Iraqi invasion of Kuwait: One of history’s greatest events that changed the course of our lives!
“Aren’t I too young to die? “ is a question that I remembered my 8-year-old brother ask my parents one afternoon in August 1990. As a mom of two young girls, I can empathize with the feelings of helplessness and frustration that swamped my parents. However, they defied all odds to protect us and how!
Our rendezvous with Kuwait was quite by chance. My dad was employed in Hyderabad with Larsen & Toubro company for many years. He happened to see a job posting in The Hindu newspaper looking to hire electrical engineers for the Ministry of Electricity and Water in Kuwait.
Kuwait is a small Arab country bordering Iraq and Saudi Arabia, rich with oil reserves. Not surprisingly, there was a lot of curiosity and chatter in our hometown in India, wondering why my parents would pick Kuwait of all places that would be their home away from home for many years. Interestingly, the majority of Kuwait’s population was expatriates, and we were now one among them! To cut a long story short, my dad left for Kuwait, and my mom, an innocent 21-year-old with stars in her eyes, later joined him along with a tiny 4-month-old baby (me!)
I had a relatively sheltered childhood in Kuwait until 1990. Life was pretty uneventful but busy and happy. It revolved around a routine where we went to school, did homework, played with the neighborhood kids, celebrated birthdays, went grocery shopping with my parents, and watched Tamil and Hindi movies every Friday on our small TV. We occasionally went on picnic breaks with friends at the corniche. We typically had our staple fare of south indian food that included poori bhaji, idlies toasted with crunchy gun powder, curd, and lemon rice.
We studied at Carmel School, a Christian missionary school located in Salwa. I still have very fond memories with the nuns; Sister Bernita, Sister Carmen Mary, who were kind but stern. We learned English, Hindi, and Arabic as first, second and third languages mandated by the CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education). Here’s a little fun fact, while my spoken Arabic is rusty, I can still read and write the Arabic script.
I have vivid memories of looking forward to weekends when we go to the club to swim and eat fries. My parents worked hard to ensure that my brother and I had the best childhood possible. We were allowed to learn Bharatnatyam (dance), Indian Carnatic music, karate, and tennis. While we went for the classes during weeknights, they would patiently wait in the car until our classes (whose timings did not align all the time) ended.
Indians were the largest diaspora living in Kuwait, and remittances to India were high, which helped with the Indian economy in the eighties. The eighties were also fraught with geopolitical instability with the Iran-Iraq war, and Kuwait seemed caught in the cross-fire. We would hear bombshells go off due to the proximity of the gulf countries. The Iraqi economy suffered after the brutal war even though there was a ceasefire in 1988. I also remember visiting my grandparents and relatives in Madras once in two years. 1983 has poignant memories as my grandpa passed away that year, and we spent six months in Madras, helping my grandma cope with her grief.
One Thursday in February 1990, I remember us discussing the impending finals in May over dinner. Out of the blue, my dad threw us a bait that if we stood first in class in the finals, we would earn a trip to the Disneyland in Orlando! Vivek and I for once banded together and contemplated if this was a bait and switch. We decided that we had to study for the finals anyway and if we won this trip, it would be a cherry on the cake. We burned the midnight oil and ended up doing well. I remember Vivek had by then advertised the fact that we were going to America to everyone in his grade :-)
We embarked on a two-month trip to America that covered the entire east coast on an Amtrak starting in late May 1990 ( my paternal grandma also joined us on the trip). We started in Boston, went to New York, DC, and spent two whole weeks in Orlando! Our highlights were visiting Harvard University, Niagara Falls, Disney, and Universal Studios. Just sitting on the steps of Harvard kindled my urge to study computer science and move to the United States of America, nine years later.
Unfortunately, all good things must soon come to an end. Our new school year was going to resume August 15 (I would be in 8th grade, Vivek in 4th grade). We bade a sad farewell to my cousins in Boston and returned to Kuwait on July 30, 1990, carrying a treasure chest full of memories.
