Despite Grand Life Style, Kuwaitis' Anxiety Grows

By CHARLES P. WALLACE

Nov. 2, 1987 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

KUWAIT — This Persian Gulf sheikdom offers its citizens a grand life style, all paid for with its oil wealth: Everyone is entitled not only to one of the highest standards of living in the world but to free medical care, a government-subsidized house, even a college education at state expense.

And so a Western ambassador was startled recently when 28 Kuwaiti families approached his embassy to request permission to emigrate and to leave the good life here behind.

“It’s always been unthinkable for Kuwaitis to want to give up their citizenship, with all the benefits that implies,” the envoy said. “Well, people are thinking the unthinkable.”

Despite the vast oil reserves that seem to assure a rosy economic future, these are troubling times for Kuwait’s 1.6 million people--of whom, according to recent statistics, only 600,000 are actually Kuwaiti citizens. (The others, mostly Palestinians, Egyptians and Asians, are permitted to live here because of a severe shortage of domestic manpower and share, to a limited extent, in the government largess.)

“The thinking Kuwaiti is beginning to realize that the past is gone, that something is in the wind with major political consequences,” one Western diplomat said. Only a handful have expressed a desire to emigrate, but many others are clearly shaken by the latest turn of events in the Persian Gulf.

For seven years, anxiety has steadily increased as the rumble of the Iran-Iraq War approached ever closer to Kuwait, a nation the size of New Jersey situated between the two antagonists at the northern end of the gulf.

Then, in October, three Iranian missiles scored direct hits--on two oil tankers and an oil-export platform--at Kuwait’s Sea Island loading facility. The material damage can be quickly repaired, but the Iranian strike at the symbolic lifeline of Kuwait’s only real industry translated anxiety into towering fear, and it will not quickly subside.

“Kuwaitis are scared now,” said Ahmed Khatib, a prominent nationalist intellectual who was active in the country’s fledgling Parliament before it was closed by the ruling Sabah family last year. “They see rockets falling, bombing every day. They know they can’t defend themselves. They’re so scared they can’t even think reasonably.”

Some Kuwaitis blame the government for inviting the United States last July to re-register 11 Kuwaiti oil tankers--half the national fleet--under the U.S. flag so that they might have a U.S. Navy escort on the increasingly perilous 550-mile journey up the Persian Gulf.

“The policy of re-flagging was a fiasco,” said a newspaper editor who is usually one of the government’s staunchest supporters. “We have been dragged by the United States into an open confrontation with Iran.”

For many Kuwaitis, the anxiety created by the American presence in the gulf was compounded when the United States announced that it would not retaliate against Iran for attacking Kuwait’s Sea Island terminal as the Navy had done when an Iranian missile hit an American-flagged ship next to the terminal a few days before.

“By drawing this distinction,” a Kuwaiti leftist said, “the United States gave Iran the green light to attack Kuwait. Now, instead of attacking Kuwaiti shipping, which had little impact, the Iranians know they can attack Kuwait itself with impunity. How is this an improvement for Kuwait?”

Some Kuwaitis said they could see no practical alternative to Kuwait’s seeking outside protection last July to fend off Iranian raids and that in any case it was too late to reverse the policy. But they remain critical of the slowness with which the government seemed to respond to the missile threat.

Delay in Action Questioned

It was only after the third missile attack on the Sea Island terminal that the defense minister, Sheik Salim al Sabah al Sabah, announced that Kuwait “is considering appropriate measures,” according to the official Kuwaiti news agency.

“It makes you wonder what the government was waiting for,” said an oil executive who expressed frustration at the apparent lack of defensive measures around the oil industry.

In the end, the government moved some of its U.S.-supplied Hawk missiles to Faylakah Island, about 10 miles northeast of Kuwait city, in the hope that they could shoot down Iran’s Silkworm missiles, which are being launched from Iranian-held positions on Iraq’s Faw Peninsula.

A day after this step was announced, a small bomb wrecked the downtown ticket offices of Pan American World Airways, a blunt reminder to Kuwaitis of their vulnerability to sabotage and of the connection with the United States.

Terrorist Attacks

Since early in the Iran-Iraq War, terrorists have been attacking targets in Kuwait, starting with the December, 1983, bombing of the U.S. and French embassies and the local headquarters of the Raytheon Corp., suppliers of the Hawk missiles.

The early terrorists were mostly Iraqis and Lebanese, while the later ones were revealed to be Kuwaiti. All have one thing in common: They are followers of Shia Islam, the religious sect that predominates in revolutionary Iran.

Within Kuwait, the sabotage campaign has gradually raised tension between the dominant Sunni Muslims here and Shias, who make up a third of the population. The result has been increasing discrimination against Shias, who respond by becoming increasingly angry at their treatment.

An editorial in Al Anba, a prominent Kuwaiti daily, after the bombing of the Pan Am office suggests just how far anti-Shia feeling has been allowed to emerge in public.

The newspaper blamed the bombing on “Iran’s agents inside the country who have sold themselves to the devil and betrayed the land which sheltered them and granted them all security and peace.”

‘Fifth Column’ Assailed

It said Kuwait “should be able to deal with the acts of sabotage by eradicating the fifth column which has started to reveal its ugly face and its loyalty to the enemies of this country.”

Another disquieting subject for many Kuwaitis has been the increase in speculation that Iran may be laying the groundwork for a direct attack on Kuwaiti soil.

Early in October, the mass-circulation Iranian newspaper Kayhan, quoting an unnamed “political expert in the Middle East,” suggested that Iran might preempt an American military move against Iranian forces on the Faw Peninsula by attacking Kuwaiti territory. Translations of the article have been broadcast repeatedly on Tehran radio’s Arabic service, which is heard widely in the gulf region.

According to Western diplomats here, the idea is not so farfetched. Faced with an impregnable line in the Iraqi fortifications near the key southern city of Basra, the Iranians have been seeking a way of taking their adversaries by surprise on the battlefield.

‘Soft Underbelly’

Like Belgium at the start of World War I, Kuwait is the “undefended soft underbelly” that could provide a breakthrough for Iran, according to military analysts. Just landing troops in strength there would send shock waves down the gulf, the analysts noted, as well as destabilize the Iraqi defenses.

“There is no way Kuwait could go up against Iran army-to-army,” one diplomat said. “It’s an idea that has to have occurred to a lot of people.”

Ironically, even talk of missiles has been taking a back seat in recent days to concern about the world stock markets. Many Kuwaitis, who lost about $90 billion in the collapse of a local stock exchange five years ago, had entrusted their assets to stockbrokers in New York and London.

“A lot of people have taken a bath financially,” a Western economist said. “For the moment, it’s completely overshadowing the threat of war.”