On August 2, 1990, Iraqi soldiers invaded Kuwait. The speed with which the invaders took over the country was shocking; it seemed an excessive response to a conventional understanding of the grounds for the conflict between Iraq and Kuwait. Despite Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's constant referrals to low oil prices and Iraq's desperate economic situation, U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie, during her July 25 meeting with him, reflected U.S. perceptions that Iraq's quarrel with Kuwait was little more than a "border dispute."1 Arab leaders, including Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, also believed that Iraqi goals were limited.2 Foreign diplomats in Baghdad who were attending a reception hosted by China on the evening of August 1 agreed that the most Iraq might do would be to cross the border.3 But Iraq took all of Kuwait in a single day, after which it began deploying armored divisions on the Saudi border. Despite Iraq's August 3 announcement that it would begin to withdraw from Kuwait in two days, there was no Iraqi pullback, and on August 8, Saddam declared Kuwait to be annexed to Iraq.4
The Iraqis were not the only ones active during this first week of what turned out to be nearly seven months of occupation. Jordan's King Hussein immediately launched a diplomatic effort to get Iraqi forces to withdraw, despite the obstacle presented by an Iraqi statement prohibiting the "extinct regime" in the persons of the ruling Sabah family from returning to Kuwait.5 The king's efforts were negated by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and U.S. President George Bush. Meeting in Aspen, Colorado, the day after the invasion, Thatcher pushed Bush to reverse the pledge he had made earlier to King Hussein that the United States would remain in the background, allowing him at least 48 hours in which to persuade Saddam to withdraw. Instead, Bush deferred to Thatcher, who took an aggressive stance against Saddam in both their names. Bush himself urged Mubarak and Saudi Arabia's King Fahd to withhold their support from King Hussein's diplomatic efforts and support instead a U.S.-led campaign against the Iraqi invasion.6
Kuwaitis organized in and outside of the country to combat the takeover. About a third of the population was abroad on August 2 and others became refugees as a direct result of the invasion.7 Most of the ruling family left Kuwait immediately, conscious of their potential to increase the vulnerability of the Kuwaiti nation should they be captured and either killed or used for propaganda purposes.8 They were joined by other officials whose positions could be used to enhance the legitimacy of Iraqis pretending to act in their names.9 Most Kuwaitis stranded at home by the invasion refused to leave. They mobilized themselves to care for family, friends and neighbors and resisted the occupation in every available way from gathering intelligence and sending it abroad to mounting public demonstrations and committing acts of sabotage. Kuwait's present minister of commerce and industry, and labor and social affairs (two portfolios), Abd al-Wahhab al Wazzan, put it this way: "We did not leave .... This is our place and we can't be anywhere else."10 This explains why the trickle of Kuwaitis across the border that continued throughout the occupation went in both directions. Though some left, others returned, most in quite prosaic ways - flying scheduled airlines into Iraq and taking a bus to Kuwait.11
Kuwaitis outside also were active in resisting the occupation.12 Those with media expertise worked to mobilize public opinion in support of the U.S.-led military "coalition," gradually coming together to roll back the invasion. Optimists planned for post-liberation reentry and reconstruction. Insiders had informed them when Iraqi troops began placing explosive charges on Kuwait's oil installations during the second week of the occupation.1 3 Reentry plans included making arrangements for fire-fighting teams to extinguish any oil-well fires the Iraqis might set when they were driven out.
Political reconstruction was on the agenda of the "outsiders." The invasion had occurred less than two months after Kuwait's ruler, Jabir al-Ahmad, had engineered the election of an extra-constitutional assembly in an effort to quell months of demonstrations against his 1986 dismissal of the parliament and suspension of constitutionally mandated civil-liberties guarantees. The invasion opened a political space that pro-democracy forces used to their advantage. Kuwaitis from a wide range of backgrounds pressed their government-in-exile to agree to real steps toward the resumption of constitutional life should Kuwaiti sovereignty be restored.14 After liberation, Kuwait's international position could be seen to have changed. Differences between pre- and post-invasion Kuwait were more subtle.
