TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/031891/0318000.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 26.2 KB | 530 lines

                51                                                            WORLD, Page 28

KUWAIT

Chaos and Revenge


By MICHAEL KRAMER/KUWAIT CITY -- With reporting by Lara Marlowe/
Kuwait City


    Kuwait is burning -- physically, politically and
spiritually. Kuwait City, where 80% of the prewar population
of 2 million lived, is a sad, lonely town. The skyscrapers are
abandoned, their ground-level shops have been looted, and
nearly everything is covered with an oily soot, a reminder of
the ongoing conflagration outside the capital -- the hundreds
of oil-well fires depleting the nation's lifeblood at a rate
far greater than anyone had predicted.

    Wherever one travels, nerves are raw, tensions deep. Many
of those who remained while Iraq pillaged and raped their land
resent those who fled, and sizable numbers in both camps want
nothing less than the wholesale expulsion of Kuwait's
Palestinians, despite evidence that most opposed Saddam's
perfidy.

    If one complaint binds all, it is rage at Kuwait's
government, which had months to plan for the nation's recovery
but has so far performed incompetently. Many who had been
effectively shut out of the nation's political life organized
themselves admirably to survive Iraq's occupation;
understandably, they now want a say in public affairs. Across
all groups and all issues, the question since Kuwait has been
freed is simple: Freed for what?


    At 3:30 in the morning on Sunday, March 3, in the shadow of
Kuwait City's Maryam Mosque, a Kuwaiti resistance member who
calls himself Mike leaned his French-made automatic rifle into
the chest of his childhood friend Mustafa al-Kubaisi. He
whispered, "This is your last night," and fired. Unsatisfied
by the effect of the single shot, Mike used his 7.65-mm MAB
pistol to put another round into Mustafa's head.

    Mustafa al-Kubaisi, who was 29, was born in Kuwait to Iraqi
parents. He worked as an overseas telephone operator and
enjoyed the cradle-to-grave benefits of Kuwait's welfare state,
but he could never be sure of his status. Because of his
parents' Iraqi origins, and despite his having been born in
Kuwait, he had to have a work permit to remain in the country.
Naturalization, common throughout the world, is virtually
impossible in Kuwait.

    Mike, 33, is the son of wealthy Kuwaitis. He graduated from
San Francisco State University and trained to be an airline
pilot, but he quit to manage his family's real estate empire.
Mike's house is within shouting distance of Mustafa's, and he
recalls being something of a "big brother" to Mustafa. Mike
advised him about work and girls and gave Mustafa rides in his
Ferrari. He also supplemented Mustafa's salary. "Nothing big,"
says Mike, "but on a fairly regular basis."

    When Iraq invaded Kuwait, Mike lay low. But then another
childhood friend, a woman named Esrar al-Ghabandi, was killed.
Unlike Mike, Esrar had joined the resistance immediately. After
Esrar had made four trips to Saudi Arabia to deliver
information about Iraqi troop movements in Kuwait, Mike and
some friends discovered her mutilated body. Esrar had been axed
in the head and shot seven times in her breasts and vagina.
Within days, Mike and his friends formed their own resistance
cell, which operated apart from the more organized efforts of
other Kuwaitis. They met frequently to plan strategy, and
Mustafa was usually present. "Why not?" says Mike. "We had known
each other all our lives. I didn't think we had any secrets."

    But Mustafa had one. As he once confessed to another
neighbor, Mustafa had always resented his uncertain status.
Whether he also was a longtime spy for Iraq's secret police,
as Mike believes, is debatable. What Mike and several other
resistance members know for certain is that Kuwaiti army
officers operating with Mike's cell began to disappear whenever
Mustafa took part in the group's deliberations. "So we began
watching his movements," says Mike. "He was informing. There was
no doubt."

