TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/080591/0805003.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 27.3 KB | 552 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 32

COVER STORIES

KUWAIT: BACK TO THE PAST


By MICHAEL KRAMER/KUWAIT CITY


    Last year at this time the world worried about German
unification, a U.S. appeals court overturned Oliver North's
Iran-contra conviction, and Pete Rose was headed for jail.
Saddam Hussein was ranting about Kuwait's excessive oil
production, but few believed even he would choose the sword so
soon after the end of Iraq's eight-year conflict with Iran. In
fact, Saddam's bellicosity ("O God almighty, be witness that we
have warned them") was barely noted. The big news from the
Middle East was the possibility that Syria's Hafez Assad might
finally be serious about negotiating with Israel's Yitzhak
Shamir.

    Today Germany is peaceful, Iran-contra is threatening
Robert Gates' nomination to head the CIA, Pete Rose is out of
jail, and the big news from the Middle East again concerns the
possibility of a negotiated peace among Arabs and Jews. And, of
course, there is still Saddam -- beaten but unbowed, as arrogant
and ruthless as ever, a defiant, devious tyrant tempting
another U.S. strike that would aim to complete the job begun in
January.

    Which is not to say the gulf war wasn't worth it. A
crucial principle was defended: aggression will be checked --
at least when the victim sits atop the commodity clemenceau said
was "as necessary as blood." But on most other fronts the
euphoria of the allied victory has given way to the region's
traditional pessimism. Centuries-old attitudes have not changed,
new alliances have not jelled, and the historic suspicion of
Western influence has receded only slightly. Even a joint
defense force to deter future invasions has proved impossible
to fashion; such is the distrust among the gulf states and their
Arab neighbors. A Middle East peace conference may finally be
held, but its success is far from assured. Its convocation would
owe as much to the end of the cold war as to the end of the gulf
war, and to Israel's need for U.S. aid in the settling of Soviet
Jews.

    And what of Kuwait, the city-state built on oil and ease
in whose name the entire enterprise was waged? The government
that failed to anticipate the war now lacks the leadership to
manage the peace. Outside the oil sector, there is little if any
sense of emergency. most ministries are only skeletally staffed,
and the country would probably still lack power and water if
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had not overseen their
restoration -- illustrating a dependency of little consequence
to most Kuwaitis, who rarely lift a finger except to point it.
Those who had hoped for a new Kuwait, a more democratic,
self-reliant and purposeful society, have been forced to concede
the obvious: the rush is in the opposite direction -- back to
the past.



    A SCARCITY OF JUSTICE

    Early in the afternoon of Feb. 25, when allied troops were
less than two days from liberating Kuwait City, three Iraqi
officers led by Lieut. Colonel Mohammed Rida burst into the
capital's Plaza Hotel. Confronting Khalid and Ali, the
Palestinians who had kept the place running during the
seven-month occupation, Rida calmly issued a terrifying order.
"We will be back tomorrow," he said. "You will produce the women
you have hidden. We will have a last party. if you do not
provide, you will die."

    Khalid and Ali had been born in the West Bank, had come to
Kuwait as small boys, had won high marks at Kuwaiti schools and
had attended college in the U.S. Kuwait was and is the only
country they have ever known, and both men had risked their
lives aiding the Kuwaiti resistance. They regularly moved money
and guns around the city in Ali's white Chevrolet Sprint and had
obtained a fake Iraqi identity card for the Plaza's Kuwaiti
owner.

    Shortly after the Iraqi officers left the Plaza, Khalid
moved 32 women to a nearby mosque and determined that he would
rather forfeit his life than aid in the planned rape. Sometime
before morning, however, Colonel Rida and thousands of other
Iraqi troops pulled out of the city. Over the next 24 hours,
many of the retreating soldiers (and an undetermined number of
Kuwaiti hostages accompanying them) died as allied aircraft
bombed the highway that led back to Iraq. "We can only pray that
Rida was one of them," says Khalid.

