Wings of Resistance: How Kuwaiti Pilots Fought Back Against Iraq in 1991

25/02/2026

KUWAIT CITY, Feb 25: When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the country plunged into darkness—literally and figuratively. Black smoke choked the sky, warplanes screamed overhead, and the ground trembled with explosions. Captain Ahmad Al Sabah, a Mirage pilot in the Kuwaiti Air Force and a member of the Royal Al Sabah family, flew straight into that chaos. His missions became part of the country’s desperate fight to survive and, eventually, break free.

As the U.S.-led coalition launched its campaign in the Gulf War, Captain Al Sabah was in the air every day from January 17, 1991, the very start of Operation Desert Storm. He and his fellow pilots racked up more than 30 missions over their own occupied homeland before the coalition really ramped up its push over Kuwait.

From his Mirage’s cockpit, Captain Al Sabah saw something most people only read about in history books: Saddam Hussein’s retreating forces torching Kuwait’s oil fields. “In the southern oil fields alone, I saw more than 150 wells burning,” he said at the time. “All the oil fields had been set on fire. You could see the smoke even from the ground.” In the end, over 200 oil installations blazed, turning daylight to darkness for miles. As if that wasn’t enough, the fires crept north as Iraqi troops braced for a possible ground attack.

Kuwait City became a fortress. As coalition bombing intensified, Iraqi troops stuffed anti-aircraft guns into residential buildings and lined them up along the coast, bracing for a U.S. Marine landing. Even as obvious military targets became scarce, anti-aircraft fire over the city never really let up. Pilots had to stay sharp every second in the air.

The Kuwaiti Mirage, originally built for intercepting enemy planes, took on a new job—ground attacks. Alongside Skyhawk jets, Kuwaiti pilots bombed Iraqi troop positions and military sites, working shoulder to shoulder with coalition forces. Captain Al Sabah admitted that the U.S. Harriers and F-18s brought some serious hardware to the fight, and he never forgot the roar of the British Tornado jets tearing through the sky.

By February 1991, as liberation loomed, Kuwaiti pilots geared up to take back their airspace. Their combat patrols were there to back up the coalition and clear out the last of the Iraqi resistance. The invasion left Kuwait battered—oil fields in flames, infrastructure shattered, cities bristling with weapons. But the Kuwaiti armed forces, standing together with their allies, pulled the country back from the edge.

Now, years later, pilots like Captain Ahmad Al Sabah remind us of the chaos and courage of those days, a war fought above a burning nation, and the grit that brought Kuwait from occupation back to freedom.