Half a million stranded in the sand.

• Position: Refugees from Iraqi invasion of Kuwait - Kuwait: The Crisis - Cover Story

More than half a million foreigners, mostly Asians, became innocent victims of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

Infants, children, women and old and infirm individuals--primarily from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, the Philippines and Sri Lanka--who lived in Kuwait and fled that country following the Iraqi move, were trapped for weeks on end in makeshift refugee camps, either on the Iraq-Jordan border or in Jordan. Foreign workers living in Iraq also suffered the same fate.

Painting a gloomy picture of their situation, the UN Disaster Relief Organization (UNDRO) said they were "surviving on minimal food rations without basic sanitation or shelter, in soaring temperatures and forceful desert winds". Some died in pitiful conditions in the camps.

However, thanks to a vast international effort involving the UN, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the countries of their origin, most of them had been able to return to their homelands by the third week of October.

UN agencies were working in the area "to contain human...