On the face of it, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 appeared to be a retaliatory operation against what the then Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein claimed was a Western and Israeli-backed Kuwaiti plot to strangle Iraq economically and overthrow his regime.

The invasion and the US-led war to liberate Kuwait that followed are seen as the sparks that set Iraq aflame for years and that ignited more than three decades of geopolitical disorder in the entire Middle East.

But the history of the invasion has since been muddied by so much confusion, distortions, and conspiracy theories from all sides that the official version of the conflict has become less and less convincing.

A UK court is soon to start looking into claims that British Airways passengers and crew taken hostage in Kuwait on the eve of the crisis may shed light on some aspects of the mystery behind the takeover.

Just a few weeks before the invasion’s 34th anniversary, the passengers and crew who were held hostage as human shields by Iraq after their BA flight landed in Kuwait as Iraqi troops stormed the emirate, decided to sue the airline and the UK government for “deliberately endangering” them.

The claimants say they have evidence that BA and the then UK government led by former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher knew that Iraq had invaded the tiny Gulf state before the plane they were travelling on made a scheduled stopover at Kuwait International Airport on 2 August 1990.

The BA149 flight from London Heathrow to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, carrying 367 passengers and 18 crew members landed in Kuwait as Iraqi armed forces were invading the country.

The passengers and crew claim that the flight was used to secretly transport a special operational team for immediate and covert deployment to the battlefield “regardless of the risk this posed to the civilians onboard.”

Soon after midnight on 2 August 1990, Iraqi Republican Guard divisions rolled across the border into Kuwait, heading down the asphalt highway on their way to the capital Kuwait City. Saddam later annexed the sheikhdom and made it Iraq’s 19th province.

Flight BA149 touched down at 4:13am that same morning for refuelling and a change of crew. Shortly afterwards, Iraqi bombers began strafing the runway, and troops circled the airport.

The passengers and crew were taken hostage and eventually transferred to Iraq, where they were held as human shields. However, nine men who had boarded the plane late reportedly vanished as soon as it landed.

Lawyers for the claimants say BA knew the invasion was taking place, and the nine men, a covert special operations team on board, was authorised by Thatcher, the UK Ministry of Defence, and MI6, the UK’s foreign intelligence agency.

The Boeing 747 plane was destroyed at the end of the Gulf War, with Britain claiming that fleeing Iraqi forces blew it up. However, in his book The Secret History of Flight 149 author Stephen Davis says he has evidence that the UK asked US fighter planes to destroy it so that evidence of the top-secret mission would be removed.

British Airways received compensation for the plane from Iraq through a UN panel set up after the invasion. However, the British passengers on the flight, who were held hostage, were denied compensation.

In 2021, after the release of documents to the UK National Archives that showed that the then British ambassador in Kuwait had warned the UK Foreign Office that the invasion was under way before flight BA149 landed, then UK foreign secretary Liz Truss said that the government had covered up the warning for decades.

Whether the British court asked to consider the claimants’ case will indict the British government and the UK national carrier remains to be seen. But the case will surely cause many to revisit the forgotten facts of the invasion with a view to rewriting its history.

In the run-up to the invasion, tension between Iraq and the US and Britain increased, fuelled by fears that Saddam might be trying to keep Iraq an extremely militarised country following the Iraq-Iran War and might aggressively pursue policies that could threaten the West and its regional allies.

Signs of a breakdown in relations between Washington and Baghdad suddenly surfaced and tension escalated after the then US Bush administration accused Iraq of developing new chemical and biological weapons systems.

The standoff in the spring of 1990 culminated with the execution of a journalist working with the British newspaper the Observer on charges of espionage in Iraq. The hanging of the Iranian UK-based journalist Farzad Bazoft sparked a propaganda campaign against Saddam, with statements by Thatcher deliberately intended to insult him.

For years, Saddam had enjoyed a good relationship with the West. Washington helped Baghdad in the Iraq-Iran War including by providing Saddam’s army with military intelligence and shielding him from condemnation for deploying chemical weapons.

Even after the Bazoft crisis, Thatcher sent Saddam a letter reminding him of the “long-standing ties” and the “many positive aspects to our relations on which we can build”. Then UK foreign secretary Douglas Hurd also warned her of the dangers of taking measures that could damage “British business.”

The invasion of Kuwait came amid a severe economic crisis in Iraq stemming from an estimated $80 billion in debts to the neighbouring Arab Gulf nations accrued during the eight-year war with Iran.

Saddam accused Kuwait of keeping oil prices low and pumping more than its quota of oil from the two countries’ shared oil fields, blaming it for drastically reducing Iraq’s badly needed revenues.

In another warning that upped the regional ante, Saddam promised to “wipe out half of Israel” with chemical weapons if Iraq was threatened with an atomic bomb, recalling Israel’s devastating 1981 air strike against Iraq’s nuclear facilities.

Taken together, the internal and external threats that Saddam felt at the time appear to have made him believe that he was being besieged by regional and international conspirators. This made him respond vigorously, creating an environment that made the Kuwait invasion possible.

Attempts have been made to unravel the thought processes of Saddam during the crisis, mostly revolving around finding clues in his own words to explain his ideas, such as Iraq’s independent position and its frustrated potential.

Saddam’s vision of himself, Iraq, and the world and his motives and decision-making were often attributed by Western politicians and the Western media to his allegedly erratic, paranoid, and reckless reactions.

While leadership qualities, psychological traits, and personal character remain important when trying to understand the mindset of those in power, falling into temptation cannot be ruled out when explaining decision-making.

There is no shortage of evidence to suggest that Saddam’s decisions were dictated by his instincts, great ambitions, and driven personality characterised by grandiosity and paranoid and violent reactions.

But could Saddam have been manipulated by his regional and international foes in order to force him into a reckless adventure, having refused to alleviate his fears of a conspiracy and to accommodate his “legitimate security interests”?

One answer comes from a famous story implying that the US, which had appeased Saddam in a bid to contain the Islamic regime in Iran, would tolerate his invasion of Kuwait.

One week before the invasion and the subsequent annexation of Kuwait, the then US ambassador in Baghdad, April Glaspie, informed Saddam that the US took “no position” on his dispute with the Kuwaitis.

Whether or not Saddam interpreted Glaspie’s remarks as constituting a “green light” from the US to seize Kuwait, as some commentators later charged, remains to be seen when she speaks out and all official US documents, including diplomatic exchanges and CIA files, are available for researchers.

Meanwhile, the evidence given in the UK BA149 flight case and the court’s eventual ruling may disclose some previously unknown factors that will enable researchers to dive deeper into the conflict and unravel the Kuwait invasion.

Whatever the truth may turn out to be, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait 34 years ago was a radical turning point in Middle East history, and like other momentous events in the last century it cannot simply be dismissed as the act of an erratic leader.

Instead, it must be seen within the context of a struggle for control of the region’s destiny.

Political traps are also not unknown in history. Many believe that the 15th-century Italian writer Niccolo Machiavelli’s masterpiece The Prince was in fact an act of political deception intended to undo the authority of the Florentine Republic’s then ruler, Lorenzo de Medici, by giving him advice that would jeopardise his power, hasten his overthrow, and allow for the resurgence of the city’s republican institutions.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 1 August, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly