Judy Schriener reflects on a trip to Kuwait in 1991 to report on the oil fires and the planned rebuilding from the Gulf War.

After the first Gulf War in early 1991 when Iraq invaded and destroyed much of Kuwait, I was blessed to travel to Kuwait to cover the efforts to rebuild the infrastructure and buildings, and to put out the many oil fires. I believe I was the only woman journalist to travel there alone. 

At the time, the only way for us to get to Kuwait was to pick up our visas in person in Saudi Arabia, where women were highly restricted in many ways. These were not easy logistics.

I had lots of help from the many American construction and design companies that were already working in the area. They shared information, gave me names of their people on the ground there and volunteered to help in any way. I felt prepared and was excited to go.

In Kuwait, I would need a car, and none were available to rent in Kuwait, so I would need to bring one from Saudi. Women couldn’t drive in Saudi, so we arranged for two cars and two drivers to take me to the border, and then I’d take the car and my driver would go back with the second driver.

My travel as a solo woman created several more challenges. Upon my arrival in Riyadh, a guard approached me and wanted to know who my sponsor was. I said I wasn’t sure. He asked if anyone was picking me up and I said yes. He told me to leave my carry-on and purse and follow him to find that person. Fortunately, even though we were nearly two hours late, someone from one of the contractors was there with my name on a sign. The two men spoke in Arabic for a minute and then I was allowed to go back in, get my bags and continue on to Customs. In the long, crazy queues I cozied up to a couple of Americans, who turned out to be frequent visitors doing business there. They welcomed me and gave me many helpful insider tips.

When I got to the hotel, I checked in and went to my room. Shortly thereafter, I got a call from the front desk asking me to come down. Why? The police wanted to talk to me “for just five minutes,” he said. He had seen me being delivered by a man and they wanted more info. I began calling: ENR, Senator John McCain’s office where I had a contact, the contractors in the U.S. that had been helping me. They all began faxing me at the hotel, asking for them to treat me well and emphasizing that I had the right journalist’s visa to travel with, etc. The faxes started showing up and the staff slipped them under my door. I knew that the person who called me had read them. I finally went down, asked who wanted to talk to me and was told to wait. I waited for about 15 minutes and went back up to my room. Nobody called again.

The next morning, I went to the office of the Ministry of Information, and they wrote some kind of note to show people. I showed it to the front desk person and from then on, I was treated like royalty. I got a tour of the hotel, including a rooftop area where people were sunbathing in bikinis and drinking alcohol. I was shocked! My guide said, “This is not for everybody,” and invited me to come back and order whatever I wanted. I passed on that.

The next night one of the guys I met in the Customs line took me to dinner and then a spontaneous tour of the city. I had brought a hijab head covering with me but had not brought it down since we were dining in the hotel, so I was bare-headed when we went to the souk (shopping mall). We were almost finished when two armed morality policemen stopped us and told my companion he would have to take me away because my head was not covered. They escorted us out.

My next stop to get my visa was in Dhahran. A professional friend from a daily newspaper in Arizona who had traveled to Kuwait a month before had told me to look for a Saudi colonel whose name escapes me after 33 years. I saw him in the room where we all went to wait for our visas, and I went up to him and said excitedly, “Colonel (Whatever)! My friend (So-and-So) said to tell you hello!” It was a very good move. He invited me to go to Kuwait the next day with the Saudi Royal Air Force on a C-130. Yes!

We cancelled the two cars and drivers. I was the only American on the plane, and we were joined by two Brits who were there to seek work in Kuwait. The air force officers and one’s wife were polite and quiet. I was quite touched to see five macho officers in turn gently fanning the uncomfortable wife as she laid there with her head in her husband’s lap. It was quite the experience.
 

Finally, in Kuwait

It was May and hot, well over 100°F in Kuwait, much like it was in Phoenix, where I’d lived for 10 years before moving to New York for ENR. On the bus from the airport to the Kuwait International Hotel, I was excited. Then I saw a design on one of the overpasses that reminded me of similar ones in Phoenix, and I was brought up short. What if my city had been attacked like Kuwait was? That serious moment changed my whole approach to my trip and how I covered the rebuilding efforts.

There were challenges in an area that was so devastated. Phone lines were dead. There were a few centers where we could go and wait in line to use a working phone, but they were not always working. Since I’d flown, I had no car. But a kind soul offered me one, a not-new Toyota, that was someone’s private car, so I rented that. (All I had to turn in for expenses to ENR was a scrawl on an envelope, so I was grateful to be reimbursed for it.) I drove all around Kuwait for the next two and a half weeks, got lost over and over, and loved the freedom it gave me.

