June 1995, Pages 13-14, 103-104

Special Report

Resilient New Kuwait: Tempered by Fire

By Richard H. Curtiss

I first visited Kuwait in 1965, when my wife and I drove the 450 or so miles of newly constructed paved highway that separated it from Baghdad, where I was U.S. Embassy press attaché. Our primary goal was just to feast our eyes on the sea, a recurring psychological necessity for Californians.

However, as a small and relatively clean and orderly metropolis where the fixtures in the hotel bathrooms worked and the food and service in the restaurants were excellent, Kuwait City itself was a very pleasant surprise. We decided right then that we would welcome an assignment there. The Kuwait posting never came, but subsequent tasks took me to Kuwait for short visits nearly every year throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

During that period the city grew steadily, with new ring roads connecting ever-expanding residential suburbs. However, I could always find my way on foot around the old downtown area, which took on an increasingly cosmopolitan atmosphere with the addition of Indian, Chinese, Korean, Philippine and Thai restaurants catering both to visitors like me and to the country's dramatically expanding expatriate population.

The architectural ambiance was eclectic. Among the traditional souks there appeared soaring marble-fronted hotel and office towers and glittering shopping malls where middle-aged Kuwaitis—men dressed in white galabiyas and women in black abayas—mingled with the sports-togged younger Kuwaiti generation and tens of thousands of Palestinians, Lebanese, Egyptians, Indians, Pakistanis, Filipinos and others in Western dress. Despite the growing economic gaps between the increasingly affluent Kuwaitis, the middle class Levantine Arabs, and struggling new arrivals from Egypt and Asia, the atmosphere was a tolerant one—live and let live.

For Kuwaitis it meant an abundant, heavily subsidized lifestyle that included big two- and three-story villas for thriving, three-generation extended families; free education through the university level; and annual or even semi-annual foreign vacations. For Palestinians it was not home because citizenship was denied to most of them, but it was the next best thing and opened to many an even more prosperous life than they might have enjoyed had they been able to remain in their homeland.

For most of the others it was a place from which to send vital remittances to families back home—or even be joined by their families if they stayed long enough—and where they could save enough money to ensure a comfortable existence when they returned to their countries of origin.

On Aug. 2, 1990, however, the old life was shattered, literally overnight, for every inhabitant of Kuwait—from the ruling family to the most newly arrived South Asian laborer—by the Iraqi invasion. It was so sudden that Rashid Birosli, now an aide in the Emiri Diwan, witnessed it without comprehension. Home for the summer after taking a B.A. at a Southern California college, he was looking forward to returning to Los Angeles in the fall to enroll in graduate studies at the University of Southern California. On the night of Aug. 1-2, he had been visiting until late with friends and decided to walk home sometime after midnight.

"I noticed a lot of traffic, including military vehicles, in the streets, but I didn't pay any attention and went to bed as soon as I got home," he notes sheepishly. "When I woke up in the morning, there was an Iraqi tank outside my house, and when I tried to go out to find out what had happened, an Iraqi officer ordered me back inside."

A few days later, he bundled relatives into the family automobile and headed across the desert to Saudi Arabia. Later he joined the Kuwaiti army and took military training in Egypt and psychological warfare training at Fort Dix, New Jersey. He returned to help liberate Kuwait on "the proudest day of my life."

A Not-So-Lucky Friend

Not so lucky was his best friend, who took members of his family out on the same day as did Birosli, but later decided to return across the desert to occupied Kuwait to care for relatives and property left behind. He was never seen again. Two of Birosli's first cousins also are missing. He believes they are among the 625 Kuwaitis said to be languishing in Saddam Hussain's prisons. He fears that by now, trapped in tiny cells for more than four years for use as pawns in Saddam Hussain's endless, pointless intrigues, they may have been driven insane.

Every Kuwaiti and every expatriate who was inside or outside Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990 has his own story. Ahmad Naseeb was an 18-year-old student newly enrolled in American University in Washington, DC. After the invasion, he halted his studies to work at the suddenly overburdened Kuwait embassy in the U.S. national capital and then volunteered for his country's armed forces. On Dec. 14, he was attached to the intelligence section of a U.S. Marine Corps unit and was sent to Al Khobar in Saudi Arabia to monitor Iraqi military broadcasting frequencies. He moved with his U.S. unit into Kuwait at the beginning of the ground war and, only days later, his military assignment ended on March 5, 1991. After finding his family safe, he returned to American University to take a degree in engineering. Now he hopes to go to work for his former boss, Sheikh Saud Nasir Al-Sabah, who was Kuwait's ambassador to the U.S. during the war, and now is Kuwaiti minister of information.

