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Front Matter}
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$Date{1984}
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Country:     Persian Gulf States
Book:        Persian Gulf States, An Area Study: Introduction
Author:      Laraine Newhouse Carter
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1984


Front Matter

Foreword

     This volume is one of a continuing series of books prepared by Foreign
Area Studies, The American University, under the Country Studies/Area
Handbook Program. The last page of this book provides a listing of other
published studies. Each book in the series deals with a particular foreign
country, describing and analyzing its economic, national security, political,
and social systems and institutions and examining the interrelationships of
those systems and institutions and the ways that they are shaped by cultural
factors. Each study is written by a multidisciplinary team of social
scientists. The authors seek to provide a basic insight and understanding of
the society under observation, striving for a dynamic rather than a static
portrayal of it. The study focuses on historical antecedents and on the
cultural, political, and socioeconomic characteristics that contribute to
cohesion and cleavage within the society. Particular attention is given to the
origins and traditions of the people who make up the society, their dominant
beliefs and values, their community of interests and the issues on which they
are divided, the nature of extent of their involvement with the national
institutions, and their attitudes toward each other and toward the social
system and political order within which they live.

     The contents of the book represent the views, opinions, and findings
of Foreign Area Studies and should not be construed as an official
Department of the Army position, policy, or decision, unless so designated
by other official documentation. The authors have sought to adhere to accepted
standards of scholarly objectivity. Such corrections, additions, and
suggestions for factual or other changes that readers may have will be
welcomed for use in future new editions.

William Evans-Smith
Director, Foreign Area Studies
The American University
Washington, D.C. 20016

Acknowledgments

     The authors are indebted to numerous individuals in various agencies
of the United States government and in international, diplomatic, and
private organizations in Washington, D.C., who gave of their time, research
materials, and special knowledge on Middle Eastern affairs and the countries
covered in this book to provide data and perspective. The authors also wish
to express their appreciation to members of the Foreign Area Studies staff
who contributed to the preparation of the manuscript. These include Denise
Ryan, Andrea T. Merrill, Lenny Granger, and Dorothy M. Lohmann, who edited the
manuscript; Harriett R. Blood and Gustavo Adolfo Mendoza, who prepared the
graphics; and Gilda V. Nimer, who provided valuable bibliographic assistance.
The authors appreciate as well the contributions of Ernest A. Will,
publications manager, and of Charlotte Benton Pochel, who typed the
manuscript. The book was phototypeset by Margaret Quinn. The efforts of Eloise
W. Brandt and Wayne W. Olsen, administrative assistants, are also sincerely
appreciated.

     Special thanks are owed to Marty Ittner, who designed the book cover and
the illustrations on the title page of each chapter. The inclusion of
photographs in this study was made possible by the generosity of various
individuals and public and private organizations. The authors acknowledge
their indebtedness especially to those who provided work not yet published.

Preface

     The overthrow of the shah of Iran in 1979 and the outbreak of the
Iran-Iraq War in September 1980 were matters of major importance to the region
and the world, but the events were of immediate and growing concern to Iran
and Iraq's five small neighbors: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United
Arab Emirates (UAE). In 1981 the rulers of these Arab monarchies joined with
the Saudi Arabian monarchy to form the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The
members of the GCC have since embarked on numerous joint socioeconomic and
political ventures, and they have used the GCC to channel massive financial
and other assistance to Iraq. In addition, by late 1984 the GCC members had
engaged in two joint military exercises, and observers anticipated that
military cooperation within the GCC would probably increase throughout the
1980s.

     Persian Gulf States: Country Studies replaces the Area Handbook for the
Persian Gulf States published in 1977. Like its predecessor, the present book
is an attempt to treat in a compact and objective manner the dominant
historical, social, economic, political, and national security aspects of the
contemporary societies. Sources of information included scholarly books,
journals, and monographs; official reports and documents of government and
international organizations; foreign and domestic newspapers and periodicals;
and interviews with individuals having special competence in the affairs of
the separate countries and of the region. Relatively up-to-date economic data
were available for some countries, but not for others, and the sources were
not always in agreement. Most demographic data should be viewed as estimates.