    When the resistance was certain Mustafa was aiding the
Iraqis, Mike invited him to stay at his home. "That way I could
better keep an eye on him," says Mike. "I used him to help me
get through checkpoints and to move some weapons around. It was
minor stuff, and it bound us more closely together. We kept the
important things from him, of course, but I am sure he thought
he was continuing to penetrate us." Shortly after the
liberation, Mustafa was arrested by the Kuwaiti intelligence
service and removed to the local jail. "But he was mine," says
Mike, "and one night I prevailed on the guards to turn him over
to me. I wanted to kill him myself. I cooked him a last meal
and told him I was going to turn him in as a POW. I told him
he would be traded for allied prisoners. I told him to get his
things, and we walked to a wall about a hundred yards from my
house, which is where I did it. And that was it. I have no
regrets. He was also helping to run Palestinians who informed
on Kuwaitis. How could I let him go?"


    When the allies first rode into Kuwait City, on Feb. 26,
they were led by Arab forces, though not by Kuwaitis. Earlier
in the campaign, a Kuwaiti soldier killed a surrendering Iraqi
and shoved his body into a ditch. "From that moment," says a
U.S. military officer, "we were determined to restrain the
Kuwaitis," and American special-forces troops now regularly
accompany Kuwaiti patrols. But the resistance still operates.
Mike says he knows of at least 80 "proven collaborators" who
have been executed. "The word has gone out to be calm for now,"
says a resistance leader, "to cool it until the journalists
leave."

    "That's right," confirms a senior Western diplomat. "The
government is operating with a light hand. The country is an
arsenal. Everyone has weapons. They turn some in, to be
perceived as cooperating with the call to lay down arms, but
everyone is keeping some -- just as they are keeping the names
of some collaborators to themselves when turning over their
lists to the army." The problem, another Western diplomat says,
is the government's poor credibility. "No one really knows if
cracking down on the resistance would work, or whether they'd
tell the ministers to shove it," he says. "All the government
knows for sure is that at the end of the day, it doesn't want
Kuwait perceived as no better than Saddam. We hope that the
idea of sanctioning an open season later on won't really come
to pass. We're counting on the passage of time to calm
emotions."

    Kuwait is a tense nation at a tough time, "a place in need
of therapy," says Dr. Abdul Rahman al-Awadi, a physician who
long served as his country's Health Minister and is now
Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs. Everyone has witnessed
an atrocity or has a tale to tell. Al-Awadi turns pale when he
recalls the story of an Iraqi patrol that spotted some Kuwaiti
children playing in the street. "They were told to stop, and
all but one did," says al-Awadi. "That one was picked up by the
hair by an Iraqi soldier -- he was still holding his soccer
ball -- and shot in the head in front of the other kids." Some
of Mike's friends had to cut down seven young Kuwaiti girls who
had been hanged in a schoolyard after having been raped. There
are several hundred women awaiting abortions, says a doctor
at Mubarak al-Kabir Hospital. All were victims of gang rape.

    Even when Kuwaitis try to forget the tragedies, they cannot
escape reminders of the occupation. The sky is what everyone
notices first each morning. When the wind blows toward Kuwait
City, the sky darkens as if a storm were moving across the
plain. At times, night appears at noon. The oil fires are that
horrendous. There is no electricity, the result of last-minute
Iraqi sabotage. Few believe the repeated assurances that at
least some electricity will return "tomorrow." Too many
tomorrows have passed.

    Water and power were operating until shortly before the
Iraqis withdrew, apparently to pacify the population and permit
Iraqi looters to spot unoccupied houses. When the Iraqis
visited inhabited homes, it was mostly to make their presence
felt. "We left things around, watches and some jewelry," says
Tariq al-Riaz. "That usually satisfied them, and their searches
were perfunctory. When we did need to hide, we did so in rooms
we created behind walls."

    The hardest thing to do was to teach Kuwait's children to
"like" Saddam, says Salah al-Awadi, manager of credit-card
sales for the Gulf Bank. "When Iraqis visited us, we would
serve them soft drinks. Once, my son Youssef, who is almost
four, said, `Take this glass and put it on Saddam's head.' We
had to teach the kids to say good things about Saddam for fear
they would be killed if they didn't."