Exactly three days later, a sequence of global events completely shook our world. It changed the course of our lives and the lives of millions of expatriates living in Kuwait. It was an irony, that when we were touring the US, nobody recognized Kuwait. We had to explain that it was a country near Saudi Arabia.
Fast forward to the invasion and the gulf war, Kuwait had become a verb symbolizing the “Iraqi invasion.”
The day of August 2, 1990, is permanently etched in my brain. Having just returned from Boston, we were so jetlagged, and our sleep patterns were erratic. I woke up jarringly to a loud explosion, and it seemed as if an airplane had crashed nearby. There was smoke billowing in the air. My dad had already left for work near the Basra border, and we were desperately trying to get a hold of him but were unable to. We tuned in to the BBC and learned that Iraq had sent 120,000 troops and annexed Kuwait, declaring it to be the 19th province of Iraq!
Kuwait was part of the Ottoman province of Basra a long time ago. The inherent differences between Basra and Kuwait are few, with several families straddling both sides of the border while sharing common bonds of kinship. Modern Kuwait itself has roots as a British protectorate carved out of Basra while still under Ottoman control. The Al Sabahs have occupied the Kuwaiti throne since the state’s inception. However, the invasion of Kuwait was about more than historical claims. It was mainly a bid for Kuwait’s oil, billed as an attempt to prevent Kuwait from stealing Iraq’s own oil from the shared Rumailah oil-fields through “slant drilling.”
My dad finally got home unscathed after a couple of hours and recounted a harrowing tale that still gives me the goosebumps. It was 6 AM, he was at work and was sitting in his office on the 6th floor; suddenly there was a commotion in the main road visible from the window. He was sitting close to the window. Army trucks were moving in a single line formation. My dad’s colleague, who was listening to the radio, said, “Amir of Kuwait on radio, is asking people to be on alert and is seeking help from neighboring countries due to Iraqi army invasion.” Later around 8 AM, all employees were instructed to stop all work. The building my father worked at was a Kuwaiti government building, and therefore considered a legitimate target by the Iraqi forces. They fired small arms at the building and struck it, inflicting bullet damage. A bullet razed past my dad, who was sitting near the window. My dad recognized that this was war-time, and it meant survival of the fittest. He crawled on all fours out of his floor, raced down the stairs, and jumped into his car parked a short distance away. Bullets were raining from all sides.
He went full throttle, breaking all speed limits. But with bullets raining, he felt it was essential to stop the car and hide in a nearby building. He followed his intuition and did just that. He hid in the toilet on the ground floor of an adjacent empty building. He then saw many soldiers in uniforms entering the building and changing their uniforms into dishdasha (the traditional Arabic dress). That’s when he realized that these men were Kuwaiti army soldiers. My dad felt it was unsafe to remain there. He hopped back into his car and sped back home at over 100 mph (10 miles away). My dad recounted how he has never driven like that in his life ever. Seeing dead bodies strewn on the roads, with balls of fire and cars engulfed in flames on both sides, gave him the much-needed adrenaline boost. Miraculously, he arrived back home safe!
We were subject to constant bombing over the next two days. We lived in Maidan Hawally, near the Imam Hussein mosque, and our building was close to Sheikh Sabah’s palace, which was considered a target. We took refuge in our building’s basement, which served well as a bunker. We lost contact with the rest of the world, and we later learned that our family in India was very concerned about us.
We realized that we were in the midst of a global political crisis that changed our lives. I had read the journal of Anne Frank in school in the final semester of seventh grade and was inspired by her; I started chronicling my experiences daily for the next eight weeks! Unfortunately, I lost the journal during our escape back to India — a huge regret. The lessons, for better or worse, are indelibly etched in my memory — it feels like it happened only yesterday. We have shared these experiences orally with interested friends and family innumerable times that the details are crystal clear. I am writing this down thirty years later as I would like to share this with my fellow travel enthusiasts around the world.
