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COLLATERAL DAMAGE

How Kuwaiti mall slammed by Saddam reopened — the very same day

BY DEBRA HAZEL

Photo: Associated Press

“We have the most famous mall in the world,” said Nowal B. Al-Najjar, the marketing director of Souk Sharq, Kuwait City.

That may well have been true for a short while back in March, after an Iraqi missile struck Souk Sharq during the opening stages of the war against Saddam Hussein’s regime. Images of the wreckage were transmitted worldwide within minutes of the March 29 explosion.

How the mall dealt with the crisis is a story in itself. Fortunately for the mall and for its managers and shoppers, this war story is a happy one, thanks largely to some luck and an emergency plan that many thought unnecessary before the attack.

“We were the first mall in Kuwait to have an emergency plan and the first to have an evacuation plan,” Al-Najjar told SCT. “And we were the one to get hit.”

It was a night of good luck and bad for the 602,784-square-foot mall, which sits on the site of an old open-air market overlooking the Persian Gulf, Al-Najjar says. The bad luck was because Souk Sharq wasn’t even the missile’s target. The center’s upscale neighborhood also houses Kuwait’s Parliament building, the Foreign Ministry and the Sief Palace, home of Kuwait’s Emir Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah. The good luck was that the missile struck at 1:39 a.m., a mere two hours after the mall’s cinema and restaurants had closed. The only people on site at the time were members of the mall and security staff, who, fortunately, were on the other side of the center. Another stroke of luck was that the missile, a low-flying Chinese Seersucker C-201 modified by Iraq, hit a pier adjacent to the mall and exploded in the Gulf. Al-Najjar estimates that the water absorbed some 70 percent of the blast, which saved the center and buildings nearby.

Had the missile hit earlier, the disaster would have been far worse. Souk Sharq is a major gathering place for affluent Kuwaitis browsing such North American and European tenants as The Body Shop, Guess and McDonald’s, as well as local merchants.

In accordance with the project’s emergency plan, mall security immediately notified the Ministry of the Interior and Souk Sharq supervisors, then checked around the building for anyone who may have been inside the mall. The mall is operated by National Real Estate Co., Kuwait City, which has a 20-year build-and-manage agreement for the 5-year-old mall with the Kuwaiti government.

Anwar Al-Faraj, the center’s general manager, was at home sleeping when the missile hit.

“My mobile, home phone and my pager started ringing all at the same time,” Al-Faraj recalls. “I called my supervisor, Adel Monadi [the center’s senior supervisor], to see what the 911 code he had sent me was about. He informed me that the mall was hit by a missile.”

The Kuwaiti military secured the site quickly. Al-Faraj raced to the mall to find the fire department and senior government officials already there. Among their concerns was that the missile was carrying biochemical or radioactive contaminants.

“When I arrived at the site, the chemical team was examining the remains of the missile and found it to be clear of any chemicals,” Al-Faraj said

Still, the damage was considerable. “The back of the mall was full of holes from the shrapnel, and broken glass [was] everywhere,” Al-Faraj said. A small fire on the first floor was still burning, and the ceiling under the cinema had been blown out, scattering white gypsum. Part of the pier was gone. The blast had also blown out all the sliding glass doors, twisting their metal frames, and destroyed the management offices. The ceiling in the central hall was damaged, and two shop windows were shattered. To Al-Faraj’s relief, however, the mall’s signature water clock, in the center court, remained intact.

Normally, Al-Najjar too would have rushed to Souk Sharq to inspect what she calls her “second home” and to handle the international media that had quickly gathered at the site. But she wasn’t even in Kuwait at the time. A dual citizen of the United States and Kuwait who grew up in Boston, Al-Najjar was evacuated before the war, along with her husband, her children and other American and British nationals. She was scheduled to return to Kuwait the day of the bombing, but an emergency appendectomy kept her in St. Louis. Shortly after leaving the hospital, she heard over the radio that a Kuwaiti mall had been bombed.