     Brief comments on some of the more valuable sources for further reading
appear at the conclusion of each chapter; the Bibliography is located in the
back of the book. Measurements are generally given in the metric system; a
conversion table is provided to assist those who are unfamiliar with the
system (see table 1, Appendix A). English usage follows Webster's Ninth New
Collegiate Dictionary.

     The transliteration of Arabic words and phrases posed a problem. For many
of the words-such as Muhammad, Muslim, hadith, and shaykh-the authors followed
a modified version of the system adopted by the United States Board on
Geographic Names and the Permanent Committee on Geographic Names for British
official use, known as the BGN/PCGN system; the modification entails the
omission of diacritical markings and hypens. In numerous instances, however,
the names of persons or places are so well known by another spelling that to
have used the BGN/PCGN system might have caused confusion. For example, the
reader will find Mecca rather than Makkah, Oman rather than Uman, and Doha
rather than Ad Dawhah. In addition, although the five governments officially
reject the use of the term Persian Gulf-as do other Arab governments-and refer
to that body of water as the Arabian Gulf, the authors followed the practice
of the United States Board on Geographic Names by using Persian Gulf or Gulf.

     Arab names are frequently confusing to the Western reader, but they
should be viewed as a genealogical chart. For example, the name of the heir
apparent in Qatar is Shaykh Hamad bin Khalifah Al Thani. The term shaykh is
an honorific that is adopted by the male members of noble families, religious
scholars, and other prestigious individuals; the term bin (or ibn) means "son
of" and Al Thani is the name of the ruling family of Qatar. Hamad, who is
addressed as Shaykh Hamad, is, as the name indicates, the son of Khalifah of
the Al Thani family. Should Hamad feel the need to do so, he could include the
names of his forebears to show his lineage, i.e., Hamad bin Khalifah bin Hamad
bin Abdallah bin Qasim bin Muhammad Al Thani. (The word bint means "daughter
of," and the word bani means "son of," hence tribe or clan. A Gulf Arab woman
rarely takes her husband's name; women's names, like men's, usually include
the father's name and possibly the name of the family, clan, or tribe.)

     Many names-such as Rahim, Rahman, Azam, and 96 others-are designations of
the attributes of God. A common name among peninsular Arabs and of Muslims
elsewhere is Abd al Aziz. Abd al means "servant" or "slave of"; Aziz means
"powerful" of "precious"; the name therefore literally means the slave or
servant of the Powerful (God). The name Muhammad, the Prophet or Messenger of
God, is probably the most widely used name for males in the world.

[See Figure 1.: The Persian Gulf States of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and
the United Arab Emirates, 1984. NOTE-Most boundaries are not defined; boundary
representations shown here areapproximations.]

Introduction

     The security and well-being of the five small Arab countries on which
this book focuses-Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates
(UAE)-continued in the mid-1980s to be inextricably involved with the affairs
and actions of the other littoral states of the Persian Gulf: Iran, Iraq, and
Saudi Arabia. Iraq's invasion of Iran in September 1980 and the ensuing
Iran-Iraq War, therefore, occasioned immediate concern within the other Gulf
governments. The armed forces and military equipment of either belligerent far
surpassed those of the smaller states. In the 1960s and 1970s the
revolutionary, anti-monarchial regime in Baghdad had laid claim to parts of
Kuwait, and the shah of Iran had asserted Iranian rights to Bahrain and parts
of other Gulf states (see Disputes and Perceived Threats, ch. 7.) The
fundamentalist and expansionist Shia (see Glossary) religious leaders who
seized power in Tehran in 1979 in the wake of the shah's downfall not only did
not repudiate the shah's territorial claims but also repeatedly proclaimed
their animosity toward the Sunni (see Glossary) monarchies across the Gulf,
monarchies that they depicted as pro-American and un-Islamic. Whereas the
oil-importing countries of the world were concerned primarily with the impact
of the war on oil supplies and prices, the oil-exporting states of the Arabian
Peninsula feared that a victory by either Iran or Iraq might lead to a
military threat to their oil fields and to their survival and independence.

