Billions of dollars worth of planes were also taken, some to be destroyed on the ground in Iraq, some flown to Iran and then returned, after protracted negotiations, by Tehran. Saddam Hussein has not changed one jot, everyone knows it, and many think he could try to start the whole thing again. Throughout the city signs point people to the nearest air raid shelter. Maneuvers at the UN to negotiate a partial lifting of sanctions unsettle Kuwaiti diplomats. The hope that some may be alive is sustained by the conditions in which they were rounded up, near the end of the war, and by the recent revelation that Iraq held Iranians for years after the Iran-Iraq war without anyone knowing.
Every family is touched directly or by near kinship.
Resistance to Reform Returning after 28 years I am, however, struck by other changes that accompany and predate the Iraqi invasion. From the 1930s to the 1970s the main axis of conflict in Kuwait was between the al-Sabah ruling family and the merchants of Kuwait City. Some supported the al-Sabah, while others were Arab nationalists who pressed for greater freedom and greater control of the country's finances. In 1975 and again in 1986 the Amir dissolved the elected parliament rather than face continued criticism. Above all, pressure for accountability after the stock market crash seems to have spurred the second dissolution.