Kuwait Chaos and Revenge

By MICHAEL KRAMER. KUWAIT CITY

Kuwait is burning -- physically, politically and spiritually. Kuwait City, where 80% of the prewar population of 2 million lived, is a sad, lonely town. The skyscrapers are abandoned, their ground-level shops have been looted, and nearly everything is covered with an oily soot, a reminder of the ongoing conflagration outside the capital -- the hundreds of oil-well fires depleting the nation's lifeblood at a rate far greater than anyone had predicted.

Wherever one travels, nerves are raw, tensions deep. Many of those who remained while Iraq pillaged and raped their land resent those who fled, and sizable numbers in both camps want nothing less than the wholesale expulsion of Kuwait's Palestinians, despite evidence that most opposed Saddam's perfidy.

If one complaint binds all, it is rage at Kuwait's government, which had months to plan for the nation's recovery but has so far performed incompetently. Many who had been effectively shut out of the nation's political life organized themselves admirably to survive Iraq's occupation; understandably, they now want a say in public affairs. Across all groups and all issues, the question since Kuwait has been freed is simple: Freed for what?

At 3:30 in the morning on Sunday, March 3, in the shadow of Kuwait City's Maryam Mosque, a Kuwaiti resistance member who calls himself Mike leaned his French-made automatic rifle into the chest of his childhood friend Mustafa al- Kubaisi. He whispered, "This is your last night," and fired. Unsatisfied by the effect of the single shot, Mike used his 7.65-mm MAB pistol to put another round into Mustafa's head.

Mustafa al-Kubaisi, who was 29, was born in Kuwait to Iraqi parents. He worked as an overseas telephone operator and enjoyed the cradle-to-grave benefits of Kuwait's welfare state, but he could never be sure of his status. Because of his parents' Iraqi origins, and despite his having been born in Kuwait, he had to have a work permit to remain in the country. Naturalization, common throughout the world, is virtually impossible in Kuwait.

Mike, 33, is the son of wealthy Kuwaitis. He graduated from San Francisco State University and trained to be an airline pilot, but he quit to manage his family's real estate empire. Mike's house is within shouting distance of Mustafa's, and he recalls being something of a "big brother" to Mustafa. Mike advised him about work and girls and gave Mustafa rides in his Ferrari. He also supplemented Mustafa's salary. "Nothing big," says Mike, "but on a fairly regular basis."

When Iraq invaded Kuwait, Mike lay low. But then another childhood friend, a woman named Esrar al-Ghabandi, was killed. Unlike Mike, Esrar had joined the resistance immediately. After Esrar had made four trips to Saudi Arabia to deliver information about Iraqi troop movements in Kuwait, Mike and some friends discovered her mutilated body. Esrar had been axed in the head and shot seven times in her breasts and vagina. Within days, Mike and his friends formed their own resistance cell, which operated apart from the more organized efforts of other Kuwaitis. They met frequently to plan strategy, and Mustafa was usually present. "Why not?" says Mike. "We had known each other all our lives. I didn't think we had any secrets."

But Mustafa had one. As he once confessed to another neighbor, Mustafa had always resented his uncertain status. Whether he also was a longtime spy for Iraq's secret police, as Mike believes, is debatable. What Mike and several other resistance members know for certain is that Kuwaiti army officers operating with Mike's cell began to disappear whenever Mustafa took part in the group's deliberations. "So we began watching his movements," says Mike. "He was informing. There was no doubt."

When the resistance was certain Mustafa was aiding the Iraqis, Mike invited him to stay at his home. "That way I could better keep an eye on him," says Mike. "I used him to help me get through checkpoints and to move some weapons around. It was minor stuff, and it bound us more closely together. We kept the important things from him, of course, but I am sure he thought he was continuing to penetrate us." Shortly after the liberation, Mustafa was arrested by the Kuwaiti intelligence service and removed to the local jail. "But he was mine," says Mike, "and one night I prevailed on the guards to turn him over to me. I wanted to kill him myself. I cooked him a last meal and told him I was going to turn him in as a POW. I told him he would be traded for allied prisoners. I told him to get his things, and we walked to a wall about a hundred yards from my house, which is where I did it. And that was it. I have no regrets. He was also helping to run Palestinians who informed on Kuwaitis. How could I let him go?"

