Kuwait Diary

Kuwait Diary -- March 21 st, 2003.

Day 2 of the second gulf war.
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Today was the day of the vernal equinox, when night equals day, signifying the arrival of spring. We should have been out celebrating its arrival with colors, celebrating with flowers.

But even nature seemed to have been taken aback by the forces unleashed by man. A brief spell of sunshine was quickly overtaken by gusty winds with sand-storms and ominous thunder without a drop of rain. Thirty oil fields were burning in southern Iraq and the thick smoke slowly drifted into Kuwait.

I was woken up in the early hours by the wail of air raid sirens and more missiles had been fired at us from mobile rocket launchers in Iraq. An Al Samoud missile flew low over the neighborhood of Salmiya heading toward the Ahmadi oil refinery. Three patriots intercepted this missile. But when it fell to the ground on impact, two Bangladeshi workers died.

There was a further exodus of expatriate workers flying out of the war zone. The Saudi goverment was helping people make their exit through their territory. There was joy in Lebanon, Phillipines, India and the subcontinent, when flight after flight landed, evacuating guest workers from the gulf.

Today was Friday which is the holy day of Islam (equivalent to Sunday elsewhere) and the mosques announced the call for prayer at four o’clock in the morning. I am not a Muslim so I am not allowed to visit the mosques, but I wonder how many ventured out today.

After breakfast, when the all clear signal had been given, I thought that I’d snoop around and reconnoitre the neighborhood. I took a short drive around the block. The streets were totally deserted and there were checkposts manned by armed police. Road blocks had been set up and every few kilometers along the Arabian Gulf Road, I saw pickets and sand bunkers. I decided against taking unnecessary risks and returned home. Yes, this city was definitely part of a war.

I returned home to find my phone ringing, my family was calling from India to check that I was safe, alive and well. I got a call from my good American friend and colleague Charlie Dalton who was calling in from Florida. We had worked together on many projects in different countries and, in a specific technical field, he was definitely my Guru. Then my Irish aunt Johanna called from Lincolnshire, England. There was more fear in her voice than perhaps I should have had in mine. I gave a prayer of thanks to God that I had so many genuine friends and wellwishers from around the world. Their reassurance and concern made me feel good. I opened my mail box to find a deluge of emails and I slowly answered all of them, as the chilling wail of air raid sirens continued.

The War.

Early in the morning, Baghdad was bombed again. But, it was a relatively light outing, a fatening of the cow before the kill. Out in the desert a huge American convoy moved into the Iraqi desert heading left past the Euphrates valley on their way to Baghdad. It was an awesome sight as the armoured vehicles moved on preceded by armed helicopters. The ‘embedded’ reporters in the army convoy provided a running commenatry on how fast the convoy was moving. There was no resistance. There were some Bedouine (desert nomads) tents on the vast open desert. There was nothing else. The convoy moved at 50 miles per hour. At this speed they would be in Baghdad in three days. But, I thought to myself, wasn’t this exactly how it was meant to be? This was the open desert. Why would you find resistance here and why would you not move fast? I guessed that even trivial things would have to be given dramatic overtones. There was a TV audience who had to be kept satisfied and hooked on. There were advertisement revenues at stake.

The main battles were, however taking place in the South East of Iraq, very close to the Kuwait border. The coalition ( mainly British) forces were fighting for the port of Umm Qasr on the Shatt Al Arab waterway. Very quickly, the coalition announced that Umm Qasr had been taken and we saw the Star Spangled Banner being raised by a US marine. We saw video tapes of Iraqi prisoners being taken by British Troops.

