Kuwait and see | 28-11-02
Kuwait
and see
Jack Fairweather
reports on ambivalent attitudes to war with Iraq
inside the country that knows what it has to fear from Saddam Hussein.
With
war against Iraq only a 'hair trigger away' should Saddam Hussein fail to meet
the terms of a tough new UN resolution, the Kuwait Government has declared it
is happy for the country to become a launching pad for US-led military action.
The announcement hardly came as a surprise. Bitter memories of the Iraqi invasion
of Kuwait in 1990 and the signing of a defence agreement with the US after the
first Gulf War – which allows Kuwait's territory to be used for a future
invasion of Iraq – has made this small desert country the most hawkish
of Arab states.
Throughout the summer American forces have been building up their presence in Kuwait, with a quarter of the country declared a military zone to enable troop manoeuvres along the border with Iraq. Public support for such measures has been overwhelming.
Ahmed al-Jarallah, editor-in-chief of Kuwait's biggest-selling English language newspaper, The Arab Times, said: 'Show me the Kuwaiti who does not want America to begin a war against Iraq. We all remember what Saddam did to us before. There can be no voice for peace in Kuwait.'
But, despite al-Jarallah's words, support for war is not as comprehensive as it at first seems. There are many voices in Kuwait which have not been heard as America and its allies prepare for war. Some remain silent out of exasperation, others because they have no power to speak, and some have turned instead to violence. They are respectively environmentalists, Kuwait's vast immigrant population and a growing number of Islamic fundamentalists – an unlikely and mutually exclusive group who nonetheless all have cogent and powerful reasons for opposing war against Iraq.
Mijbil al-Mutawa is director of the Scientific Centre in Kuwait, a pioneering museum and wildlife sanctuary which is doing much to educate people about Kuwait's rich but fragile ecosystems. He is keenly aware of the consequences of bringing war back to the region. He described his return to Kuwait in the aftermath of first Gulf war: 'The day after the liberation I went with my family out into the desert, where we used to go camping and picnicking in the winter. There was nothing but burning oil wells and destroyed vehicles. The eagles, the camels, the desert plants were gone. I cried.'
But it is this experience of environmental devastation which has paradoxically dissuaded many green campaigners from speaking out against war. Unlike in the West, the environmental and the anti-war lobby remain deeply divided. As al-Mutawa explained: 'We have an evil dictator a couple of hundred miles up the road who has invaded us before and has threatened to do so again. Now, how do you weigh up which will be the greater cost to the environment: going to war now or Saddam going to war again in the future?'
It is a dilemma which cuts to the heart of the liberal debate in Kuwait, where support for the US has often meant support for many of the most progressive aspects of modern Kuwait. The prospect of war against Iraq is seen as a way of 'opening up the region to Western values and lasting peace,' according to al-Mutawa.
Al-Mutawa himself is one of a generation of Kuwaitis who have received a liberal education in the US, which has allowed him to bring ideas of environmental protection to a country best-known for providing the world with 10 per cent of its crude oil.
'Of course I am against the war,' he said, 'as an environmentalist, as a human being. But would I like to see Saddam removed form power as one of the consequences of war? Yes I would. And because its so difficult to find a consistent position, many environmentalists simply say nothing at all.'
Silence is, however, the only option for Kuwaiti's vast immigrant community, which makes up of 60 per cent of the country's population. The majority of these workers, drawn by Kuwait's oil wealth from other Arab countries and South Asia, are opposed to war. But within Kuwait's limited democracy they are given no political voice, and few dare to speak out against the establishment.
Abdullah is typical of many immigrants. Originally from Syria, he has spent the past 30 years driving taxis in Kuwait, relying on tenuous yearly work permits. He said: 'I'm against war with all my heart, but what can I do? If I, or anyone else, says anything we can easily be expelled from the country. The Kuwaitis want us to work with our mouths shut.'
