Читать книгу Behind Iraqi Lines - Shaun Clarke, Shaun Clarke - Страница 5

Just after two in the morning the Kuwaiti Customs and Immigration officials playing cards at a table in the concrete administration office of the Al-Abdaly checkpoint were distracted by a rumbling sound approaching from the border of Iraq. Lowering their cards and removing their cigarettes from their lips, they glanced quizzically at one another as other officials, who had been dozing at their desks, were awakened by the increasing noise.

The floor began shaking beneath the men’s feet. At first bewildered, then slowly realizing that the unthinkable might be happening, the senior official, an overfed, jowly man in a dusty, tattered uniform, dropped his cards onto the table, stood up and walked to the door. By the time he opened it, the whole building was shaking and the distant rumbling was rapidly drawing nearer.

The Customs official looked out of the doorway as the first of a convoy of 350 Iraqi tanks smashed through the wooden barriers of the checkpoint. Shocked almost witless, he dropped his cigarette and stared in disbelief as one tank after another rumbled past, noisily smashing the rest of the barrier and sending pieces of wood flying everywhere.

Fear welled up in the official when he saw shadowy figures in the billowing clouds of dust created by the tanks. Realizing that they were armed troops advancing between the tanks, he slammed the door shut, bawled a warning to his colleagues, then raced back to his desk to make a hurried telephone call to Kuwait City, informing his superiors of what was happening.

He was still talking when the rapid fire of a Kalashnikov AK47 assault rifle blew the lock off the door, allowing it to be violently kicked open. Iraqi troops rushed in to rake the room with their weapons, massacring all those inside and – more important from their point of view – blowing the telephones to pieces.

As the spearhead of Saddam Hussein’s military machine rumbled along the 50-mile, six-lane highway leading to Kuwait City, troops were dropped off at every intersection to capture Kuwaitis entering or leaving. Other troops disengaged from the main convoy to drag stunned Kuwaiti truck drivers from their vehicles and either shoot them on the spot or, if they were lucky, keep them prisoner at gunpoint.

Simultaneously, Iraqi special forces, airlifted in by helicopter gunships, were parachuting from the early-morning sky to secure road junctions, government buildings, military establishments and other key positions in the sleeping capital.

Moving in on the city, still out of earshot of most of those sleeping, were a million Iraqi troops, equipped with hundreds of artillery pieces, multiple-rocket launchers, and a wide variety of small arms. Stretched out along a 200-mile front, obscured by clouds of dust created by Saddam Hussein’s five and a half thousand battle tanks, they endured because they were motivated by months of starvation and their growing envy of Kuwaiti wealth.

In air-conditioned hotels, marble-walled boudoirs and lushly carpeted official residences, the citizens of Kuwait were awakened by the sound of aircraft and gunfire from the outskirts of the city. Wondering what was happening, they tuned in to Kuwait Radio and heard emergency broadcasts from the Ministry of Defence, imploring the Iraqi aggressors to cease their irresponsible attack or face the consequences. Those who heard the broadcasts, Kuwaitis and foreigners alike, went to their windows and looked out in disbelief as parachutists glided down against a backdrop of distant, silvery explosions and beautiful webbed lines of crimson tracers. It all seemed like a dream.

Thirty minutes later, as the early dawn broke with the light of a blood-red sun, the grounds of the Dasman Palace were being pounded by the rocket fire of the Iraqis’ Russian-built MiG fighters. Even as the Emir of Kuwait was being lifted off by a helicopter bound for Saudia Arabia, his Royal Guard, pitifully outnumbered, were being cut down by Iraqi tanks and stormtroopers. In addition, the Emir’s half-brother, Sheikh Fahd, who had nobly refused to leave, had been fatally wounded on the steps of the palace.

While Hussein’s tanks surrounded the British and American embassies, his jets were rocket-bombing the city’s airport, illuminating the starlit sky with jagged flashes of silver fire, which soon turned into billowing black smoke. Two guards died as Iraqi troops burst into Kuwait’s Central Bank to begin what would become an orgy of looting.

By dawn the Iraqis were in control of key military installations and government buildings in the capital, Kuwait’s pocket army was fighting a losing battle to protect the invaluable Rumaila oilfields and thousands of wealthy Kuwaitis and expatriate Britons, Americans, Europeans and Russians, trying to flee to Saudi Arabia, were being turned back by the Iraqi tanks and troops encircling the city.

Having returned to their homes, the expatriates heard their embassies advise them on the radio to stock up with food and stay indoors. Those brave enough to venture out to replenish their food stocks saw Iraqi generals riding around in confiscated Mercedes while their troops, long envious of Kuwaiti prosperity, machine-gunned the windows of the stores in Fahd Salem Street, joining the growing numbers of looters. Soon reports of rape were spreading throughout the city.

Before sunset, the invaders had dissolved Kuwait’s National Assembly, shut ports and airports, imposed an indefinite curfew and denounced the absent Emir and his followers as traitorous agents of the Jews and unspecified foreign powers.

No mention was made of the Iraqi tanks burning in the grounds of the fiercely defended Dasman Palace, the sporadic gunfire still heard throughout the city as loyal Kuwaitis sniped at the invaders or the many dead littering the streets.

Even as the sun was sinking, torture chambers were being set up all over the city and summary executions, by shotgun or hanging, were becoming commonplace.

By midnight, Kuwait as the world knew it had ceased to exist; the armoured brigades of the Middle East’s most feared tyrant stood at the doors of Saudi Arabia; and thousands of foreigners, including Britons, were locked in hotels or in their homes, cowering under relentless shellfire or hiding in basements, attics, cupboards and water tanks as Iraqi troops, deliberately deprived of too much for too long, embarked on an orgy of looting, torture, rape, murder and mindless destruction.