Keep Your Eye on This Man : Iraq’s Saddam Hussein Seems Awfully Interested in Tiny Kuwait

Fresh from a propaganda triumph in the Arab world that followed his recent threat to destroy half of Israel, Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein has now turned his bellicosity against closer neighbors, this time Arabs.

Hussein accuses Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates of back-stabbing his country by producing more oil than their OPEC-approved quotas allow, thus forcing down prices and cutting Iraq’s petroleum income. Now it’s claimed that Kuwait violated Iraq’s southern border and illegally pumped out $2.4-billion worth of its oil.

Though both now say they have stopped, Kuwait and the U.A.E. have in fact cheated on their quotas; their excess output has had a lot to do with pushing down oil prices. It’s absurd, though, to suggest that tiny Kuwait, which sits atop about 20% of the world’s known oil reserves, would poach on Iraqi fields. It’s even more ludicrous to imagine that this country, so terrified of its larger neighbor, would even consider border games.

So what is Saddam Hussein up to? For one thing he’s genuinely upset about the now-halted drop in oil prices, since each $1-a-barrel slide costs Iraq $1 billion a year in income, a serious loss to an economy burdened with huge foreign debt. As it happens a lot of that debt is owed to Kuwait, which helped subsidize Iraq’s war against Iran. It wouldn’t be surprising if Iraq were using coercion now in a bid for debt forgiveness. And perhaps Hussein is again preparing to assert Iraq’s old but specious claim to sovereignty over Kuwait.

Would Hussein go to the extreme of attempting conquest? The temptation certainly is there, and there’s no doubt his powerful and war-tested army could roll quickly over Kuwait, gaining for Iraq enormous oil resources and a bigger voice in fixing prices. Few in the Persian Gulf--or, indeed, the larger Arab world--would have the courage to complain too loudly about such aggression. Hussein may be preparing to show again just how ruthless he can be.