When the allies first rode into Kuwait City, on Feb. 26, they were led by Arab forces, though not by Kuwaitis. Earlier in the campaign, a Kuwaiti soldier killed a surrendering Iraqi and shoved his body into a ditch. "From that moment," says a U.S. military officer, "we were determined to restrain the Kuwaitis," and American special-forces troops now regularly accompany Kuwaiti patrols. But the resistance still operates. Mike says he knows of at least 80 "proven collaborators" who have been executed. "The word has gone out to be calm for now," says a resistance leader, "to cool it until the journalists leave."

"That's right," confirms a senior Western diplomat. "The government is operating with a light hand. The country is an arsenal. Everyone has weapons. They turn some in, to be perceived as cooperating with the call to lay down arms, but everyone is keeping some -- just as they are keeping the names of some collaborators to themselves when turning over their lists to the army." The problem, another Western diplomat says, is the government's poor credibility. "No one really knows if cracking down on the resistance would work, or whether they'd tell the ministers to shove it," he says. "All the government knows for sure is that at the end of the day, it doesn't want Kuwait perceived as no better than Saddam. We hope that the idea of sanctioning an open season later on won't really come to pass. We're counting on the passage of time to calm emotions."

Kuwait is a tense nation at a tough time, "a place in need of therapy," says Dr. Abdul Rahman al-Awadi, a physician who long served as his country's Health Minister and is now Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs. Everyone has witnessed an atrocity or has a tale to tell. Al-Awadi turns pale when he recalls the story of an Iraqi patrol that spotted some Kuwaiti children playing in the street. "They were told to stop, and all but one did," says al-Awadi. "That one was picked up by the hair by an Iraqi soldier -- he was still holding his soccer ball -- and shot in the head in front of the other kids." Some of Mike's friends had to cut down seven young Kuwaiti girls who had been hanged in a schoolyard after having been raped. There are several hundred women awaiting abortions, says a doctor at Mubarak al-Kabir Hospital. All were victims of gang rape.

Even when Kuwaitis try to forget the tragedies, they cannot escape reminders of the occupation. The sky is what everyone notices first each morning. When the wind blows toward Kuwait City, the sky darkens as if a storm were moving across the plain. At times, night appears at noon. The oil fires are that horrendous. There is no electricity, the result of last-minute Iraqi sabotage. Few believe the repeated assurances that at least some electricity will return "tomorrow." Too many tomorrows have passed.

Water and power were operating until shortly before the Iraqis withdrew, apparently to pacify the population and permit Iraqi looters to spot unoccupied houses. When the Iraqis visited inhabited homes, it was mostly to make their presence felt. "We left things around, watches and some jewelry," says Tariq al-Riaz. "That usually satisfied them, and their searches were perfunctory. When we did need to hide, we did so in rooms we created behind walls."

The hardest thing to do was to teach Kuwait's children to "like" Saddam, says Salah al-Awadi, manager of credit-card sales for the Gulf Bank. "When Iraqis visited us, we would serve them soft drinks. Once, my son Youssef, who is almost four, said, 'Take this glass and put it on Saddam's head.' We had to teach the kids to say good things about Saddam for fear they would be killed if they didn't."

People move more freely now, of course, but a favorite pastime, a walk on the beach, is impossible. The seaside fortifications built by the Iraqis -- four separate lines of trenches and obstacles -- "look like Normandy from the air," says a U.S. Army general. Mines are everywhere, and the minefield maps Baghdad provided the coalition are "useless," says U.S. Ambassador Edward Gnehm. The city is rocked by explosions several times a day as U.S. Army experts detonate Iraq's abandoned ordnance. Sporadic gunfire is heard throughout the day -- celebratory rounds discharged mainly by Saudi soldiers. (It is the Americans, however, who are in demand for pictures and autographs.)

Expatriates -- Palestinians particularly -- are subjected to time-consuming searches. In the Hawalli area, where many Palestinians live, Kuwaiti troops roam the streets, instructing the population, "Turn in your weapons, Palestinian people. This is for your own security." The latest graffito reads, DEATH TO PALESTINIAN TRAITORS. WE DON'T WANT THEM. "They are hypocrites!" screams Massmoa Hassan, a Kuwaiti woman passing by. "We went to school with you. We helped you. The P.L.O. donation boxes were filled by us. And you are traitors. Get out!"

Hawalli residents tell of suspected collaborators being taken roughly away. Sarah Hamdan Salman says her three sons were blindfolded, handcuffed, beaten with machine guns and shoved into the trunks of cars by civilians who the Palestinians are convinced are resistance members. When she went to the local precinct to inquire about her children, she was told, "You're a Palestinian" -- and then she was spat upon. Did it happen? "I don't doubt it," says a U.S. Army major assigned as an adviser to the Kuwaitis. "All I can say is that we're trying to hold it down."

