Road to war: Six lanes of tarred, lit-up highway

The road to war winds its way out of the sheltered bay around which Kuwait City is built before straightening up and heading due north, to Iraq.

Six lanes of perfectly tarred carriageway, lit all the way, stretch for 120km through scrub and desert to a modest border post which has been closed since the end of the 1991 Gulf War.

It is along this road that much of the huge U.S.-led force gathering in Kuwait will roll if an attack on Iraq is ordered. They couldn't have it any easier.

"If and when ground forces go in, they'll go in along positions all along the frontier," a senior U.S. officer said yesterday.

"But once we have secured territory and made advances, it doesn't take a military genius to realise the main road to Basra will be a key objective and we will be moving forces along this route. It is a perfect road."

Basra lies just 60km north of the border. In friendlier times, thousands of Kuwaitis would make the three-hour trip each week for some rest and relaxation in the city.

Just east of where the historic Euphrates and Tigris rivers join to form the Shatt Al Arab waterway leading to the Arabian Gulf, Basra is also close to Ur, the capital of ancient Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilisation.

"Basra was a fun town, a party town. We used to go there to sometimes drink a little and enjoy ourselves," a Kuwaiti businessman, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.

Although Kuwait has become a more liberal society since the Gulf War, alcohol is still banned and authorities take a strict line against drug use and prostitution.

"Basra was an escape for people who wanted to try some of these things away from home," the businessman said.

Since the Operation Peninsula Shield build-up began, the road to the border has become a hive of activity. Huge convoys of military vehicles can be seen making their way north, laden with equipment ranging from tanks and bulldozers to moveable bridges, generators and even portable toilets - painted, of course, in desert camouflage.

Vast sprawling tented camps packed with coalition troops pepper both sides of the highway. Almost invisible by day, their lights brighten up the sky with an eerie glow when night falls.

Scores of helicopters can be seen flitting across the horizon, while the sonic boom of a jetfighter can sometimes be heard as it roars towards patrol of the no-fly zone in southern Iraq.

The road became know as the "Highway of Death" after Desert Storm forces blitzed the retreating Iraqis as they fled Kuwait. Graphic pictures at the time showed kilometres of hulks of tanks, trucks and cars, many with the corpses of their occupants burnt to their seats.

Nothing remains of that now - the wreckage was dumped in the desert at a site that is off limits to civilians - but a few buildings along the way still show signs of the war.

Kuwait shares a 200km border with Iraq, but five kms (three miles) on the Kuwaiti side and 10km on the Iraqi side is a demilitarised zone patrolled by the UN mission to Kuwait.

In January 1993, when the UN Security Council definitively ruled on the disputed border, Kuwait dug a huge trench along the entire length of the frontier.