    People move more freely now, of course, but a favorite
pastime, a walk on the beach, is impossible. The seaside
fortifications built by the Iraqis -- four separate lines of
trenches and obstacles -- "look like Normandy from the air,"
says a U.S. Army general. Mines are everywhere, and the
minefield maps Baghdad provided the coalition are "useless,"
says U.S. Ambassador Edward Gnehm. The city is rocked by
explosions several times a day as U.S. Army experts detonate
Iraq's abandoned ordnance. Sporadic gunfire is heard throughout
the day -- celebratory rounds discharged mainly by Saudi
soldiers. (It is the Americans, however, who are in demand for
pictures and autographs.)

    Expatriates -- Palestinians particularly -- are subjected
to time-consuming searches. In the Hawalli area, where many
Palestinians live, Kuwaiti troops roam the streets, instructing
the population, "Turn in your weapons, Palestinian people. This
is for your own security." The latest graffito reads, DEATH TO
PALESTINIAN TRAITORS. WE DON'T WANT THEM. "They are
hypocrites!" screams Massmoa Hassan, a Kuwaiti woman passing
by. "We went to school with you. We helped you. The P.L.O.
donation boxes were filled by us. And you are traitors. Get
out!"

    Hawalli residents tell of suspected collaborators being
taken roughly away. Sarah Hamdan Salman says her three sons
were blindfolded, handcuffed, beaten with machine guns and
shoved into the trunks of cars by civilians who the
Palestinians are convinced are resistance members. When she
went to the local precinct to inquire about her children, she
was told, "You're a Palestinian" -- and then she was spat upon.
Did it happen? "I don't doubt it," says a U.S. Army major
assigned as an adviser to the Kuwaitis. "All I can say is that
we're trying to hold it down."

    All residents, even Kuwaitis, are subjected to the
three-month martial law decree and its 10 p.m. to 4 a.m.
curfew. "It's not fake," says Colonel Jesse Johnson, the
commander of U.S. special-operations forces in Kuwait City.
There have been several nighttime incidents "where people drive
up to the checkpoints and open fire" on the Kuwaiti soldiers,
says Johnson. The troops assume their attackers are
Palestinians. The clash between those who remained and those
who left is everywhere. Some Kuwaitis who stayed behind
surrendered their automobile license plates for Iraqi tags. At
a checkpoint last week, a Kuwaiti without plates was harassed.
"So you changed your plates," shouted a Kuwaiti soldier. "And
you fled, you coward," the driver yelled back.

    Some Kuwaitis have taken to visiting the house where the
Iraqis constructed an elaborate torture chamber. Electric-shock
devices are the most prominent features, and pinups of scantily
clad women adorn the walls. The government is thinking of
turning the place into a museum. "We should preserve this so
we remember," says Minister of State al-Awadi, whose indoor
swimming pool the Iraqis used to extract information. Victims
would be dunked into the water while they were tied to ropes
hung from the ceiling. A poignant scene plays out almost daily
when Kuwaitis visit the Riqqa cemetery, searching for the
remains of loved ones. Kuwaiti authorities say 2,792 bodies of
people who died unnatural deaths since Aug. 2 are buried there.
Another site of interest is the ice rink, which served as a
makeshift morgue for Kuwaiti dead. There are no bodies there
now -- only some dried blood and a persistent stench.

    Ambitious travelers journey about 30 miles toward Basra to
see the remains of a convoy of fleeing Iraqi vehicles destroyed
by allied aircraft. At the Iraqi border last week, tragedy was
replaced by joy. Several thousand Kuwaitis were kidnapped by
Iraqi soldiers in the last days of the occupation; last Friday
Baghdad suddenly released about 1,175, transporting them back
to Kuwait City in trucks bearing the seal of the Republican
Guard. Most had been held at a military barrack near Basra,
squeezed in so tight that they were forced to take turns
sleeping. For the first three days, they were given no food or
water. From then on, they subsisted on a single rock-hard roll
a day.

