabians that Sadam would not limit his

military action to Kuwait. The CIA had planned for the Kuwait military to flee the country leaving

the Iraqis unopposed. This served a dual purpose, the Americans could get a military foothold in

the area and, as one American senior military officer told me after liberation, These God dam

cock-suckin mother-f*****s will never hold the world to ransom with oil prices agin. He was

talking about the Kuwaitis.

April Glaspie, the American Ambassador in Baghdad, gave Sadam her blessings for him to

invade Kuwait although later she qualified this as saying that she never thought for one moment

that he would occupy all of Kuwait instead of just the north. At around the time of the invasion,

she was summoned to Washington and it was more than two years before April Glaspie was heard

from again; she had mysteriously disappeared from the American political scene.

The Invasion

That morning, 2nd August, when I was awoken by the Iraqi warplanes on their low-level strike

missions, I had no idea that the Iraqis had invaded Kuwait; the media, published that same

morning, assured citizens that a peaceful settlement was close at hand. The air-raid siren located

within a few yards of my villa had not been sounded, neither had any of the others. There was an

element of deceit going on. Numerous eminent Kuwait families, including the Royal Family, had

already left Kuwait in the preceding days; most by driving into neighbouring countries and many

by air to countries further a field. Expatriates, British included, were left to face the invading

forces even though it is known that their respective governments knew days before, if not weeks,

that the invasion would take place. Several expatriate oilfield workers were on location less than a

kilometre from the Kuwait - Iraq border and were overwhelmed within minutes by Iraqi tanks and

troops with no warnings and no chance to flee. Immediately they had been interned and sent for

Human Shield

Sadam with his son, Uday

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* I was wrong on that issue; the Iraqi troops left the Kuwaitis alone.


processing to the Mansour Meliah Hotel in Baghdad. Their families stayed at home waiting in

futility for them to return unaware that their husbands had become sacrificial lambs.

The Iraqi military was unopposed. The entire Kuwait army had fled, except that is, for a half

dozen Kuwaiti tanks whose crews had refused to retreat but instead, faced the 300 tanks of the

Iraqi army and fought. They were gallant men but they perished quickly. All Kuwaiti military

vehicles and aircraft were moved into Saudi on the advice of the Americans, they had been

ordered not to fight but to allow the Iraqis to enter Kuwait without any resistance. The Kuwait navy

had stood down from full alert to standby, unarmed and without fuel. Weeks before the invasion

all military personnel had been issued with civilian (Civil) IDs and ordered to destroy their Military

IDs should an invasion take place. Those that remained on duty had been ordered to take civilian

clothes with them and destroy their military clothing should the Iraqis invade. One of my Kuwait

Air Force friends, a sergeant at the northern airbase of Jaber Al Ali, was on duty that morning when

he was given the alert that the invasion had begun. He changed his clothes, burnt his uniform,

destroyed his Military ID and then drove out of the camp to return to his home in Salwa. As he

turned out of the airbase gates an Iraqi tank and then a group of soldiers confronted him. He was

taken back into the camp for interrogation, but he withstood the questioning and convinced the

Iraqis that he was a civilian. They let him go but without his vehicle. He had to walk the forty miles

back to Salwa. With no civilian vehicles around a lift was not available and there was little shade

from a hot, searing sun beating down at some eighty degrees. It took him two days to get back.

He visited us soon after checking that we were okay before he left for Syria after first obtaining a

large bag of Arabic unleavened bread for us.

On that first day, after my entanglements with the military believing them to be Kuwaiti, I

decided to stay with my good friend Dave and his family in their flat in Mahboula, a small coastal

district to the south of the city and south of my area Mishrif. Mahboula was a popular residential

area for expatriates with most buildings being large apartment complexes popular with both

British and Americans, a situation I thought would be a better option than staying amongst

Kuwaitis who may be subject to aggression*by the Iraqis.

