evidence: Volunteer Kuwaiti divers have been busily cleaning up their country’s polluted seabed for nearly a decade, but the debris they remove is not just old shoes and tyres. Guns, canons and shells litter the crystal blue waters off the island of Um al-Maradim, which served as a military base for the Iraqis during the first Gulf war. Um al-Maradim's sandy beaches and turquoise lagoons used to be the jewel of the Persian Gulf. But in 1990, Iraqi troops arrived and it became their military base for the invasion of Kuwait. The Iraqi troops dug trenches on the pristine beaches and surrounded the island with barbed wire. The troops surrendered on January 28, 1991, but the small tropical paradise that was Um al-Maradim still bears the scars of their short stay today. [...] Um al-Maradim was at the forefront of Iraqi military manoeuvres, to the detriment of its wildlife and seabed. Retreating soldiers poured oil into the sea allegedly as part of a revenge strategy to damage Kuwaitan territory as they they left. The coral reef sustained permanent damage. Weapons and ammunition were dumped by Iraqi military ships as troops fled the island at the end of the war.