Sheikh Saud, whose embassy was suddenly responsible for thousands of Kuwaitis stranded in the U.S. without funds and with checkbooks and credit cards on banks that had ceased to function, recalls vividly the nights and days of dealing with the U.S. media, the Pentagon, State Department and Congress, which held a number of hearings to which he was invited to describe what he knew about the Iraqi occupation and explain why Kuwait would need U.S. miliary support for its liberation. Asked how the workload of a hands-on minister of information responsible, among other things, for his country's radio and television programming, compares with that of his frenetic ambassadorial assignment, Sheikh Saud shrugs off his present duties with a grin, explaining, "Nothing will ever be like those wartime months.

Eighty-year-old Abdel Aziz al-Sagar, Kuwait's first president of parliament in the 1960s and now chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, had just attended a meeting in Europe of 4,000 Chamber of Commerce officials from all over the world and then had checked into a hospital in Hamburg, Germany for a serious operation. When he heard of the invasion, however, he checked out of the hospital, flew to Saudi Arabia to join Kuwait's ruler in establishing a government-in-exile, and when his work was done flew back to Hamburg for the operation. Meanwhile his Palestinian executive assistant of 20 years was able to smuggle Chamber of Commerce files out of the Chamber offices before they were looted. The assistant is one of some 50,000 Palestinians who remain in Kuwait, which was home to 400,000 Palestinians before the invasion.

Dr. Hassan Ibrahim, director of a Kuwaiti non-governmental research organization, the Kuwait Society for the Advancement of Arab Children, had just arrived in the U.S. when he learned of the invasion. He stayed glued to the radio until he learned, late on the first day, that both the ruler, Sheikh Jabir al-Ahmad al-Jabir Al Sabah and Crown Prince and Prime Minister Saad al-Abdullah al-Salim Al Sabah, had escaped in the confusion of the night invasion to Saudi Arabia. Although a brother of the ruler was killed directing the defense of the palace, Dr. Ibrahim knew that with most of the ruling family outside the country, a defense could be organized.

He threw himself into the work of the Committee for a Free Kuwait, and helped launch a highly effective information campaign in the United States. When he returned in triumph after the liberation, he found his family, members of which had been scattered all over the world, safe. However, the villa which housed his foundation had been used as an Iraqi military headquarters. Today the huge pot in which the Iraqi soldiers cooked their meals, using books from the foundation library and chairs from the offices as fuel, is on the villa's front lawn full of blooming petunias. The foundation staff, however, is still rebuilding the library and reconstructing the research files. What the Iraqis did not burn they vandalized in an orgy of senseless destruction just before they withdrew.

Abdul Rahman al-Ateeqi, Kuwait's first ambassador to the U.S. in 1962, subsequently served simultaneously as Kuwait's minister of petroleum and minister of finance. He now is chairman of the board of Investcorp, one of the biggest capital funds in the Gulf. He, too, was caught outside the country by the invasion but his son, a contractor, was able to retrieve and hide his father's extensive business files before the offices were looted, vandalized and finally burned. Today, although he has put his Bahrain-based business back together, Mr. al-Ateeqi receives guests in the offices of his son. Those offices are intact, but the business was destroyed when the Iraqi forces looted its equipment.

Although I was able to visit Kuwait City for a day with a Saudi military press tour only hours after the country's liberation, my stay in April 1995 was my first opportunity to see and hear first-hand the problems of rebuilding the country. In February 1991 I photographed the joyous and tearful scenes as Kuwaitis welcomed their international liberators. I also experienced for a few hours the desolation of a city without food, electricity or water as nighttime cold set in and a pall of black smoke blotted out even the light of the stars.

On that 1991 visit I could see that every ground floor shop in the city had been looted, some had been burned, and even the glass and marble towers bore shell holes and smoke smudges from a last-minute indiscriminate barrage fired by Iraqi soldiers as they retreated.

On a subsequent airport transit in the fall of 1991, while some of the oil wells still burned outside the city, I noted how valiantly ground personnel and aircrews were working to provide normal service from terminal buildings still only partially restored. It was only in 1995, however, four full years after liberation, that the magnitude of the Kuwaiti reconstruction effort became clear to me.

The Magnitude of Reconstruction

Some of the pleasant, modern malls, which have grown up on the sites of the traditional souks, have been totally restored. Others still are hollow shells, with collapsed shelves and empty boxes still littering the floors just as they were left by looters rushing to join the miles-long convoy of fleeing Iraqi occupiers. It was when that retreating convoy was bombed at the front and back by coalition aircraft that the road upon which it ground to a halt earned the sobriquet "highway of death." Most of the fleeing Iraqi soldiers were able to escape by foot from the burning vehicles. But they left millions of dollars worth of loot from one of the wealthiest cities on earth among the smoldering wrecks. From there it was scattered by the winds over hundreds of square miles of desert.

