Kuwaitis Wage Campaign for U.S. Hearts and Minds

His tiny nation conquered, his people humiliated, somber Sheik Saud al Nasir al Sabah, Kuwait’s ambassador to the United States, stood on the dais at a Beverly Hills banquet and reflected on “the bright side.”

Now, at least, the Kuwaitis know who their friends are, he said--especially “our friends in the United States.”

He described an emotional meeting with President Bush shortly after the Iraqi invasion--how the President wiped away a tear after hearing reports of rape and other atrocities. “From that moment,” the ambassador said, “I knew that this man and this nation stands for what it was built upon--freedom, liberty and justice for all.”

Those words prompted applause--enthusiastic at some tables, but subdued at others. Some of the 450 diners have sons who might soon be ordered to fight a war to liberate Kuwait.

With about 400,000 American and allied troops now amassed in the Persian Gulf ready to fight over a nation that has lots of oil but only about 800,000 citizens, many Americans wonder whether Kuwait is really worth fighting and dying for.

Such doubt is one reason that Sheik Saud, a member of the Kuwaiti royal family, has been on a nonstop tour of press conferences, TV and radio shows and speeches, including this one Dec. 13 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. And it is why thousands of other Kuwaitis and their closest American friends are now waging a campaign to win the hearts and minds of a reluctant American public.

Kuwaitis in the United States have organized “public education” groups across the nation and are paying a potent Washington-based lobbying and public relations firm more than $5.6 million to help them state their case.

This ad hoc Kuwaiti lobby includes businessmen who wage counterdemonstrations against anti-war protesters, students who produce video documentaries describing their country’s torment, former hostages who engage in verbal saber-rattling on TV news programs, and an American woman who fled her adopted country with her children, leaving her Kuwaiti husband behind, and now spends her days addressing Rotary clubs, Elks lodges and high school classes.

They are encountering an America that seems eager to stand against aggression but not necessarily willing to fight a war--certainly not as willing as the Kuwaitis.

A Los Angeles Times Poll on Dec. 14 showed that only 37% of respondents favored a counter-invasion by U.S. and allied forces if Iraqi troops do not leave Kuwait by the United Nations-imposed deadline of Jan. 15. More preferred a strategy of enforcing the embargo, but holding off on an attack.

Like everyone else ensnared by the Persian Gulf crisis, the Kuwaitis and their friends are working against the Jan. 15 ultimatum. If Iraqi President Saddam Hussein does not pull his troops out before the U.N. deadline for the use of force, a war for liberation is what Kuwaitis want--and the sooner, the better.

Of course Kuwait is worth fighting for, they say. If war comes, it would indeed be a fight for such high-minded principles as freedom and justice; a war against a power-mad tyrant bent on controlling the world’s economy and developing nuclear weapons; a war for whatever argument strikes the right chord in a particular audience. Anti-war activists who hoist signs saying “No Blood for Oil,” they insist, are sadly missing the point.

War might be necessary because economic sanctions against Iraq are not working, said Hassan Ibrahim, a former Kuwaiti education minister who established the Washington-based Citizens for a Free Kuwait in the first hours of the Aug. 2 invasion. To simply prolong the sanctions “is prolonging the agony of a small country and people who are suffering,” he said.

“We believe Kuwait really can’t last that long,” added Ibrahim, now a Kuwait University professor who was doing research in Washington when Iraqi troops overran his country. He cited an unconfirmed report that, on a typical day, 10 members of the Kuwaiti resistance are being executed.

On Aug. 2, as their nation’s small army waged a futile resistance against the surprise invasion, Ibrahim and others began organizing. Within weeks, Citizens for a Free Kuwait had groups of Kuwaiti nationals distributing newsletters, giving talks and doing interviews with media in at least 30 U.S. locales, mostly on college campuses.

Among an estimated 5,000 Kuwaitis in the United States, about 1,800 are students on Kuwaiti government scholarships. Most of the remainder are tourists or visiting Kuwaitis who were stranded by the invasion, Ibrahim said. Some Kuwaitis are permanent U.S. residents.

Financed by wealthy Kuwaitis in exile, Ibrahim’s group hired the influential public relations firm of Hill & Knowlton to help state their case.

“They’re not professional publicists or politicians,” said Hill & Knowlton Vice Chairman Frank Mankiewicz. “They have no experience at this, and they’re kind of overwhelmed. All of a sudden, they’re getting 100 media calls a day.”

