FOUR minutes of terror during the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait changed Laila al-Qadhi's life. After troops at a checkpoint threatened to take away her daughters, her thoughts turned to the exiled Kuwaiti government living in the comfort of the Sheraton hotel in Taif, Saudi Arabia.
Al-Qadhi, 37, an English lecturer at Kuwait University, vowed she would never again fear the ruling al-Sabah family, and that after liberation she would champion the rights of women and the underprivileged.
Last week, as Danah, 6, and Reem, 5, played safely at their mother's feet, al-Qadhi kept her pledge. "Having faced death at the end of a gun barrel, and the prospect of losing my children, how can I now be afraid of people who spent the occupation in the safety of a five-star hotel?"
Al-Qadhi's dissatisfaction is shared by thousands of Kuwaiti women, even if most are afraid to voice their concern publicly. Those who faced death, torture, detention and rape are no longer prepared to accept their position in the country's male-dominated society.
They have become Kuwait's "suffragettes", and hope their role in the liberation struggle will gain them the reward British women won after the first world war. They are demanding the vote for the first time and the right to stand for government.
"If women had been in the government, Kuwait might not have played its part in helping a monster like Saddam become a hero," said al-Qadhi. "After the experiences women have been through, we cannot allow ourselves the old complacent attitude of simply accepting any crumbs that are thrown to us. Those who have stayed while the cowards fled deserve to participate in government."
During the seven-month occupation, al-Qadhi smuggled food and money to foreigners in hiding and cared for two girls aged eight and nine who had been turned out of a foster home by the Iraqis. "You didn't have to carry a gun to be a freedom fighter," she said.
Because women were considered less of a threat by Iraqi troops, they were allowed greater freedom of movement. They used it to smuggle weapons under their abbayas (black gowns) and to plot Iraqi troop movements.
Many women forged identification papers and female doctors transformed the basements of their homes into emergency medical centres to treat wounded resistance fighters. Some women even took to the streets with guns and bombs.
Outside the Kuwaiti Association to Defend War Victims, Nahla crouched beside her white Toyota Prelude and pointed to the bumper she had used to kill an Iraqi soldier. It had been a calculated act. Just two weeks into the occupation, she had asked her brother how she could assist the resistance. His advice had been to find a single soldier with his back to her in the street and to run him down.
Nahla, 21, a student who asked for her surname not to be published, said: "When I saw a soldier, I speeded up and hit him at about 100km an hour. He went over my bonnet and afterwards lay motionless on the ground. Before doing it I thought, 'This man has come to kill my family and to take my freedom away.' But afterwards I cried and felt terrible about what I had done."
Today Nahla and many others pose the same question: how can women who took such risks during the occupation now go without a voice in their homeland?
Nabila al-Taywi, 20, an Iraqi-born nursing student who has lived in Kuwait for 15 years, worked in the resistance with her Kuwaiti fiance. Together they blew up an empty Iraqi tank two weeks after the invasion, but were arrested later in August and detained for nearly seven months. "All women ask for is respect and basic rights. We have been treated as equals by men during the occupation and ask only for the same now," she said.
The women's movement has discovered a martyr in Asrar al-Qabandi, 32, who came from a prominent Kuwaiti family.
According to friends and resistance sources, she passed information to and from the exiled al-Sabahs via a satellite telephone. She was arrested by the Iraqis and later killed from a single axe blow to her head. Her body, which also had three bullet wounds in the chest, was wrapped in a cloth and left on her parents' lawn.
Hind al-Bahar, a doctor and close friend, said she hoped al-Qabandi's death had not been in vain. "She was a strong, aggressive woman who loved her country," she said. "It would be sad if things didn't change for women now. It is the perfect chance to contemplate building a new society."
Kuwaiti women are not totally oppressed. They have greater freedoms than women in many other Middle East countries, notably Saudi Arabia. They are permitted to drive, wear Western clothes and run businesses. Equal education opportunities lead many to prominent jobs in teaching, medicine, law and the civil service.
Yet, apart from not having the vote, women are discriminated against in other ways. Kuwaiti women who are single or married to foreigners have trouble finding houses. This is not the case for men in the same situation.
Despite public pressure for change and the government's pledge to bring democracy to the country, the advancement of women's rights is by no means guaranteed. Though the campaign has some influential supporters, including the minister of planning, the emir, Sheikh Jaber al-Sabah, is known to oppose dramatic change.
The best hope for women rests in an early recall of the national assembly, dissolved in 1986, and a new bill to extend the vote to women and men who cannot trace their ancestry in Kuwait back to 1920 and are therefore also deprived of a vote.
So far the women's movement lacks the organisation and leadership of the British suffragettes of 80 years ago, though if a woman is to emerge in the mould of Emmeline Pankhurst, it could be al-Qadhi.
Intelligent, articulate, politically aware and dedicated to her cause, she may yet be persuaded to interrupt her career to campaign full time for the sake of her sex. "If we don't change now, the answer to the question 'Is Kuwait worth dying for?' has to be 'No'," she said.
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