From that first day, the British embassies were relaying news over shortwave and satellite TV,(BBC World and CNN), that the Iraqis had closed all borders between Kuwait and Saudi and that all

British and American citizens should, ...take a low profile and stay indoors to avoid being lifted

and processed... do not attempt to escape via the borders. The British embassy wardens whose

job it was under such circumstances to relay information given by the British Embassy should

have contacted us. No one in our complex or those adjacent had heard anything at all from the

wardens for the Mahboula / Mangaf / Fintas areas and the news we had of them was that they had

gone into hiding and had either disconnected their telephones or were not answering them. It was

apparent that these people, who were volunteers from the British expatriate community, had only

become wardens to enjoy good time drinks and socialising at the British Embassy, brown-noses as

we were now referring to them. When it came to being commissioned in their real purpose, they

failed miserably jeopardising British Citizens lives. The only news of the situation that we had wasvia the very unreliable media reports on the airwaves who for most part, were guessing.

There were still several British people in the complex, most of who were families, but several

apartments were unoccupied; either the residents had fled to other parts of Kuwait or had not yet

returned from summer vacation and in the worst cases, had not returned from the oilfields. Dave

and I looted those apartments which we knew had been abandoned; our looting was confined

strictly to food and tools and hardware that may be useful at a later time should the occupation

become extended. We took care to lock the apartments up after us, which meant changing the

lock where we did not have a key. Other foreign nationals were free to move about and that

became a problem for us. Foreign nationals, mostly from Central and South Asia, North Africa and

Palestine, were roaming around looting on a large scale in what was now an anarchy State. The

threat to our building from looters for the time being was greater than that from the Iraqi troops.

Dave and I set about repairing the complex perimeter gates and the electronic locks to the access

doors of each building. For the next few days, the embassy was still advising that we take a low

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profile and stay indoors. However, as food ran low, there was a need to visit the Cooperative

Society supermarkets which remained open. I also had to relocate my cars. A large complex not

too far from ours was the Union Center [sic], a four-block complex with a large courtyard between

them, where some of our British and American friends were staying. The complex had a large

basement car park with security gates, which were manned by the few Western residents, an ideal

location for my cars.

I had driven to Daves local supermarket in Mangaf but had to abort due to Iraqi soldiers being

on duty at the entrance. I was not to know they were there only to enforce law and order. I drove

to the coop in my district some twenty minutes away as a reconnaissance trip. There were soldiers

along the route but they gave me little heed as I drove almost full throttle in my Daimler

Sovereign XJ6. At the coop complex there was a long queue waiting to enter the supermarket but

no soldiers. I could not afford to risk queuing where I would stand out like a sore thumb. I parked

as close as I could to the entrance door and got out of the car. Immediately, a Kuwaiti rushed up

to me, took my arm and ordered the shop door to be opened to let me in. All items were rationed

but the Palestinian women running the shop allowed me, as an Inglaise (Englishman), to take what

I wanted. My extra large trolley was half-filled with Cola and Baked Beans. I was allowed out

without paying, such was the respect and concern for British citizens, I felt humble. I took the

opportunity to visit my villa with the intention of taking all the food I had there. As I loaded the lastcase of bottled home-brewed beer into the boot of my car, I was approached by the two qadama

[maids] of the villa next to mine. They were Indian women and in distress. Their Kuwaiti kafil

[employers] had left Kuwait days before the invasion leaving the maids behind with no food or

money. Trembling and with tear soaked faces they pleaded that I take them with me, but that was

impossible. The best I could do was to give them a hundred pounds and suggest they travelled to

Salmiya where there was a large community of Asians. I returned to Mahboula but was stopped at

a checkpoint on the way. Winding my way around the barbed wire trestles, I drew up to two

soldiers wielding AK47s and I opened the window. One of them opened the passenger doors and

looked inside, the other stared at me and asked for identification. I gave him my Civil ID. Ah,