Their riches looted, their businesses destroyed, and many of their relatives and friends dead, missing or traumatized, the Kuwaitis are rebuilding their country successfully, despite predictions by some outsiders four years ago that they would never recover.

Before the Gulf war, some Kuwaitis had a reputation among other Arabs for idleness or arrogance. In my own frequent personal encounters I had met a cross section of Kuwaitis ranging from some who were warm, hospitable and eager-to-learn to others who were xenophobic, aloof and assertive. Clearly the stereotype did not apply to all but, for some, it may have contained a grain of truth.

On this first real visit since the war, however, I encountered a breed of Kuwaiti that seemed new—at least to me. Some of the older people, who perhaps had been too dependent upon the expatriates who helped them construct the original Kuwaiti economic powerhouse, seemed broken and daunted by the tasks of rebuilding shattered businesses and lives. All Kuwaitis now, however, are extremely friendly to visitors, proud of their personal contributions to the survival of their country and imbued with a patriotism and idealism that has replaced the assertiveness of the past. Most important, younger Kuwaitis seem ready and eager to tackle the tasks still remaining.

It's risky to generalize from chance encounters. But the war that temporarily traumatized Kuwait now seems to have strengthened it. Privileged and self-indulgent Kuwaitis who, during the war, got such bad international press for seeming obliviousness to the risks and sacrifices of young soldiers coming from all corners of the world to liberate their country, seem to have disappeared. In their places are young, well-educated Kuwaitis determined to live down the negative stereotypes of the past, and to live up to the goals they have set for themselves in rebuilding their country and restoring a fragile environment desecrated so cruelly by a mad conqueror and his minions.

Since I first encountered them 30 years ago, I've liked Kuwait and its people. Now I respect and admire them as well.

Richard H. Curtiss is the executive editor of the Washington Report.

SIDEBAR

A Dedicated Volunteer

Lights are burning in the offices and cars fill the parking lot when my taxi arrives at 7 p.m. at the Sabah Al Salem Foundation in a suburb several miles from the center of Kuwait. The foundation, named after Kuwait's deceased previous ruler, originally was created to help students. It provides scholarships for Kuwaitis to pursue specialized study abroad, and assistance for the thousands of foreign students studying at Kuwaiti universities. At one side of the large, modern compound are apartments to house students from poor nations who cannot afford housing on the open market.

My appointment is with Dr. Rola Dashti, a volunteer with the Committee for Kuwait POWs and Missing Persons in Iraq. Before I can even pronounce her full name, a guard points me toward an auditorium where I will find "Doctor Rola." Inside a large retangular hall whose walls are covered with photos of all of Kuwait's 625 missing persons, a slim young woman in slacks and a bright blouse is describing the work of the organization. Seated in a semi-circle around her is a rapt audience of American university students selected by the National Council on U.S.- Arab Relations of Washington, DC for a 10-day visit to Kuwait sponsored by the Kuwait American Foundation.

Despite her poise and unstudied elegance, Rola Dashti looks no older than the university students she is addressing in fluent, unaccented American English. But the intensity of her presentation holds them spellbound and their questions continue until the tour leader insists they must leave to attend a dinner in their honor being given by one of Kuwait's leading businessmen.

Still they cannot tear themselves away as they follow Dr. Dashti through a quick tour of the photographs on the walls. She seems able to answer personal questions about any of the 625 faces staring from the softly illuminated displays, and each story seems more tragic than the previous one.

Despite her total familiarity with the subject, however, 30-year-old "Dr. Rola" is a part-time volunteer, not a paid full-time employee of the committee. Educated in British and American schools in Beirut, and then at U.S. universities, she holds a Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and is a full-time economist with the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, one of the leading research institutions in the Arab world.

That institution, like everything and everyone in Kuwait, has its own sad story. The occupying Iraqi army carried off to Baghdad its millions of dollars worth of scientific equipment, destroyed the records of ongoing experiments, some of them underway for years, and released, lost or ate the hundreds of hybrid fish, shrimp, domestic animals and plants being developed for agricultural purposes in the sub-tropical marine, desert and marsh environments characteristic of the Gulf.

Rola Dashti's days are spent reconstructing the lost scientific work at KISR, and many of her evenings are spent at the POW committee, trying to ensure that as the last accounts from the 11 years of warfare in the Gulf are settled, the world does not forget Kuwait's missing 625 persons.

