By Lidia Qattan

At the very inception of the Gulf war the Allies quickly set to destroy the Iraqi war machine, systematically hampering its lines of communication. Saddam retaliated, ordering on the 25th of January the release of a huge oil spill on the waters of the Gulf, which exposed the Gulf region to a serious environmental catastrophe and damaged the desalination plants.

Finally realizing he was losing the war the dictator ordered the implementation of his final scheme on Kuwait the “Scorched Earth”.

The whole oil field was set on fire along with the total destruction of the entire oil industry’s infrastructure: the refineries, the storage tanks and the oil-terminals.

The water-desalination and electricity plants and their entire distribution network were also destroyed.

At the same time in Kuwait men, women and children were indiscriminately kidnapped by the thousands from the streets of towns and taken hostages to Iraq; when the streets became deserted the kidnappings continued at the mosques during prayer.

Fortunately, in the aftermath of the war those held prisoners in Basra were released by the Iraqi resistance in the South of Iraq, before it was ruthlessly crushed by Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guards.

Other Kuwaiti hostages were released by the World Red Cross, but the 650 POWs the World Red Cross could not locate were never seen alive again.

Finally realizing he was being defeated Saddam Hussein declared he would withdraw his forces from Kuwait, but on his own terms, a proposal promptly rejected by the Allies.

In the ground attack, the last stage of the war of liberation known as “Desert storm” hundreds of thousands of Iraqi troops readily surrendered, clearly revealing the state of mind of those men. Many were either too young or too old to fight, most of them were snatched from their families and forced to join the army.

The backbone of the Iraqi forces were the Republican Guards, the elite units loyal to Saddam Hussein, who during the invasion held the population in the grip of terror and during the war fought valiantly.