    Because the Plaza's owner, Hamad al-Towaijri, is a
prominent businessman, Khalid's and Ali's jobs are secure, and
they will probably remain in Kuwait. They are among the very few
lucky Palestinians. "If you can call it lucky," says Ali. "Even
with Hamad giving us work, daily life is hard. People who talk
nicely to me turn harsh when they find out I'm Palestinian. My
Kuwaiti friends say I shouldn't visit because they will be
branded Palestinian lovers. And God help me if I get into a
traffic accident with a Kuwaiti, even if he is at fault. I'm the
one the police will blame, and surely I will be beaten before
I'm released -- if I'm released. You think my work with the
resistance will save me? No way."

    While few of the policy decisions supposedly ratified
during the Kuwaiti government's exile have been implemented, the
single one being pursued with a vengeance concerns Kuwait's
400,000 Palestinians and the approximately 100,000 other
foreigners who hail from what everyone calls "the bad
countries," the nations whose leaders supported Saddam Hussein
or who remained neutral. To the best of Kuwait's ability, almost
all of these expatriates will be driven out or refused
permission to return. It does not matter if they were born in
Kuwait. The Arab way holds: you are what your parents or
grandparents are. If they came from Iraq or Jordan, Yemen or the
Sudan, your nationality is theirs -- which in today's Kuwait is
crime enough.

    So far, only Kuwait's ambassador to Washington has
publicly articulated his nation's policy. "If people pose a
security threat, as a sovereign country, we have the right to
exclude anyone we don't want," says Ambassador Saud Nasser
al-Sabah. "If you in the U.S. are so concerned about human
rights and leaving hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in
Kuwait, we'll be more than happy to airlift them to you free of
charge, and you can give them American citizenship."

    If wholesale deportation is deplorable, it is still
preferable to murder. There are fewer reports now of atrocities
than during the free-for-all that roiled Kuwait in March, when
vigilante groups joined Kuwaiti police and military officers in
seeking revenge. The Palestine Liberation Organization estimates
that about 400 Palestinians were killed then. "If anything,
that figure is probably low by about 600," says Abdul Rahman
al-Awadi, the former Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs who
continues to advise Prime Minister Saad al-Abdullah al-Sabah.

    Today's big squeeze is hardly subtle. Of the approximately
230,000 Palestinians who fled Kuwait following Iraq's invasion,
none are being allowed to return. Except for those expressly
needed in critical government posts (perhaps 2,000 in the
ministries of Health and Electricity and Water), most of the
170,000 remaining Palestinians have been fired from their jobs.
At the same time, the government is demanding back rent, and
private Kuwaiti landlords are doing the same. Free medical care
and public schooling, heretofore rights for expatriates, are
history. Private schooling is still possible, but the 50%
government subsidy has been ended. "Why should we aid them?"
asks Education Minister Sulaiman al-Bader. "Most of them went
to school during the occupation where they sang the Iraqi anthem
and studied Saddam's speeches. How could our own children learn
sitting next to them?"

    "Can't you understand?" wonders Ali al-Khalifa al-Sabah,
a former Kuwaiti finance minister. "We were the most vocal
supporters of the P.L.O., and we gave plenty, more than $60
million in the past six years alone. And that doesn't count the
5% of Palestinian salaries we deducted for direct transmittal
to Yasser Arafat. Who would not feel betrayed?"

    Jobless, stateless, without access to Kuwait's welfare
system and with rent and other bills to pay, "how are those of
us without protected employment to live?" asks Ali of the Plaza
Hotel. "Obviously we are being forced to leave." But even
leaving is difficult. Approximately 30,000 Palestinians hold
Egyptian travel documents, but Cairo is less than eager to take
them. Jordan is the only available haven, but Saudi Arabia has
refused overland transit to Amman, Iraq has allowed it only
sporadically, and the only other way out, by air, is costly. The
result is a general milling about -- a bitter and demoralized
Palestinian population resigned to a fate most are unable to
seal.