Inglaise, he exclaimed. Welcome. He lowered his rifle whilst the other soldier closed the door

and then said Yallah, I drove off soaked in perspiration, but not because of humidity. This was not

the last time I encountered a military checkpoint but each time the outcome was the same.A strong community atmosphere developed in the complex as Dave and I organised evening

community gatherings at the bar that quickly transformed into daily happy hours -- a much-

needed tonic for our morale. Without onsite news, it was difficult to know what the best action for

us to take was. Should we sit tight and wait for the Iraqis to leave Kuwait or make a dash to the

border? The media, particularly CNN, was suggesting an imminent withdrawal by the Iraqis would

take place and they showed footage of what they claimed was Iraqis with their military equipment

withdrawing from Kuwait. We knew better. Unless road signs, as shown in their footage, had been

turned around then the Iraqi military build-up was more intense with extra troops, tanks and

artillery pouring in through Mutlah.

The Occupation

News was coming in that a British civilian had been shot and killed in an attempt to escape across

the border and an American civilian had been shot and wounded trying to escape from the Iraqis

in the city. Since the embassies were still claiming that the borders were closed and sealed, an

attempt for us to cross the border was no longer a viable option and besides this, none of our

group had four-wheel drive vehicles. We had to wait and hope that UN resolutions and embargos

would be sufficient to cause the Iraqis to withdraw.

One thing was certain, the Iraqis were not picking us up on the highways. I had driven through

military checkpoints on several occasions, not only without problems but also with extreme

courtesy from the Iraqi soldiers. On several occasions, soldiers had come to the door of the

apartment. With their rifles on their shoulders and hats in their hands, they asked only for water.

On one occasion, two soldiers of the Republican Guard did come to the door with rifles at the

ready; they searched the apartment looking for Kuwaiti Resistance fighters and finding none,shouldered their rifles and left politely.

I began to wonder why the American and British Foreign Offices were constantly reminding

their citizens to take a low profile advising that the Iraqis were lifting and processing them. From

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my experience, this was certainly not the case. I had driven openly on the highways frequently, I

had driven through checkpoints and I had spoken to Iraqis on the street; soldiers had frequently

called at the apartments and taken water: there were no instructions with the Iraqi military to pick

up either British or American nationals.

The Western media was reporting that the Iraqi troops were looting, raping and pillaging. There

was no truth in this accusation at all, in fact, the Iraqi troops were well disciplined and once

organised, they were behaving in nothing other than a professional manner and I rememberthinking that the American military could learn a lot from them. The Iraqis did have a problem

from the few Kuwaiti Resistance Fighters and they had to respond accordingly. Occasionally this

meant shelling private residences where the snipers were operating from, but given the

circumstances of war, this was not an unreasonable response.

Western propaganda was rife, such as the lies told by the fifteen-year-old Kuwaiti girl in

America, Nayariah, who had been coached by Hall and Knowlton an American PR firm before she

had made her tearful accusations before American television and other media. She told of the

Iraqis removing over three hundred babies from their incubators, leaving them to die on the floors

of the Al Adan hospital and then taking the incubators to Baghdad. The girl was the daughter of

Saud Naser Al Sabah, the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the USA. Human Rights investigations attempted

to confirm Nayariahs story but found no witnesses or any evidence to support it. When John

Martin of ABC World News visited the Adan after liberation and Interviewed Doctor Mohammad

Matar, Director of Kuwait Ministry of Health and his wife, Doctor Faiz Yousef, who ran the

obstetrics unit at the Adan, both stated that Nayariahs charges were false. The fact was that

Nayariah had left Kuwait before the invasion and had been residing with her father in USA. After

liberation, both she and her father admitted the lie and retracted it, but the lie remains in history.

The truth is that the Kuwaitis never owned that amount of incubators, they owned less than thirty

and these were fully accounted for after liberation, remaining functional in the hospitals.

