Terrorism Prompts Security Clampdown : Kuwait Gripped by Siege Mentality

By midnight, the freeways of Kuwait are nearly empty of traffic, but they are bathed in a surreal, salmon-colored glow that could be produced only in a place so rich that the cost of street lighting is unimportant.

Despite the lateness of the hour, a huge traffic jam suddenly materializes and stretches for more than a mile. As drivers get out of their cars to gawk at what they initially thought was an all-too-common freeway pileup, the real reason for the jam becomes clear: It is a police roadblock.

Four lanes abreast, khaki-clad policemen are carefully stopping every car, checking the identities of not only the drivers, but the passengers as well. Car trunks are being carefully searched.

The roadblocks are part of a strict security clampdown that has been imposed across this prosperous oil kingdom in the wake of a wave of terrorist attacks in recent months.

In addition to the roadblocks, according to Western diplomats here, police forces have been carrying out house-to-house searches looking for foreigners who are in the country illegally.

An Interior Ministry official, Gen. Youssef Bader Kharafi, was quoted recently as saying that 4,000 people have been deported since mid-July and that he expected more expulsions. The magnitude of the problem is enormous: Nearly two-thirds of Kuwait’s 1.4 million population is considered foreign.

‘Barriers Are Going Up’

“The Kuwaitis have developed something of a siege mentality,” a Western diplomat said. “The barriers are going up, and no one knows for how long.”

Although Kuwait has been the scene of terrorist attacks since 1983, when suicide bombers attacked the U.S. and French embassies as well as key government installations, the latest security measures were prompted by new attacks on vastly different--but equally significant--targets.

In late May, a suicide bomber barely missed killing the country’s emir, Sheik Jabbar al Ahmed al Sabah, by crashing his bomb-laden car into the ruler’s motorcade. Two of Jabbar’s guards were killed.

Perhaps even more troubling to Kuwaitis were time-bomb attacks on outdoor cafes, which are favorite gathering places as the enervating summer heat descends on the country. The simultaneous attacks in early July killed 9 people and wounded 87 others.

“The cafe bombings were terrorist in the truest sense of the word; they succeeded in frightening the pants off everybody,” a diplomat said. “Without a clear target, every Kuwaiti must be saying to himself, ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’ ”

The rash of terrorism has, momentarily at least, united the country and the often-rebellious National Assembly behind the government. Calls for the death penalty for terrorists and for even more rigid security measures have not evoked even a murmur of dissent.

Despite the united stand against terrorism, the strains are beginning to produce serious cracks in Kuwait’s once-harmonious society, which a decade of oil boom had accustomed to prosperity rather than adversity.

“For the first time, the signs of intercommunal tensions between Shia Muslims and Sunnis are beginning to appear,” one envoy here said. “There are suggestions that Shias are less loyal than Sunnis.”

In fact, the Shias have been under growing suspicion in Kuwait since the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War five years ago.

Kuwait, whose population is nearly 40% Shia, has supported Iraq over non-Arab Iran, providing the Iraqis with transshipment facilities, as well as cash, to help the war effort. Iran, which is across the Persian Gulf from Kuwait, is almost entirely Shia Muslim, and many of Kuwait’s Shias look to the preachings of Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini for spiritual guidance.

Abdul-Ridal Assyri, a California-trained political scientist, warned in a newspaper article recently that if the current strains continue, “Kuwait may become the Lebanon of the gulf,” an unmistakable reference to Lebanon’s ten years of sectarian fighting.

After the article appeared, the newspapers were filled with vague warnings against Assyri, who is a Shia, until the minister of information personally ordered the country’s newspapers to publish no more on the subject of communal tensions, according to local journalists.

Shumlan Eilissa, a Sunni political scientist at Kuwait University, said Shia resentment has been building up for some time because of government moves to purge Shias from the security forces and army. Shia officers have been offered the choice of early retirement or transfer to non-sensitive jobs, he said.

“It used to be that Sunnis and Shias got along fine, except perhaps that there was little intermarriage,” a Sunni businessman said. “Now you get the impression--it’s still just a feeling--that the government thinks it’s OK to discriminate against Shias.”

Diplomats here tend to play down the comparisons with Lebanon, noting that it is almost impossible for a Kuwaiti to obtain a gun, whereas Beirut was a virtual arms bazaar on the eve of the 1975-76 civil war.

The government recently felt obliged to deny reports that it had banned Lebanese passengers from flying on Kuwait Airways for fear of hijacking and other acts of terrorism, but the denial was so lukewarm that many Kuwaitis took it as an indirect confirmation.

Remarkably, the government statement on the recent expulsions said 80% of the 4,000 people deported since the attack on the cafes had been in the country illegally. The statement left the impression that the remaining 20%, presumably Shias and therefore undesirable, were forced out even though they had proper papers.

Western diplomats said they were surprised by Kuwait’s decision to get tough on terrorism rather than bargain with the terrorists.

“Everyone said the Kuwaitis would be instant capitulators, but they are clearly prepared to go the course on this one without prompting from Washington or anyplace else,” a diplomat said.

Terrorists hijacked a Kuwaiti airliner last December and took it to Iran, killing two Americans on board before the aircraft was stormed by Iranian security forces. Although the other passengers were eventually freed, the plane has never been returned by the Iranians.

The tough Kuwaiti policy could make it more difficult to arrange a swap of 17 people now serving time in Kuwaiti prisons in connection with the embassy bomb attacks in return for seven Americans being held hostage in Lebanon. Rumors of talks about such a trade have circulated in the Middle East for weeks.

The hostages and the group holding them--identified only as the shadowy Islamic Jihad (Islamic Holy War)--have said in messages to the West that the seven would not be freed until the 17 in Kuwaiti jails are released.

The tense security situation also is blamed by Kuwaiti officials for the National Assembly’s decision to suspend all aid to Syria, Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

A diplomat here said, “There is a real sense that Syria is somehow behind all this terrorism.”