NATIONAL SECURITY
Following liberation, Kuwait's contested boundary with Iraq was demarcated and certified by a U.N. commission.15 The commission's report supported Kuwait's position that its territorial integrity had suffered from what Henry Kissinger, in another context, called "salami tactics," the gradual crowding of a weaker opponent by an aggressor. In a September 1990 interview, an employee of the Kuwait Drilling Company who had been working on the border when the invasion occurred told me that he thought the July 1990 concentration of Iraqi troops on the border was "another 1978," one more instance of the Iraqi military suddenly massing on the border to "move" it farther southward. The official demarcation of the border north of the presumed pre-invasion boundary between Kuwait and Iraq confirmed Kuwaiti sovereignty claims and conferred on them the imprimatur of the United Nations. But it did not erase Kuwait's territorial vulnerability, and border incursions have occurred since then.
The invasion and war also altered Kuwait's strategic posture. Since 1961, when the bond between Kuwait and Britain formally ended, Kuwaiti policy makers had taken a strong stand in favor of regional autonomy in foreign policy. Yet in 1961 and during subsequent occasions of Iraqi threats to Kuwait, Kuwait's regional allies proved to be ambivalent in their support and reluctant to come to its defense.16 Extra-regional powers tipped the balance in Kuwait's favor. Iraq's 1961 threat to absorb Kuwait was blocked by British military intervention, only later supplanted by an Arab League force. Although the 1973 crisis between Kuwait and Iraq drew prompt diplomatic support from other Arab states, one factor in Iraq's decision to back down was probably pressure from its Soviet ally.17
The Gulf Cooperation Council was formed in 1981 by Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Oman to deal with heightened internal and external security problems arising first from the Iranian revolution and then from the Iran-Iraq War.18 Kuwaiti leaders again reiterated their position that Gulf security was the joint responsibility of the Gulf states.19 However, after a promising beginning, multilateralism in the GCC flagged. Kuwait preferred unilateral action on internal security matters, but it chafed under unilateral decisions taken by its GCC partners. One example is the 1986 refusal of the GCC to respond to Kuwaiti demands for protection of its shipping from Iranian attacks made in retaliation for Kuwait's assistance to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war.20 Another is the May 1991 refusal by GCC members to implement a 1987 oil agreement to produce and market oil for any member whose production was curtailed, as Kuwait's had been as the result of the post-liberation conflagration in its oil fields (see below).21
GCC reluctance to accede to these Kuwaiti demands reflects both insufficient strategic resources and fear of inviting retaliation from stronger neighbors. Such explanations serve equally well to explain why the GCC was unable to forestall or roll back the 1990 Iraqi invasion on its own. GCC members are well aware of their strategic vulnerability. In 1987, sometime before post-liberation Kuwait forged bilateral military alliances with extra regional powers like the United States and Britain, Oman strengthened its own strategic ties to these outside powers.22 As Fred Lawson notes, the security dilemmas of the Arab Gulf states are complex. The five smaller GCC members are wary of collective-security proposals that could cement Saudi hegemony; all six are averse to the permanent stationing of Egyptian and/or Syrian troops to protect the region.23 Yet the continuing presence of U.S. troops in Kuwait since liberation has rekindled anti-Western and especially anti-American antagonism and has renewed interest in regional-security arrangements although there is no consensus on what such arrangements ought to be.
Resentment of U.S. influence in Kuwait also comes from critics of Kuwaiti arms purchases, some of them members of parliament. Urging by Gulf war allies such as the United States, France and Britain to purchase expensive armaments is seen by these critics as unethical. They have signed formal security agreements with Kuwait and should not require bribes to ensure their response to future attacks on it. Also, military purchases are thought to involve kickbacks to political allies of the regime. This increases opposition to large arms purchases, especially at the same time that the government is urging cutbacks in expenditures that support the living standards of low-income Kuwaitis. Kuwait is in financial straits, stemming from the high cost of war and reconstruction coupled with years of depressed earnings from low oil prices, a situation that only recently has changed. Arm-twisting by wealthy developed countries to get Kuwait to commit to purchasing arms whose strategic utility appears to be marginal seems especially venal under these circumstances.
