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 resentments 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.