KUWAIT CITY, 19 March 2003 — Panic-mode has set in all over this tiny emirate as Westerners heed embassy warnings to leave immediately and residents make a rush for food, water and fuel in last-minute preparations for an impending US-led war on neighboring Iraq.
Kuwaitis and most expatriates here have for months remained calm as the government set in motion contingency plans for war on Iraq and US troops steadily massed on their soil, now numbering nearly 150,000.
As US President George W. Bush issued Iraq a 48-hour ultimatum from 0100 GMT yesterday morning, declaring war a certainty after weeks of diplomatic fervor to solve the Iraq crisis peacefully, Kuwaitis have been hit by the reality of being on Iraq’s doorstep as the eleventh hour nears.
Streams of cars were seen waiting at filling stations around the country yesterday, while bread queues extended well over the norm and supermarkets were struggling to meet demands for essentials like water, rice and tinned food.
“My wife has been nagging me to prepare for this war for days but I didn’t feel like it until I listened to George Bush’s speech this morning,” said Ahmad Hamad, a 35-year-old Kuwaiti salesman.
“I knew immediately that Thursday night could be the night for the bombs to fall,” he said.
Hamad, who was in Kuwait throughout the Iraq’s August 1990-February 1991 occupation and the subsequent Gulf War to liberate the emirate, said he is “familiar with the feeling that comes as a prelude to war.”
“I went to the market immediately after Bush’s speech, because I knew that if I had to shop I should do it now since later the queues will be longer than 50 meters,” Hamad said.
“My wife has asked me to tape up the air conditioning vents, which I’ll do this evening. I don’t believe these measures will help much but we’ll prepare a shelter in our house, just to put my wife’s mind at ease.
“If a missile were to land in our neighborhood, it’ll be too late to do anything,” he said.
The irony is that the majority of Kuwaitis, who are most fearful of a possible retaliatory Iraqi chemical or biological attack, do not even have gas masks.
“We don’t think it’s necessary that everyone in Kuwait have a gas mask,” Information Minister Sheikh Ahmad Fahd Al-Sabah told a press conference on Sunday.
The emirate, with a population of 2.2 million, recently imported 200,000 masks, but it is unclear to whom they were distributed. NBC (nuclear, biological and chemical) protective suits and gas masks are meanwhile available for sale in some stores.
“We think we’ve prepared everything necessary for any emergency,” Sheikh Ahmad said, adding that the emirate has deployed 10 Patriot missile batteries around the country to confront any Iraqi attack.
Kuwait, the minister explained, has been divided into six areas, all amply stocked with food and medical supplies.
Czech and Slovak NBC specialists have been deployed near residential areas to monitor any change in the atmosphere.
But even their presence did not appease Waleed Mohammed.
“I feel scared, frightened but also helpless that whatever happens is out of our hands now. Any personal preparations people make, I think, are a waste of time,” said Mohammed.
The 29-year-old civil servant said he was disappointed that only certain government sectors had supplied their employees with gas masks.
“I feel that shelters are a false sense of security for any attack but in every crisis the sense of security is more important to the government than the actual security,” said Mohammed, whose family has prepared a makeshift shelter in their house.
Westerners continued frantically booking flights out of here after Monday’s British and US embassy advisories for their citizens to depart with the threat of war swiftly approaching, while more foreign schools were temporarily closing down.