Transportation of air ambulatory passengers was part of my domain with Kuwait Airways prior to,

and indeed after liberation. I was the engineer responsible for the design and development of

stretcher and incubator installations on the KAC fleet. Initially, such was the shortage that I had

problems getting incubators from the ministry to install into the aircraft to carry critically ill

neonates to foreign hospitals. To solve the problem KAC procured four incubators and these were

still within Kuwait Airways workshops when I returned to Kuwait in 1991, albeit they had repairable

damage from falling debris caused by liberation missiles.

The Western media was reporting that the Iraqis had taken the Kuwaitis gold bullion and dollar

reserves from the vaults of the Kuwait National Bank and showed considerable footage of this

alleged event. In truth, the bullion and dollar reserves had been moved to London weeks before

the invasion. In fact few of the Kuwaiti banks had been damaged or looted and most were

operative within weeks, if not days of the liberation. I was informed that some of the banks had

remained operative throughout the occupation, managed by the Kuwaitis, serving the Kuwaitis.

Reports that the Iraqis were torturing Kuwaitis is also open to question. I saw some of the so-

called torture rooms after I returned after liberation, one such place was a room in a sports

stadium, Qadsia, another, a basement of a Kuwaiti Villa. Neither of these areas was occupied by

the Iraqi troops who tended to stay clear of inland areas and concentrate their manpower andheadquarters close to the coast and inland borders. My own impression was that these rooms

were being used before the invasion and almost certainly against the opposition group by the

Kuwait Special Police; the torture equipment was too well setup to have been established in the

first few weeks or even months of the occupation as was alleged.

In another show of propaganda, the Western media had reported in the first few days that

Sheikh Fahad Al Ahmad Al Sabah, the Minister of sport and manager of the Kuwait national

football team, had been shot gallantly defending Dasmah Palace, the old residence of the Amir.

The reports were that he had refused to leave Kuwait and had stood on the palace steps with a

few of his guards and fought the Iraqi troops.

The truth is nothing like this. Sheikh Fahad had remained at the palace, the reason for which

no one other than the Al Sabah family knows, leaving it late to flee. As he fled in his car,

approaching the palace gates, he defied Iraqi commands to stop and was shot, the bulletspenetrating thorough the rear window of the car.

As a testimony to Sheikh Fahad, who was a brash and rather arrogant man, his car was

untouched other than painted gold and then mounted on a plinth and located on the side of the

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coast road between Dasmah and Raz Salmiya as a monument. It was a couple of years before

anyone realised the implications of the bullet holes through the rear of the car.

After liberation, the Kuwaitis announced that over 600 Kuwaiti citizens were missing and that

they had been incarcerated in Iraq, which the Iraqis strongly denied and no evidence has been

found since to support this. Indeed, I have no doubts whatsoever that this number is too

coincidental with the number of Kuwaitis missing from members of the opposition group prior to

the invasion and that the two groups are the same.When the Iraqis annexed Kuwait, they announced the installation of a provincial government

and most of the members were from the Kuwaiti opposition. This suggestion was given no

credence by the Western press but it was a fact. When Kuwait returned to some normality after

liberation, eight of the Kuwaitis who sat on the provincial government were put on trial. Their

defence was that they had been coerced. Most were found guilty and sentences of imprisonment

and hanging were imposed, however, months later, with pressure from the USA, the sentences

were commuted and the men released without explanation.

Fourteen days after the invasion, we heard that an escape attempt was being made across the

border at Selmi, which lay on the Kuwait-Saudi border close to the southern border of Iraq. The

report was that a British embassy official would be at the border to meet the convoy and lead

them through Saudi to Riyadh. At our end, our so-called Wardens were organising the run.