Reality over the next few weeks was stark. Kuwait was subdued entirely within three days, and the royal family, the Al Sabah clan, went fleeing across the desert into Saudi Arabia for protection. We attempted to take a drive through Kuwait City and were horrified to see corpses strewn on the road, with little care for humanity. Saddam had occupied Kuwait, and the Iraqis took over all the Government positions. My dad was still required to work every morning and was paid by the Iraqi administration in Iraqi dinars. By this time, the local banks had stopped issuing Kuwaiti Dinars. All of our savings in Kuwaiti Dinars were converted into Iraqi dinars using a bizarre one-to-one conversion rate between Kuwaiti and Iraqi dinars! A Kuwaiti dinar was worth over $3 days before the war. Within just four days of the invasion, with the UN enforced sanctions against Iraq, the Iraqi dinar, until then also worth $3, began a jaw-dropping devaluation, settling at 3,000 dinars to the dollar. In a matter of two days, our life’s savings became worthless. As you can imagine, this was a massive shock for us.
I have a confession to make, for a couple of days after the invasion, Vivek and I were excited about our situation. It was nerve-wracking to see the events unfold, but we were thrilled that school would no longer open on August 15 as originally intended. However, within a week, that excitement turned to grief as we realized that our lifestyle is changing drastically — we had limited movements, we had to be on guard all the time. We learned to live in the dark on candlelight for the next eight weeks. We had to create an illusion that the flat/apartment was uninhabited so that no Iraqi soldier stopped by. We had a washer to wash our clothes, but dryers were not standard. We had a clothesline outside the window where wet clothes would dry under the mid-day sun quickly. We could no longer hang the clothes there and had to spread them on furniture indoors to slow dry. Additionally, we now had to self-study for 3 hours in the morning to join our new classrooms in India later in the year. My mom was teaching us Tamil in anticipation of Tamil being the third language mandated in schools in Madras.
My dad continued to work under the Iraqi regime for another one month as he and my mom were looking for a safe escape route out of Kuwait. Waving him goodbye every morning was a stressful exercise, as the situation outside was tense. Here is another incident worth recounting. One morning, after my dad left the house at 6 AM, we peeked out of our 5th-floor window. It was daylight, and we saw his blue Toyota drive up the road, merging with the rest of the traffic. We also saw other cars behind him and saw a tanker transporting hundreds of gas cylinders. Suddenly, we heard a huge explosion and saw a massive fire break out in that segment of the road. We were terrified. We had no idea if my dad was safe or if he got caught in the fire. There was no way to reach him as in those days, there were no cell phones. We waited with bated breaths fearing the worst, and after about an hour, my dad called us from his desk at work, granting us respite.
To compound our problems, the Ministry still had all of our passports, so we could not leave the country. My father described how we got our passports back. Everyone assembled in the ground level of the building, and the passports were thrown out randomly from the 4th-floor window by the Administration office. There was a stampede. Everyone tried to grab the right passport flung down — some passports even got trampled on amidst the ensuing chaos. Fortunately, my dad managed to retrieve all our passports, but those who could not have had to get a travel document from the embassy.
It was a difficult time for us. Although we were frustrated, we were hopeful. There was so much anarchy, pillage, and loot everywhere. There were stories of a British Airways air hostess raped. Iraqi soldiers forcefully took away women that they fancied, they entered homes taking away money and jewelry. Our building faced a mosque and was near a clinic that becomes one of the Iraqi army rest stations, which provided the soldiers easy access to the apartments in our building. We were lucky not to have been subject to their atrocities.
Most of our neighbors (the friends we played with) were lucky to be stuck in their home country (they were going to return closer to the school reopen date). A couple of our neighbors were in the same boat as us. Our neighbors on the second floor had to part with their cash, but thankfully, nothing more. The soldiers were also notorious for seizing cars from lone drivers. For this reason, on rare occasions, we had to leave the apartment for getting food and supplies, my dad started taking Vivek and me as his companions. Unfortunately, this arrangement caused other kinds of nightmares. I vividly remember one particular occasion when the Iraqi soldiers stopped us at a checkpoint (it seemed that there was a checkpoint every meter). Two Iraqi soldiers knocked on the window and asked us to lower the windows.
