The left, with its natural antipathy to the self-serving foreign adventures of Tony Blair and George W Bush, occasionally needs to be reminded that Saddam Hussein was a thoroughly bad man. He terrorised and slaughtered his own people, targeted trade unionists and critics, and was himself a military adventurer. Such a reminder is this narrative of a forgotten story – the heroism and sacrifice of ordinary Kuwaitis in the months before their liberation from Saddam’s invasion forces 20 years ago.
There were, of course, tales of venality and corruption, of collaboration and cowardice, but Alex Darwin’s is an uplifting story involving the courage of minor civil servants, shopkeepers and military veterans who opposed the occupation through demonstrations, non-compliance, sabotage and, most valuable of all, the dissemination of information to the outside world.
One story told here can stand for many. Asrar al-Qabandi was a tiny woman, under five feet tall, who worked in the foreign ministry and whose background was computer science. After the invasion her first act of defiance was to throw a tantrum when a friend was arrested; so much so that her friend was released. She outraged the occupiers by giving interviews via a satellite link. Given a fake identity by the underground, she went to Basra to note troop movements, bribing Iraqi checkpoints with cigarettes. She helped smuggle out foreign nationals, sometimes in a part-filled water tanker. She also learnt how to make improvised explosive devices, although there is no evidence she used that expertise.
The Iraqi military police caught up with her during a raid on a supposedly safe house. She was held for a month, tortured, repeatedly raped in front of other detainees, and drugged, but never gave up a single name of her confederates. She was killed and her body left in a black garbage bag outside her father’s house, an axe embedded in her skull. In life she was a heroine of the resistance, in death she became a symbol. “Asrar is restistance”, said one police officer.
There are many such stories in this well-researched book which, in places, reads like a thriller. Alex Darwin is the pen name of the veteran Middle East commentator and author Adel Darwish. He knows his stuff and his contacts are good. Forgive him for asking Dubya to write a foreword. The former President does, though, sum up the purpose of this book – to keep “alive the selfless heroism of those Kuwaitis who refused to cower in the face of Saddam’s inhumanity, and whose courage and love of country helped preserve Kuwaiti sovereignty during its hour of maximum peril”