Immediately this had alert bells sounding. From what we had already seen of the behaviour of

these wardens, the mission was doomed to failure before it began. I was dubious. The Selmi Road

ran from Mutlah all the way south along the Iraqi border until it reached Selmi on the Saudi

border. The entire road was intense with military and police posts, and part of the Selmi Road

formed an emergency runway for the northern airbase of Jaber Al Ali. To believe that the invading

force did not occupy these posts was nothing less than folly. Vehicles that were not captured

would have to drive off-road and the whole area was comprised of sandstone crags and sand

dunes. I was anything but convinced and immediately named it as the Lemming Run, but I

remained open-minded.

A frequent visitor to Daves flat was an American friend who was working with the Kuwait Navy.

He told us that the Navy had been stood down from alert to standby the day before the invasion

began. Tim had suffered horrific physical and mental torture when, as senior officer of the

American Navy spy ship, SS Pueblo, in the late sixties.

His captors, the North Koreans, placed him before a

firing squad on several occasions, he was not to know

that each time the rifles were unloaded and the firing

pins would strike against empty chambers. The

Americans were denying that the ship was a spy ship

and the crew was refusing to confess. Now, Tims

nerves were fragile to say the least. We advised him

of our thoughts but I can understand why he, normally

a sensible man, could not resist the urge to escape.

He left with the seventy-vehicle convoy that morning

on 16

th

August, two weeks after occupation. Asexpected, the convoy failed to escape; they had been

forced to flee into the desert soon after navigating the

Selmi Road and encountering military checkpoints.

Some of the scattered vehicles were turned back by

the Iraqis, some captured, some families left without

vehicles and others fled aimlessly in wrong directions. Eventually most had returned to their

dwellings telling their stories of anguish. One escapee group was our infamous wardens who

turned into the desert and followed a track west towards Iraq. They drove straight into an Iraqi

military camp and were arrested. Tim, now in trauma after the aborted escape attempt and his

two colleagues in his car decided to give themselves up to the Iraqis at Mutlah and they were last

seen waiting in a long traffic queue to the fortified ridge checkpoint.

At the time of the Lemming Run, the idea that a member of the Saudi British Embassy meetingthe refugees at the border was so strong it seemed unquestionable that this would not be the case

and yet after liberation, the British Foreign Office emphatically denied it. Had the British citizens

yet again been duped?

Human Shield

Sailors from the United States intelligence-gathering vessel Pueblo greet their familiesin December 1968 after spending a year asprisoners in North Korea. Tim is inforeground left. Henry Kissinger whonegotiated the release is centre.

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I was seriously concerned for the welfare of Tim; I had seen the state of his nerves when he

frequented the bar. I could not imagine him surviving internment under canvas in the searing

heat. After my release and return to UK in December, on the 23 rd my house telephone rang. When

I answered, I was greeted by the voice of an American woman; it was Tims wife, Linda.

Immediately I asked about Tim and a voice came from the receiver, Hi good buddy, howz yawl

doin? After Tim had waited for almost an hour at Mutlah, with the engine temperature of the car

moving into red the occupants decided to give up and ...return to Cliff and Daves for a G and T.As they neared the turnoff for our building in Mahboula, hastily they decided to give themselves

up at the Saudi border and so drove on. Forty minutes later, they were at the Saudi border

checkpoint and were stopped by soldiers. They were Saudi Arabian soldiers; there were no Iraqi

troops anywhere near. They were allowed to drive on to Bahrain where they boarded an aircraft to

London, thence back home to Virginia, USA. I blurted out some good old-fashioned English

expletives, but the fact was that during those first few weeks, both the British and American

foreign offices had been telling their citizens that the Iraqis had closed all borders and that they

should not attempt to escape. Either their hi-tech satellite tracking systems and intelligence units

were utterly defective or we were caught up in a very serious game of political chess where

Western expatriates were the pawns.

This border control was the same one that CNN had been showing in their footage a few days

after the invasion claiming that the fleeing Kuwaitis were being forced by the Iraqi military into

exchanging their passports for Iraqi passports before they were allowed to leave the country.