Immediately afterwards, this was strongly denied by the Iraqi Information minister speaking on BBC. He made light of the news that Umm Qasr had been taken and said that the people who had surrendered were not Iraqi soldiers but civilians. Come to think of it, yes, these guys were indeed wearing jogging tracksuits and not military uniforms. By late evening the coalition forces had announced that they were ‘very close’ to taking Umm Qasr, but they had received unexpected resistance. It was confirmed that two US marines had been killed and that their names were being withheld pending announcement to their families. Welcome then to the ‘fog of war’, the confusion and uncertainty that engulfs everything that anyone does or says. The ‘fog’ is an integral part of war and one has to tread through it very carefully.

Images

Tony Blair got a very frosty reception at the European Union conference being held in Brussles. The conference itself was an unmitigated disaster. Iraq had created deep splits in the European union and in the relations of nearly every country in the world against Britain and the USA. It would take a lot of time and effort to heal these wounds.

It was clear by the second day of the war that Bush had handled diplomacy very badly. It had never been given a chance, like his father had painstakingly done eleven years earlier. In fact, it was said that he thinks in simple minded and clear terms, good evil, black and white; that grayness and subtlety was beyond his ken. At least that is what most Europeans and many American analysts thought. The main aim of the US coalition, it was now clear, was ‘regime change’ and not the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, that the UN and Hans Blicks were inspecting in Baghdad. Diplomacy had gone off tangentially in a different direction.

As a poker faced Arie Fleisher said today, this war will make Saddam bring out his weapons of mass destruction. The jury is still out on that.

US Aid came out with its US$ 600 million contract proposal for the reconstruction of Iraq that had been drafted more than a month ago. This contact had two additional clauses which I found very interesting. One clause in the contract was written to bind the contracting parties to “ Buy American” and the second was an anti-abortion clause. Clare Short, the British International Development minister, flew to New York to argue the case for reconstruction activities to be handled by the United Nations. But, the cards were at least open on the table.

Traders decided that war was definitely good for business and the uncertainties of oil supplies were unfounded. The Dow Jones and the Nasdaq equity indices gained their ground today as oil prices fell to a six month low. Yes, war was definitely good for business.

President Chirac of France bluntly told Tony Blair, “ you have started the problem, you should now find the solution.” This does point out towards the difficult times that countries will have to face when the might of the American army has subdued a weak Saddam.

Everybody is doing things in their own “ national interest”. The Russians have, embedded in Iraq, an investment of some ten billion dollars. It is estimated that France has investments and projects amounting to eighty four billion dollars and so do the Germans. Presently the US does not have any investments in Iraq. It is in American domestic interest that contracts come to US Companies. Then, there is the issue of control of oil and gas supplies. It is becoming clearer by the day, where the fissures and divisions among old and strong allies are coming from. Suddenly, people are talking about topics that were taboo even yesterday.

The US administration was overjoyed when the Turkish parliament voted today to allow US planes to overfly its territory. That joy soon turned into anger when it became known that Turkey had sent in 1500 of its own troops into the battle theate in northern Iraq to curb any Kurdish ambitions to create their own homeland. “You can’t do this, you can’t invade the Kurdish territory. This is Iraq you are invading,” the Americans were indignant. “But you’ve done exactly that, why can’t we?” was the Turkish retort. And, another Nato alliance was now in tatters. War is a strange thing. The best of plans seem outdated as soon as they are put on paper. Uncertainty and chaos prevail, such is the 'fog' of war. Things aren't always what they seem to be.

As night fell on this part of the world, the B 52 ‘Work horse’ bombers which had taken off in the afternoon from England, began dropping their deadly payload on Baghdad. Cruise missiles took off from the warships in the Gulf. Operation “ Shock and Awe” that had been promised by Mr Rumsfeld, had begun in earnest. Saddam’s palaces and the house of his wife were targeted, as were official buildings which are symbols this regime. Baghdad was burning. In twenty years of war and suffering, the citizens had seen nothing like it.

Within Kuwait in the dense air-space, a second coalition helicopter crashed after colliding with another. Seven British soldiers and one US marine were the casualties.

In the southern arena, around the port of Umm Qasr, the ground battle continued. Next Stop…… Basra.