400 • 20 THE GULF WAR AND THE PEACE PROCESSthe emirate, not the flood of poor immigrants from other Arab states or
from lands as far away as Bangladesh and the Philippines. These guest
workers, however valued they might have been for their brawn, brains,
and labor, did not enjoy the rights of Kuwaitis. Seldom could foreigners
get Kuwaiti citizenship, even if they had worked in the country for forty
years; nor could their children, even if they had lived there all their lives.
By what special merit did a few Kuwaitis amass such fortunes, while most
other Arabs remained poor?
Kuwaitis reply that in the eighteenth century their bedouin ancestors
settled in a sheltered inlet near the northwestern end of the Gulf and set
up a small fort (Arabic: kuwayt) there. In 1756 the settlers chose a member
of the Sabah family to manage their affairs. Although many Kuwaitis re¬
mained nomadic and national borders were fixed only in the twentieth
century, they were not just "tribes with a flag." Some Kuwaiti settlers took
up trading, shipbuilding, pearl diving, and fishing. In the late 1930s, an
Anglo-American firm found oil, but only after 1945 (when Kuwait's popu¬
lation totaled 150,000) did the tiny emirate become an exporter. Petro¬
leum output, national wealth, and population skyrocketed after that.
Kuwaitis have shrewdly used their oil revenues to build a modern infra¬
structure, educate their youth, invest money (estimated at $100 billion)
abroad, set aside funds for a future when oil wells may dry up, and support
less opulent but more populated Arab states that might protect them
against aggression. Because a quarter of Kuwait's inhabitants were Pales¬
tinians, the regime gave both economic and political support to the PLO
and related Arab causes. Far from depending on the West, Kuwait was the
first small Gulf state to establish diplomatic ties with communist countries.
And it was the only Gulf state that had a popularly elected parliament, al¬
though the amir dissolved it twice and suffrage was limited to males who
could prove they descended from pre-1920 inhabitants. Did Kuwait deserve
to be attacked for not raising its oil prices or for not curtailing production
to assist Iraq's redevelopment after 1988? Was it wrong to expect Iraq to pay
back its loans?
Iraq's Annexation of Kuwait
The Iraqi army invaded and occupied Kuwait shortly after midnight on 2
August 1990. The Kuwaiti amir, Shaykh Jabir Al Ahmad Al Sabah, some of
his relatives and high officials, and many of his subjects fled to neighbor¬
ing Saudi Arabia. From there they called on the international community,
mainly the US, to help them win back their country. Iraqi President Sad-