لنستخرج كنوزا من المعرفة و الإبداع و العلم و الأفكار
"'Pearls before swine,' that's what you said to me, after I gave you a compliment in Kuwait concerning an excellent cable I had just transmitted on the TERP V on your behalf. I no longer recall the subject of the cable. That would have been about 30, maybe 31 years ago. I am interested in purchasing your beautiful watercolor: Citadel, Aleppo."
So it was that I heard from Hal for the first time since we had served together at U.S. Embassy Kuwait three decades ago. He reminded me that it was 30 years ago this month that our paths had diverged in the drama of the events swirling around Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. I was chief of the political section, he was deputy head of our communications section.
Caught Out, Caught In
In early August 1990, I was caught outside the country on leave with my family. We had been due to fly back the day after the invasion. I took my wife and our two young children back to Washington and then left to spend most of the war doing liaison work with the Kuwaiti government in exile in Taif, Saudi Arabia. Other embassy colleagues, including Hal, were trapped in Kuwait when the Iraqis poured in. After a period of siege at the U.S. mission, he and others in our diplomatic community were allowed to leave by convoy to Baghdad. Another period ensued as involuntary "guests" of Saddam, but Ambassador Nathaniel Howell, Hal and our other remaining colleagues were eventually permitted to fly to Frankfurt and then back to Andrews AFB, where they were greeted on arrival by Secretary of State James A. Baker III.
Above, author at ceremony
re-raising flag at U.S. Embassy
Kuwait after liberation in 1991
Meanwhile, after Operation Desert Storm and the liberation of Kuwait in March 1991, I flew back into the country with Ambassador Edward W. Gnehm to help restart embassy operations. It was an eerie time. Nothing worked -- not electricity, not toilets, not phones. We ate MRE's -- military rations, or Meals Ready to Eat. Every pack had a little bottle of Tabasco sauce, which I put on nearly everything. I looked forward to the packets of peanut butter, which I would squirrel away for snacks.
Into Kuwait: All Senses Assaulted
At night, the city was pitch black. All was quiet except for the sound of generators. We carried bottles of water up six flights of stairs to our rooms in the gloomy, powerless four-star hotel across the street from the embassy. Ever since stumbling up those darkened hotel stairs, I have never been without a good flashlight. I learned to brush my teeth, shampoo, take a sponge bath and shave using a single bottle of water. Our rooms were semi-private; the door locks on all had been broken. I had little worth stealing except a short-wave radio. My clothes, like the hotel and the entire city, reeked of oil smoke.
By day, there was a smelly gray pall from oilfield fires. The oilfields, just south of the city, gushed a thundering column of black liquid, fire and smoke from hundreds of blown wells. A massive black plume rose over the area. Usually, but not always, the prevailing winds took the plume south toward the Saudi border. Up close, the noise was deafening, the sky was completely dark, and the convection currents from the fires created a strong warm wind in your face. All of the senses were assaulted – sight, smell, touch and hearing. If you lingered too long, the gases would give you an upset stomach.
Kuwait oilfields burn behind
destroyed Iraqi tank (photo: Claude
Salhani, Black September to
Desert Storm, p 242)
I went often, because Kuwait rapidly became a de rigueur visit for visiting Congressional and other VIP delegations. The codels showed up immediately -- New York Republican Senator Al D'Amato was first in -- even though we had asked the Department to minimize such trips because the embassy skeleton crew had little means of supporting them. I recall enlisting a Kuwaiti friend who owned a travel and tourism agency to help. He obligingly fished the wheels of his tour bus out of an industrial air-conditioning duct, where he had hidden them from Iraqi looters. He put them back on the bus, and a gleaming codel support vehicle materialized outside the embassy like magic.
All we did was work, morning, noon and night. No days off and nothing else to do. I only knew the day of the week from my watch. Because of the time difference, Washington tended to get fired up and full of questions when it was late at night our time. One of the most important things we did, a story that is not well known, was protect the resident Palestinian population from revenge by the Kuwaitis, especially those returning from outside. There had been about 400,000 Palestinians in Kuwait before the war, including many teachers and other middle-class professionals. But Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) supported Saddam Hussein during the conflict, thereby earning the enmity of many Kuwaitis. Some Palestinians went back to home countries like Jordan after the invasion. But many others stayed, and a good number of them had helped the Kuwaitis who remained, including members of the Kuwaiti resistance, whether buying food for them or passing messages among family members.
The Humanitarian Disaster That Wasn't
Soon after our return to the embassy we began to hear of Palestinians being detained and mistreated. I had to buy fruit and vegetables for one of my political section assistants because Kuwaiti vendors in his neighborhood refused to sell to him. The Palestinians were non-citizens, had no effective representation and the Red Cross was powerless to help. So they came to us, lining up outside the embassy every day to report on missing persons and seek our help. We diverted much of our limited staff to this, sending embassy officers out into police stations all over the country. The Ambassador delivered a stern message to the Kuwaiti leadership that the United States would not tolerate abuses. And it worked. It was a humanitarian disaster that did not happen, a direct result of U.S. diplomatic intervention. My deputy, Kevin, led the effort. The Human Rights Report he drafted for Kuwait that year was, in my view, a classic, one of the best ever done. I firmly believe that the actions of the Kuwait embassy team in those crucial early days saved hundreds of Palestinian lives.
American tank zooms past burning Kuwait
oil field (Claude Salhani, Black September to
Desert Storm, p 241)
Later that spring of 1991 I returned to Washington, from where I went on to a succession of other foreign assignments, including as deputy chief of mission in Damascus 1997-2001. For his part, Hal became a consular officer, studied Arabic at our Tunis field school, and served as consul general in Damascus, among other places. Hence his interest in the Citadel, Aleppo painting. He was in Syria about eight years after my four-year stint there.
I told Hal that Citadel, Aleppo was at my studio in Maine and I was in California. My brother and his wife had helped me in shipping some things, so we could probably get it to him, although I couldn’t be sure exactly when. He agreed, followed up promptly, and now owns Citadel, Aleppo. It gives me a good feeling to know that one of my Middle East paintings -- like Water Carrier and Donkey, Kuwait, Circa 1929, which went to another veteran of the State Department's Near East Affairs bureau -- will soon be in the home of someone who shared my experiences.
Hal’s deus ex machina reconnection triggered personal recollections of an event 30 years ago whose knock-on effects continue to shake the wider region. Regular followers of this space include a number of Foreign Service colleagues who know these events well, notably Ambassador Howell and his wife Margie. Every one of them has tales to tell like this. Distinguished public servants all. I salute them.
Thanks for the memories, Hal.
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