While what remained of the physical damage of the seven-month occupation is a museum in today's Kuwait, the psychological effect can be felt everywhere. Even today, the occupation period is one of the topics in daily conversations. It is also regularly raised in the evening diwaniya, a kind of salon for men only where the prominent Kuwaiti families invite people to talk on a wide variety of issues. Seated around a large square room, each of the men can tell a story of looting, rape and killing. And it never takes long, that the talk turns to the point of the 605 Kuwaitis that are still missing since the occupation.
Nobody knows for sure if they are still alive or in Iraqi prisons as prisoners of war.
Their number may seem small, but so is the Kuwaiti population of only 700,000. Thus, everyone at the diwaniya I attended knows of a case of a missing person, either in his own family or in that of friends. It is said that, in proportion to their population, there are more Kuwaitis missing in action than Americans who were lost in World War II, Korea and Vietnam altogether. Abdel-Hamid Attar is the spokesman for the National Committee for Prisoners of War. He himself had lost a son.