They asked us for our identification cards. Identification cards that showcased our nationality were significant at this time, and we could not step out of the house without them. The Indian government had taken a neutral stand in the conflict, resulting in the Iraqis adopting a benevolent attitude towards Indians compared to Pakistanis. After checking our IDs, the Iraqi soldier peeked in through the window and spotted me. He gestured that I leave the car and go with him. At this point, my dad got out of the driver’s wheel and begged the soldier for mercy haltingly in broken Arabic. After much suspense, the soldier disgustingly waved us away, saying “Yella Barra” (which means get lost fast ….before I change my mind). After that day, my parents forbade me from leaving home and I stayed put for the next 5–6 weeks until we left Kuwait.
We later saw an announcement on TV that Saddam cracked the whip on “the evil complacent Iraqi soldier,” and any resident harassed was encouraged to file a complaint. And to demonstrate that he meant what he said, a picture of an Iraqi soldier beheaded and hanging from the tree as punishment was on the TV channel as a warning to all Iraqi soldiers.
We lived our lives in fear and anxiety. At night we slept on the floor with our shoes on, ready to bolt at a moment’s notice. We avoided windows as stray bullets still hit residential buildings with regularity. There were persistent rumors of chemical attacks, so we kept gas masks and charcoal by our side. We were always ready to soak bed sheets in water and cover ourselves at the first sign of any chemical odor. We had our essentials packed in a permanent state of readiness, including passports and education certificates required when we returned to India — my dad had the foresight to think through this. There was a shortage of food in supermarkets. We managed to survive with whatever food we had stocked earlier.
There was an intense international outpouring of support for Kuwait. Embargoes on Iraq made the life of the average resident very difficult. The restrictions increased hatred and bitterness towards anyone perceived to be “western.” There were stories of American men dressed as women wearing the hijab to leave the country. Saddam gave interviews voicing his distaste for Americans, Canadians, and Britishers, holding a trembling young American boy as a hostage on one occasion. In an unprecedented move from a bizarre world, Indian-origin Canadians pleaded with the Indian embassy to give them Indian travel documents highlighting their Indian heritage. As the situation worsened, panicked Indians urged the Indian government to rescue them.
Sunny Mathews, a rich local businessman, played a larger than life role in the evacuation of Indians from Kuwait. We knew Sunny Mathews through my mom’s friend Abraham Varghese. I had played badminton a few times with Sunny uncle’s daughter and Anju (Abraham uncle’s daughter). The story of the evacuation is documented in the 2016 Bollywood movie, Airlift where the character played by Akshay Kumar is modeled after Sunny Mathews.
At the time, the Indian foreign minister, IK Gujral, traveled to Baghdad to ask Saddam Hussein’s help in the repatriation of Indian citizens from Kuwait. As Baghdad was subject to embargoes, New Delhi and Baghdad decided to allow Indians to use Iraq as a transit to reach Jordan. Jordan was a neutral country during the Gulf war, similar to Switzerland’s role during the World Wars. The United Nations, Red Cross, and other international relief agencies set up temporary camps for Indians before they flew to their homes. Initially, the Indian government used military aircraft to airlift hundreds of Indians from Kuwait. As these planes required special clearance from several countries on flight routes, New Delhi decided to use civilian planes instead. But, soon, civilian flights were also prohibited from operating from Iraq and Kuwait, making Jordan the only option for the rescue mission. With the situation deteriorating, we were desperate to leave.
My dad was looking to leave privately. Many Indians used a route through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. However, we learned that Turkey and Afghanistan were dangerous. A friend of ours took this route and made it up to Amritsar. Unfortunately, the parents died of a freak accident, while the kids escaped unhurt. It was so sad. My dad says that it was a hard decision for him to make, as he had a young wife, an adolescent daughter and 8-year-old son.
