Iraq and Kuwait Are Beginning a Beautiful Friendship
Iraqis need an option other than Iran, Saudi Arabia and the U.S.
Kuwait and Iraq have put out the fires of the past.
Photographer: Mario Tama/Getty Images
I first visited Safwan, a dusty town on the Iraq side of the border with Kuwait, in early 2003, a few weeks before the start of the U.S.-led invasion. Coalition forces were deploying a few miles to the south, waiting for the order to smash through the long manmade berm separating the two countries. Laith, my government-appointed Iraqi minder, knew what horrors were to come.
As a young infantryman during the 1991 ejection of Saddam Hussein’s troops from Kuwait, Laith had lost many comrades in that vicinity. In the retreat, he had carried the body of one soldier for several miles, and buried it in a ditch on the Iraqi side of the border late one night. He had meant to recover the remains eventually, for a proper internment. But it was months before he was able return, and by then he couldn’t recognize the landscape.