On the occasion of the Kuwait Invasion I thought I would share a very informative article on the Kuwaiti Resistance. The article was published by the Middle East Quarterly back in 1995 but is actually taken from a book called “Days of Fear“. It’s very interesting to read although it’s a bit long. I actually had to send it to my Kindle so I could read it since I don’t generally read articles this long in a web browser.
The article contains intricate details on the resistance and lots of accounts of their heroic actions, many which I hadn’t heard of before. Here’s a snippet just to give you an idea of the kind of stories that the article contains:
On some occasions, Kuwaitis had no choice but to take severely wounded Resistance fighters to the hospitals, sometimes only steps ahead of the Iraqis. In one incident, a youth shot in the head was admitted as a traffic accident victim. The Iraqis knew that someone had been wounded and would end up in a hospital, so they searched the operating rooms just as he was about to undergo surgery. The patient was obviously in a bad way but the Kuwaiti doctor could not risk telling the cause of his wound. The patient’s x-rays would clearly show the bullet in his head, so the Kuwaiti doctors played a trick: One of them left the room, ostensibly to get the images that were just then being developed, but actually x-rayed his own head and showed the film to the Iraqi, who was satisfied by this ruse and left the hospital staff to get on with its work.
And here is another:
About ten days before the land war, in late February 1991, another gaffe outside Kuwait may have undone much of their good work. The Resistance informed the government-in-exile that it had sabotaged the Iraqi mining of the oilfields, and that most of the wells apart from the Wafra field and a few others were safe. An official apparentlyfoolishly broadcast news of this accomplishment. The Iraqis may have heard the broadcast or may have simply decided on their own that they had to test the circuits for real. In any case, they tried to blow up a number of wells at Rawdatain, in the north of Kuwait, as a test. They failed to explode. The Iraqis then checked the charges and discovered the sabotage. Over the next few days, Iraqi army engineers frantically reset the detonators, and then blew the wells. Overall, the operation was still a victory for the Resistance, for while about 720 wells were destroyed, the Iraqis did not have time to reset and blow the other 300.
As I said the article is pretty long but it’s thorough. Check it out [Here]
Photo: Bob Pearson/AFP/Getty Images
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