    Officially, none of this is happening. "Most of the
Palestinians helped Kuwaitis during the Iraqi occupation," says
Prime Minister Saad. Yet Saad's failure to define collaboration
has made it impossible to distinguish between true disloyalty
to Kuwait and acts undertaken merely to survive. The elaborate
money-distribution scheme that provided almost $200 million for
bribes and food during the occupation served only Kuwaitis. "Why
is someone who worked in order to live -- and only because the
government wouldn't support him as it was supporting Kuwaitis
-- a collaborator?" asks Sana Salah, a Palestinian computer
programmer.

    One of the few members of the ruling family actively
aiding the Palestinians is Ali Salem al-Sabah, the resistance
leader who left his doctoral studies in California to return to
Kuwait after Iraq's invasion. With the help of his father, the
commander of Kuwait's national guard, Salem has moved 800 jailed
Palestinians into Kuwait's juvenile prison. "Life is better for
them at what we call Ali's prison," says Salman al-Sabah, the
head of Kuwait's state security service. "Ali has spent
thousands of dollars of his own money for mattresses and linens
and to have food catered to the prisoners. Compared with our
other facilities, the juvenile prison is a Hilton."

    Salem suffers no illusions. He knows his efforts are
merely temporary. "I've given up freeing them so they can live
in Kuwait," he says, "even though most have no charges filed
against them. The best I've been able to do is improve
conditions and try to organize a few subsidized charter flights
so some can leave. And believe me, none of it would be possible
if the government weren't made to see that the $60,000 a year
to keep each one of them in jail was stupid. It is less
expensive simply to kick them out. It all comes down to money
in Kuwait. It always has, and it always will."



    WHAT'S IN IT FOR ME?

    Long before the oil came in, the Kuwaitis were known as
shrewd traders. They plied the seas from the Indian subcontinent
to the East African coast and almost always turned a profit. So
it is not surprising that today, with the oil fires still
burning and a return to normal life nowhere in sight, Kuwait's
greatest effort involves merchandising its destitution.

    By law, foreigners doing business in Kuwait must deal
through Kuwaiti agents, and the trials of PVE, a
California-based environmental company, are illustrative. A
Saudi businessman familiar with PVE invited the concern to bid
for the monumental job of cleaning up Kuwait's oil fields. The
final count of blown wells, not yet officially released, is 732
out of a total of 1,000. At least 248 well fires have been
doused, but the hardest to cap, the high-pressure wells, have
yet to be seriously tackled. In the meantime, giant lakes of oil
have formed, covering an estimated 1 million Iraqi antipersonnel
mines and contaminating about 1.2 billion cu. ft. of soil. As
each day passes, the oil soaks deeper into the sand and the
lakes expand in area and volume.

    Two weeks after liberation, PVE vice president Michael
Taylor joined scores of other foreign businessmen at the
ransacked Kuwait International Hotel. PVE was ready to move
immediately, but Kuwait was not. The Saudi intermediary, it
seems, lacked sufficient clout. Five months later, a network of
agents is finally in place, and a contract should be signed
soon. But the delay -- and the need to pay astronomical agency
fees -- has pushed the estimated cost of the two-year project
to approximately $1.2 billion. "More than $100 million of that
will go to the agents," says an aide to the Prime Minister, "and
PVE will properly pass that cost on to the state."

    A fiscally prudent government would have acknowledged the
emergency and waived the agency rules, says Abdulaziz Sultan
al-Issa, chairman of the Gulf Bank. "But that would mean cutting
people out of the moneymaking loop, and our rulers are
scrupulous about allowing such windfalls. It is part of the
elaborate way in which our loyalty is bought."

    In fact, the scheme merely refines a centuries-old
compact. Kuwait was founded in the 1700s by three families. Two
continued as lucrative merchants while the Sabahs were charged
with protecting the state. Major decisions were a product of
consultation. The merchants held the upper hand and set policy;
the Sabahs executed it. When the oil began flowing seriously in
the 1950s, the Sabahs were suddenly the wealthiest of all, and
the power relationships inverted. A succession of farsighted
emirs distributed billions of dollars to the populace, and
Sabah-generated patronage is still central to the family's
power. "These days," says a Kuwaiti minister, "the smart
businessmen come to me and my colleagues, and we direct them to
agents. No decisions are more important than who gets to share
the pie. Those who charge corruption are the ones who feel left
out -- and those who bitch loudest are usually calmed by our
sending agency commissions their way."

