The "Plot" and the Problem: How Things in the Gulf Got Where They Are

By Michael Collins Dunn

The question of war or peace in the Gulf will be resolved fairly soon. Whatever the outcome, historians will wrestle for years with the questions of what really happened in the last days of July and the first days of August 1990. Critics of the rapid US intervention often overlook the confusion and tension of those days, and the real uncertainty about what Iraq's intentions were. Added to the "fog of war" was the real belief (whether justified or not) in Saudi Arabia that its neighbors were ganging up on it to cut the kingdom apart.

Wars and crises often start because of misjudgments, and few crises began with as many misjudgments as this one. Kuwait misjudged Iraq's seriousness, as did the US and the other Arabs. Iraq clearly misjudged the US will to respond and the Saudi willingness to invite the US in. Such misunderstandings are always dangerous in a crisis. The First World War is the most obvious case of a massive global confrontation which somehow grew from an obscure assassination in the Balkans.

The outlines of the future debate over the origins of the present crisis are already clear. Those who oppose the US/Western intervention in the Arabian Peninsula recognize the potential disruptiveness of such a foreign presence (clearly true), and insist that the US moved too quickly, that had it given time to the Arab world, an "Arab solution" would have been found without outside involvement. The other side of the argument—mostly those Arab states backing the coalition, and the Western states involved—sees things differently. In the first week of August there was a genuine threat, they feel, to the Saudi oil fields, and anything short of a quick intervention might have led to the collapse of Saudi Arabia. Lacking access to classified information, satellite photos, and most importantly the private intentions of President Saddam Hussain, we cannot know for certain at this time which side is right.

One thing seems clear: while the US may have been eager to intervene in the region, it could never have done so without regional support. Initially one heard some critics commenting that the US "pressured the Saudis to let us come in." This attitude shows a lack of understanding of Saudi ability to withstand pressure to do something they do not wish to do, which is considerable. For years, the Saudis have resisted US "pressures" for a greater American role in the region. Without other factors, the Saudis would not suddenly succumb to US "pressure" to send hundreds of thousands of troops to their cautious kingdom.

Few crises began with as many misjudgments as this one.

In fact, the Saudis genuinely believed, in the first days of August, that not merely their borders but the survival of their kingdom was at stake. The objective truth of this conviction cannot be verified at this time. But in any crisis situation, perception is more important that objective reality, and everything which occurred in the days before and after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and everything which Iraq said and did, reinforced the Saudi perception that the kingdom's neighbors might be conspiring in a plot to dismember Saudi Arabia itself.

By now, anyone who follows the Middle East closely has heard of "the plot." Most Saudis and many Egyptians seem to believe it in one form or another, at least that there is a germ of truth behind it. In basic outline ' it holds that Iraq, Jordan and Yemen had conspired and agreed that after Iraq had attacked the Saudi oil fields, the other two countries would also claim parts of the kingdom for themselves, King Hussein of Jordan reclaiming his ancestral Hijaz (including Mecca, Medina and the Red Sea ports), and Yemen recovering the provinces it lost to the Saudis in 1934, and perhaps more.

Just Enough Smoke

Baldly stated, it sounds like a typical Middle East coffeehouse exercise in fantasy. But there is just enough smoke to make one wonder if there might be, or have been, a spark of fire somewhere. For example:

King Hussein of Jordan did, in the weeks before Iraq's invasion, inform his own parliament that he would be honored to be addressed by the title "Sharif. " Now this title merely indicates a descendant of the Prophet, but it is also the title which the king's great-grandfather held as custodian of Mecca. The king's great-grandfather, Hussein bin Ali, was expelled from the Hijaz in the 1920s by the father of the present Saudi king.
North Yemen and South Yemen had been scheduled to unite in November of 1990, but they instead announced unification in May, apparently to pre-empt any Saudi interference. The new country has a larger population than Saudi Arabia, and its combined armed forces roughly match the Saudis' in strength.
The Saudis had always had doubts about the "Arab Cooperation Council" linking Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Yemen. But in 1990 Egypt found itself alone in trying to keep the ACC limited to a political and economic role: the other three states wanted to transform it into a military alliance. Egypt objected, and was surprised to find out that the other three had prepared a military agreement anyway. Egypt and Saudi Arabia both now suspect that the ACC was a front for Iraqi-Jordanian Yemeni cooperation.

