Occupying Iraqi forces were retreating from the country, 208 days after Saddam Hussein’s invasion
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Sara Akbar
But for Sara Akbar, there was no relief. The 33-year-old chemical engineer in the Kuwaiti Oil Company watched the sky turn black as night with smoke as her entire industry burned, and with it, all hopes for Kuwait’s oil-dependent economy, not to mention the environment.
“Personally, we didn’t participate in the celebrations of the liberation,” she says.
“In the last days of the occupation, we ventured out to see our offices burning. So we went to work in our colleague’s home and started to put the plans together.”