    Little of the current largesse would be possible if the
government had adopted a novel reconstruction plan drafted
during the Iraqi occupation. A small group of Kuwaiti
technocrats had proposed creating a Kuwaiti-run corporation to
oversee the postwar rebuilding. "For years we have sought to
expand beyond our oil base," explains Fawzi al-Sultan, a Kuwaiti
who serves as an executive director at the World Bank in
Washington. "By taking charge of the reconstruction effort
ourselves, we would have cut costs and developed an expertise we
could have then marketed worldwide. But the politics was wrong.
Agencies and other forms of patronage would have fallen off
greatly."

    The richest Kuwaitis are not alone in benefiting from the
government's financial maneuvers. The Emir's first act after
liberation was to forgive all consumer debts -- a gift of about
$1.2 billion that, naturally, applied only to Kuwaitis.

    If the Emir's debt-forgiveness decree was a stroke of
political genius, a recent statement by Prime Minister Saad was
stupefyingly foolish. "Saddam is still thinking and planning
further operations aimed at destroying Kuwait," said Saad on
June 19. "They may take the form of sabotage to destroy Kuwait
from within."

    Saad's cry was meant to persuade George Bush to leave
ground forces in Kuwait indefinitely. "We'll stay beyond the
publicly announced withdrawal date of Sept. 1," says a State
Department official, "and we may soon sign a protection
agreement, but a long-term commitment of ground forces is not
in the cards." The U.S. is not completely against the idea,
explains a Western diplomat in Kuwait, "but Washington won't go
along unless an Arab force is present as cover. Getting labeled
as Kuwait's sole guarantor would only confirm the fears of those
who think the U.S. wants to control the region militarily, and
an overall Middle East peace would then be even harder to put
together."

    If Saad's statement had little impact in Washington, it
has scared hell out of his constituents at home. A call to turn
in weapons has gone unheeded despite the promise of a 15-year
prison term for harboring arms. "Why should we turn in our
guns?" asks a Kuwaiti merchant. "The government couldn't protect
us the first time. If the Iraqis come again, we're better off
fending for ourselves, especially since the Arab states can't
agree on a common security policy."

    The Prime Minister's analysis, repeated as a mantra by his
subordinates, has also had a damaging effect on Kuwait's
economy. With the exception of automobile dealers, who are
thriving as Kuwaitis rush to replace more than a quarter-million
stolen or trashed cars, most Kuwaiti businesses were moribund
even before the Prime Minister spoke. Uncertain about the size
of the postliberation population until the de facto deportation
policy runs its course, businessmen are leery of replacing lost
inventory. The government's inexplicable failure to set a
reasonable compensation policy for goods lost during the
occupation has aided stagnation as well. Most businessmen are
also waiting to see whether the Emir will trump his
consumer-debt order by similarly forgiving commercial loans.
"Now we have Saad's idiotic statement about Saddam," says the
Gulf Bank's Sultan. "Where is business confidence to come from?
Who from the outside will invest here if our leaders are
trembling? And what interest rates will we have to pay when the
government borrows in the international markets if Kuwait is
deemed a security risk? Nothing Saad could have said would have
been dumber." What is now certain as well, admits Salem
Abdulaziz al-Sabah, the governor of Kuwait's Central Bank, "is
that there will be a run on bank accounts when the current
withdrawal restrictions expire on Aug. 3."



    ONE EMIR, ONE VOTE

    With little physical devastation beyond the oil fires that
darken the skies, Kuwait appears tranquil. Most shops are
closed, but the supermarkets are well stocked, and bargains --
10 watermelons for $1 -- can be had from the Iranian merchants
whose skiffs cross the gulf each morning. Giant minesweeping
machines patrol the beaches, but few people pop up their
umbrellas or venture into the water.

