Kuwait: Photos of the Gulf War Fires that Turned Kuwait's Oil Fields into Hell

Nov 13, 2016 | Sebastião Salgado, VICE
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Oil was both the beginning and the end of the story of the Iraqi invasion. Baghdad insisted that it had an historical claim to the territory of Kuwait, but what most angered Saddam Hussein was his perception that overproduction by Kuwait's oil industry was weakening the global oil price. Further, he believed that, in the large Rumaila oil field, which lay on both sides of their common border, Kuwait was using so-called "slant-drilling" to suck oil belonging to Iraq. By annexing Kuwait, then, Iraq could not only significantly swell its own oil reserves but also increase its influence over the oil market. Initially at least, for Saddam Hussein this sufficed as punishment of the ousted Kuwaiti royal family.