    Those who show up at the border are usually a bedraggled
lot. At night they look like ghostly figures, small bands of
refugees suddenly illuminated by the headlights of military
convoys. Mostly they are expatriates or foreigners who lived
in Iraq and are fleeing the anti-Saddam violence. Thousands of
Egyptians, for example, are being deported. Mohammed el-Habal,
65, is one of about a dozen Egyptians who camped near the
border last week, waiting for his status to be determined. "The
Republican Guard told us that if Egypt had stayed with Iraq, if
we had supported Iraq, we would not have been turned out," says
el-Habal, who reports that some of his compatriots have been
murdered by Iraqis.

    The plight of Iraqis who lived in Kuwait before the war and
who are now trying to return to Kuwait is even more desperate.
Men, women and children are encamped near the border highway.
U.S. soldiers have given them rations, but they have no water.
On a cold, rainy night last week, the Iraqis huddled around
campfires. The horizon was lit by the flames of the burning oil
fields. In her tattooed hands, Fadiyah Saad held her new
granddaughter, born by the roadside on March 5. The family was
debating whether to name the child Hudud (borders) or Istiqlal
(independence).


    With Kuwait independent again, some of those who stayed
behind yearn for aspects of the occupation. Supplies were more
plentiful then, and those who had previously felt themselves
to be mere employees of a business called Kuwait Inc. banded
together as a nation. "For the first time," says Ali Salem, a
resistance leader, "all barriers were breached. Shi`ite
Muslims, who have long been discriminated against by the Sunni
majority, were major players, perhaps even the most
significant. We were, at least for that time, truly one."

    There were approximately 60 resistance groups operating at
any given time, each with 40 to 50 members. The head of each
cell knew his opposite number in other units, but his
subordinates did not know one another. Elaborate codes were
developed to fool eavesdropping Iraqis. Young girls carried
bullets in their underwear. Fake identifications were common.
A sophisticated printing operation was hidden a block from the
headquarters of Iraq's secret police.

    In addition to the organized resistance, many Kuwaitis
operated on their own. Since Iraqi soldiers examining cars at
checkpoints frequently stole whatever was in sight, some
Kuwaitis added rat poison to bottles of orange juice and then
hid them in the trunk. Iraqi sentries would discover and seize
the bottles -- and presumably drink the tainted liquid later.

    Salem presided over a network that distributed nearly $100
million, smuggled into Kuwait from the exiled government in
Taif, Saudi Arabia. "We used the money for bribes to get people
out of jail, to pass checkpoints, to buy fruits and vegetables
brought from Iraq," says Salem. "This is the Middle East, and
money talked even more here because the Iraqis are so poor."


    Kuwait's leaders can be blamed for much of the current
chaos. Like all governments, Kuwait's is sometimes savvy,
sometimes incompetent. But at the top, and with a few notable
exceptions, Kuwait's Cabinet is decidedly mediocre -- an
opinion shared by most Kuwaitis. The government's primary
mission for seven months has been to plan its return. The
ministers began well by removing themselves from direct
responsibility. A reconstruction plan was concocted in
Washington by Fawzi al-Sultan, an executive director of the
World Bank, who assembled a team of international experts.

    But as the war of liberation neared, the ministers in Taif
became jealous of an organization that threatened to supplant
them. In short order, al-Sultan's team was torpedoed. Each
ministry recaptured control of its own work, coordination
evaporated, and the resistance movement, which knew what was
needed and how to accomplish it, was effectively shut out.