He said, “it was purely my decision to go or stay, and I decided to stay and waited, sometimes questioning if I had taken the right decision.”
After a fortnight, things got unbearable as Kuwaiti resistance forces attacked Indians as pictures of IK Gujral hugging Saddam went viral on international media much to the Indian government’s embarrassment. It became clear; we had to leave.
On September 26, we engaged a private Iraqi charter bus with 25 other people and left Kuwait. My parents functioned as the group leaders and had a sense of responsibility towards everyone’s safety in the group. As per the arrangement, the bus driver had to drop us at Amman Airport to catch our Air India flight, operating like a shuttle-bus carrying the refugees back to India.
The bus stopped in Basra, Iraq, and halted for an hour for a rest-stop. The stop was a small hotel that had restrooms. I had to use the bathroom, and while using it, all of a sudden noticed a peeping Tom — an Iraqi soldier! I screamed! My dad rushed to my rescue and loudly berated the soldier. The chastened soldier left us, and we scurried back inside our bus. The soldier recovered his wits, gathered a few of his companions, and began to search for us, climbing into each coach in convoy. We were terrified that they would spot us. Thankfully, all the buses in convoy looked similar. Fortunately, the bus pulled out before they got to our bus. We have had so many miracles through this entire escapade that we are so grateful to GOD and for all that he has done for us. My dad could have been picked by them, languish in an Iraqi prison all his life or even worse, be killed for his attitude.
From Basra, we proceeded to Baghdad. We went past the murals of Saddam adorning almost every wall. Saddam as a benevolent leader, Saddam as a tennis player, Saddam wearing the traditional Dishdasha, Saddam as a general, Saddam as a movie star etc.
Then we crossed Baghdad and entered the no-man’s land (the area between Iraq and Jordan) at 10 PM. The bus stopped, and the driver left us all in the middle of the desert, reneging on the agreement, saying he had no permit to enter Jordan. It was pitch dark, and there were the warning signs of a sandstorm. Many kids in our group started crying and so did I. There were tens of thousands of people from around the world — Filipinos, Koreans, Arabs, Indians, etc. Thankfully, the winds were not strong, and we survived the wrath of the weather god.
My dad was scared that if by any chance, either my mom, my brother, or I was lost, predators could traffic us into Yemen or Saudi Arabia for commercial/sexual exploitation. The men in the group formed a human chain where they held hands in the outer circle while the women and children were inside. They continued to look out for arriving buses and implored them to take us into Jordan. These buses had a permit and carried Indians like us. But to our utter despair, all of them refused us entry.
Only in hard times does one come to recognize one’s real friends — and we got to experience that first hand. Another family was traveling with us who, despite being a long time family friend, worked out an arrangement in the sly with another approaching bus without informing us. They left with a promise — “Don’t worry, Mr. Nagarajan, spend the night in the desert, and I’ll send a bus your way that will bring you into Jordan.” Meanwhile, my parents being group leaders, ensured that everyone in our group found a bus. At this point, it was close to 5 AM, my brother and I were hungry and tired. We had been standing in a human chain for many hours.
There was an older couple, the husband had a cardiac problem, and the wife was anxious. She pleaded that we don’t get on a bus leaving them alone. I remember my dad ensured that we find a bus that took the six of us so that we don’t leave them alone. We ended up sitting on the floor of the bus (while the older couple got seats) and arrived at the Jordanian border. After another 12 hour waiting period, we cleared immigration. The whole process was painstakingly hard. We then boarded yet another bus that took us to a refugee camp near Azraq, Jordan (150 km from Amman). The campsite we arrived at was a temporary red-cross refugee camp where all of us — in thousands — were put in tents. Each tent had 40 people. There was no toilet, open defecation, and only tea, apples, and bread served. This campsite is today a permanent site that hosts Syrian refugees.
Refugee life was an unforgettable experience. It is a great equalizer — there is no difference between a white-collar worker and an uneducated laborer. We are all in the same situation fleeing to our homeland with little more than the shirts on our backs. All supplies rationed, and fights would sometimes break out while standing in line for bread. We stayed in a tent with 40 other people who became our family for the next 14 days. We played games together, cracked jokes, and bonded over a common goal.
