KUWAIT: On the occasion of the national days, the Kuwaitis recall with pride their resistance to the 1990 blatant Iraqi aggression and their unity with the sagacious leadership to restore the homeland’s sovereignty and freedom. Echoes of "Allaho Akbar” chants on February 26, 1991, still resonate to this day. On this glorious day, the "Desert Storm” liberation operation was launched, resulting in the historic event of the liberation of Kuwait.
At the political level, the late Amir Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah and the Crown Prince and Prime Minister at the time, Sheikh Saad Al-Abdullah Al-Salem Al-Sabah, played a major role in rallying Arab and international support for Kuwaiti legitimacy to defend national rights. The Kuwaiti people remember the prime role of the GCC countries, which gave Kuwait all types of support and hosted Kuwaiti citizens.
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Moreover, among the great memories was the historic stance taken by the late US president George W Bush (senior), who pledged to restore Kuwait’s independence and succeeded in persuading the US Senate to employ military might to free the country from the occupation claws on January 21, 1991. The Kuwaitis continue to eulogize the martyrs who sacrificed their blood for Kuwait’s sake during the flagrant aggression and participation of sisterly and friendly countries in the liberation of the country.
During the aggression, the Kuwaiti people became strugglers, each in his or her own position. Some had carried the guns for resisting the occupation with gunfire, and many women carried out diverse tasks in backing up the national resistance. The Kuwaiti people stood robustly behind the wise leadership that exerted tremendous efforts to liberate the homeland, restore its freedom, and draw international support for the national cause.
And necessities were secured for Kuwaitis everywhere, depicting a unique national unity example. They were ready to help in the liberation of Kuwait when the battles broke out at dawn on January 17, 1991. There was full coordination among government and popular apparatuses, and the Kuwait Air Force took part in the first aerial strikes while the infantrymen were among the fore-ranks of the coalition forces that advanced into the Kuwaiti territories.
Despite the bitter sentiments with respect to the martyrs and the missing, Kuwait launched, in 1993, relief campaigns for the Iraqi people and granted further assistance to them after the downfall of the defunct Iraqi regime in 2003. Today, it remains the largest aid supplier to the Iraqi people. At the diplomatic level, the visit that had been paid by the late Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah to Iraq on June 19, 2019, constituted a noble gesture and reflected good will for preserving solid and brotherly relations with the neighbors and the desire to thrash out hanging files.
The coming generations of Kuwait will always remember the unjust acts by a neighboring state, troops of which had gone on a rampage on its territories, ransacking valuable properties, including the national archive, and dragging citizens to dark corners—remains of many had been located in the following years on the Iraqi soil.
The troops of the ousted regime had been adamant on inflicting harm to Kuwait and the Kuwaitis until the last moments of their occupation, when they torched scores of oil installations and fields, causing wide-scale pollution to the land, water reservoirs, and the sea—an environmental catastrophe unprecedented in the history of the Arabian Gulf. Amid the black smoke and dark clouds that spread across the Kuwaiti skies, ebbing visibility and blocking sunlight, the citizens bravely again scrambled, struggling to put out the stubborn blazes that left sustainable damage to the environment and deep injuries in the Kuwaitis’ consciousness. - KUNA