Since the beginning of time, Arab women have unified families, grounding them with the pillars of faith and community. Now, marking the historic reunification of the GCC countries, royals from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE come together for the first time in four years, in our February issue, to show their people – and the world – that they are one. Below, meet HH Sheikha Intisar AlSabah, the Kuwaiti royal giving hope and light to victims of trauma.
When Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, HH Sheikha Intisar AlSabah’s life was forever changed. During a week that would live in infamy, the Kuwaiti royal fled her family’s home. As bombs targeted a site near her hideout, she found herself dancing and singing for her two small daughters, in the hope that her positive energy would somehow conceal the destruction and horror just a few steps away. Flashbacks from those days still haunt her. One such indelible memory involves stumbling upon an Iraqi soldier’s lifeless body. She remembers how shocked she was by her own stoicism when the man’s helmet was pulled back and she realized he was dead.

The princess eventually fled with her children to Saudi Arabia with just a few random items of clothing and forged passports. She would spend decades tackling the symptoms of her post-traumatic stress disorder, eventually making it her life’s work to help other victims of war overcome the same mental health condition through her eponymous foundation, founded in 2018.

While the breakthrough reunification of the GCC sees the renewal of diplomatic and economic ties with neighboring Qatar, the fighting that endures in Yemen, Syria, and Libya continues to perpetuate the mental health crisis. “We have never had so many wars in the Arab world. I think our region has the most refugees, the most displaced people, and the most violence,” she says, adding that all Gulf nations are connected in some way to the ongoing destruction. “Leaders fight, people suffer,” she comments. Yet Sheikha Intisar is hopeful and wishes that the GCC countries coming together in unity will promote peace and healing in the region.

At 94, her father, HH Sheikh Salem Al-Ali Al-Salem Al-Sabah, is the commander of the Kuwaiti National Guard and the most senior serving member of the royal family. Her mother, who married him in her early teens, continued to study nights in pursuit of her own education. As a young woman, HH Sheikha Intisar says she was undeterred in pursuing her own ambitions. After attending Kuwait University and studying physics, she also married young at 20 and had two children by the age of 21. When her youngest daughter, who is now 21, entered pre-school, Sheikha Intisar began her career as a board member of the Refrigeration Industries and Storage Company, one of the first air-conditioning companies in the Gulf. In 2011, she founded Lulua Publishing and Lulua Production House, dedicated to promoting mental health, wellness, and self-empowerment.