     In the mid-1980s an estimated 60 percent of the world's proven oil
reserves were located in or offshore of the eight littoral states, and most of
their oil exports were shipped to world markets through the Strait of Hormuz,
the choke point on the sealanes to the Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean (see
fig. 21). The six societies on the peninsula possessed about three-fifths of
the region's reserves but only a small fraction of its population. The
populations of Iran and Iraq-over 40 million and 14 million,
respectively-dwarfed those of the societies on the peninsula. In addition, the
small amirates on the western shore of the Gulf included within their
boundaries relatively huge numbers of aliens. Although estimates varied in
mid-1984 foreigners accounted for nearly 60 percent of Kuwait's population of
about 1.5 million, almost 80 percent of the UAE's 1.2 million, and between 60
and 80 percent of Qatar's approximately 270,000. Nearly 30 percent of
Bahrain's 395,000 were foreigners, as were between 25 and 48 percent of Oman's
estimated 950,000. Moreover, significant percentages of the populace in
Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE consisted of Shia, thus constituting, in
the opinions of the various governments, potential fifth columns for the
Iranian ayatollahs (see Social Systems of the Gulf Countries, ch. 1).

     In January 1981, only four months after the outbreak of the war, the
monarchs on the peninsula agreed to coordinate and unify their economic,
political, social, and defense policies in a formal way. On May 24, 1981, the
six heads of state met in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE, and signed a
charter establishing the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Most foreign
observers assumed that a major goal of the signers would be to achieve a close
military relationship, but the early efforts of the GCC members were directed
largely toward socioeconomic cooperation and joint financial enterprises. In
addition, the members used the GCC to channel huge financial subventions to
Iraq (see Organization and Structure, Appendix C). By late 1984 the GCC
members reportedly had transferred in excess of US$35 billion to the Iraqi
regime (see Impact of the Iran-Iraq War, ch. 7).

     Although the armed forces of some of the member states engaged in brief,
bilateral military training missions, it was not until October 1983 that
military units from all GCC members participated in a joint military exercise.
The operation, called Shield of the Peninsula (Dir al Jizira), was held in the
UAE, and the defense officials and military commanders subsequently declared
that the exercises had been an excellent training and learning experience (see
Military Aspects of the Gulf Cooperation Council, ch. 7).

     During 1984 the senior military commanders and defense ministers met with
some frequency. In mid-September the GCC defense and foreign ministers held a
joint ministerial conference at a Saudi military base in southwest Saudi
Arabia. The official press release after the meeting declared that the results
of the proceedings would remain secret, but the government-owned Saudi news
agency announced that the ministers had "forged . . . a joint defense policy"
for review by the Supreme Council, i.e., the GCC heads of state, in a meeting
scheduled for November 27-29, 1984, in Kuwait. A Kuwaiti newspaper reported
that Kuwait's defense minister had stated that the defense policy provided for
a joint naval command center at the Saudi Gulf port of Al Jubayl and that the
center would be tied into a communications and command system linking the
armed forces of the member states. The defense minister was also quoted as
asserting that a "GCC joint deployment force" consisting of two brigades would
man an air defense system at Shuayb al Batin, about 360 kilometers north of
Jiddah, Saudi Arabia.

     Between October 10 and October 23, units of the GCC armed forces carried
out another joint military exercise-Shield of the Peninsula II. The manuevers
were held in Saudi Arabia near Hafar al Batin, the site of King Khalid
Military City; the hosts built a huge tent city for the participants and
observers, including a command and communications center and a field hospital.
According to official press reports, the exercise focused on joint planning
and a testing of joint command, communications, and coordination in simulated
combat conditions. The field exercises included parachute drops of men and
equipment, night operations, and "defense and attack operations involving the
use of live ammunition by land and aerial forces."

     In late October and early November various GCC ministerial councils and
special bodies held numerous meetings in preparation for the Supreme Council
meeting, which was usually described as the fifth summit conference. These
conferences included meetings of the oil and mineral resources ministers and
of the GCC's Finance and Economic Cooperation Committee and the Gulf
Investment Corporation (see Economic Cooperation, Appendix C). The defense,
foreign, and planning ministers also held meetings in preparation for the
summit conference.

