Weeping, Flag-Waving Kuwaitis Return Home From Exile : Gulf: The government launches its program to bring refugees back, and 401 emotional--if well-heeled--citizens step off the first flight.

Piercing a soot-choked sky, Kuwait Airways Flight 5804 landed at the battered Kuwait International Airport from Cairo on Saturday, delivering hundreds of weeping, flag-waving Kuwaitis to their homes after a long--and comfortable--exile.

With the 747 jet parked by a hangar that had been burned and gutted by Iraqi troops, passenger Adnan Baharani stepped to the Tarmac, slipped to his knees and kissed the ground. Overcome with emotion, he had to be coaxed onward by airline employees.

“Whether Kuwait is ready or not, we wanted to come here to our country,” said Baharani’s sister, Zenab, a high school social worker and one of 401 well-heeled refugees on the flight.

More than two months after the troops of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein were driven from Kuwait, the government’s campaign to bring its citizens home was officially launched Saturday with a free charter service for Kuwaitis scattered throughout the Persian Gulf region and Europe. The government gave Kuwaitis a month to return, starting this weekend, or they would risk losing a monthly paid-in-exile allowance that in some cases reached $4,000 per family.

On Saturday, five flights brought 1,703 people, and another seven flights were scheduled for today. Many more of the exiles are arriving overland, driving from Saudi Arabia in Range Rovers and Mercedes-Benz sedans packed full of clothing, childrens’ toys and appliances.

Many Kuwaitis are returning to see firsthand, for the first time, the damage Iraqi troops inflicted on their homes and neighborhoods. But others, discouraged by the smoke from oil well fires that fill Kuwait’s skies or the danger of unexploded land mines, are delaying their journey home.

The return of its people to Kuwait is a key test of the tiny nation’s powers of recuperation and will undoubtedly shape the course of Kuwait’s future.

It presents a new set of problems for a struggling Kuwaiti government and a turbulent Kuwaiti society: Some of those who endured seven months of occupation expressed resentment toward the new arrivals; meanwhile, public utilities such as water, lights and telephones--barely restored for current residents--may not be available for newcomers.

In the next month, the government hopes to receive as many as 15,000 returning Kuwaitis each day, a goal considered unrealistic in some circles.

About 300,000 Kuwaiti citizens fled the emirate after Iraqi tanks rolled into Kuwait last Aug. 2, or were out of the country when the invasion took place. At least 100,000 more left after allied forces drove Iraqi troops from the wrecked capital.

The government has yet to announce whether thousands of foreign-born residents will be permitted back into the country. Some have reportedly been denied entry as the Kuwaiti government tries to complete a registry of foreign-born residents.

At the Kuwait International Airport on Saturday, many of the returning Kuwaitis said they were aware of the damage done to their homeland. They had followed reports on television and were prepared.

“We hope we can build again, make (Kuwait) even more beautiful than before,” said Baharani, who like most of the exiles had spent nine or 10 months away.

“We are tired of traveling,” said Sawjia Ali, a housewife with four children in tow who was met by her husband, a police officer.

In addition to money from their government, many of the Kuwaiti citizens who lived abroad during the occupation were given housing by host countries such as Saudi Arabia.

Aware, perhaps, that Kuwait is still far from normal, tens of thousands of Kuwaitis are ignoring the deadline and staying away. Some have children in school elsewhere, but many have little confidence in the government’s ability to provide a normal life.

“There has to be services rendered so the citizens feel like there is government, an authority for citizens to turn to,” said Suleiman Mutawa, the government’s planning minister until the Cabinet was overhauled last month.

Others say they will return in the fall--summer months were traditionally a time for taking vacations from Kuwait.

The influx--if it materializes--will strain services such as water and electricity that are still not fully restored and pose a greater challenge to a government already under criticism for slow response to the problems encountered when the country was liberated from the Iraqis.

So far, electricity and water are available in most parts of Kuwait city, and food shortages are generally a thing of the past. Nearly 100 of an estimated 600 oil well fires have been extinguished, but thick black smoke still hovers on Kuwait’s horizon.

In one sign of returning normalcy, traffic jams began developing last week in Kuwait city. With traffic lights functioning at only some intersections, however, a potentially fatal game of chicken is played at some of the crossroads.

Work crews have started appearing in some parts of the city, picking up trash and sweeping streets, but many neighborhoods are still scarred by ransacked homes and buildings looted by Iraqi troops.

One week ago, the downtown shopping area resembled a ghost town on what would have been a bustling Saturday afternoon. The roofs on stores were caved in and offices were boarded shut. The smell of sun-stewed trash filled the air. A week later, however, some stores had opened, and cars began filling downtown streets.

Even before Saturday’s program of charter flights began, Kuwaitis were venturing homeward with mixed results.

May Issa, 51, director of one of the country’s leading bilingual Arabic-English schools, returned to Kuwait but then decided to go back to Bahrain where the telephones worked and made it easier for her to communicate with teachers and other employees scattered all over the world whom she must now recruit to reopen her school.

“I am depressed to see my country this way,” she said. “The physical thing is nothing. It’s what is behind the physical, how the country will get back on its feet. I don’t know how it will come back.”

As thousands begin to return, tension may increase between those who stayed behind under occupation rule and those who lived a relatively comfortable life abroad.

Those who chose exile are sometimes spoken of as cowards by those who stayed behind, who in turn are sometimes viewed with suspicion for contacts they may have had with the Iraqi occupiers.

“I feel sorry for those who left,” said one businessman. “They lost something. (They lost) the ability to speak passionately about the country, what it needs.”

Bedour Fadalla, a housewife and owner of a chain of boutiques who lived through the occupation, said she has trouble understanding how a Kuwaiti could leave his or her country. But she is prepared to greet those who return. “I will meet them with honor and pride,” she said. “They will understand my pride, and they will feel shame.”