At around the third week of occupation, according to Western media, the Iraqis were tightening

their nets on the Western detainees and we heeded their warning. Now happy hour was

transferred to afternoons and evening lights were

dimmed. We took the warning seriously; at that point

the media advised us that the Iraqi government was

instructing all British citizens to report to the Regency

Palace Hotel in Salwa and Americans to report to the

Sheraton Hotel in Kuwait City. Most of us were in total

defiance of the order but many British and Americans

did respond. When they arrived at the hotels they

were turned away by the military, the Iraqis had made

no such order. However, it was not long after this

announcement that the Iraqi government did start

issuing instructions for British and Americans to be

picked up; they were going to accommodate us in Baghdad as guests. Later the Iraqis began to

place British, American and Japanese citizens at strategic military target sites as part of a human

shield, a move that without question had been promulgated by Britain and America by the

constant speculation that the Iraqis would do just that.

In my own analysis there were potentially two options for the outcome of the pre-invasion

discussion between the Iraqis and the Kuwaitis. One way or another, the Iraqis had to have

money. Either Kuwait or the UAE pay the money the Iraqis believed that they owed (not without

good reason), or Iraq would take the land that they believed they had the right to and from this,generate the funds Iraq so desperately needed. Knowing this, the Kuwaitis, as was the Arab

League, were prepared to appease rather than antagonise and were heavily biased to conceding

to Sadam by leasing Warbah and Bubyan, writing off his war debts and ceasing horizontal drilling.

As much as the slur on Sadam and his mother had promulgated a spontaneous start to the

invasion, had Kuwait and UAE not agreed to at least some of Sadams demands, the invasion was

inevitable.

Invasion in the hottest month of the year when shade temperatures reached the mid-fifties

centigrade is not conducive to ground warfare where it has considerable negative impact on both

troops and equipment. I believe the reason for this timing, as Sadam stated, was that this was a

time when the Western schools were closed for the summer months and Western Expatriates were

taking vacations escaping from the intense heat. Instead of the usual three thousand western

expatriates, only around four hundred were in Kuwait. This consideration is hardly the thinking ofa despot who planned to use Western civilians to form a human shield. Instead of between six and

twelve people on each site, he could have had a hundred and forty.

Human Shield

7-year-old Stuart Lockwood with SadamHussain.

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On 26th August, 25 days after occupation, the Iraqis announced that they would release British

women and children on the 28 th August, news that was received by us in great jubilation. The

Iraqis had organised buses that would depart Salmiya for Baghdad at 0630 hours but

unfortunately, they had not informed the soldiers in the field of this. When the convoy of four cars

carrying our women and children left on that morning, within a few hundred yards it was stopped

at a checkpoint. The occupants were taken to the Iraqi Intelligence HQ for interrogation. From

that, the Iraqis were able to establish the whereabouts of their husbands and, after releasing thewomen and children, they made a charge on our building booting flat doors open. They captured

all of the men except for Dave and I who hid in a hidey-hole cupboard we had prepared days

earlier. They took the eighteen men away for processing and continued the search for us. We fled

and hid in another complex not far away, the Union Center [sic] where we had three British and

two American friends residing. Apart from those and two Jordanian families, (and an emu and a

llama), there was no one else residing there. The three British men gave us a key to flat 4B next

door on the same floor, and this became home for the next four months.

Above and joining the two blocks A and C at the opposite end of the complex was a suspended

row of flats, or villas, as they were known but in essence, penthouses. Since these were the

highest flats, we deemed one of them

appropriate to set up with a gas proof room and,

possibly, a hidey-hole. Because there had been

the odd one or two soldiers roaming around the

complex, we requested one of the other

occupants to keep a lookout for us whilst we set

about modifying a room of Villa V4. Don had

been volunteered. As we were hammering our

way into the project, Don called for silence and

beckoned us to the large patio window. Soldiers

were on the landing of our flats and they were

escorting the two British and two Americans

away. With them was the Kuwaiti owner of the

complex, Omar Ben Essa. He took some soldiers

to our flat and attempted to open the door from

a bunch of keys he had chained to his clothing.