Does she really believe they still are alive? "We know that Iraq has them," she answers with total conviction. "We believe the 625 are alive." She points out that after his war with Iran, Saddam Hussain did not return all of the Iranian prisoners Iraq held. Only after he attacked Kuwait did he let the last of the Iranians go home to ensure their country's neutrality.

Why is he holding the Kuwaitis? "No one knows but Saddam Hussain," she answers. "From Aug. 2 until a few days before the liberation on Feb. 22, 1991, people were taken," she replies. "Some were taken in groups. Many people were taken from Friday prayers at the mosques. Recently I heard that a total of 20,000 were taken for periods of days, weeks or months, but a lot of them returned."

Asked whether any of her own relatives are among the prisoners, she says not, but then explains her motivation for working so single-mindedly on their behalf: "I feel that the martyrs and the prisoners of war sacrificed their lives to free all of us, so the minimum I can do is volunteer some of my time. To me, all of them are my brothers and sisters."

Nor, she says, is she in any way unique. Ninety percent of the committee personnel are volunteers, she explains, including teachers, engineers, clerks, students and members of POW families.

The exhibition hall in which we are standing, she says, formerly was the wedding hall for families of students who could not afford to hire a hotel ballroom for wedding receptions.

"This room used to be for joyful events," Dr. Dashti explains. Now it will be used for the present purpose "until all of the 625 are accounted for."—RHC

SIDEBAR 2

Who And Where Are Kuwait's 625 MIAs and POWs?

The detainees include three brothers from the Badria family, an engineer, a computer scientist and a university student. They were taken from their home on Jan. 25, 1991 by Iraqi soldiers, who packed them into an automobile, still in their night clothes, with nine other detainees from their neighborhood. A week later their mother heard where the middle son was being held and was able to see him, still in his pajamas, before Iraqi soldiers forced her to leave.

Since then she has heard from returning prisoners that her sons were separated, put in different prisons, and are moved regularly to prevent international bodies from tracing or identifying them.

Another woman identified by the National Committee for Missing and POW Affairs only as Umm Ahmad has lost both her husband and her only son to the Iraqi prison system. Their captors charged that the son was a citizen of Iraq, while he insisted he was a Kuwaiti.

Iraqi forces arrested anyone found with such nationalist symbols as Kuwaiti flags, pictures of the ruler and the crown prince, texts of Kuwaiti songs and old Kuwaiti newspapers. The Iraqis also searched for and seized members of the Kuwaiti army, police and national guard, regardless of whether or not they were serving in military or resistance operations.

Many Kuwaitis were seized in their homes, often in the middle of the night. The raids were not generally based on precise information, but rather unsubstantiated accusations against one family member, kinship to someone who was wanted, or even similarities in name. In this manner entire families were taken into custody.

Many young men were seized for volunteering to distribute food and other necessities to residents of Kuwait. Others were arrested for expressing hostile opinions, often in anger after being harassed or robbed at checkpoints. Some who had been outside Kuwait when the invasion took place were arrested as they tried to enter Kuwait via desert routes linking it to neighboring countries. Others were arrested for trying to escape.

In the final days before Kuwait's liberation, occupation forces arrested every young man who appeared on the streets or attended services at mosques. Eventually, just looking through an open doorway was cause for arrest.

One such detainee is Bader Murad, a 20-year-old student whose father had died, and who therefore assumed responsibility as head of the household consisting of his mother and two sisters. At the beginning of the occupation he volunteered to help distribute food and pick up garbage. On Aug. 4, only two days after the invasion, he set out on this duty and was arrested and taken to Iraq. A cousin, who was delivering food to a hungry family that day, also was taken prisoner and sent to Iraq.

The youngest of these arbitrarily detained prisoners was three-year-old Asmaa Al-Fulaij, whose older brother was arrested while he was distributing food and necessities after the invasion. Three weeks later he was brought back to his home, in shackles, by soldiers who then arrested his parents, brother and five sisters, including Asmaa, the youngest.

They were first imprisoned in Kuwait, and then transferred to Iraq. They slept on bare concrete floors with no blankets, and were given bits of hard, moldy bread to eat. Men and women were kept apart, but constantly heard rumors of torture and beatings of male prisoners, and sexual assaults on women prisoners.

Asmaa became so sick she could not keep food down, and she began to suffer from chronic diarrhea, anemia and malnutrition. Finally, after five months, members of an Iraqi resistance group discovered the Kuwaiti family and took them to Americans who repatriated them. However, the eldest brother, the original detainee, remains a prisoner in Iraq. —RHC