All residents, even Kuwaitis, are subjected to the three-month martial law decree and its 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. curfew. "It's not fake," says Colonel Jesse Johnson, the commander of U.S. special-operations forces in Kuwait City. There have been several nighttime incidents "where people drive up to the checkpoints and open fire" on the Kuwaiti soldiers, says Johnson. The troops assume their attackers are Palestinians. The clash between those who remained and those who left is everywhere. Some Kuwaitis who stayed behind surrendered their automobile license plates for Iraqi tags. At a checkpoint last week, a Kuwaiti without plates was harassed. "So you changed your plates," shouted a Kuwaiti soldier. "And you fled, you coward," the driver yelled back.

Some Kuwaitis have taken to visiting the house where the Iraqis constructed an elaborate torture chamber. Electric-shock devices are the most prominent features, and pinups of scantily clad women adorn the walls. The government is thinking of turning the place into a museum. "We should preserve this so we remember," says Minister of State al-Awadi, whose indoor swimming pool the Iraqis used to extract information. Victims would be dunked into the water while they were tied to ropes hung from the ceiling. A poignant scene plays out almost daily when Kuwaitis visit the Riqqa cemetery, searching for the remains of loved ones. Kuwaiti authorities say 2,792 bodies of people who died unnatural deaths since Aug. 2 are buried there. Another site of interest is the ice rink, which served as a makeshift morgue for Kuwaiti dead. There are no bodies there now -- only some dried blood and a persistent stench.

Ambitious travelers journey about 30 miles toward Basra to see the remains of a convoy of fleeing Iraqi vehicles destroyed by allied aircraft. At the Iraqi border last week, tragedy was replaced by joy. Several thousand Kuwaitis were kidnapped by Iraqi soldiers in the last days of the occupation; last Friday Baghdad suddenly released about 1,175, transporting them back to Kuwait City in trucks bearing the seal of the Republican Guard. Most had been held at a military barrack near Basra, squeezed in so tight that they were forced to take turns sleeping. For the first three days, they were given no food or water. From then on, they subsisted on a single rock-hard roll a day.

Those who show up at the border are usually a bedraggled lot. At night they look like ghostly figures, small bands of refugees suddenly illuminated by the headlights of military convoys. Mostly they are expatriates or foreigners who lived in Iraq and are fleeing the anti-Saddam violence. Thousands of Egyptians, for example, are being deported. Mohammed el-Habal, 65, is one of about a dozen Egyptians who camped near the border last week, waiting for his status to be determined. "The Republican Guard told us that if Egypt had stayed with Iraq, if we had supported Iraq, we would not have been turned out," says el-Habal, who reports that some of his compatriots have been murdered by Iraqis.

The plight of Iraqis who lived in Kuwait before the war and who are now trying to return to Kuwait is even more desperate. Men, women and children are encamped near the border highway. U.S. soldiers have given them rations, but they have no water. On a cold, rainy night last week, the Iraqis huddled around campfires. The horizon was lit by the flames of the burning oil fields. In her tattooed hands, Fadiyah Saad held her new granddaughter, born by the roadside on March 5. The family was debating whether to name the child Hudud (borders) or Istiqlal (independence).

With Kuwait independent again, some of those who stayed behind yearn for aspects of the occupation. Supplies were more plentiful then, and those who had previously felt themselves to be mere employees of a business called Kuwait Inc. banded together as a nation. "For the first time," says Ali Salem, a resistance leader, "all barriers were breached. Shi'ite Muslims, who have long been discriminated against by the Sunni majority, were major players, perhaps even the most significant. We were, at least for that time, truly one."

There were approximately 60 resistance groups operating at any given time, each with 40 to 50 members. The head of each cell knew his opposite number in other units, but his subordinates did not know one another. Elaborate codes were developed to fool eavesdropping Iraqis. Young girls carried bullets in their underwear. Fake identifications were common. A sophisticated printing operation was hidden a block from the headquarters of Iraq's secret police.

In addition to the organized resistance, many Kuwaitis operated on their own. Since Iraqi soldiers examining cars at checkpoints frequently stole whatever was in sight, some Kuwaitis added rat poison to bottles of orange juice and then hid them in the trunk. Iraqi sentries would discover and seize the bottles -- and presumably drink the tainted liquid later.

