Hall of Heroes - Asrar Al Qabandi

Asrar Mohammed AlQabandi was born on November 23, 1959. She lived in Dhahiat Abdullah Al Salem, Kuwait. Her life consisted of education, she was passionate about it and spent most of her early life studying and gaining a proper education. After that, Asrar went to England for an English course, and after three years she earned her high school degree in the US. She went on to earn three master degrees in education, economics and handicap rehabilitation. Asrar then worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the information center. She established a nursery school and volunteered in an association to take care of Autistic children.

August 2nd, 1990 also known as "Black Thursday" was the day Iraq invaded Kuwait . Saddam wanted to completely eradicate Kuwait's existence from the world, so he invaded Kuwait, tortured its people, tormented them and took away their homes, families and lives. The Kuwaitis were absolutely terrified from his actions, not from the mental and physical torture, or the killing and destroying, but from his attempt at taking away their own homeland. Asrar's patriotism made her immediately spring into action and join the resistance movement. Her main role in the Kuwaiti resistance was to gather and send information, to the groups that she's working with. The destruction of her country stimulated Asrar's great pride and patriotism towards her country. This caused her to join the resistance and fight for her country's life.

Asrar was aware that she was risking her life, she would smuggle weapons and people into and out of the country and would also partake in many risky activities. She helped important people from the Bahraini Embassy leave the country safely. She also smuggled in weapons from nearby places, like; Al Basra -- which is a city in Iraq -- and Saudi Arabia. Asrar was smart and sneaky, she destroyed telephones that were monitored by the Iraqis. Asrar also helped many people by providing fake ID's to Kuwaitis who were targeted by the Iraqi army. She supplied food and money to foreign families who were in need, and took care of 65 foreign hostages. Asrar was truly a brave woman, she did all this knowing that if she got caught, her execution is guaranteed.

During the invasion, Asrar was courageous, and pulled off many daring stunts. Asrar managed to deceive the Iraqis who guarded the Ministry of Civil Information by pretending to be an Indian worker. She was then able to get her hand on the discs of the public institution and smuggled them to Saudi Arabia. After that, Asrar returned to Kuwait with a fake identity, Sara Mubarak. This was not easy considering she had to pass the border, where there were half a million Iraqi soldiers. She also made sure none of the accounts from the Central Bank of Kuwait were acquired by the Iraqis. Asrar would regularly send in reports about the condition in Kuwait to the Kuwaiti government headquarters, who in Taef, Saudi Arabia, at that time. This was never easy for Asrar, and to make everything worse she was put in situations where she had to kill Iraqi soldiers.

Asrar planned to let the world know about the cruelty taking place in her homeland. Asrar sent out pictures of tortured and mangled victims for the world to see. She assured Kuwait's cry for help was heard by calling the famous American media interviewer and presenter Barbara Walters. Asrar represents the real ideal brave woman, she also represents pride to one's nation. She specifically teaches and showed us how to react if something like the Iraqi Invasion would ever happen now. Asrar would die for her country, people like her were even more proud of Kuwait than we ever were.