    The results of mismanagement are everywhere. Supplies of
essential foodstuffs, supposedly stockpiled and ready to go in
Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, were delayed at the border because
Kuwait's Interior Ministry had failed to provide proper
documentation. Some of the stocks spoiled. When a shipment
finally arrived in Kuwait City late last week, five days behind
schedule, the Commerce Ministry's distribution plan had to be
scrapped because it could not do the job quickly. Some of the
needed food was distributed by U.S. Ambassador Gnehm. "He had
the media with him," says a Kuwaiti minister admiringly. "He
wanted to embarrass us into moving faster, and it worked." But
the shipments still lag. "Quite literally," says Ali Salem, "we
had more in the stores when Saddam controlled Kuwait."

    The oil industry, Kuwait's backbone, is in even worse shape.
Rashid al-Amiri, the Oil Minister, is roundly denounced by his
colleagues. A committee of other ministers was appointed last
Thursday to "assist" him. "What is unforgivable," says one of
al-Amiri's associates, "is that he is in no small measure
directly responsible for much of the havoc we face."

    Some months ago, Kuwaiti operatives trained by Western
intelligence agencies successfully sabotaged Iraq's plan to
cripple Kuwait's oil-producing centers. The wires leading to
explosive charges buried in the sand were snipped and reburied.
Al-Amiri was so delighted that he bragged about it in an
interview he gave to an Arab newspaper. Whether the Iraqis
would have checked the wires in any event may never be known,
but Kuwait says it is now losing 6 million bbl. a day from the
600-odd wells ablaze.

    Complaints about specific ministers from other ministers and
the public at large prompted the entire Cabinet to consider
resigning at a late-night meeting last Thursday. But the Prime
Minister urged them all to work harder instead. "We'll see
where things stand in three or four weeks," an aide reports
Sheik Saad as saying. Says a Western diplomat: "Considering the
public's anger, and all the weapons available, they're lucky
they don't have a new regime by now."

    What is really on the government's mind these days, and on
everyone else's as well (which is why the government is
consumed by it), is the matter of democracy. The Prime
Minister, a poet of noncommitment who usually deflects direct
inquiries by saying, "That will be discussed," is promising
elections for a new parliament. The opposition wants a return
to the dissolved 1986 parliament. But that is the same assembly
that refused to expand suffrage to include women and "second
grade" Kuwaitis -- people who cannot trace their ancestry in
Kuwait earlier than 1920.

    Many Kuwaitis, including those who served in the resistance,
believe that voting rights must be expanded. In addition, says
Hamad al-Towgari, 34, a San Jose State University graduate who
owns the Kuwait Plaza Hotel, the "real issue is what powers any
parliament has. We want to be modern. We want something closer
to a constitutional monarchy, something closer to the British
system." Says Ali Salem, a member of the ruling al-Sabah
family: "The oligarchy must give way."

    The person who perhaps best expresses the pervasive disgust
is Laila al-Qadhi, a Kuwait University English professor. Few
say on the record what al-Qadhi says, but many agree with her.
"At best," says al-Qadhi, "we have a democracy tailored for a
few. It can't be real, of course, until women and the children
of expatriates who are born here are entitled to vote as full
citizens. Certainly those who stayed and fought for Kuwait
while the cowards fled deserve to participate in their
government. But I am not optimistic. Many will collaborate to
restore the old order because it is so comfortable for so many.
The Sabahs are smart. They have bought the loyalty of most
with a system that makes all comfortably lazy. What has changed
is that we who stayed no longer fear those who rule, and they
fear us because we do not fear them. But if we don't change,
then the answer to the question `Is Kuwait worth dying for?'
is no."

    Among those in the government most disposed to change is
Minister of State al-Awadi, an enlightened liberal. "It is not
easy to establish a democracy in this part of the world," he
says, "especially when other nations will be upset if we do.
But it will come, all of it, including the right of women to
vote. It will just take time." To which al-Qadhi answers
simply, "Why should we have to wait?"


    The biggest losers in Kuwait are its Palestinian residents,
who numbered 400,000 before the invasion. About 180,000 stayed
behind. The resistance estimates that 50,000 actually
collaborated with the Iraqis. But even those who helped Kuwait
resist the occupation are likely to suffer. "The Palestinians
were invaluable," says al-Towgari. "They got us through
checkpoints and got us fake identity papers saying we were
foreigners. We know who the good ones are, and we want to tell
the world about them. But they say no. They are scared of P.L.O.
retribution. It is a vicious circle. Maybe when things calm
down, people will realize how much we need the Palestinians
just to get on here."