RECONSTRUCTION
Liberation found Kuwait in a shambles. The population was disoriented and short of food, water and fuel. Looting and capricious destruction of property had been widespread throughout the occupation, and more than 6000 Kuwaiti prisoners had been taken. As their last days in Kuwait approached, the occupiers took hundreds of additional captives, wrecked and firebombed buildings and industrial installations, and detonated charges on more than 700 oil wells.
Returning Kuwaitis - "outsiders" - saw themselves as rescuers. "Insiders," who had coped on their own with little in the way of outside help during seven months of fear, deprivation, boredom and violence, saw them differently. Insiders had to protect and care for one another and to keep Kuwait in existence despite Iraqi efforts to co-opt and assimilate them. They resented being treated like helpless infants by their government and by returning compatriots who had exaggerated the insiders' victimization during the occupation and then congratulated themselves for having liberated the country upon their return. Another slap came from the government's refusal to utilize resistance networks to distribute scarce food, fuel and water. The government was concerned to present itself as fully competent to take charge and perhaps also wanted to diminish the status of resistance leaders. Yet this decision imposed additional deprivation on already exhausted insiders and was the first of a string of policies that overrode insiders' desires to increase national self-reliance in favor of reestablishing citizen dependence on the state.24
The ability of the state to resume prewar levels of welfare spending was in doubt. Departing Iraqis had detonated hundreds of explosives on Kuwaiti oil installations. Insiders noted the charges being placed from the second week of the occupation, but forays into the oil fields to disarm them were detected by Iraqi troops.25 During the occupation, a small group of top managers working outside on reentry planning contracted with four oil well fire-fighting teams to be ready to come to Kuwait immediately after liberation and arranged for supplies and equipment. The oil-well fires were extinguished in nine months, a tribute to the planners and the initial fire-fighting teams and also to an April 1991 decision to invite additional firefighters, including Kuwaiti volunteers, to join in the effort. Competition among the fire fighters over which teams could put out the most fires kept morale high despite the danger and difficulty of the job. When it was over, the Kuwait Oil Company reported that 727 wells had been secured and capped.26
Other reconstruction activities received increasing attention as the oil-well fires came under control. Measures to restore oil production capacity began, as did repair work on public buildings and roads. One by one, Kuwaitis renovated their homes. They reordered books and computers for looted schools and libraries, equipment for looted hospitals and plumbing fixtures for destroyed lavatories and bathrooms. When I visited the National Museum in 1992, once the home of the world's largest collection of Islamic art, the great halls where the main collection had been displayed were empty of everything but rubble, all their treasures stolen. Left behind were contemporary works by Kuwaiti artists, including portraits and figures that had been slashed in the face and genital areas. Excrement was deposited on textiles, a water-well cover and furniture. A manager at the Mina Abdullah Refinery told me that desks and papers there had been similarly defiled. I also heard complaints from exasperated husbands whose wives found identical remnants of the occupation in their houses and refused to set foot in them until they were totally gutted and rebuilt.
The hostility between Kuwait and Iraq is revealed by those contemptuous relics left by Iraqi occupiers, as well as by the strong resistance to reconciliation shown by most Kuwaitis since liberation. Even so, restitution for damages inflicted by the invasion and occupation got underway almost immediately through an innovative system directed by the United Nations.27 The source of war reparations were Iraqi foreign assets and, when those were exhausted, 30 percent of the proceeds from the oil-for-food program established under U.N. Resolution 986 of 1995 and subsequent amendments. The program allows Iraq to sell oil under U.N. supervision to ensure that the proceeds will not be spent on weapons. It constitutes a limited suspension of the economic-sanctions regime that was initiated shortly after the invasion.
