Kuwaitis preparing for attack

It was a bit of a poor show, the emergency drill.

"Very slow," said Lt. Col. Adel Shoaib of the Kuwait City Fire Department, as he gazed at his watch. About 200 girls in blue-and-white-checked uniforms filed into their school gymnasium, filling it with chatter and relaxed laughter. "Five minutes and 30 seconds, by now. Too slow."

But then, students at the Naileh Girls School were blocked from three of four doors by plastic sheeting intended to protect them from chemical or biological agents if an attack from Iraq actually occurred.

Shoaib said the plastic wouldn't be much use if half the girls were outside breathing in poisons because they couldn't get into the building fast enough. He would have a word with the principal after the drill.

Kuwaitis all over the country are preparing for the possibility that Iraq might attack them if the United States were to invade Iraq. But as the rather lackadaisical emergency drill at the school illustrated, many Kuwaitis are not taking the threat terribly seriously.

Despite the growing signs in Kuwait almost daily that war may be coming – over the weekend the government made about one-quarter of the country off limits because of huge American and Kuwaiti military exercises starting in the north – there is an overwhelming feeling that the U.S. military will protect Kuwait.

"I really think they expect the United States will neutralise the Iraqis," said a Western diplomat. "It's partially a justified belief, but there's maybe a little denial there."

The Kuwaiti government is taking no risks. It has ordered emergency drills all over the country. On television, short films show people how to construct sealed shelters at home.

The government also has made contingency plans for maintaining supplies of water, electricity, food and communications systems, said Fahad Al Buti, chief of Kuwait City's Civil Defence Centre.

There are other signs of the threat of war. On Friday, a vast convoy of American tanks and armoured vehicles lumbered slowly down the main road from Kuwait City to the Iraqi border.

An exercise over, they were returning to the large American military site, Camp Doha, on the outskirts of the city. Soon they'll head out again to the hard, flat desert for more training.

"It's wasting time and money, but I agree 100 per cent with what they're doing," said Hamed Al Othman, a Kuwaiti farmer who, like hundreds of others, was having workers tear down buildings of his that were on government-owned land now declared off limits. His herds, too, would be moved.

Al Othman, an unequivocal supporter of the U.S. military presence in Kuwait, seemed typically unstressed by the prospect of more conflict in the region. Like many Kuwaitis, he said the situation in Kuwait is different from that in 1990, when Iraqi forces rolled easily into Kuwait.

This time, there is the massive American military presence to protect the country. On the other hand, if there is a war, a desperate Saddam Hussain may feel he has nothing to lose by unleashing chemical or biological weapons on American forces in Kuwait.

"If it happens, it happens and we'll all go down," said Majed Al Busaili, 26, an architectural engineer who was visiting a mall in downtown Kuwait City.

He explained his fatalism and equanimity by citing his experience as a teenager in 1990. "I lived here during the invasion," he said. "We've faced war, so we're familiar with the war situation. In some respects, it was really fun. We stayed inside and the whole family was around."

Others are taking things a little more seriously. Although sales of gas masks have dropped in recent days, as the United States seems to be slowing its push toward war, last month stores were doing good business in gas masks.

"We sold between 35 and 40 last month," said Mohammed Hassan, a salesman at the Ahmedal Saleh and Sons military supplies store in Kuwait City. This time last year, he was selling none.