Kuwaiti Exiles Try London on $9,500 a Day

Imagine having to get by in London on just $9,500 a day, being so strapped for cash that the no-limit tables at London’s casinos are off-limits for the foreseeable future.

This is the plight of many Kuwaitis stranded here.

The crisis in Kuwait has produced what may become the world’s wealthiest refugee community, yet the Kuwaitis trapped here are measuring the tragedy not in terms of dollars and dinars but in lives and land.

“I can tell you this,” said 21-year-old Mohammed, who like other exiles did not want to give his family name, “any one of us would rather be a poor man in Kuwait than a millionaire in London.

“With all the money on Earth I could never live anywhere in the world as I can live in Kuwait. Whatever it takes, even if it’s all the money we have on Earth, we want it back.”

Mohammed’s attitude was typical of the 20,000 or more Kuwaitis who were vacationing in Britain when Iraq invaded their tiny, oil-rich country Aug. 2. The vacation in Britain is a tradition that goes back for generations among Kuwaitis.

Their zeal points up the human drama unfolding in the huge Kuwaiti exile community, which despite its renowned wealth has largely faded from public view since the crisis erupted at home.

At first glance, the exiled Kuwaitis would not seem to qualify as candidates for world sympathy. But after the tanks rolled into Kuwait, and much of Kuwait’s estimated $100 billion in overseas assets was frozen, a bank that was set up here for Kuwaitis who frequent London imposed a withdrawal limit of 5,000 pounds a day per person--about $9,500--to prevent a run on the bank.

Many Kuwaitis are complaining that they are now unable to dine at a five-star restaurant every night and to frequent the swank nightclubs like Tokyo Joe’s and Annabel’s.

“If you want to be rough, you can say they’ve got a high-class problem here,” a banking source said, asking not to be identified by name. “What’s so shocking is that it’s all so undeserved. The Kuwaitis did absolutely nothing to invite this except succeed. If anything, they are paying the price for being rich.”

Some are also paying the price for not being as rich as others.

“Actually, many of our people are in need right now,” said Maha Sane, a stranded tourist who is working with a volunteer citizens’ committee to arrange financial assistance for Kuwaitis in London.

“Many of the tourists here are middle-class families traveling on a set budget for a month or so. All they had was enough cash to enjoy themselves for that month and some credit cards. But the minute Kuwait was invaded, our Kuwaiti dinars were worthless. The banks started cutting up our credit cards and, for those who do not own property here, really they had nothing at all.”

In keeping with Kuwait’s long-standing policy of sharing the wealth--a London banker calls Kuwait “the most perfect and natural welfare state in the world”--the wealthiest of the Kuwaitis here pooled their resources with the Kuwaiti Embassy’s and set up an emergency fund to provide housing and living expenses.

“This is the tradition among our people, to take care of our own and certainly care for those who cannot take care for themselves,” Sane said as she processed the newest of 500 applications.

She and her family clearly are not in need, but their experience says a great deal about the character of the Kuwaitis.

As she does almost every summer, when the temperature in Kuwait rises to 120 degrees and more, Sane went to Monte Carlo this summer with her parents and sisters. When the Iraqis invaded their country, they decided to go to London.

For many years, London has been something of a summer capital for Kuwaitis who can afford it. Even before the Kuwaitis discovered the vast oil deposits that have made many of them so wealthy, they were shrewd and successful traders who traveled and invested abroad, principally in Britain. Britain had looked after Kuwait’s foreign and military affairs from 1899 until independence in 1961.

In 1946, oil money started pouring in, and Kuwait’s rulers have put more than a third of it in long-term, high-yield investments in Britain.

“So for most of the Kuwaitis who spend their summers here, it’s always been a combination of business and pleasure,” the banking source said. “And of course it fits their lifestyle of wanting to spend May to September out of Kuwait.”

But what led Sane and her family to leave the Riviera and come to London was a sense of community.

“We came here,” she said, “because at a time of crisis we want to be surrounded by our own people, and we just knew that London is the center of the Kuwaiti community in Europe. We wanted to help in any way we can.”

Many Kuwaitis are doing more than committee work. They are enlisting in an underground resistance force, a Kuwaiti official said.

“We have a lot of volunteers, not only Kuwaitis but a lot of British as well, who are offering to leave the same day and fight underground in Kuwait,” said Ali Sabah, who is related to the royal family and is head of the embassy’s consular section.

With embassy funds, he said, the volunteers are being flown from London to a place on the gulf where resistance leaders are taking them into Kuwait.

“This is our plan,” he said, “to fight until we can go back. We are still not refugees. Our (exile) government is still there (in Saudi Arabia). We are still carrying our passports. And we are not settling down in other countries. We will go home.”

Time, though, is taking its toll on the Kuwaitis. Exiles like Sane are complaining about a growing identity crisis and losses that go far beyond the financial.

“How can we speak of money?” she said. “We cannot go to our own houses. We do not have a home. We do not have an identity. Even our passports must be reissued because the Iraqi invaders can make new passports in our names for their people, now that they have our government offices.”

She was asked how her committee is surmounting the public relations obstacle of vast wealth and resources, and she replied:

“To me, all the money in the world means nothing without our land, the place of our birth, the place we were raised. We will fight to the death to get this back. We hope the world will understand that just because Kuwait is rich, that doesn’t give anyone the right to invade it.”