Kuwait: Free at Last! Free at Last!

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On Feb. 27, six months and 25 days after Iraqi tanks crushed Kuwait beneath their treads, another column of armored vehicles rumbled into the capital city. This time the advancing forces were greeted with an outburst of exultation that rivaled the liberation of Paris during World War II. As columns of Kuwaiti and Saudi tanks and personnel carriers rolled up the battered, wreckage-strewn expressway into Kuwait City, civilian cars formed a convoy around them, horns honking, flags waving. Crowds along the way danced and chanted, "Allah akbar!" "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" and "Thank you, thank you!" Thousands swarmed onto the streets, embracing and kissing the arriving soldiers.

That joyful scene was staged amid the ruins of what had been a gleaming metropolis. It was backlighted by towering orange flames on the horizon where hundreds of oil wells, torched by fleeing Iraqis, continued to burn and block the midday sun with huge curtains of dense black smoke. The eerie pall was a visible symbol of the dark ordeal Kuwait had lived through during the Iraqi occupation and a final, horrifying week of murder, kidnapping and destruction.

Yet even the terrible memories could not still the celebration as the troops moved into the center of the city, where parking lots were carpeted with broken glass and scores of buildings that had been set on fire by Iraqi troops still smoldered. Members of the Kuwaiti resistance movement joined in the parade, shooting into the air with rifles from the back of pickup trucks. Saudi soldiers added to the din with bursts of machine-gun fire.

Everywhere the green-white-red-and-black Kuwaiti flag, which had been outlawed during the occupation, fluttered from buildings, bridges and hats. A baby dressed in an outfit made from the flag was held up to be kissed by the liberators. A woman in black robes blew kisses at U.S. Marine Lieut. General Walt Boomer, who rode atop one of the troop carriers. "We'll never see anything like this again in our lifetime," Boomer declared. "Makes you appreciate freedom, doesn't it?"

But with the joy came angry expressions of revenge and hatred. Newly liberated Kuwaitis began a campaign to eradicate every reminder of the occupation. They shredded, burned and even machine-gunned portraits of Saddam Hussein and Iraqi flags. A band of youths used a sledgehammer to demolish a sign marking the REPUBLIC OF IRAQ MINISTRY OF EDUCATION IN THE DISTRICT OF KUWAIT. Others spat on Iraqi bank notes, the only legal tender under Saddam's rule, and tossed them into a bonfire.

The angry mood was shared by many of the arriving soldiers and civilians. One of them, Mohammed Khayhe, a Saudi Information Ministry official, surveyed the cold, smoky darkness over the city. The electricity had gone off when the allied ground offensive began on Feb. 24, and cars were using their headlights in the choking billows from the oil fires. "It's like a nuclear winter," said Khayhe. "Now that Kuwait is free, it's not fit to live in."