    Kuwaitis traditionally beat the oppressive summer heat by
vacationing in Europe, so the country's ghostly appearance is
not unusual. But with school starting early in order to squeeze
two academic years into one, many of the estimated 300,000
Kuwaitis still outside the country are beginning to return. Many
stop first at a cemetery on the edge of town, where the graves
of friends and relatives killed by the Iraqis are marked by red
banners. It is only at night, when Kuwaitis gather to gossip,
that one perceives the pervasive seething. The treatment of
Palestinians is on everyone's mind, but deeper, more worrisome
resent ments are expressed, and none approach the disdain felt
by those who stayed for those who left. "We cared for ourselves
and proved our loyalty," says Nadyah al-Mudhaf, an investment
banker. "The `runners' wined and dined and discoed, and now they
are back to treating us like we didn't exist. We love our rulers
for all they have done for us economically, but they don't
trust us enough to let us have a meaningful say in the running
of our nation."

    The Kuwaiti government is behaving as would most regimes
in similar circumstances. Its overriding priority has been the
reassertion of its authority. But its decision to disband the
resistance groups that kept the peace in the weeks following
liberation has been ``a colossal error," in the words of a
Western diplomat. "Embracing those who stayed and fought, using
their expertise and praising their willingness to help, could
have gone far toward uniting the nation."

    No one familiar with Kuwait is surprised that the
government does not understand its mistake. By all accounts, the
new Cabinet is less competent than the old, and the Prime
Minister, who is notorious for hoarding power while being loath
to make decisions, won't sack or even investigate the conduct
of the military leaders who let the country down so completely,
so quickly, last summer.

    Still, a revolution is the last thing anyone envisions.
Outraged by their commanders, who were among the first runners,
several hundred lower-ranking military officers have protested
the lack of accountability. They want the Chief of Staff and at
least five other high-ranking officers fired. In many countries
such discontent would produce rumors of an imminent coup. In
Kuwait the disenchanted sent a polite letter up the chain of
command, asking for an audience with the Prime Minister. Seven
weeks later, they have still received no response, so most stay
home passively and grow beards -- an officer corps on a genteel
sit-down strike. "A coup, a civil war?" laughs an air-force
officer whose Hawk missile antiaircraft battery shot down four
Iraqi jet fighters on the day of the invasion. "We're all too
comfortable economically to even think of revolution. Maybe if
we had a hint at what might follow the Sabahs if they were
overthrown, we would act. But we don't, so we won't."

    Since becoming independent from Britain in 1961, Kuwait
has enjoyed the greatest democracy and freest press in the gulf
region -- which is not saying much. The last parliament,
elected in 1985, was suspended by the Emir in 1986 largely
because it began to act like the U.S. Congress. Its sin:
investigating the financial affairs of senior government
officials. The Emir also imposed a press censorship that
continues to this day. Pressure against the government's
autocratic tendencies began to rise in 1990, so the Emir created
a National Council, an assembly that could question policy but
not legislate. The council, which met only once before the Aug.
2, 1990, invasion, reconvened on July 9 and now meets weekly.

    Seven opposition groups have joined to protest the
council's existence and urge that the old, suspended parliament
be reinstated. Few Kuwaitis seem to care. By calling the council
back, the Emir hoped to establish a nonthreatening channel for
complaints. He has not been disappointed. Within days of the
council's convocation, its members began receiving letters from
citizens urging that it probe specific areas. The opposition may
pine for the old parliament, but the populace appears content
to treat the council as a legitimate avenue of expression
(especially since it is as eager as the Emir to restore the old
order, and so is considering a plan that would give $70,000 to
every Kuwaiti family -- a $10 billion outlay the Central Bank's
governor Salem labels "totally insane").

