At the ultra-modern Sultan Center supermarket, the signs were everywhere Tuesday of a country preparing for war.
There were no sacks of sugar. Bottles of water were running low.
Workers unrolled 500 yards of plastic sheeting for customers trying to jury-rig “safe rooms.” They were laying in 1,000 more yards.
“I was thinking there would be no war right up until the last minute,” Whaleed ElSeyoufi said as he placed duct tape, plastic sheeting and two chemical warfare suits in his shopping basket.
With nearly 150,000 U.S. military personnel and 26,000 British troops poised in Kuwait for an impending assault against Iraq, few here fear an invasion. But nobody seems to be taking any chances.
Police checkpoints have been beefed up in recent days, and convoys of armored military vehicles rumbled through the main business area Tuesday.
Many residents recall the devastation, looting and killing wrought by Iraq’s 1990 conquest, an unhealed scar symbolized by hundreds of civilians who are missing and considered prisoners of war.
Some, such as ElSeyoufi, seemed frightened about the potential for an Iraqi missile attack with chemical or biological warheads.
“Do you know where I can get any gas masks?” he asked.
There were none at the Sultan Center, where management turned down a faxed request for 50 gas masks from the Kuwait Fisheries Association.
The apparently imminent U.S.-led war against Iraq is reverberating throughout the region.
In Israel, the government urged citizens Tuesday to prepare sealed shelters with duct tape and plastic sheeting and to check their gas mask kits, Reuters reported. Israel was struck 39 times by Iraqi missiles during the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
“Although the probability [of an attack on Israel] is low, we are preparing for all scenarios,” Maj. Gen. Amos Gilad, an Israeli military spokesman, told Israel Radio.
Britain’s Foreign Office advised travelers to avoid Israel, and British Airways announced it was suspending flights to and from Tel Aviv, beginning Wednesday night.
Many expatriates in Kuwait also seemed to be leaving, one day after the U.S. and British governments advised their nationals to leave.
Lines snaked around the departure area at the Kuwait International Airport as passengers loaded with heavily packed suitcases and boxes of televisions and stereos waited patiently for flights. Many anticipated that civilian airspace could be closed at the start of a war.
“My family has been shouting over the phone, `Get on the first plane and get out of there,”‘ said Vicki Roberts, an Australian who works as an information technology instructor at the English School for Girls.
Roberts is taking a two-week vacation and hoping that the situation is resolved before she returns.
Other expatriates have decided to stay.
“I don’t feel there’s a reason to leave,” said Sandra Williams of Birmingham, England, who has worked as a secretary in Kuwait for a decade. Two dozen of her friends have fled.
Filling her shopping basket with steak, french fries and vegetables, Williams appeared nonchalant about looming war, until she admitted that she had created a “safe room” in her home.
“The best motto is to be prepared,” she said. “I have a gas mask, chemical suit. Better to be ready and not use it.”
The Kuwaitis have improved their civil defense in recent years, adding shelters to residential neighborhoods and establishing command centers to oversee the physical and mental needs of the citizens and the city’s infrastructure.
At one such command post inside the auditorium of the Saleh Shaab High School, volunteers and government workers relaxed Tuesday.
“In the city, everyone is scared . . . everyone is trying to find a safe place in their house,” said Nasser Al-Shareef, an engineer in charge of firefighting.
“But I don’t think Saddam Hussein has the opportunity to attack,” Al-Shareef said. “He has the guts, but he doesn’t have the capability.”
Nahed Mohammed Al Masqati, a psychologist, said war jitters are beginning to affect the country’s psyche.
“We’ve seen four children and three mothers who were panicked a bit,” Al Masqati said. “Parents are also beginning to take children from their school. You know, the children get panicked if rumors start.”
Kuwaiti Police Col. Fahad Al Shargawi heads the command center, barking out instructions from behind his desk placed on the stage of the high school auditorium. Camouflage netting hangs overhead, more a prop than anything else.
Come early Thursday local time, when President Bush’s 48-hour ultimatum to Hussein expires, Al Shargawi said he will be behind the desk.
And he won’t leave until the war is over.
“I’ll be stuck here like glue,” he said.
