Germany in NATO. This was an issue that Bush and Thatcher had hoped would cause a
much longer delay and much greater acrimony, but now there were no more barriers to
the successful completion of the "two plus four" talks on the future of Germany, which
meant that German reunification before the end of the year was unavoidable.
On the same day that Kohl and Gorbachov were meeting, satellite photographs monitored
in the Pentagon showed that Iraq's crack Hammurabi division, the corps d'elite of the
Republican Guard, was moving south towards the border of Kuwait. By July 17,
Pentagon analysts would be contemplating new satellite photos showing the entire
division, with 300 tanks and over 10,000 men, in place along the Iraq-Kuwait border. A
second division, the Medina Luminous, was beginning to arrive along the border, and a
third division was marching south. [fn 29]
The disputes between Iraq and Kuwait were well-known, and the Anglo-Americans had
done everything possible to exacerbate them. Iraq had defended Kuwait, Saudi Arabia,
and the other Gulf Cooperation Council countries against the fanatic legions of Khomeini
during the Iran-Iraq war. Iraq had emerged from the conflict victorious, but burdened by
$65 billion in foreign debt. Iraq demanded debt relief from the rich Gulf Arabs, who had
not lifted a finger for their own defense. As for Kuwait, it had been a British puppet state
since 1899. Both Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates were each acknowledged to be
exceeding their OPEC production quotas by some 500,000 barrels per day. This was part
of a strategy to keep the price of oil artificially low; the low price was a boon to the dollar
and the US banking system, and it also prevented Iraq from acquiring the necessary funds
for its postwar demobilization and reconstruction. Kuwait was also known to be stealing
oil by overpumping the Rumailia oil field, which lay along the Iraq-Kuwait border. The
border through the Rumaila oil field was thus a bone of contention between Iraq and
Kuwait, as was the ownership of Bubiyan and Warba islands, which controlled the access
to Umm Qasr, Iraq's chief port and naval base as long as the Shatt-el-Arab was disputed
with Iran. It later became known that the Emir of Kuwait was preparing further measures
of economic warfare against Iraq, including the printing of masses of counterfeit Iraqi
currency notes which he was preparing to dump on the market in order to produce a crisis
of hyperinflation in Iraq. Saddam Hussein developed many of these themes in a July 17
address in which he accused the Emir of Kuwait of participation in a US-Zionist
conspiracy to keep the price of oil depressed.
The Emir of Kuwait, Jaber el Saba, was a widely hated figure among Arabs and
Moslems. He was sybaritic degenerate, fabulously wealthy, a complete parasite and
nepotist, the keeper of a harem, and the owner of slaves, especially black slaves, for
domestic use in his palace. The Saba family ran Kuwait as the private plantation of their
clan, and Saba officials were notoriously cruel and stupid. Iraq, by contrast, was a
modern secular state with high rates of economic growth, and possessed one of the
highest standards of living and literacy rates in the Arab world. The status of women was
one of the most advanced in the region, and religious freedom was extended to all
churches.