Salem presided over a network that distributed nearly $100 million, smuggled into Kuwait from the exiled government in Taif, Saudi Arabia. "We used the money for bribes to get people out of jail, to pass checkpoints, to buy fruits and vegetables brought from Iraq," says Salem. "This is the Middle East, and money talked even more here because the Iraqis are so poor."

Kuwait's leaders can be blamed for much of the current chaos. Like all governments, Kuwait's is sometimes savvy, sometimes incompetent. But at the top, and with a few notable exceptions, Kuwait's Cabinet is decidedly mediocre -- an opinion shared by most Kuwaitis. The government's primary mission for seven months has been to plan its return. The ministers began well by removing themselves from direct responsibility. A reconstruction plan was concocted in Washington by Fawzi al-Sultan, an executive director of the World Bank, who assembled a team of international experts.

But as the war of liberation neared, the ministers in Taif became jealous of an organization that threatened to supplant them. In short order, al-Sultan's team was torpedoed. Each ministry recaptured control of its own work, coordination evaporated, and the resistance movement, which knew what was needed and how to accomplish it, was effectively shut out.

The results of mismanagement are everywhere. Supplies of essential foodstuffs, supposedly stockpiled and ready to go in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, were delayed at the border because Kuwait's Interior Ministry had failed to provide proper documentation. Some of the stocks spoiled. When a shipment finally arrived in Kuwait City late last week, five days behind schedule, the Commerce Ministry's distribution plan had to be scrapped because it could not do the job quickly. Some of the needed food was distributed by U.S. Ambassador Gnehm. "He had the media with him," says a Kuwaiti minister admiringly. "He wanted to embarrass us into moving faster, and it worked." But the shipments still lag. "Quite literally," says Ali Salem, "we had more in the stores when Saddam controlled Kuwait."

The oil industry, Kuwait's backbone, is in even worse shape. Rashid al- Amiri, the Oil Minister, is roundly denounced by his colleagues. A committee of other ministers was appointed last Thursday to "assist" him. "What is unforgivable," says one of al-Amiri's associates, "is that he is in no small measure directly responsible for much of the havoc we face."

Some months ago, Kuwaiti operatives trained by Western intelligence agencies successfully sabotaged Iraq's plan to cripple Kuwait's oil-producing centers. The wires leading to explosive charges buried in the sand were snipped and reburied. Al-Amiri was so delighted that he bragged about it in an interview he gave to an Arab newspaper. Whether the Iraqis would have checked the wires in any event may never be known, but Kuwait says it is now losing 6 million bbl. a day from the 600-odd wells ablaze.

Complaints about specific ministers from other ministers and the public at large prompted the entire Cabinet to consider resigning at a late-night meeting last Thursday. But the Prime Minister urged them all to work harder instead. "We'll see where things stand in three or four weeks," an aide reports Sheik Saad as saying. Says a Western diplomat: "Considering the public's anger, and all the weapons available, they're lucky they don't have a new regime by now."

What is really on the government's mind these days, and on everyone else's as well (which is why the government is consumed by it), is the matter of democracy. The Prime Minister, a poet of noncommitment who usually deflects direct inquiries by saying, "That will be discussed," is promising elections for a new parliament. The opposition wants a return to the dissolved 1986 parliament. But that is the same assembly that refused to expand suffrage to include women and "second grade" Kuwaitis -- people who cannot trace their ancestry in Kuwait earlier than 1920.

Many Kuwaitis, including those who served in the resistance, believe that voting rights must be expanded. In addition, says Hamad al-Towgari, 34, a San Jose State University graduate who owns the Kuwait Plaza Hotel, the "real issue is what powers any parliament has. We want to be modern. We want something closer to a constitutional monarchy, something closer to the British ; system." Says Ali Salem, a member of the ruling al-Sabah family: "The oligarchy must give way."

The person who perhaps best expresses the pervasive disgust is Laila al- Qadhi, a Kuwait University English professor. Few say on the record what al-Qadhi says, but many agree with her. "At best," says al-Qadhi, "we have a democracy tailored for a few. It can't be real, of course, until women and the children of expatriates who are born here are entitled to vote as full citizens. Certainly those who stayed and fought for Kuwait while the cowards fled deserve to participate in their government. But I am not optimistic. Many will collaborate to restore the old order because it is so comfortable for so many. The Sabahs are smart. They have bought the loyalty of most with a system that makes all comfortably lazy. What has changed is that we who stayed no longer fear those who rule, and they fear us because we do not fear them. But if we don't change, then the answer to the question 'Is Kuwait worth dying for?' is no."