Injured parties, not only Kuwaitis but also nationals of other countries whose persons or property were damaged or destroyed by the invasion and occupation, file claims and present supporting documents to authorities established by their home governments or by international organizations. These authorities check the evidence and forward properly supported claims to the U.N. Compensation Commission, whose governing council sits in Geneva and is responsible for the final determination of the awards. By May 2000, the commission had paid out a total of$15.6 billion. More than 2.5 million claims amounting to more than a quarter of a trillion dollars have been presented to date, and officials expect processing to continue for several more years.28
For some Kuwaitis, however, the exorcism offered by reconstruction and restitution lies in the future because their occupation isn't over. These are the approximately six hundred Kuwaiti captives, most of whom were snatched off the streets during the occupation's last days and have been sequestered in Iraq ever since. In February 2000, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed retired
DOMESTIC POLITICS
The post-liberation political scene in Kuwait should be viewed from two levels. On the surface, little has changed in what Ghanim al-Najjar deplores as a system that seems to operate according to a mathematical formula rather than a political process.30 In Kuwait, there is an alternation in political life between parliaments that are legally elected and/or permitted to serve full four-year terms and those whose elections are rigged or whose terms are cut short. The formula continued to operate after liberation. The first post-liberation parliament, elected in 1992, served its full term. The 1996 parliament was suspended in 1999. Even though the mathematical regularity continued, however, there was a significant difference between the events of 1999 and the three earlier instances of the rulers' intervention in parliamentary life. In 1999, what happened was legal, and new elections were held within the prescribed 60 days of the termination of the 1996 parliament.
The 1999 parliamentary elections revealed other aspects of the continuity and change characterizing Kuwaiti politics. First, the election returned a large - perhaps the largest- number of "liberal" parliamentarians in Kuwaiti history, despite the efforts of the regime to keep its opponents in the parliament to a minimum. In 1981, the amir redistricted the country to increase the number of "rural" or tribal representatives in the parliament. This was an important part of a larger social process that Shafeeq Ghabra calls "desertization," the dilution of urban cosmopolitanism through the importation of tribe members and their values into the mainstream of Kuwaiti life. Desertization progressed rapidly after 1981, due to redistricting and to the selective incorporation of large numbers of tribal residents as full, first-category citizens of Kuwait with both economic and social rights and full political rights, including the right to vote and run for office.31 This alteration in the balance of social forces in Kuwait also changed the social composition of the growing "middle" or intermediate classes, most members of which owe their status to jobs, education and social entitlements paid for by oil revenues. Consequently, even religious practice has become more "traditional," one reason why Kuwaiti women still have not attained full political rights.32
The power and authority of Islamists and Islamist groups have risen since the occupation, a result of the prominence of Islamists in the Resistance and of the mosque as an institution protected by religious values from the degree of surveillance and interference that governments - including Iraqi occupying forces – exercise in other gathering places.33 Religious symbolism started to become a more conspicuous idiom of official state rhetoric in the late 1970s, and some Islamists and Islamist voluntary associations began to attract support from the Kuwaiti government.34 The regime's religious allies enjoy political power and access to favors (wasta) that boost their ability to attract followers, and, for those who run for political office, these advantages in turn attract voters. These "movement Islamists" are only one source of the rise in ostentatious religiosity in Kuwaiti life. Tribal traditionals who have benefited socially and politically from desertization also advocate state support of religiously sanctioned lifestyles and are among the strongest supporters of the regime.
At the same time, support for modern lifestyles and political democratization also is growing. The 1999 election returned moderates from rural as well as urban areas, while the line dividing Islamists from liberals also is fuzzy. On issues like defense spending, movement Islamists can be found, together with liberals, among the most vociferous opponents of the regime. On others, such as the bundle of education, employment and welfare policies that collectively shape how self-reliant Kuwait is - or is not - liberals and Islamists are more often found on opposite sides, liberals favoring greater individual responsibility and Islamists a more protective (paternalistic) state.