    Maybe later, but not quite yet. Last Sunday at the Doha
power plant, a Kuwaiti army lieutenant who had spent the past
seven months in exile refused to allow six Palestinian workers
to enter the facility. His orders, he said, came straight from
the Defense Minister: no Palestinians. Arguing with the soldier
was the plant's director, who patiently explained that the
whole country was waiting for electricity and that it would
never be restored until the Palestinians were admitted, because
they were the people who knew how to do the work. Still the
lieutenant was unmoved. Finally, and just by chance, Minister
of State al-Awadi arrived. For a time, even he could not budge
the soldier. He succeeded eventually, but as the Palestinians
walked toward the plant, the soldier spit at them.

    "The worst hatred toward the Palestinians is coming from
those who left," says al-Awadi. "On the outside we heard about
the atrocities and had to listen to Yasser Arafat's support of
Saddam. Perhaps after people have come back and have a chance
to assess the real situation, their attitudes will change." For
the time being, the Palestinians who remained in Kuwait through
the occupation will be allowed to stay, but even those who did
not collaborate may never be trusted again. "For a time," says
Major Mohammed Hamoud, a Kuwaiti air force Hawk missile
battalion commander, "we let some Palestinians into the army,
mostly the sons of longtime residents. I had 30 or so in my
battalion, and they performed well on the first day of the
invasion when we shot down 12 Iraqi planes and helicopters. But
now, you can never be sure if they will turn, and so they must
go."

    One goal of Fawzi al-Sultan's disbanded reconstruction team
has survived Kuwait's internal politics: the proposal to cut
the country's preinvasion population of 2 million almost in
half by shedding many of the country's non-Kuwaiti resident
workers. "Demography is the key," al-Sultan says. "We want
Kuwaitis to work, to have incentive, to be productive. We want
a merit system in education and at work, without guaranteed
government jobs. The way to make Kuwaitis not be lazy is to
force them to fend for themselves. And the way to do that is
to strip away the foreigners who do most of the hard work while
Kuwaitis lie about."

    The process has already begun. On March 2, the Gulf Bank ran
an advertisement in the daily newspaper Voice of Kuwait seeking
Kuwaitis to be trained as bank clerks in Dubai. "That's the
start," says Salah al-Awadi, who works for the bank. "What will
happen in my office is that we will gradually replace
foreigners with Kuwaitis. I am sure that others will follow."

    Last fall those Kuwaiti officials who would hazard a guess
at the optimum size of the Palestinian population put the
figure at 100,000. "Now surely we can achieve that," says one
minister. "We can do it either by denying readmission to those
who left and deporting some of those who stayed -- or we can
kick out some who stayed and replace them with some who left
who we are fairly sure can be trusted."


    As he drives through Kuwait City inspecting the damage
inflicted by Iraq, Minister of State al-Awadi can barely
contain his anger. "You see what they did to the museum, to the
scientific center, to art in people's houses," he says. "I know
it is said that the Iraqi soldiers were just following Saddam's
orders, and I am sure they were. But living in a place like
Iraq, with a regime like Saddam's, makes little Saddams of
everyone, or brings out the Saddam in all of us. When you live
in a society without principles, the rape of Kuwait is what you
get. If there is a silver lining to all this, it is that we may
now understand the value of having principles as we try to
build a new, more democratic and merit-driven country. If
people can understand that, Saddam will have done us a great
good.

    "I hope that will happen," adds al-Awadi as he notices the
wind shift, "but I just don't know." The dark cloud is
approaching rapidly, and perhaps in anticipation of its
arrival, al-Awadi begins to cough the cough that many suffer
whenever they are near where Kuwait burns.