Among those in the government most disposed to change is Minister of State al-Awadi, an enlightened liberal. "It is not easy to establish a democracy in this part of the world," he says, "especially when other nations will be upset if we do. But it will come, all of it, including the right of women to vote. It will just take time." To which al-Qadhi answers simply, "Why should we have to wait?"

The biggest losers in Kuwait are its Palestinian residents, who numbered 400,000 before the invasion. About 180,000 stayed behind. The resistance estimates that 50,000 actually collaborated with the Iraqis. But even those who helped Kuwait resist the occupation are likely to suffer. "The Palestinians were invaluable," says al-Towgari. "They got us through checkpoints and got us fake identity papers saying we were foreigners. We know who the good ones are, and we want to tell the world about them. But they say no. They are scared of P.L.O. retribution. It is a vicious circle. Maybe when things calm down, people will realize how much we need the Palestinians just to get on here."

Maybe later, but not quite yet. Last Sunday at the Doha power plant, a Kuwaiti army lieutenant who had spent the past seven months in exile refused to allow six Palestinian workers to enter the facility. His orders, he said, came straight from the Defense Minister: no Palestinians. Arguing with the soldier was the plant's director, who patiently explained that the whole country was waiting for electricity and that it would never be restored until the Palestinians were admitted, because they were the people who knew how to do the work. Still the lieutenant was unmoved. Finally, and just by chance, Minister of State al-Awadi arrived. For a time, even he could not budge the soldier. He succeeded eventually, but as the Palestinians walked toward the plant, the soldier spit at them.

"The worst hatred toward the Palestinians is coming from those who left," says al-Awadi. "On the outside we heard about the atrocities and had to listen to Yasser Arafat's support of Saddam. Perhaps after people have come back and have a chance to assess the real situation, their attitudes will change." For the time being, the Palestinians who remained in Kuwait through the occupation will be allowed to stay, but even those who did not collaborate may never be trusted again. "For a time," says Major Mohammed Hamoud, a Kuwaiti air force Hawk missile battalion commander, "we let some Palestinians into the army, mostly the sons of longtime residents. I had 30 or so in my battalion, and they performed well on the first day of the invasion when we shot down 12 Iraqi planes and helicopters. But now, you can never be sure if they will turn, and so they must go."

One goal of Fawzi al-Sultan's disbanded reconstruction team has survived Kuwait's internal politics: the proposal to cut the country's preinvasion population of 2 million almost in half by shedding many of the country's non- Kuwaiti resident workers. "Demography is the key," al-Sultan says. "We want Kuwaitis to work, to have incentive, to be productive. We want a merit system in education and at work, without guaranteed government jobs. The way to make Kuwaitis not be lazy is to force them to fend for themselves. And the way to do that is to strip away the foreigners who do most of the hard work while Kuwaitis lie about."

The process has already begun. On March 2, the Gulf Bank ran an advertisement in the daily newspaper Voice of Kuwait seeking Kuwaitis to be trained as bank clerks in Dubai. "That's the start," says Salah al-Awadi, who works for the bank. "What will happen in my office is that we will gradually replace foreigners with Kuwaitis. I am sure that others will follow."

Last fall those Kuwaiti officials who would hazard a guess at the optimum size of the Palestinian population put the figure at 100,000. "Now surely we can achieve that," says one minister. "We can do it either by denying ( readmission to those who left and deporting some of those who stayed -- or we can kick out some who stayed and replace them with some who left who we are fairly sure can be trusted."

As he drives through Kuwait City inspecting the damage inflicted by Iraq, Minister of State al-Awadi can barely contain his anger. "You see what they did to the museum, to the scientific center, to art in people's houses," he says. "I know it is said that the Iraqi soldiers were just following Saddam's orders, and I am sure they were. But living in a place like Iraq, with a regime like Saddam's, makes little Saddams of everyone, or brings out the Saddam in all of us. When you live in a society without principles, the rape of Kuwait is what you get. If there is a silver lining to all this, it is that we may now understand the value of having principles as we try to build a new, more democratic and merit-driven country. If people can understand that, Saddam will have done us a great good.

"I hope that will happen," adds al-Awadi as he notices the wind shift, "but I just don't know." The dark cloud is approaching rapidly, and perhaps in anticipation of its arrival, al-Awadi begins to cough the cough that many suffer whenever they are near where Kuwait burns.

With reporting by Lara Marlowe/Kuwait City