ON August 2, 1990, the world witnessed Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. His Republican Guard troops stormed our country, bringing destruction and devastation. After seven long months, Kuwait was liberated through the intervention of a broad international coalition led by the United States in Operation Desert Storm. In several articles, I have described that war as one of the most reckless military adventures in history.
It showed the damage and disaster that can befall a dictator who recognizes no opinion but his own and hears no voice but his own. We witnessed this in his reckless war with his neighbor, Iran, where he made fatal mistakes, which he repeated in Kuwait. With a bit of prudence and by listening to military experts, he could have continued his unjust occupation, seized the opportunity, and possibly withdrawn at the right time, thus saving himself from an inevitable downfall and sparing his country from destruction. However, arrogance prevailed, as is typical of any foolish and ignorant dictator.
One of Saddam’s gravest errors, and, for us, a fortunate one, was awarding himself the highest military ranks and insisting on commanding an army of one million soldiers, despite never having received military training or even completing his education.
The legitimate Kuwaiti leadership successfully evacuated the country safely under the cover of night. Their resilient presence abroad became a unifying national symbol. It stood for Kuwait’s independence and right to exist, embodying the unanimous support of its citizens from all walks of life at the Jeddah Conference, where they rallied behind their leadership and reaffirmed loyalty to its legitimate authority. Saddam’s errors, from a military standpoint, also played a role in ensuring that no Kuwaiti citizen was willing to cooperate with him.
This provided the world with justification for the mobilization of approximately 34 countries to contribute to the liberation war, leading to the eventual killing of Saddam Hussein and most of his male heirs, and the displacement of the rest of his family. One of the most notable events during the final days of the invasion, as Iraqi forces withdrew from Kuwait, was the bombing by US warplanes of long convoys of civilian and military vehicles on Highway 80, which leads to Iraq and is widely known in the media as the “Highway of Death.” This occurred on the night of February 26, 1991. The attack targeted retreating military convoys, destroying hundreds of vehicles, including tanks, trucks, buses, and other civilian and military transport.
While no official statistics exist on the human and material losses, US sources estimate that around 2,700 vehicles were destroyed and approximately 10,000 people were killed. Other sources believe these figures are exaggerated, suggesting losses of several thousand Iraqi soldiers and about 1,400 armored and other vehicles. According to observers, this bombing is considered to be one of the most brutal and controversial events of the war, criticized for targeting a large number of mixed civilian and military vehicles during the withdrawal of Iraqi forces.
This event remains a mark in the memory of the Second Gulf War, symbolizing the end of the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait and the beginning of a new phase in the region’s history. Some military personnel and eyewitnesses reported that the absence of bodies among the vehicles hit during the mass retreat was because most soldiers fled and abandoned their vehicles as soon as the intense air attack began. Also, many vehicles scattered into the desert toward the north immediately after the initial strikes, causing chaos and a mass exodus away from the highway, which left much of the scene unrecognizable. Some newspaper correspondents present in the days following the bombing also reported finding several burned bodies inside or near the vehicles. However, many bodies were either completely charred by the flames or quickly buried, sometimes individually by comrades or advancing forces, or reduced to ash by the intense heat, making identification difficult later. History holds many lessons, yet few choose to learn from them
By Ahmad alsarraf
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