     The official briefings at the conclusion of the summit conference quite
understandably focused on the decisions reached. The heads of state extended
the appointment of the GCC secretary general, Abdullah Yakub Bisharah, to
November 1988 and confirmed that the sixth summit conference would be held in
Muscat, Oman, in November 1985. The council decided to continue financial and
other aid to Bahrain and Oman at unspecified levels. It also approved
continued study and planning for an interstate natural gas pipeline system
and a GCC railroad. The council agreed that nationals of one state may buy
and own real property in any other member state. The heads of state endorsed
the continuation and expansion of joint purchases and stockpiling of various
foodstuffs, and they requested early adoption of a common tariff to encourage
and protect domestic industries.

     The Supreme Council nevertheless again failed to reach agreement on a
comprehensive defense policy. According to official reports, the heads of
state were extensively briefed by their defense advisers on the status of the
Iran-Iraq War. They were acutely aware that during the first four years of the
war perhaps as many as 900,000 combatants had been killed, wounded, or
captured, a number almost equal to the population of Oman and larger than the
combined populations of Bahrain and Qatar. They were also briefed on the
ongoing Soviet occupation and war in Afghanistan, including the upgrading
and expansion of two airfields in that country, one near Herat and the other
some 400 kilometers to the south, and the fact that the air fields lie only
900 to 1,400 kilometers from the oil fields, ports, and other installations
on the Arab side of the Gulf.

     To the disappointment of some members, the heads of state agreed only on
the establishment of a "strike force" that will go to the assistance of a
member under clear threat of external aggression. According to a GCC
spokesman, the force will consist of units in each member's armed forces
that are to be ready to respond to a request for help. The Supreme Council
failed to adopt the "joint defense policy" that the defense ministers had
drafted, and it made no public reference to a unified command for the strike
force or to a joint naval command.

     According to informed observers, some of the smaller states wished to
move ahead on joint defense planning and consultation but were unwilling to
enter into a formal defense agreement that called for a joint command in which
Saudi Arabia would perforce be the dominant participant. In addition, Oman's
continuing military association with the United States and Kuwait's August
1984 purchase of US$327 million of air defense equipment from the Soviet
Union-and the presence in Kuwait of 10 Soviet technicians to set up the
equipment-were indications of divergent approaches. And the UAE, which had
maintained close commercial relations with Iran, reportedly posed objections
to a formal joint military organization that might appear to be oriented
almost exclusively against Iran.

     The ongoing activities within the GCC, particularly the constantly
expanding socioeconomic programs, were illustrative of the vast changes
of the preceding half-century. As recently as the 1930s the history and nature
of the scattered societies were little known to most of the world and were
of interest primarily to a few academics, diplomats, and geologists in search
of oil. The noble families that ruled the thinly populated ports and
oases-the inhabitants of which were overwhelmingly Arab and, with the
exception of Bahrain, predominantly Sunni-were heavily dependent on
subventions from the British Indian government (see The Founding of the Modern
Gulf Polities: Gulf States in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, ch. 1).
The meager natural resources then available made possible only subsistence
economies. Medical services were almost nonexistent, and education, with a few
exceptions, was limited to rudimentary religious instruction and a few years
of reading, writing, and arithmetic for the sons of the few prosperous
merchant families and the noble clans. As a result of treaties signed in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Britain possessed responsibility for
the defense, foreign affairs, and, albeit in varying degrees, internal
security of the several political entities.

