“They invaded our country in A pitch-black night .. My heart was tormented and oozed blood due to the back-stabbing aggression and fears for my children’s safety,” Maliha Al-Ansari recalls her life’s darkest moments.
Al-Ansari, Umm Qassem, recalled, in an interview with KUNA, the first moments of the Iraqi aggression that happened on August 2, 1990, when the Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait under the cover of darkness in a blatant aggression that contradicted all international conventions.
Umm Qassem has remained overwhelmed with deep sentiments of pain and bitterness particularly after the aggressors abducted her eldest son, Qassem, during the first day of the aggression.
Qassem, who was an engineer at an oil company, was taken prisoner after he left home before dawn to join his military unit. “Weeks later we learned that he had been taken prisoner and languishing in prisons of the Iraqi regime.” “The piece of my heart did not see sunlight throughout seven months of the flagrant aggression,” she bitterly recalled.
The Kuwaiti mother deeply suffered from a hairy experience of hearing horrific stories about merciless killings of the prisoners by the Iraqi regime at the time. “I used to be overwhelmed with fear each night with deep sentiments of pain piercing my soul due to his absence.” Qassem was one of many young Kuwaitis who were kidnapped by the aggressing Iraqi forces. Some of them had been freed, others remained missing or liquidated.
Al-Ansari’s other son, Hussein, who was studying medicine in Ireland, decided to return home during the occupation and join ranks of the American forces for defending Kuwait. He had succeeded in his endeavor and receiving military training in the US. He kept the matter secret for a long time and told his mother that he was in Ireland for studies.
Her third son, Ali, followed his brother’s path, joining the British forces for liberating Kuwait, “the homeland is the honor and dignity .. we will redeem it with our blood,” as he used to sincerely say.
“My children slipped my fingers and I felt at times that I may never see them again,” Umm Qassem said. Al-Ansari recalled horrific moments when her peers, other Kuwaiti mothers, received disfigured corpses of their sons from the occupiers. “I still hear their weeping and moaning after receiving remains of their pieces of heart in black bags.”
Umm Qassem found solace when the Kuwaiti forces backed by the allies liberated the homeland. Intent on inflicting harm before their withdrawal, the aggressing forces set ablaze hundreds of Kuwaiti oil wells inflicting one the largest environmental catastrphes on record.
“The skies turned pitched black with smoke billowing from the burning wells .. however the gloom was tapered off with the relieving sense of restoring freedom,” she said.
– KUNA
– News feature by Hanan Al-Saeedi
Read Today's News TODAY... on our Telegram Channel click here to join and receive all the latest updates t.me/thetimeskuwait