Based on this evidence, the argument goes that Saddam, if the US had not intervened, would have kept going through the oil fields of Saudi Arabia and perhaps into the UAE. A kingdom bereft of its oil would have been vulnerable to claims by Jordan and Yemen.

More Elaborate Explications

The Saudis might have found themselves with little else but their original homeland of the Nejd, without oil or a seaport. Since the invasion, more elaborate explications of the plot have emerged. One version has it that Saddam would have given the Palestinians of the Gulf control of Kuwait in return for their support. This has contributed to the notion that the Gulf Palestinians might be a fifth column, and has led to some Palestinian expulsions in some Gulf states.

An even farther-fetched version claims that former Algerian President Ahmed Ben Bella would be given control of the Maghreb in the new carving-up of the Arab world which would follow carrying out the plot.

This may all seem like a paranoid delusion, but as the saying goes, being paranoid does not mean no one is out to get you. If one puts oneself in the Saudis' shoes in the first days after the invasion, already alarmed by the signs of Jordanian and Yemeni friendship with Iraq and mutterings about possible future claims, it is easy to understand why the Saudis reacted quickly. Bear in mind as well that Iraqi forces not only advanced right up to the Saudi frontier but reportedly on at least three occasions crossed it; that an attempt at setting up a hot line between Iraqi and Saudi forces failed when the Saudis could not get an Iraqi answer at a tense moment; and that Iraqi propaganda was not merely denouncing the Kuwaitis but all the oil-rich hereditary monarchies of the Gulf.

Militarily, Saudi Arabia lay virtually undefended. Despite extensive expenditures on air and naval power, the country still had no ground force strength to speak of, and while modem tanks were on order they were not in place. Saddam's armored divsions could have sliced through the oil fields in two or three days, and continued on to subdue the United Arab Emirates, which he had also charged with plotting against Iraq.

Did Jordan and Yemen actually plot with Iraq to cut up the kingdom? They deny it, and there is no overt evidence to prove that they are not telling the truth. Did Iraq perhaps hint at possibilities to come? Did, in fact, Saddam even intend to attack the Saudis, or were the Iraqis really, as they insist, content with Kuwait and never intending any threat to their neighbors?

Those who give firm, confident answers to these questions are, for the most part, people with a special pleading already: Jordanians or Yemenis or Iraqis on the one side, or Saudis or Egyptians on the other. Most of us just don't know. We may never know what Saddam's innermost intentions were.

What is clear, though, is that Saudi Arabia could have lost its oil fields in a matter of hours or days. And the Saudis thought this was a real possibility. As a result, they did what had previously been unthinkable, and asked foreigners to intervene.

In the past, the shibboleth of Arab solutions to Arab problems has been (for the most part) honored. But Arab League meetings take time, and there was, in the Saudi view anyway' no time to spare.

Had Saudi Arabia actually fallen, no Arab League solution could have put it back together again. In fact, though many even now call for the will-o'-the-wisp of an "Arab solution," the Arab League tried at Cairo and split sharply without finding a solution; 12 of the Arab states, a majority, opted to back the coalition forces.

In the heat of the moment, Saudi Arabia was convinced that its survival was at stake and that it might be a question of hours. It still believes that. Perhaps someday we will learn if the threat was real or imagined. Until then, it is hard to criticize the Saudis' decision to call for the only foreign help which could arrive quickly—the Americans. Or to criticize the US decision to defend a longtime friend.

Michael Collins Dunn, Ph.D., is senior analyst with The International Estimate, Inc., a Washington consultancy, and Middle East editor of its biweekly newsletter, The Estimate.