The war that shook the Mideast

On August 2, 1990, a mother, along with her three-yearold child, takes off from an Indian airport to join her husband in the Gulf, little knowing that boundaries and geopolitical equations are being redrawn when her flight is up in the air. After decades of territorial disputes, the army of Saddam Hussein had swarmed into Kuwait and annexed the country by the time the passengers came down to earth. It has since been a familial joke that my wife unleashed a conflict in the Gulf.

The fall of Kuwait to Saddam’s brutal force sent shock waves across allied capitals and countries where millions of people and their families depended on the petrodollars to put food on the table. After several salvos of UN resolutions and embargoes, the Gulf witnessed the formation of the largest military alliance since World War II.

People lived in constant fear, with windows sealed and essentials hoarded in anticipation of Saddam’s scuds and chemical attacks, until Iraq was defeated in the combat phase of Operation Desert Shield.

The war marked a watershed for journalism across the world, including in the UAE, where Khaleej Times — the first broadsheet English newspaper in the country — heralded embedded journalism. KT reporters flew in jets and sailed on war ships to slip first-hand information under the doors of its loyal readers.

I had my front-page headline typeset and ready. It rotted in my drawers until January 17, 1991, when I rushed back to the newsroom in the dead of night. My hands trembled — not out of fear, not out of fatigue — when I stuck the headline on the page. I was shaken by the overwhelming enormity of the history-making moment and the screaming headline, IT’S WAR.