Life was trying and tiring. One night, I awakened from a deep sleep in the middle of the night, worried, frantic, and embarrassed that I — a 13-year-old — had wet my bed. I awakened my mom, and that’s when we noticed the whole tent submerged in water. We were are so exhausted in our sleep that no one saw it sooner. It was another lengthy procedure to evacuate us from the tent and get us into a dry one in the middle of the night. We later found the culprit, a broken pipe that ran under the tent inflicted by a tanker that went over it!
For the next 14 days, we saw Indian embassy officials come by every morning and escort a preset number of people to the airport. We were hopeful that our chance would come one day, and finally, it did on October 6.
We got dropped at Queen Alia International Airport, Amman, with just one bag each in our hands. All our belongings, valuables, and the best part of our life left behind in Kuwait. We waited in a queue as the Air India planes operated like shuttle buses between Amman and Dubai. Here is a funny incident that occurred after we arrived at Dubai airport; we wanted to call my uncle to inform him that we were safe! Unfortunately, we did not have any local currency (Dhirams) with us, and I dug out Dhirams from my prized coin collection to make the call. I remember feeling euphoric that I was able to help my parents. From Dubai, we flew into Bombay.
I remember, kissing the ground as soon as we arrived in Bombay, so grateful to be safe with all my family, and get another chance to pick up the strains of life again. We were allowed to travel free by the Government of India in an unreserved 3rd class train to Madras. We secured admissions to join Vidya Mandir mid-year as part of a special quota for Indians displaced by the Gulf War. Over two months, more than 170,000 Indians were untiringly flown home on 488 flights operated by state-owned Air India and Indian Airlines in the most massive civilian airlift. The Guinness Book of World Records lists Air India for this feat.
We were in Madras on Oct 18, 1990, during the festival of Diwali. Diwali that year was bitter-sweet. It was the first year ever in my life that I was celebrating Diwali in India, and it was beautiful to enjoy the festivities first hand with my grandma and uncles. The experience was so different compared to my subdued experiences in Kuwait. However, I was still traumatized and recoiled every time a firework went off. The sound of fireworks continued to frighten me for many years. It took me several years to recover from the post-invasion/war trauma and accept fireworks’ sounds.
It took us a while to adapt ourselves to our new world — new home, new friends, new connections, new school. After the sheltered life that we lived in Kuwait, this was a bigger, more open world. We found it overwhelming. Even though the people in Madras were kind to us, it was a different and challenging experience. But this was our new reality, the new normal and we had to learn to accept it.
The two-day operation in August 1990 turned into a seven-month occupation, and the 30 years of devastation for Iraqis has yet to end. Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait ended swiftly with US-led Operations Desert Storm and Desert Shield. However, a decade of crippling sanctions, a second US invasion in 2003, civil war, sectarian violence, and occupation by the jihadist Islamic State group, only defeated in late 2017, crippled Iraq. The irony is that while Iraq languished with a weak currency, Kuwait prospered with one of the world’s most valuable currencies. Despite Kuwaitis being some of the wealthiest in the world, Saddam’s invasion still haunts them.
It was vital for me to share my legacy with Rajesh, Ankitha, and Antara as this part of my past has had a considerable influence in shaping who I am today. We had left Kuwait abruptly leaving behind everything familiar — our home, our belongings, and our friends (my dad returned a few years later to close loose ends, after which he spent the last years of his career in Dubai). I finally got closure with our visit to Kuwait in 2016 during the 25th Anniversary celebration of Operation Desert Storm.
2020 has been a particularly difficult year for millions around the world. Many a time, I have found myself lamenting how hard life is because of either the COVID-19 restrictions or the California fires’ poor air quality. It is at those moments that my parents’ memories with how they defied all odds to keep us safe, renews my spirit with increased vigor and hope for the years to come.
