Free Kuwait ON MARCH 14, the Emir of Kuwait finally returned to his country, two weeks after the "liberation" of his principality by the American forces. No doubt he would have preferred to wait for one of his numerous marble, gold and crystal palaces to be repaired and law and order thoroughly reestablished. But faced with criticism from all sides, the Emir felt obliged to curtail his gilded exile in Saudi Arabia. SALAH JABER
"liberation" a commando tried to assassinate an exdeputy who was distinguished by his criticisms of the As-Sabahs' financial extravagances.
A climate of repressive terror is being progressively installed in the Emirate, in the framework of martial law. The regime's armed forces, who have returned with the barons, have set about disarming the population that stayed in Kuwait under the Iraqi occupation and who have seized the arms abandoned by the Iraqi soldiers.
The men and women of Kuwaiti citizenship who stayed behind - less than a third of the total number of Kuwaitis and the same in of Baghdad's troops, opinion among Kuwaiti Palestinians swung round. More than half of them fled the country in the direction of Jordan.
The great majority of these can hardly hope to return: the Kuwaiti regime is not only planning to prevent those nonnatives who left from returning, but to expel those who have stayed. The Kuwaiti Palestinians are thus now being subjected to a treatment half way between what they have undergone in the Christian areas of Lebanon and what they suffer under the Israeli occupation. The Kuwaiti officials are openly talking about only allowing some tens of thousands of Palestinians to stay in their territory.
The regime is intending to drastically reduce the size of the non-native population of the Emirate, so that the majority of the inhabitants should henceforth be composed of Kuwaitis and beneficiaries of oil rent. The plan is to replace labour with modern technology. For tasks which require a knowledge of Arabic, Palestinians will be replaced by Egyptians in recognition of the Egyptian government's role in the crisis.
For the rest, and notably for domestic labour — there were 500,000 domestics in Kuwait before the invasion, that is, 25% of the total population — the Emirate will continue to favour recruits from south and south-east Asia, who can be exploited mercilessly and have no intention to stay permanently in the Gulf.
Kuwait is an artificial state, firstly and above all in its social structure, where most of the native population is privileged or simply parasitic a third of Kuwaiti males have no job), living from vast oil revenues. This population enslaves and exploits a majority of "immigrants", who the sheikhs have now promised to reduce to a minority. *
A CTING under the friendly supervision of the United States ambassador, now High Commissioner of this new American colony, the ruling family of the As-Sabahs has set about restoring its regime and rebuilding war-torn Kuwait. The first object of the ruling caste has not been the reestablishment of essential services and the relief of the population that stayed in the Emirate under extremely difficult conditions. It has, of course, been the restoration of the prewar order, as a fruit of the new order of George Bush.
From this point of view the two main problems are, on the one hand, the postwar political regime, and on the other, the make-up of the population. The ruling dynasty had never shown much respect for the apology for democracy conceded in 1962, on British advice, to the rich opposition.
Of the 700 to 800,000 Kuwaiti citizens, who form about 40% of the emirate's population, less than 10% have the right io vote. Profoundly reactionary criteria exclude women and those whose Kuwaiti citizenship dates from after 1920. Even so, the emir and his many brothers found the parliament, wherein the liberal or nationalist bourgeoisie questioned their monopoly on power and their privileges, an irritation.
In exasperation, the emir dissolved the recalcitrant assembly in 1986 and suspended the constitution. Today the opposition - businessmen, members of the liberal professions and religious leaders — are speaking up, blaming the incompetence of the As-Sabahs for the disaster which overtook Kuwait. They have been protesting energetically against the government's imposition of martial law and demanding the setting of a date for new 26 ly was not longin coming soul atta he • clections. The reaction of the ruling famiInternational Viewpoint #204 • April 15, 1991 number as the Palestinians who remained — are usually those least able to afford a comfortable exile. A large part of them, perhaps the majority, belong to the Shi'ite minority (40%), an oppressed section of the
Kuwaiti population. They are also demanding the right to oversee the affairs of the state, considering themselves to have won more legitimacy than the exiles. Kuwaiti women, who, paradoxically, have probably never been so free as under the Iraqi occupation, have also been demanding their emancipation and the right to vote.
Palestinians made into scapegoats
Faced with this wave of criticism, the restored regime is combining repression and division. Under the heading "represthe country's only newspaper, sion"
which was launched by the
"resistance" even before the
Iraqi withdrawal, was shut down on March 19 for criticizing the government. Under
"divide and rule the Palestinians are being made scapegoats, accused, above all by
Kuwaitis who have returned from exile, of collaboration with the Iraqi occupation.
It is true that a sizeable section of the community of Palestinian origin - 400 to
500,000 people, including many who were born in
Kuwait or have lived there for decades - showed sympathy, at least at the beginning, for an invasion from which they could only hope for an improvement in their situation.
Subsequently, and faced with the appalling behaviour
Solidarity with