KUWAIT: With American preparations for war against Iraq intensifying, Kuwaitis are belatedly beginning to realize the consequences of having the US military machine in their backyard.
Shops across the country are selling out of gas masks, as the sang froid shown by most Kuwaitis at the prospect of war gives way to an inelegant scramble in the shopping aisles.
Over 20,000 gas masks have been sold in the past fortnight, and the small gas mask souq in central Kuwait City has been forced to close down. A spokesman for al-Ghanim electronics, one of the companies dealing in gas masks, said: "There was no interest in gas masks a few months ago but now they're being sold as soon as we put them on the shelves.
"After hearing so much about the possibility of war against Iraq in recent years, people are beginning to understand that war could soon be a reality," said the spokesman. Kuwaitis have also been stocking up on food supplies and creating air-tight "chemical" shelters in their houses following advise by the Kuwaiti government.
A report in Al-Qabas, a leading daily Arabic language newspaper, suggested however that 75 per cent of all gas masks imported into Kuwait were faulty and made of old car tyre rubber that would kill their users in the event of a chemical attack.
One military official from the German nuclear, biological and chemical defence battalion, that has been stationed in Kuwait since the first Gulf War, said: "If Iraqi forces did launch a chemical attack on Kuwait sitting in a boarded up sitting-room with a faulty gas mask is the last place one would want to be."
But though clearly rattled by the sudden intensification of American military preparations over the Christmas period, Kuwaitis do not appear to be preparing to flee the country as they did during the first Gulf War.