When in a matter of hours, and with no prior announcement, the Kuwaiti police along with American and British troops closed access to the restricted zone leading to the Iraqi border at Mutla’ police post. Several reporters found themselves cut off from their stories near the border.

The identification cards issued by the Kuwaiti Ministry of Information were suddenly canceled.

“This is no good any more. You have to turn back. No entry,” a smiling police captain told Arab News at Mutla’.

“You need a permit from the Ministry of Defense,” he continued. When prodded for more information regarding these passes, his response was: “They are not issuing permits.”

At that, reporters from LBC Television, Al-Siyasiyah, Associated Press, Saudi Research and Publishing Company and French Television converged on the side of the road, plotting how to bypass the checkpoint and get to a farm near the Iraqi border in the restricted zone, where arrangements had been made with the farmer during a previous trip to the area. After four hours in a four-wheel drive mode navigating the desert backways with head lights off to avoid detection, using night vision goggles — to no avail — the journalists agreed it was a hopeless task and returned to their respective hotels to try again the following day.

Many journalists are now sitting in their hotels in Kuwait city waiting for the restricted area to reopen, wishing they were embedded with the troops, pondering how to get to Iraq with the borders closed on all sides.

In the lobby of one of the hotels yesterday, a group journalists were contemplating a non-military covert invasion of Iraq. Several ideas were thrown around: Renting a boat from Kuwait City and using it to approach Um Qasr on the Arabian Gulf, or paying desert nomads or Bedouins to lead them through the back ways.

Despite the frustration of sitting about writing feature stories while real news was happening just 120 kilometers to the north, loud laughter could be heard as the ideas for the journalistic invasion became more and more preposterous.

As the journalists here sit enviously watching the embeds on CNN, air raid sirens break the monotony every few hours and send them scrambling for their gas masks and chemical suits, rushing down to the shelter in their hotels as long-time residents of Kuwait watch, laugh and point at them.

However, as the sirens blared again and again, rushing down to the shelter was also beginning to get dull.