    In another adroit move, the Emir has called for an
entirely new parliament to be elected in October 1992. "Too far
away," says Abdullah al-Nibari, an opposition leader. But again,
few seem to care so long as a date has been set. "In all of
this," admits a U.S. diplomat, "the anti-Sabah factions have
been hurt by President Bush's saying that the gulf war was not
fought in order to bring democracy to Kuwait. The Secretary of
State has admitted that Kuwait's government is not `the optimum
type of regime,' but when the President, who's considered a
saint in Kuwait, downplayed democracy, the Emir won a cushion
that will protect him at least until the '92 vote."

    The opposition coalition has increased its irrelevance by
being able to agree only on the National Council's supposed
illegitimacy. "The real questions people are talking about, like
the Palestinian problem, they're the ones we don't touch," says
Isa al-Shaheen, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has
put aside its own desire for an Islamic state in order to join
the coalition. "The fact is that most of the opposition is
afraid to take tough stands for fear of jeopardizing their
election prospects. Some of us want to ignore the street and try
to lead, but we've got nowhere. And with nothing to say to the
people on the matters that most concern them, we're viewed as
just another bunch of rich people out to increase our share of
the wealth by exploiting political positions."

    After the Palestinian question, the hottest political
issue in Kuwait concerns the right to vote. Until now, the
franchise has been limited to male Kuwaitis who can trace their
roots in the country to before 1920, a meager total of about
65,000 people, a figure that is less than 10% of the present
Kuwaiti population.

    Most of the opposition favors extending the vote to both
later-arriving Kuwaitis and women, but there are indications
that the Emir will steal their thunder by broadening the
franchise himself. "We have botched almost everything since
liberation," says Abdul Rahman al-Awadi, the Prime Minister's
adviser, "but through politics we now have a chance to recoup."

    Al-Awadi understands that stability is unlikely if
hereditary rulers resist legitimate pressures for change. "The
trick now is not so difficult," he says. "We must make the
regime more responsive and understanding, goals that would
certainly be helped by increasing the voter rolls." And for whom
would the newly enfranchised be most likely to vote? "Well,"
says al-Awadi, smiling, "I am not the most astute of
politicians, but it would seem to me that those granted a
certain right might well feel a strong preference for whoever
is seen as having given it to them."

    Despite their managerial incompetence, the Sabahs appear
to have the political savvy necessary to perpetuate their rule
well into the next century. Exactly how they use their power is
anyone's guess, but growing xenophobia is one likely effect. For
years Kuwait's goal has been to reach a fifty-fifty ratio of
Kuwaitis to foreigners by the year 2000 (vs. the 30-to-70 ratio
before the Iraqis rolled in). The invasion has made the
government more loudly determined than ever to reach that goal
-- but getting there will probably prove impossible. After a
whirlwind shopping spree in the Far East, a Sabah woman turned
up at the airport last week with 40 servants in tow. "I have
replaced my Arabs with Asians," she said proudly. She will not
be the last to do so.

    The Emir has declared that a "rightly guided society lets
neither the criminal go unpunished nor the innocent bear the
blame for others," but Kuwait has already expressed its
preference for punishment. As for U.S. Ambassador Edward Gnehm's
observation that "no matter how emotionally difficult it is,
Kuwaitis must now champion justice and fairness for all people
in Kuwait in the same way the entire world stood for those
principles for Kuwaitis," well, Gnehm must share a speechwriter
with the Emir.

    Meanwhile, Kuwaitis will continue enjoying a new pastime:
the daily 15-minute radio program that recounts tales of the
Iraqi invaders' stupidity. Three weeks ago, a roomful of
Kuwaitis dissolved into laughter when the announcer recalled the
troops who stole computer screens thinking they were TVs, and
then wondered why "Lotus 123" never came on the air. When not
laughing at their onetime tormentors, some Kuwaitis poke fun at
the desirability of living in their wrecked country. A favorite
joke has Kuwait's Public Works Ministry rushing to complete a
new highway to Saudia Arabia, with all six lanes going one way
-- out.

    If ever they bear down at all, most Kuwaitis will probably
work hardest in the service of the one goal they all understand
instinctively: making their nation safe for the making of money.
Democracy can wait.