Women's status offers a window on some of the complexities of Kuwaiti political and social life. The two parliamentary votes on women's political rights that were held in November 1999 indicated a sea change from the repeated sustained attacks on female autonomy that had characterized the two previous postliberation parliaments. The first vote was lopsided, reflecting some members' views on women's rights and the views of others about something else. The latter were angry that the amir had issued a very large number of decrees between the dismissal of the 1996 parliament in May and the election of the 1999 parliament in July.35 Amiri decrees issued when parliament is not in session must be approved by the parliament when it reconvenes, and the first women's-rights vote was on one of those decrees. A virtually identical proposal submitted by members of parliament was voted on a week later. This time it lost by only two votes. Fully half the votes for the proposal came from the cabinet, whose unelected members are ex officio voting members of parliament.36 All of the members from tribal areas voted against the bill, as did all movement Islamists, including Shia who had campaigned on women's rights.37 Despite this setback, however, the momentum for women's rights has not slowed. In May 2000, a Kuwaiti lower court sent forward to the Constitutional Court a petition by a female activist, Roha Dashti, requesting a ruling on whether the current electoral law banning female participation is constitutional.38
OIL POLICY
Ever since the Iraqi invasion, critics of outside intervention to roll it back have charged that the primary reason for the coalition counterattack on Iraq was Kuwait's status as a premier oil-exporting country possessing an estimated 10 percent of total world oil reserves. In the United States, for example, many of those protesting U.S. military action against Iraq carried signs reading "no blood for oil." There is another way to see oil as a reason for Europeans and Americans to assist Kuwait.39 Kuwait's oil industry is integrated into the domestic economies of oil-importing countries in Europe and Asia. Kuwait owns refineries and gasoline stations that not only supply oil products but also pay local taxes and employ local workers. As a result, leaders of these countries are receptive to appeals to help Kuwait because some of these appeals come from their own nationals.
Kuwait's oil industry is also a source of danger. Saddam used Kuwait's excessive rate of oil production and its contribution to oversupply and plummeting prices as a justification for his 1990 invasion. The example I gave earlier of the 1978 border incursion by the Iraqi military into Kuwait is another instance where Kuwaiti oil invited Iraqi aggression. The movement of the border southward was intended to prevent Kuwaitis from drilling in an oil field that Iraq wished to have all to itself. As long as Iraq chooses to deny Kuwaiti sovereignty and rejects the U.N.-demarcated boundary between the two countries, Kuwait will be vulnerable to Iraqi efforts to take some - or all - of its oil-rich territory.
Oil also is a source of vulnerability because of its role in Kuwait's relationships with its extra-regional allies. Before the 1990 invasion, Saddam charged that Kuwait had colluded with the West to keep oil production up and oil prices down. He said that the goal of this alleged cabal was to prevent Iraq from earning the hard currency it needed for debt service and imports payments and, therefore, to keep it from fulfilling its destiny as the leader of the Arab world.40 Whether Kuwait is seen as an enemy of Iraq on its own or because of its dependence on other enemies of Iraq, the combination represented by the crucial position of oil in each country's economy and the large strategic differential between the two makes vulnerability through oil a constant problem for Kuwaiti national security. Kuwaiti leaders looked for ways to deal with this problem after liberation. One strategy was to invite foreign oil companies back into the industry Kuwait had nationalized in the 1970s. A number of Kuwait's foreign oil investments already included non-Kuwaiti partners. However, foreigners were excluded from equity participation in facilities located in Kuwait itself until shortly before the invasion, when Kuwait's petrochemicals subsidiary (PIC) invited bids from potential foreign partners to invest in a new petrochemicals complex.41 Because Kuwaiti policy makers fear territorial incursions by Iraq, they invited foreign oil companies to participate in production in the northern oil fields lying along the contested boundary between the two countries. They saw foreign operators, especially those from companies based in countries likely to intervene directly if their nationals or investments are attacked by a hostile power, as insurance policies against a surprise attack from their nasty neighbor.
