All events · After the Wall
Iraqi Invasion and Annexation of Kuwait
1990–1991 · Middle East & North Africa
Displacement
Territory Seized
Displaced
700,000
An estimated 400,000-plus foreign workers fled Kuwait during the seven-month occupation, alongside several hundred thousand Kuwaitis who fled or were expelled. Kuwait's Palestinian community, put by Human Rights Watch at 350,000-400,000 in August 1990, took part in this exodus from the invasion onward. The departures continued after liberation, when Kuwait refused most of those who had left re-entry and pressed others to go: HRW recorded about 100,000 Palestinians remaining by July 1991 and 50,000-80,000 by the end of September 1991. Jordan reported absorbing over 280,000 Jordanian and Palestinian expatriates by September 1991. The post-liberation departure and expulsion of Palestinians is recorded in its own entry and is not added to this figure.
Share of the population affected
33%
of the population of Kuwait on the eve of the Iraqi invasion, 1990
Killed
1,000–2,300
conflict deaths incl. combatants
Territory
17,818 km²
Kuwait (~17,818 km2) was formally annexed by Iraq for roughly seven months before the 1991 coalition military campaign restored its sovereignty and independence.
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What happened
On 2 August 1990, Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait, formally annexing it days later as Iraq's '19th province,' citing disputed historical claims, oil pricing disputes, and Kuwaiti debt from the Iran-Iraq war. The UN Security Council declared the annexation null and void and, after sanctions and a diplomatic ultimatum failed, authorized a US-led coalition that liberated Kuwait in a six-week campaign (Operation Desert Storm) in early 1991. During the seven-month occupation, several hundred thousand Kuwaitis and over 400,000 foreign workers fled the country, and Iraqi forces looted and set fire to hundreds of Kuwaiti oil wells during their retreat. Kuwait's Palestinian community of 350,000-400,000 was largely dispersed. Many left during the occupation, and after liberation the Kuwaiti government, citing the PLO leadership's alignment with Iraq, refused most of them re-entry and pressed others to leave, so that by September 1991 Human Rights Watch put the remaining community at 50,000-80,000. That episode is treated as a separate entry.
Parties
Iraq under Saddam Hussein invaded and formally annexed Kuwait as its '19th province' in August 1990, citing historical and economic claims; a US-led multinational coalition expelled Iraqi forces in the Gulf War of January–February 1991.
Disputed
Iraq claimed historical territorial rights over Kuwait dating to Ottoman-era provincial boundaries, a claim rejected by Kuwait, the Arab League, and the international community; the post-liberation expulsion of Palestinians is itself sometimes treated as a distinct displacement event, and the proportion attributable to government policy versus community reprisal is debated.
The denominator
Kuwaiti official estimates put the population at about 2.1 million in mid-1990, of whom roughly 600,000 were Kuwaiti citizens and the remainder expatriates, including some 400,000 Palestinians and large Egyptian, Indian and Bangladeshi communities. By the 1995 census the total had fallen to 1.58 million.
Most of those who left were expatriate workers returning to their own countries. The dispersal of Kuwait's Palestinians began during the occupation and continued after liberation, when Kuwait barred return and pressed remaining Palestinians to leave; that later phase is a separate entry.
Where the baseline comes from
On the death toll
The range covers deaths in Kuwait during the invasion and seven-month occupation: roughly 1,000 Kuwaiti civilians died, about 295 Kuwaiti and 420 Iraqi military personnel were killed in the August 1990 fighting, and 605 Kuwaitis went missing, of whom only 236 sets of remains had been identified by 2009. It deliberately excludes Iraqi military deaths in the 1991 coalition campaign, for which published estimates span more than an order of magnitude — early US Defense Intelligence Agency figures around 100,000 were later revised sharply downward by analysts using aerial and unit-strength data.
Documented forms of violence
Arbitrary DetentionTortureEnforced DisappearanceSummary ExecutionDestruction of Property
Amnesty International's 1990 investigation and the ICRC's still-open missing-persons file document the arrest of over 2,000 Kuwaitis, torture including beating, electric shock and removal of fingernails, executions, the disappearance of 605 people, and systematic looting and destruction of property during the occupation.
Movements mapped
- Foreign workers, including Jordanian-passport Palestinians → Jordan, during the occupation (many in transit home)350,000
- Kuwaitis fled → Saudi Arabia300,000
Countries touched, on present-day borders
Kuwait, Jordan, Saudi Arabia
Related entries
- Overlaps with: Departure and Expulsion of Palestinians from Kuwait
Palestinians who left during the occupation are among the invasion entry's foreign-worker departures, and they are also in the Palestinian entry's net reduction of ~270,000. The exact overlap is unknown.
Sources