As Subversion Increases, It Can No Longer Be a Bystander : Internal Tensions Spur New Kuwaiti Role in Gulf War

Last week, the father of a young man who was killed while trying to rig a car bomb in one of Kuwait’s fashionable shopping areas apologized for his son’s deed by buying space for a letter on the front page of a local newspaper.

“I denounce all acts of terrorism, subversion and violence,” wrote Suleiman Salah Attar, “and if what happened was intended to harm Kuwait and its people, then God has been just in his punishment.”

As it turned out, the Attars are one of Kuwait’s most prosperous Shia Muslim families. Both Attar’s son and a second man, a cousin who also died while planting the bomb, were middle-level officials of the Kuwait Petroleum Corp. and of Kuwait Airlines, among the most influential employers in the country.

“It came as a shock to everyone,” said one Kuwaiti academician after the identities of the two men were published. “This was not a desperate act of some poverty-stricken Shia (undertaking terrorism for money) but an act stemming purely from commitment to ideology.”

Cohesion Under Strain

The incident illustrates the kind of strains tugging at Kuwait’s social cohesion as it prepares to enter its eighth year as a troubled noncombatant in the Iran-Iraq War.

One Western diplomat even suggested that it was these internal tensions as much as any external factor, such as concern over its oil exports, that prompted Kuwait to approach the United States and the Soviet Union recently about increasing their involvement in the Persian Gulf.

In the last four years, Kuwait has suffered a wave of terrorist bombings and fires that have claimed more than a dozen lives. The targets have been the U.S. and French embassies, Kuwait’s international airport, oil refineries and government buildings. The country’s ruler, or emir, Sheik Jabbar al Ahmed al Sabah, barely escaped an assassination attempt in 1985 when a terrorist drove a bomb-laden car into the sheik’s motorcade near Sief Palace.

Blamed on Iran, Allies

The Kuwaitis blame the terrorism on neighboring Iran and on local Shia Muslims allied with Iran.

“The Kuwaitis are very worried about what’s happening here,” the Western diplomat said. “They feel like they’re being singled out by Iran. They are experiencing increasing acts of internal subversion. It’s more intense here than at the other end of the gulf.”

Officially, Kuwait maintains that it is re-registering its tankers in the United States and has chartered another three from the Soviet Union solely to ensure the free outward flow of its oil, the only product this desert sheikdom in the northern corner of the Persian Gulf has to sell to the world.

But the tanker war has been flaring sporadically since 1983 and, until just a few months ago, Kuwait was among the most strident critics of big-power involvement in the gulf. According to experts here, Kuwait’s leaders have undergone a change of heart in recent months; the internal subversion was the apparent catalyst. The Kuwaiti leaders apparently are now convinced that a broader role for the superpowers in the gulf will bring a swifter end to the Iran-Iraq War.

Superpower Interest

“With the protection of the tankers has come a greater superpower interest in the war,” said a Western envoy. “The Kuwaitis have long been interested in seeing the war end, and they’ve been pleased that a serious effort is now being made,” as evidenced in last week’s U.N. Security Council resolution demanding a cease-fire between Iraq and Iran.

Many diplomats credit Kuwait with skillfully playing Washington and Moscow off against each other to obtain the maximum support for its mission. But the U.S. involvement also has helped the Reagan Administration refurbish its image here after incurring damage to it in Lebanon and through the Iran arms scandal.

“All the anti-Americanism of a few years ago has disappeared,” said a Kuwaiti professor. But he noted that if the United States were now to back out of the gulf precipitously, the optimistic mood in Kuwait could easily change.

“Kuwaiti people have an uneasy feeling that America might still let them down,” he said.

Only 600,000 people, a minority of Kuwait’s 1.7 million population, are actually Kuwaiti citizens. Of these, 30% are Shia Muslims, who share the same faith as the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the one that drives the Iranian revolution, while the rest are Sunni Muslims, the predominant Islamic sect in the Arab world.