When it first was floated, this idea did not meet with much enthusiasm in the Kuwaiti parliament, and, at that time, foreign oil companies were equally uninterested.42 Now foreign companies are interested, and among the decrees Kuwait's amir produced during the 1999 absence of parliament was one dealing with upstream privatization, that is, taking foreign partners into production ventures located in Kuwait itself. Oil-policy makers also want foreign participation to help Kuwait compensate for the massive damage to its oil fields caused by the oil well fires. Technology transfer with respect to advanced drilling techniques and enhanced recovery methods are seen as crucial to preserving Kuwait's status as a premier oil producer well into the future.
Yet the persistent reluctance of parliamentarians to agree with this perspective promises continued confrontations between the government and the 1999 National Assembly. According to the al-Najjar "formula," this parliament should anticipate a normal four-year term. However, if the government cannot persuade a majority of the body that upstream privatization is in the national interest, the formula may be discarded and the parliament suspended, a situation likely to produce a constitutional crisis.
Another example of oil's double-edged nature comes from OPEC's recent success in curtailing production enough to raise oil prices. During OPEC's March 2000 meeting in Vienna, Kuwait's oil minister was subjected not merely to pressure from the United States to raise production, but to public pressure to do so. This is a lose-lose situation for Kuwait. If it is seen as complying with U.S. wishes, the government enrages its domestic critics, along with its radical neighbors. But if it refuses to go along, U.S. strategic support may be jeopardized, particularly in Congress. Last March, for example, the House of Representatives passed a bill urging the administration to cut off aid and military sales to OPEC countries curtailing production to raise oil prices. As Kuwait's oil minister said to The New York Times, "We feel as if we are between a rock and a hard place."43 No matter what Kuwait decides to do about oil production, someone powerful enough to hurt it badly is going to be angry.
A FREE KUWAIT
One of the voluntary organizations established by Kuwaiti outsiders during the occupation was called Citizens for a Free Kuwait. That name expressed its members' hopes that Kuwait eventually would be liberated from Iraq. The Kuwait that exists today is a lot freer than the prison Kuwait became during the occupation, and, in some ways, it also is freer than the Kuwait that existed prior to August 2, 1990. Even so, Kuwaitis must continue to work for a "free Kuwait." However, freedom should not be taken to mean complete autonomy. For one thing, Kuwait's position as "a small state in a bad neighborhood" makes it hard to envision an independent foreign policy. The freedom and security of the nation depend on stable arrangements with neighbors and allies to produce a durable peace.
Domestically, tensions among social groups and between the government and the opposition interfere with the building of consensus on policies to increase Kuwait's security. Policy drifts in a kind of limbo while decisions remain unmade. In a recent conversation I had with a Kuwaiti banker, he noted that, although there are excellent people in both the government and the parliament, the whole is Jess than the sum of its parts. These excellent people are unable or unwilling to work together. Yet, in domestic policy too, complete autonomy is a fantasy. Kuwait is fortunate to have material resources that enlarge its choice among means, but it still must find the discipline to agree on ends that are satisfactory to all its people. A balance among contending interests is necessary for a durable peace at home, the most necessary condition of freedom for the Kuwaiti nation as well as the Kuwaiti people.
1 The interview concentrated on Iraq's economic quarrels with Kuwait and other states, including the United States, regarding the collapse of oil prices. The Iraqi version of this interview was published in Arabic in September. According to Elaine Sciolino, the text was evaluated by State Department officials as "essentially correct," a statement disputed months later by Glaspie in testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. See Elaine Sciolino, The Outlaw State: Saddam Hussein's Quest for Power and the Gulf Crisis (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1991 ), pp. 271-84, for an abbreviated transcript together with notes. An uncut transcript appears in The Gulf War Reader: History, Documents, Opinions (New York: Random House, 1991), pp. 122-33.