Damage in Kuwait extended beyond fires at the oil fields, to bombed-out ruins and extensive looking of damaged buildings.
Photos courtesy Judy Schreiner

Nearly everything was closed or only partially functioning. We had cool water to shower in and were grateful for that. Bombed-out roads were everywhere and the lights were scant at night. My hotel was in pretty good shape and had plentiful, excellent food for us. Everybody I knew kept asking me with a look of pity if I had found food. We feasted! It’s where I found that I loved hummus and other Middle Eastern fare, not so much the mud-like coffee served when visiting offices. But it’s offered and you drink it.

I learned much, such as when you see a woman, do not compliment her on her scarf, because she’ll feel obligated to give it to you. That was not a problem; many Kuwaitis had left the area during the rebuilding, so there were few women.

No Rules, No Problem

With almost no working phones, there were no rules. We just showed up and got to meet with everyone. My hotel was full of construction folks and we all met for dinner, stories and updates every night. There were usually a couple of Kuwaitis that would join us.

I got to meet everyone I wanted to, and everybody was great to me! Key were the Corps of Engineers people, especially Col. Ralph Locurcio, Capt. Robert Irby and Lt. Col. Doug Coffey, the last of whom took me on several sites, including the mostly non-functional airport, and kept yelling at me to stop backing up while I was taking pictures. Unexploded ordnance was buried everywhere, unseen, and he didn’t want me to get killed.

The Corps and the American and British contractors were so good to me; they made my two-and-a-half-week-long trip a success.

Here are a few: The procurement officer from Brown & Root let me shadow him for two days on his rounds to find scarce supplies. The Turner Corp. and J.A. Jones people took me to the palaces, hotels, mosques and other buildings they were working on. Blunt Inc.’s head guy there was helpful for the electrical angle. OMI Corp. showed me around the sanitary systems that they had a two-year contract to repair and maintain. Yes, there was a stench, really across the whole city, as well as a haze that was dirty and pervasive. I mostly got used to both.

Damage to government buildings was extensive in Kuwait by the end of the conflict
Photo courtesy Judy Schreiner

One great advantage of there being no rules due to lack of working phone lines was that I got easy access to several major Kuwaiti players, including Talal Al-Othman, who was in charge of the reconstruction for Kuwait’s Ministry of Public Works (MPW) and Ali Al-Abdullah, MPW’s chief engineer. Talal was especially popular because he was known as “the radio guy” for always having an accessible two-way radio. Nassar Mohamed Kharafi’s Kuwait Food Company owned 110 fast food restaurants, and he was also the president of Kharafi contracting company and would be rebuilding them himself. I spontaneously stopped by his firm on my way out of town and he invited me in to his leopard-décor office. I asked him why he did and he said, “Because you are American.” Most of the Kuwaitis I met were very grateful for our help.

I met just two women that worked in Kuwait. Fatima Al-Sabah was a sheikha, a member of the Kuwait Royal Family, and head of the architectural department of MPW. Donna Sultan was an American who was married to the owner of Kuwaiti Engineers’ Office and was an executive in the firm. Both interacted significantly with the foreigners who were there to help rebuild their country.

Everybody spoke excellent English and most had spent time in the U.S. at universities, working or both. Their sing-song English was contagious and I found myself speaking that way more than once.

The one person I could not find in Kuwait was Terry Farley, who headed the Kuwait operations for Bechtel Corp.’s efforts to help put out the numerous oil fires. He did not want to be found and made that clear to my normally very helpful Bechtel contacts in the U.S. and they were no help.

But I was determined and I extended my trip three days to keep at it until I found him. He trusted me with some helpful information, although he did not want to be named. I was glad I found him because after I later wrote another article about Bechtel’s success at getting the fires out—thanks to a renegade group that showed up with a novel FPO (fire putter-outer)—we gave him ENR’s highest honor that year, at the time called Man of the Year, later changed to Award of Excellence. To write that story, I got to accompany Terry to Kuwait in January of 1992. The country was in much better shape by then, with rules and women more in place. Terry and I met several times for pizza over the years back in the U.S. and are still in touch today.

As a final gift, I got to ride out of Kuwait on another C-130, this time with the U.S. Air Force!

Covering the rebuilding of Kuwait and getting to go there twice were life-changing experiences, for which I’ll always be grateful.