Many Find Wealth

Most of the Shia families emigrated to Kuwait from Iran in the 1920s, and several have since become fabulously wealthy doing business in Kuwait.

The recent campaign of terror here, including the bombings of key government installations, suggested to many in the majority in Kuwait that the Shias may represent a kind of Fifth Column destroying the country from the inside. Fears were voiced that Kuwait might be another Lebanon in the making.

Last January, local Kuwaiti Shias were charged with planting explosives at a massive oil facility. Six were given death sentences, which have yet to be carried out.

Like the Attar cousins who died while planting the car bomb, reportedly targeting an Air France office on orders from Iran, all the accused have been either middle- or upper-class Shias who are also Kuwaiti citizens. Their arrests shattered the myth that subversion in Kuwait was isolated and in all cases was imported from Iran.

Anti-Shia Backlash

According to Kuwaiti academicians and Western diplomats, one result of the acts of terrorism has been a general backlash against the Shia community, engendering even more bitterness among the Shias.

“The government seems to have decided to treat the lot of them as interlopers and potentially treacherous,” one diplomat said.

Like the two men who were blown up in the car bomb attempt, many Shias work for Kuwait’s large corporations or ministries.

While there have been no reports of wholesale discrimination, Kuwaitis say that Shias in sensitive jobs, particularly in the military and security services, are quietly being phased out or excluded. The Ministries of Interior (which includes the police) and Planning are said to have been particularly hard hit, but the number of people dismissed is still relatively small, perhaps fewer than 200.

“It’s causing a lot of resentment, but the Shias are afraid to speak up,” said one Kuwaiti official. “They are more concerned about self-protection.”

Identification With Iran

One indication of the strains facing Kuwait was a poll of education students at Kuwait University. A majority said in response to a questionnaire that they support Iran in the war against Iraq, Kuwait’s ally, and identified more with Iran’s Islamic republic than with Iraq’s secular government.

Such sentiments are enough to chill many Kuwaitis, who live in fear of an Iranian victory in the war. While Kuwait does not permit alcohol and is fairly strict in other religious questions, religion and politics have long taken a back seat to the practice of making money. Many Kuwaitis say an Iranian victory over Iraq would lead to the establishment of an Islamic republic in Kuwait and would fundamentally change their way of life.

So far, the oil-price recession and the war have made few dents in the high-spending life style of Kuwait, where even life at the bottom would be the envy of many Third World nations.

“Things look pretty good by world standards, even if Kuwaitis think things have gone to hell,” said one diplomat.

$10,000 Per Capita

Although national income has declined sharply because of the drop in oil prices since their 1980 peak, the per-capita gross domestic product is still $10,000 for every man, woman and child--one of the highest in the world.

Despite suggestions that the flare-up in the tanker war represented a threat to Kuwaiti oil exports, Western analysts said there has been no perceivable decline in Kuwait’s oil output. One informed source said that Kuwait is believed to be exceeding the production quota set by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

“If the question is whether Kuwait’s exports have been affected by the war, the answer is no,” one source said.

With an estimated $6 billion in income from oil exports, Kuwait, a country slightly smaller than New Jersey, has had no trouble continuing to dole out some of the most comprehensive social benefits in the world.

Education, including college abroad, is free for all Kuwaitis. Health care is free for everyone, even non-citizens.

A House for Everyone

Every Kuwaiti is entitled to receive a house, which by local standards means at least four bedrooms and a maid’s quarters. If a citizen is not happy with what is available on the housing market, the government will provide an interest-free 30-year mortgage to build a house.

The government also gives its citizens generous grants to buy furniture and cars.

“Kuwait is more communist than the Soviet Union and more capitalist than the United States,” quipped one European ambassador.

At the current rate of production, estimated at 1.1 million barrels a day, Kuwait has enough proven oil reserves to last 250 years. When the oil does run out, a massive fund, now estimated at $40 billion in investments in the Western world, has been built to support the country.