2 Jean Edward Smith, George Bush's War (New York: Henry Holt, 1992), p. 74.
3 Sciolino, p. 203.
4 Ibid., p. 224; also Kevin Don Hutchison, Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm: Chronology and Fact Book (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995), pp. 1-6. Critics attribute the failure of the Iraqis to withdraw to the involvement of the United States and Britain in the crisis - see below in the text.
5 The New York Times, August 4, 1990, quoted in Smith, p. 72.
6 Smith, pp. 66-77.
7 Milton Viorst, Sandcastles: The Arabs in Search of the Modern World (New York: Knopf, 1994), p. 257. Many of those who were away were foreign workers taking their annual leaves. Refugees included Kuwaitis and foreigners.
8 Jehan S. Rajah, Invasion Kuwait: An English Woman's Tale (London: Radcliffe Press, 1996), pp. 2-3. Some ruling family members did remain and three were prominent in the Resistance. Interview by the author with Ghanim al-Najjar in Boston, 1999.
9 Interviews by the author with oil company officials in London and Kuwait, 1991 and 1992.
10 Interview by the author in Kuwait, 1992.
11 Interview with Ghanim al-Najjar, Boston, May 1999.
12 Outsider stories are included in Mary Ann Tetreault, The Kuwait Petroleum Corporation and the Economics of the New World Order (Westport, CT: Quorum Books, 1995); and Stories of Democracy: Politics and Society in Contemporary Kuwait (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000).
13 Tetreault, The Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, p. 139.
14 Ghanim al-Najjar, 'The Challenges Facing Kuwaiti Democracy," Middle East Journal, Vol. 54, No. 2, Spring 2000, pp. 253-54.
15 For an excellent history of the boundary conflict, see David H. Finnie, Shifting Lines in the Sand: Kuwait's Elusive Frontier with Iraq (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992). Also see Richard Schofield, Kuwait and Iraq: Historical Claims and Territorial Disputes (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1990); Kuwait: Statehood and Boundaries, and the collection of U.N. documents about the boundary demarcation, Demarcation of the International Boundary between the State of Kuwait and the Republic of Iraq by the United Nations. Both are published by the Center for Research and Studies on Kuwait (Mansouria, Kuwait, n.d.).
16 Finnie, chap. 9; also, Abdul-Reda Assiri, Kuwait's Foreign Policy: City-State in World Politics (Boulder: Westview Press, 1990), pp. 19-31, 40-41, 54-57, 70-75.
17 Assiri, pp. 54-55.
18 Fred Lawson, "'Theories of Integration in New Context: The Gulf Cooperation Council," in Racing to Regionalize: Democracy, Capitalism, and Regional Political Economy, eds. Kenneth P. Thomas and Mary Ann Tetreault (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1999), pp. 15-20.
19 Assiri, pp. 75-76.
20 Ibid., pp. l 00-10.
21 Tetreault, The Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, p. 147.
22 Lawson, p, 23.
23 Ibid., p. 24.
24 See Tetreault, Stories of Democracy, pp. 87-97. Insiders offered their occupation experience as proof that Kuwaitis could take care of themselves, particularly with respect to native versus imported labor. Instead, the government increased citizens' social allowances and allowed labor imports to resume, though the preferred nationalities of guest workers changed depending on the positions of their home governments on the conflict between Iraq and Kuwait- i.e., more Egyptians and no Palestinians.
25 Tetreault, The Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, pp. 126-30.
26Ibid., pp. 142-46.
27 The restitution program is described in John R. Crook, "The United Nations Compensation Commission - A New Structure to Enforce State Responsibility," American Journal of international law 87 (1993). Its application in Kuwait is described in Adel Asem and Haya al-Mughni, "Claiming for Compensation Through the United Nations Compensation Commission: The Case of Kuwait," paper presented at the International Conference on the Effects of the Iraqi Aggression on Kuwait, Kuwait. April 1994.