The dangers of war for the immigrant community, as well as the dangers of speaking out, were highlighted clearly enough during the occupation of Kuwait and its aftermath. When Iraqi tanks rolled across the border on 2 August 1990, most Kuwaitis fled the country, leaving the immigrant population to fend for itself. Without any source of income, many immigrants collaborated with the Iraqi forces. When the Kuwaitis returned after liberation the immigrant community was charged with disloyalty and huge numbers were expelled. The Palestinian population, the most vocal and organized immigrant community in Kuwait, was reduced from 450,000 to 30,000.
'The return of war with military action against Iraq will be a disaster for us,' said Abdullah. 'If there is any danger the Kuwaitis will simply leave again and then immigrants will do whatever they have to do in order to live... This is not our war. This is the Kuwaitis' and the Americans' war. I meet with other Syrian immigrants in the evening to talk big politics, knowing the poor always suffer. It's very frustrating.'
There are those in Kuwait, however, who have been giving vent to their frustration and anger at the prospect of war. In October two members of an Al-Qae'da cell in Kuwait launched a suicide attack against US forces on Failaka Island, killing one marine and injuring another. Since then there has been a spate of further incidents and an attempt to firebomb a residential complex housing Western businessmen.
Islamic fundamentalism is growing in Kuwait and there appears to be a direct correlation between extremist violence and the build-up to war against Iraq. Further attacks in Kuwait are thought likely and, despite a government clampdown on fundamentalist groups following the Failaka shooting, anti-America sentiments can still be heard openly expressed outside the country's mosques and religious centres.
At the mosque formerly attended by Abu Ghaith, the Al-Qae'da 'spokesman', Khaled Abdul Ghanim, condemned the shootings as a matter of course. 'The attacks are very unhelpful to our cause,' said Ghanim, a religious scholar or Talib a-Alam.
Ghanim is one of the many young Kuwaitis who has grown tired of the opulent 'Western' lifestyle afforded by so much oil wealth, and turned instead to an extreme form of religious life. He makes no secret of his belief that Americans should be expelled from the country and war against Iraq averted. He refers to the large-scale American presence in Kuwait as 'the occupation', the term normally associated with the seven-month rule of the Iraqis.
He has grown angry at America's aggressive policies in the Middle East, and what he describes as the 'hypocrisy' of an older generation of Islamists in Kuwait, whose conservatism was fostered by the Government to protect the ruling al-Sabah family, and who have not spoken out against the war.
'The Iraqis are our brothers. Why should we fight against them? It was the Americans who created Saddam Hussein. Now it is for the Iraqi people to decide whether they want to keep him,' Ghanim said.
'If the Government does not listen to these views then more and more people will have to make themselves heard through violence. And if there is going to be a war against Iraq, believe me, there will be such an uprising. The people of Kuwait, the people of the Middle East, will never stand for it. The message is, for everyone's sake, let there be peace.' The Kuwaiti Government has, however, chosen to ignore voices like Ghanim's, and the other disparate calls for peace. It can do so because Kuwait is not a democracy. It does so because it has no choice.
For a small country with vast oil wealth, surrounded by neighbours like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq, Kuwait has had to welcome American protection even if it means helping launch a war against Iraq which threatens its environment, its immigrant workforce and perhaps its entire polity.
The American military presence in the region has been as much about bolstering the rule of the autocratic regimes of the Gulf states against rising Islamic fundamentalism as it has been about protecting these countries from external aggression. Qatar and Bahrain, with far more restive populations than Kuwait, house respectively America's Central Command for Central Asia and the Middle East, and the US Navy's Fifth Fleet.
Real politik has thus prevailed, along with a strange faith in America's ability not to bring about the sort of catastrophe predicted by Ghanim.
Sadly, the sense of political necessity felt by the government and by so many Kuwaitis like al-Jarallah, has disenfranchized large swathes of the population and led some to terrible acts of extremist violence.
Jack Fairweather is a freelance reporter
working from Kuwait City.
<jackfairweather@hotmail.com>
ni | home
| contact
us