Unbeknown to him I had changed the lock; he

took the soldiers to all the flats in that block with

more frustration. I had changed the locks in all doors. Once again, I felt the strains of despair and

depression as more of our comrades had been lifted.

Suddenly, the situation had turned from sombre to inexorably serious. Now the full effects of

Western politics was becoming transparent; we had become sacrificial lambs in the politics of the

governments of our own countries who, by any means, were desperate to turn the world against

Sadam Hussain in the battle for control of the worlds major oil resources. The Americans were

desperate to get UN resolutions to authorise war where they could test their new military

technology, which until now remained untested on a battlefront.There was a massive influx of Iraqi troops and equipment. They were swarming the coastal

areas to a distance of half a kilometre inland. By early September, thousands of troops had dug in

on the coastline and in the open inland desert patches surrounding us. They occupied all buildings

close to the coast and, as if that was not bad enough for us, they adopted the building that we

were in as their Southern Headquarters; we were penned in on the fourth floor with two hundred

soldiers immediately below us. Nevertheless, British obstinacy prevailed;

we would never surrender. From that time on, with curtains drawn closed,

we lived without artificial lights or sound, we limited our conversations to

whispers of essential, brief discussion and for most of the time, sat and

read or wrote. Since the kitchen was adjacent to the landing, cooking was

taboo other than microwaving in a bedroom and this at a time, twice a day

that coincided with the soldiers meals of which they ate five times a day(so much for sanctions).

After two weeks, all soldiers had been issued with new AK47 rifles. New

uniforms replaced the old tattered mismatched uniforms remnants of

Human Shield

Ali Hussain Al Majid,alias Chemical Ali.

The Union Center [sic]. I was located in the righthand foremost block on the fourth floor. Sketch bywriter.

AC

BD

Flat 4B

Villa V4

Shops

Swimming Pool

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the Iran-Iraq war; new boots replaced trainers, sandals and flip-flops. Several days later, Ali

Hussain Al Majid (Chemical Ali), the new governor of the 19 th Province, toured the area after

shanghaied Pakistani and Indian civilians had swept beaches andstreets. Peering between a gap

between the curtains, I watched as Chemical Ali visited our building through a guard of honour. I

do not know how I felt by seeing him in the flesh, certainly contempt, but I must admit to an

element of excitement bubbling inside me. Here, just a few feet away, was perhaps, next to Hitler

and Sadam, the most notorious man in recent history. I could so easily have shaken his hand, or

killed him! As it was, I merely uttered a profanity. I must admit, he looked bravura in his dark,

immaculately tailored dark-green uniform bedecked with gold-braided lanyards and brown leather

belts and straps around his mid and upper torso with colourful battle medals sewn in several rows

on his chest.

Military activity became intense as more sanctions and UN resolutions were made. Old broken-

down tanks were pushed by bulldozers into dugouts on the groins just in front of us and then

concreted in, old artillery was treated the same. We were in the middle of a very large and

potentially ballistic battlefield and it worried us. Two heavy machine guns had been bunkered in

sandbags on the roof of a beach villa facing the balcony of our apartment a mere hundred metres

away and that worried us more.

As our food ran low and since we had taken the food from the flats above us, looting from flats

on the landings below where the Iraqi soldiers were accommodated and had food and where we

had stashed food prior to their arrival, became necessary. By crawling snakelike on our bellies

past the brown tinted plate-glass partitions of the access balcony, even with the soldiers only few

feet away, we were successful. All we could do then was to sit and wait. Outside there was almost

complete silence as the Iraqi troops consisting of Kurds, and a few disabled Iraqis who were

veterans of the Iraq-Iran war, waited for the

Allies to invade. Inevitably, the deprived

Kurds began to loot the buildings in which

they were stationed. I watched, as nightly in

our complex, more flats had lights switchedon. Each night soldiers attempted to break

our door down but the battens held.