     In the aftermath of World War II these isolated, tribally oriented
societies began to experience the first aspects of truly revolutionary
change. In 1951 Britain and Oman concluded a treaty in which Britain
acknowledged Oman's status as a fully sovereign nation. Kuwait severed its
British connection in 1961 and in its Constitution the following year
proclaimed the state a constitutional monarchy. In 1968 the British government
announced its intention to reduce its military commitments east of Suez and,
specifically, to terminate its treaty relationships with and obligations
to the shaykhdoms on the Gulf. By the end of 1971 Bahrain and Qatar had
achieved their independence as traditional monarchies, and the UAE had
established itself as a federation of traditionally governed amirates (see
The Twentieth Century, ch. 1). And in 1970 Oman became the Sultanate of
Oman in the wake of a coup d'etat in which the sultan was deposed and exiled
by his son, Qaboos bin Said bin Taimur Al Bu Said, who in late 1984 continued
to rule as the sultan of Oman.

     By the mid-1970s each of the states had embarked on sweeping
socioeconomic programs that were being paid for with earnings from their
oil exports, the prices of which were steadily escalating (see Appendix B).
Their revenues varied greatly; Kuwait's were enormous and those of Qatar
and the UAE also substantial, whereas those of Bahrain were small and
declining and Oman's were modest but growing. Nevertheless, the flow of
petrodollars resulted in change on an unprecedented scale. The construction
of hospitals, schools, universities, mosques, desalination plants, highways,
airports, hotels, housing, and petrochemical plants fueled a building boom.
Hundreds of thousands of foreigners were imported to build the new
infrastructure and to staff the social, educational, and technical plants,
radically altering the ethnic and religious composition of the societies.
Indians, Iranians, Pakistanis, Palestinians, Egyptians, Europeans, and East
Asians filled positions from the most menial to the most highly skilled and
professional. In the three richest states-Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE-the
indigenous Sunni Arabs became minorities in their own societies.

     In most of the states the foreigners were subject to numerous rigid
controls. In Kuwait, for example, foreigners could not vote, own land or
other real property, or engage in specified business, and for all practical
purposes they were denied any chance of citizenship. Although the details
varied, the other governments imposed similar controls on their alien
populations, including provisions that the foreigners must depart the state
on completion of the contract period. The newly rich amirs created welfare
states in terms of social and medical services and education, and the
foreigners generally enjoyed access to these facilities. In the fall of 1984,
however, Kuwait announced that henceforth foreigners would be charged fees
for services, and there were indications that the other states would adopt
similar procedures. In addition, the UAE and Qatar enforced guidelines and
procedures designed to reduce the number of illegal expatriates and to force
workers to return to their homelands when their work permits expired.

     Until the late 1970s the ruling families and their advisers tended to
identify radical, secular Arab foreigners as the preeminent threat to their
paternalistic yet absolutist regimes. They regularly endorsed and generously
funded the efforts of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to secure
a Palestinian homeland, but they also rigorously monitored and controlled
the activities of Palestinians residing in their countries, and they allowed
almost none to become citizens. During the period that Gamal Abdul Nasser
dominated Egypt and was the popular hero of the Arab world, Arab foreigners
employed in the Gulf states who became too ardent and vocal in their advocacy
of the policies of Nasser and his fervent republicanism could expect to be
expelled. The regimes were also sensitive to the activities and propaganda of
the communist government of the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (Yemen
[Aden]).

     In 1979 and 1980 the increasingly strident and bellicose pronouncements
of Iran's new ruler, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, provoked considerable
alarm within the Arab governments of the Gulf. Riots by Shia in Saudi Arabia's
oil field region in 1979 and 1980, and an attempted coup by Shia in Bahrain
in 1981, provided evidence that many Shia were receptive to Khomeini's
advocacy of Islamic revolutions. A new element was introduced in December 1983
when a group of Iraqi Shia, whose members reportedly had been trained in Iran,
bombed United States, French, and Kuwaiti offices in Kuwait's capital. In
December 1984 members of the same group hijacked a Kuwaiti commercial airliner
and forced the pilot to land at the Tehran airport. The hijackers said that
they would blow up the aircraft unless the government of Kuwait released the
17 people whom Kuwait had arrested and convicted of the bombing incidents
the previous year. Six days later Iranian personnel entered the aircraft,
captured the hijackers without trouble, and released the passengers and crew.
By that time, however, the terrorists had killed four passengers-two of whom
were United States government officials-and abused and tortured others.
Although Kuwait and other Gulf governments expressed official satisfaction
with Iran's actions, several officials privately suggested that, because the
terrorists had been trained in Iran, the Iranian government bore at least some
responsibility for the incidents.

