Cunning, Toughness of Kuwait Bedouins Add Up to Ticket Out for Many Refugees : Exodus: The Good Samaritans of the desert have saved numerous lives, say those who fled.

For thousands of years, Kuwaiti Bedouins with their camels, sheep and goats have roamed their beloved Arabian desert, at once feared and respected for the cunning resourcefulness it takes to survive in the inhospitable peninsula.

And in the past month since the Iraqi invasion, it is this intimate knowledge of the unforgiving and unpredictable terrain that have enabled the Bedouins to successfully escort thousands of desperate Westerners and fellow Kuwaitis overland to freedom in Saudi Arabia.

Leading convoys with as many as 35 cars each, these Bedouins have zigzagged their way in fast-moving jeeps and Land Rovers across the treacherous landscape, dodging the Iraqi invaders and shifting sands that can bog down the fanciest Mercedes up to its floorboards with no warning.

Even as many Bedouins are giving up the nomadic existence for jobs and modern housing in Kuwait’s cities, they have retained their primordial allegiance to the desert.

“They know the desert like the back of their hand. You can drop them in the desert in the middle of the night, and they will know where they are and which way to go,” said Talal Alsalem, a film-maker who has produced numerous documentaries on the Kuwaiti Bedouins’ vanishing way of life.

“And they are marvelous, very generous people,” said the 35-year-old graduate of Ohio University, who was in Kuwait shooting a film on the art of Bedouin weaving when the Iraqis invaded Aug. 2.

And had it not been for these Good Samaritans of the desert, according to many Westerners and Kuwaitis who recently fled from that besieged Persian Gulf nation, countless refugees could well have become Iraqi captives--or worse, carcasses under the searing sun, victims of heat and dehydration.

Many of these Kuwaiti Bedouins have made the perilous journey across the desert repeatedly, returning to Kuwait city to help others almost immediately after reaching the Saudi border.

“They knew all the dunes and rocks,” said one refugee, a Kuwaiti man who believes his family members are still in the occupied country and asked to remain anonymous.

“They are proud, tough people,” another Kuwait refugee, Shamo Esmaeel, added in an interview at the Kuwait Embassy in Washington. Esmaeel reached the Saudi border about 10 days ago in a caravan led by a Bedouin. He said he did not know the man, but simply followed him in a car, as did about 25 other vehicles.

“One day my friend said a Bedouin man was leaving the next day, and if we wanted to go we should bring water and food and meet him at a special place,” Esmaeel recalled. He and his friend did, and several anxious hours later, they crossed into Saudi Arabia. It was Esmaeel’s first trip across his country’s rugged desert.

Many other recent refugees, including Americans such as Mary Rimdzius of Long Beach, have related similar experiences, although with individual variations. Rimdzius said she even disguised herself as a Bedouin during her escape.

Fahd Mohammed Sager, 30, a fire captain in Kuwait city, said he escaped about a week after the Iraq invasion, also in a caravan led by a Bedouin. As the caravan left the highway and began heading out across the unmarked desert, he recalled, there were almost 100 other cars, many of them heading off in different directions in search of the Saudi border.

But even with a Kuwaiti Bedouin leading the way, their caravan came to a dead stop, its progress blocked by an above-ground portion of an oil pipeline. After a detour, they reached Saudi Arabia several hours later.

The refugees spoke of encountering sympathetic as well as brutal Iraqi soldiers, of uncommon generosity among fellow travelers and of utter desperation that drove men and women to abandon the bodies of loved ones in the relentless journey to freedom. But the one constant throughout these accounts has been the uncanny survival skills of the Kuwaiti Bedouins.

A small number of them, especially those who had served in the small Kuwaiti military, also are believed to be involved in an embryonic resistance movement within Kuwait, supported in part by the American CIA.

Bedouins are the nomads of the Arabian, Syrian and North African deserts. The term comes from the French version of the Arab word badwai , meaning “desert dweller.” They constitute about one-tenth of the Middle East’s population but inhabit or use almost nine-tenths of its land.

Hundreds of thousands of Bedouins still roam the deserts, living in animal hair tents with no modern amenities. But their ranks have fallen dramatically in recent decades as Arab countries have become more urban and flush with petrodollars.

Still, at the heart of Arabia is the desert and the Bedouin. They have shaped the character of the region.

The Bedouin society is based on the clan, a group of united families in which individual rights are subordinated to those of the majority. Blood ties are considered to flow through the male line.

For the clan--or for the collection of clans that joined to become a tribe--survival is a daily challenge in the hostile environment. One needs to be tough to endure the desert and both strong and cunning to hold off raiding parties.

The desert and those who wander there are both feared and respected, and from the Bedouin tradition comes the roots of today’s Arab hospitality: Any man, friend or foe, who had the courage and strength to cross the desert and appear at another’s tent was embraced as a brother and given water, food and lodging for three days. On the fourth day, he was on his own. The kiss then could become the sword; the visitor might be hunted once more as the enemy.

Today, the Bedouins are the true survivors and traditionalists of the Arab world, widely regarded as people of great honor. They still pay no attention to national boundaries.