28 Kuwait Times, May 14, 2000, distributed by the Washington Kurdish Institute, May 17. 2000, [email protected].
29 A recent story in the Philadelphia Inquirer discusses the current status of Kuwaiti POWs in Iraq. See Barbara Demick, "In Kuwait, Hope Lingers for 605," April 27, 2000, p. A-5.
30 Al-Najjar, p. 245. The 1967 parliament was the product of a rigged election. The 1975 and 1985 parliaments both were closed down during the year following their elections; the government refused to schedule elections for new parliaments until 1981 and 1992, respectively.
31 Shafeeq Ghabra, "Kuwait and the Dynamics of Socioeconomic Change," Middle East Journal, Vol. 51, No. 3, Summer 1997, pp. 358-72. See also Nicolas Gavrielides, 'Tribal Democracy: The Anatomy of Parliamentary Elections in Kuwait," in Elections in the Middle East. implications of Recent Trends, ed. Linda L. Layne (Boulder: Westview, 1987). pp. 187-213; Tetreault, Stories of Democracy. It should be noted that, at the time when large numbers of bedouins were given full citizenship, other immigrants were naturalized at far lower rates. The law during much of this period restricted naturalizations to 50 per year.
32 For example, with regard to the veiling of women, which has become more common among urban Kuwaitis, and gender segregation at post-secondary educational institutions, which never had been a policy in Kuwait prior to 1996, when a law was passed requiring implementation of gender segregation within five years.
33 Neil Hicks and Ghanim al-Najjar, "The Utility of Tradition: Civil Society in Kuwait," in Civil Society in the Middle East, Volume I, ed. Augustus Richard Norton (New York: E. J. Brill, 1995), pp. 186-213; Mary Ann Tetreault, "Civil Society in Kuwait: Protected Spaces and Women's Rights," Middle East Journal, Vol. 47, No. 2, Spring 1993, pp. 275-91; Shamlan Y. Al Essa, "The Political Consequences of the Crisis for Kuwait," in The Gulf Crisis. Background and Consequences, ed. Ibrahim Ibrahim, (Washington: Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, 1992), pp. 169-85.
34 Mary Ann Tetreault and Haya al-Mughni, "From Subjects to Citizens: Women and the Nation in Kuwait," in Women, States and Nationalism.· At Home in the Nation? eds. Sita Ranchod-Nilsson and Mary Ann Tetreault (New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 153-55; and Tetreault, Stories of Democracy, pp. 158-64.
35 Several of the decrees issued in 1999 dealt with the budget, whose deadline for passage was July. The majority were concerned with substantive issues, not only women's rights but also foreign investment, oil policy and other matters on which the government and members of parliament were in conflict. As it turned out, all the non-budgetary decrees were rejected by the 1999 parliament.
36 The first vote was 41/21 against; the second was 32/30 against. Of the fifteen members of the Cabinet, all but the Islamist member (who, ironically, is the only Cabinet officer who also is an elected member of parliament) voted in favor. "Yes" votes from the Cabinet totaled fifteen because the prime minister also voted for the measure.
37 Abdullah al-Shayeji, "Kuwaiti Parliament and Women's Suffrage,'' posting to Gulf2000, December I, 1999.
38 Reuters, "Kuwaiti Woman's Case Advances in Court," The Washington Post, May 30, 2000, p. A 15.
39 Tetreault, The Kuwait Oil Corporation, pp. 194-95.
40 Sciolino, p. 200.
41 Tetreault, The Kuwait Petroleum Corporation. Union Carbide was eventually chosen as the foreign partner in the Equate facility.
42 Arab Times, August 25, 1997, p. 4.
43 Edmund L. Andrews, "Kuwaitis are Exasperated by America's Oil Politics," The New York Times, March 27, 2000, Gulf 2000 archives.
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