“I put on the television and saw the words ‘prestigious mall hit by missile,’ and my heart dropped,” Al-Najjar said. “I prayed it wasn’t us.” But a few images later, she recognized that it was indeed her center. “Unfortunately, I was still a little drugged up, but I had my mobile and started instant-messaging my boss and colleagues.”

The messaging wasn’t just one-way. Like Al-Faraj, Al-Najjar received calls and messages from around the 6,950-square-mile country (it is slightly smaller than New Jersey) and other parts of the region. Friends, colleagues and competitors were keen to inquire about the mall and its staff.

“Kuwait is small, like a high school, so the news spread like wildfire,” Al-Najjar said. “They were even calling me in the States.”

Once the military gave the all-clear that same morning, the center’s architects and builders came to inspect the facility. The cleaning company came in to clear away the broken glass and board up unsafe areas. With the doors gone, extra security was brought in to guard the entrances.

The mall was declared structurally sound, and National Real Estate reopened it at 2 p.m., just over 12 hours after the attack. People came both to look at the damage and to shop. Being open is a matter of pride for the mall, which operates 365 days a year, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

“If we had closed down, it would have made the people nervous,” Al-Najjar said. “Opening showed that nothing was going to shake us — it was business as usual.”

Finally recovered from her surgery, Al-Najjar returned to Kuwait on April 8.

“When I came back, I was so happy to see everybody,” she said. “Yet my heart was full of pain. This is our mall, our property; this is our home.”

To be sure, the mall was open. But things were in fact far from business as usual. With the management offices destroyed, the staff had to work out of the mall’s central hall.

“We were refugees to Starbucks,” Al-Najjar said. “We had staff meetings there. We had nowhere to go. It was crazy, but we managed.”

According to the Souk Sharq team, theirs was the only mall in the region to have an emergency plan. With war looming, Al-Najjar had been pushing for one. Mall executives met with the Kuwaiti Interior Ministry to discuss how to handle bombings and chemical and other forms of attack. Plans were made to have staff in the mall 24 hours a day once the war began, and security officers were given special instructions and contact information. In addition, plainclothes officers from the Interior Ministry were in the center during operating hours to provide further protection.

Souk Sharq’s managers devised an evacuation plan with the help of engineers who determined the safest places to move shoppers and staff should the need arise. They drew up maps showing the locations of emergency exits and fire extinguishers.

Posters in English and Arabic were put up all about the mall describing the various kinds of alarms that would signal imminent attack, specific types of attack and the all-clear. Management distributed emergency numbers to tenants as well as mall staff. Weekly meetings, conducted in both English and Arabic, provided tenants with updated information.

While some tenants expressed satisfaction with all these precautions, others thought the entire thing a waste of time.

“They said, ‘Why bother? Nothing will happen’ — an attitude typical of the region,” Al-Najjar said. “But [better] prepared than sorry.”

Longer-term repairs proceeded quickly. Within six weeks the custom-made doors had been replaced, and all the rest of the damage was repaired within two and a half months. At press time only the pier into the Gulf had yet to be restored.

The blast did reduce sales, which had been normal during the war, but dropped “significantly” for four weeks after the explosion, largely due to a reduction in shopper traffic, Al-Najjar says. Exact figures are not available from tenants, who do not pay percentage rent.

When the work was finished, Souk Sharq held a reopening ceremony, complete with an Arabic band, the distribution of candy (a Kuwaiti custom) and the unveiling of the clock, which had been covered during the repairs. Sales have long since returned to previous levels.

“Nothing can prepare you for a missile strike,” Al-Faraj said. But “having a well-thought-out plan and good communication between all parties involved will help avert any unnecessary injuries.”

With no one hurt and the mall back to normal, Al-Najjar can even afford to laugh. After all, the explosion made her mall world-renowned. It even gave her an unexpected side benefit.

“I now have a new office,” completely redecorated, she said, “thanks to Saddam Hussein.”

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