Liberation Tower: The Telecom Mast the Invasion Interrupted

Everyone in Kuwait City knows the tall concrete needle on the skyline, but it was meant to carry a different name. When the Ministry of Communications started building it, the plan was to call it the Kuwait Telecommunications Tower. The summer of 1990 changed that, along with everything else.

Ten years to finish

Construction began in 1986. It stopped during the Iraqi occupation, resumed in 1993 and was completed in 1996. In March that year the late Amir, Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, opened it under the name it carries today: Liberation Tower.

The ministry describes the tower as a witness to Kuwaiti resilience and a symbol of the country’s liberation. A building begun to keep the country connected ended up named for the year those connections were cut.

372 metres

The tower stands 372 metres tall, which the ministry notes is 40 metres higher than the Eiffel Tower, and it is Kuwait’s second-tallest building after Al Hamra Tower. At 150 metres up there is a 926-square-metre hall with a full 360-degree view over the capital.

Open for a few days

The first public opening in 1996 lasted only a few days, according to the ministry’s undersecretary Kholoud Al-Shehab, speaking in February 2022. That month the ministry reopened the tower to visitors free of charge for the national holidays, with the hall fitted out with objects from the history of Kuwait’s telecoms and postal services. Mornings were kept for school groups and official visits, evenings for everyone else.

So for most of its life the tower people see every day has been something they look at rather than go up.

Photo: Liberation Tower at night above Kuwait City. Photo by Snap® from Kuwait, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: Ministry of Communications — About the tower (Arabic); Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) — Liberation Tower reopens to the public, 3 February 2022 (Arabic).