Kuwait


Few nations have been transformed as dramatically as Kuwait, a modern-day city-state blessed with one tenth of the world's known oil reserves. In 1934 its population was 75,000, and though it did not export its own petroleum until the 1950s, it began to prosper at this date by providing a port for the shipping of Iranian and Iraqi oil. After that, both the wealth and population skyrocketed; so many foreign workers were allowed in that the Kuwaitis soon found themselves a minority in their own country. By 1990, the population stood at 2.1 million, less than half of which were Kuwaiti citizens. Many of the foreigners were classified as bidun (Arabic for "without"), because they are not citizens of any country.
In June 1961, the emir of Kuwait's ruling Sabah family, Sheikh Abdullah, felt confident enough to ask the British for independence. Britain granted it, and Iraq's General Kassem immediately laid claim to the country, arguing that Kuwait was a part of southern Iraq that had been illegally separated at the turn of the century. This meant that although Kuwait had enough money to stand on its own, it did not have the armed forces needed for defense. The emir had to ask British forces to stay for two months, until the Arab League could send a peacekeeping force to take their place. Iraq replied by blocking Kuwait's entry the first time it applied to join the United Nations.

Six months later, in a move to promote national unity, the emir made the bold step of establishing the first constitutional monarchy in the Persian Gulf region. He allowed elections for a constituent assembly, and the assembly wrote a constitution that guaranteed the Sabah family's domination but allowed the people a role in government. The same year saw the establishment of the Kuwait Fund for Arab Development, an organization that lent money for various development projects, ranging from enlarging Beirut's port to modernizing Tunisian agriculture and the Sudanese railway system. Similar foundations had existed in the West for decades, but this was the first in the Arab world. In 1963 a fifty-member parliament, elected by all male Kuwaiti citizens, replaced the constituent assembly.

Sheikh Abdullah died in 1965, and was succeeded by Sheikh Sabah Salem. He ruled until the end of 1977, whereupon Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad took his place. During Sabah Salem's rule, Kuwait found its place among the Arab nations; like other Arabs, Kuwait favored Arab nationalism and a Palestinian state, but took a neutral stand between the radical states and the conservative ones. The government saw turbulent times, because the assembly was usually more liberal than the cabinet, and the two found it difficult to get along. Conditions grew so bad that the Emir suspended the constitution in 1976, dissolved the parliament, and muzzled the press. However, the ruling family wasn't ready to give up the idea of a Western-style government, so new elections under a revised constitution were held in 1981.

Meanwhile, revenues grew, and because the government chose to use its money wisely, a poor Kuwaiti became a contradiction in terms. In the Arab world Kuwait enjoyed the best education and the most advanced economy; from 1976 onwards, 10 percent of all state revenues were saved for future investments, instead of being spent immediately. These investments included considerable purchases of land and shares of companies overseas; by the late 1970s, this by itself generated an income of $9 billion a year. At home some of this went to build the first university in the region, scientific organizations like the Kuwait Institute of Scientific Research (KISR), and a local manufacturing industry.

The second time Kuwait tried a constitutional government, it found that life had gotten considerably more dangerous. First, many of the Palestinian refugees who fled Lebanon's civil war settled in Kuwait; as in Jordan and Lebanon, they became a destabilizing influence. Then in the mid-1980s, the worldwide slump in oil prices halved revenues and caused Kuwait's stock market to crash. Worst of all were the shockwaves from Iran and Iraq. As in Bahrein, Kuwait's large Shiite community supported the Iranian revolution, while the Sunni majority opposed it, leading to trouble between the two groups. Then during the Iran-Iraq War, Kuwait found itself at the eye of the storm; we saw in Chapter 17 how Iran marked Kuwait as an enemy for supporting Iraq, and how both the United States and the Soviet Union stepped in to protect Kuwait's ships. All this meant bitter debates in the parliament, and more bad relations between the executive and legislative branches of government. In 1986 the cabinet resigned, saying that it could no longer carry on its work, forcing the Emir to suspend the constitution and the press again. This time he waited until July 1990 to reinstate them, and instead of restoring the parliament, he created a National Assembly, a body that was part elected and part appointed, and gave it a four-year mandate to solve the problems which had caused the previous governments to collapse.

They never got a chance, because Iraq invaded a few weeks later. The Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, and the war to drive the Iraqis out, were covered in the previous chapter of this work, so we won't repeat the Persian Gulf War narrative here. After the war, those Kuwaitis who had fled the country began to return, and they found Kuwait City burned and looted; four-fifths of the oil wells had been sabotaged, leading to widespread environmental damage from oil spills and fires until they were capped. The total cost to rebuild the country was estimated at somewhere between $20 billion and $30 billion. Fortunately the Kuwaitis could pay for this, having $90 billion in financial reserves.

Rebuilding Kuwait's infrastructure proved to be relatively simple, compared with repairing Kuwaiti society. The Palestinians had been chased out, and many other foreign workers wouldn't come back, so Kuwait's population did not recover; as of 1998, it was 1.9 million. The Kuwaitis realized that they should learn how to work by themselves, but a future without help from the foreigners didn't look very attractive. At first martial law was necessary, but the Emir had promised from exile that the 1962 constitution would be made the law of the land again, once enough Kuwaitis had returned. However, he committed the blunder of holding onto power for too long; he didn't keep his promise until late 1992. Consequently, the dynasty that had acted so progressive in the 1960s now looked reactionary. Critics declared that the Sabah family was acting like the Bourbons in France, having learned nothing and forgotten nothing; human rights groups accused the government of staging unfair trials for Palestinian and Iraqi collaborators; some outsiders even asked if Kuwait deserved to be liberated.

Various crises in the Persian Gulf region remind the Kuwaitis how vulnerable they are, like the war scare of 1994 when Iraq massed troops near the border. For that reason, Kuwait still relies heavily on American forces for protection. This has caused some Arabs to ask if the Kuwaitis are still loyal to the Arab cause, or if they have become a protectorate of the West again. The country and its rulers may eventually regain the high status they enjoyed before the 1990 rape, but it will