Inevitably, with sixty-one of the sixty-two

flats trashed, our time was limited. With

heavy tools and brute force, our door finally

yielded on 27th November, two days before

UN resolution set the date of Allied invasion

to be 15th January. An Iraqi Lieutenant, a

Kurd, who, until conscripted by the Iraqis,

had been teaching English in Kurdistan,

captured us. He sat with us showing remorse for our capture, trying to think of ways that he couldlet us go. He drew a chair up to the table at which we were sat and, rejecting our offer of a gin and

tonic, told us how the Kurds had been forced to join the Iraqi army against their will with threats of

death to them and their families. It was virtually all Kurds now in Kuwait and few, if any, wanted to

be involved in the dispute. He had no choice but to call the Iraqi intelligence and after a night in

the Regency Palace Hotel, I was flown to Baghdad to the Mansour Meliah Hotel and thence to the

prison camp in Babylon.

In so many ways, my capture was a great relief, finally I was able to talk in other than a

whisper, and I could watch television, have the lights on, eat well and walk around and even play

football. Reflecting on my time in hiding in Kuwait, I realise that I was just as much a part of the

Human shield there as I was in Iraq, only my subjugators were different and in many ways that

was a much harder time than being held in the camp in Babylon. Yet, at the time that I was takento the prison camp, I had resigned myself to death, I never believed from then on that there was

to be a different ending, but thankfully to Yousef Arafat and the good will of Sadam, the ending for

Human Shield

Early morning looting of food whilst the Iraqi soldiers

relax just below. Sketch by writer.

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me was what it was. My love and respect for the Iraqi people has not waned; I have always found

them the most generous and friendly of the Arab peoples. Even during my visits to Baghdad in

1968 I never felt threatened despite there being strong anti-British feelings subsequent to the

seven-day Israeli war in which the British and Americans were accused (rightfully) of assisting the

Israelis.

I was freed on the 10th December 1990 when I returned quietly home to my wife and children.

At Gatwick airport, I was swarmed over by the media, but I wasnt interested in them, all they

wanted was lies and sensationalism. All I wanted was a big hug and somewhere private to cry.

Liberation.

On 29th November, the UN Security Council authorized the use of force against Iraq unless it

withdrew from Kuwait by 15th January 1991. With UN resolutions in place, Desert Storm, the

liberation of Kuwait, began on 17th January

1991. With the capture of 150,000 Kurds, who

quickly and voluntarily gave themselves up,

liberation was complete, but not without Iraqis

and Kurds paying an awful price as those notcaptured by the Allies, attempted to flee

Kuwait through the ridge at Multlah.

The scene at Mutlah was sickening.

Thousands of road vehicles had been strafed

with bullets and Rockwell Hellfire anti-tank

missiles fired from AH-64A Apache helicopters.

Even as I saw it five months later, it was utterly

distressing and when added to this, the photographs that Kuwaiti citizens had taken immediately

after, displayed the last torturous, painful moments of life of those inside the vehicles. They had

been incinerated; many bodies were fused to

the metal of their vehicles their faces distortedin hideous smiles as roasted flesh and

tightened skin had twisted their jaws and

stretched open their mouths showing bony

jaws of teeth. Skulls were wrapped in heat-

tightened skin with wide-open-eyeless eye

sockets. Decapitated and mutilated bodies lay

around the site; the stench of burned flesh still

hung in the air. These 10,000 bodies

{contention} were not only Kurdish soldiers,

most were civilian men, women and children.

Innocent Iraqi citizens caught up in the lies

and deceit of Hussain, Bush and the British

government, people who had believed that

Kuwait had indeed been returned to

Documents

The Human Shield - Allies or All Lies