     During the early 1980s the Gulf monarchs became aware of the serious
threat to the stability of their regimes posed by indigenous groups usually
described in the Western press as Islamic fundamentalists. In an article in
the Fall 1984 issue of Foreign Affairs, Professor James A. Bill reported that
one of the amirs privately commented that he "would rather deal with 10
communists than one Muslim fundamentalist." By the mid-1980s the activities of
several Sunni revivalist groups had become a matter of utmost concern to the
rulers.

     An example of fundamentalist agitation occurred in late 1984 in Kuwait. A
member of a fundamentalist student organization at the University of Kuwait
asked Shaykh Abd al Aziz Baz, the senior member of Saudi Arabia's ulama (see
Glossary), for his opinion on the university's coeducational system. Shaykh
Baz-who has embarrassed the Saudi government by insisting that the world is
flat-opined that women who attend a coeducational school are no better than
prostitutes. He also castigated musicians and asserted that it is un-Islamic
to photograph any living creature. Copies of the shaykh's judgment were
circulated in Kuwait's mosques, and when the government launched an inquiry
into the event, various fundamentalist groups charged that the government was
attacking Islam.

     Professor Bill uses the term Populist Islam (Islam al Shaabi) to describe
the revivalist mass movement that is challenging Establishment Islam (Al Islam
as Rasmi), the traditional fundamentalism of the ruling families. (Other
scholars have used such phrases as "Islam from below" and "Islam from above"
or "Islam of the ruled" and "Islam of the rulers" in discussing the same
phenomenon.) Some adherents of Populist Islam are basically reformers, whereas
others are intent on re-creating the totality of Islamic dominance and
influence that they believe existed at the time of the Prophet Muhammad.
Professor Bill reports that the various groups nonetheless share a rejection
of Shia beliefs, a dislike of the governments of the region, and an animosity
toward the United States. The real or perceived close relation between the
ruling families and the United States prompts some fundamentalists to refer to
Establishment Islam as Al Islam al Amriki (Islam Americana).

     By the mid-1980s, to have a "pro-American" reputation was to risk being
labeled as inadequately pro-Arab and, at least by implication, soft on Zionism
and Israel. A majority of fundamentalists and secularists were united in a
belief that the United States neither would nor could pursue a policy in the
Middle East to which Israel was opposed. Put another way, Gulf Arabs tended to
believe that Israel's foreign and defense policies and practices were endorsed
by the United States. When in July 1980 the Israeli Knesset (parliament)
formally annexed East (Arab) Jerusalem-known to Muslims as Al Quds and sacred
to them because of its association with the Prophet-Arab Muslims were outraged
that the United States did not force Israel to rescind an act that the United
Nations (UN) Security Council declared "legally invalid." The Israeli
government's policy of encouraging and subsidizing Jewish settlements in Gaza,
the West Bank, and the Golan Heights continued to be bitterly resented by Gulf
Arabs in the mid-1980s. The issue of the occupied territories was further
inflamed in December 1981 when the Knesset extended Israeli "laws,
jurisdiction, and administration" to the Golan Heights. Although the United
States government criticized this de facto annexation, it joined Israel in
casting the only two votes against a UN General Assembly resolution condemning
the act, thus alienating moderate as well as extremist Arabs.

     The growing feeling of ill will toward the United States created a
dilemma for the Gulf monarchs, who had, after all, observed the overthrow of
several neighboring monarchies in recent years. Their economies remained
closely linked to the West in general and the United States in particular.
Despite the Soviet Union's pro-Arab posture in the confrontation between the
Arabs and Israel, only Kuwait maintained diplomatic relations with Moscow, and
only a fraction of the foreign trade of the Gulf states involved the Soviet
Union and its East European allies. Nevertheless, some observers feared that
in the future at least some of the rulers will feel compelled to convey a
public image of loosening or even ending the American connection.

December 28, 1984                       Richard F. Nyrop