Kuwait’s government-in-exile has financed Ibrahim’s group. Records filed with the Justice Department in accordance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act show that Hill & Knowlton received $5.64 million for the period beginning Aug. 20 and ending Nov. 10. People representing foreign entities must file the forms every six months.

Of the $5.64 million, $1.1 million went for a daily monitoring of American attitudes by the Wirthlin Group, a firm that had done extensive polling for the Reagan Administration. Wirthlin’s latest poll showed that 44% felt the Bush Administration’s handling of the crisis was “just about right,” while another 40% said the Administration should take stronger actions. But only 56% of respondents agreed with the statement that “the legitimate constitutional government of Kuwait is worth fighting for.”

Hill & Knowlton spent another $644,571 on video production and $140,412 on travel. Mankiewicz, a past president of National Public Radio, said much of video production costs went for satellite rental to beam “electronic news releases”--both video and radio--across the globe.

The public relations firm’s fee for the period was slightly less than $3 million, said Mankiewicz. About 75 people, including Craig Fuller, who was chief of staff for then-Vice President Bush, have worked on the account.

Along with other groups, Hill & Knowlton has worked with a small band of Kuwaiti students in Southern California who are producing pro-Kuwaiti documentaries for distribution to public-access cable TV channels.

“That’s our weapon now--it’s the camera. We fight the video war with Saddam Hussein,” said Fahed Bouresli, a 25-year-old TV production student at Chaffey College in San Bernardino County. “I want everyone to know Kuwait is not all oil. Kuwait is people.”

The students say they have dipped into their Kuwaiti government scholarship stipends to pay for production of a dozen hourlong documentaries describing Iraq’s occupation and atrocities committed against the Kuwaiti people.

Bouresli, who has lived in the United States for four years, offered a wry smile when asked to assess the American public’s attitude regarding the possibility of war. “It changes every day,” he said. “Basically, Americans believe what they see on TV.”

Many Kuwaitis are frustrated that some Americans seem more concerned with prices at the gas pump than with war crimes and violations of human rights.

At the West Covina office of the newly formed Kuwait-American Friendship Council recently, a group of Kuwaitis accused the anti-war movement of hypocrisy. Why, they asked, aren’t anti-war activists calling on Hussein to withdraw his troops? Why aren’t they denouncing the atrocities? Why don’t they demand that Hussein open Kuwait to humanitarian organizations and the media?

“The peace movement,” a graduate student named Anwar Ali muttered, shaking his head. “It’s so naive to think you’re going to reach peace without using the stick, especially dealing with a tyrant.”

Ali reached for analogies to explain why America and its allies should boot Iraq out of Kuwait. For America to do nothing would be like a police officer standing idly by while a weak person was mugged, he said.

When it was suggested that many Americans are less than fond of being “the world’s policeman,” Adnan Saleh, a businessman who has lived in Los Angeles for 18 years managing Kuwaiti investments, emphasized the United States’ “enlightened self-interest.”

“The interests of the American people are at stake,” Saleh said. “It’s your jobs at stake, your way of life. If this monster is allowed to eat Kuwait, watch out.”

Kuwaitis make regular appearances at anti-war rallies, offering their viewpoint. Saleh confronted famed Vietnam veteran and anti-war protester Ron Kovic at one Westwood protest.

In trying to win over Americans, Kuwaitis have discovered that they must combat their own popular image as dapper, limousine-riding sheiks who achieved immense wealth through the luck of geography. Some people, they have learned, are not quick to sympathize.

Kuwaitis also are called upon to defend a Muslim society that hardly seems democratic to American eyes--particularly for women, who are not allowed to vote. This might be a war for freedom and justice, many Americans ask, but for whom?

Ibrahim responds with a 17-page memo that begins with two pages on the status of Kuwaiti women: “News of the courageous participation of Kuwait women in the resistance reaches us daily. Kuwaiti women have clearly taken a front-line position with their male counterparts in the struggle. . . .”

Angi Saad, a civil engineer, is one Kuwaiti woman on the front lines for Citizens for a Free Kuwait. Unlike Saudi women, she said, Kuwaiti women not only have been allowed to drive cars for years, but their educational and professional opportunities probably exceed those of American women.

To counter resentment of their wealth, Kuwaitis are quick to point out their extensive foreign aid and loans to other nations. Liberating Kuwait, they say, would benefit not only Kuwaitis but also the more than 1.3 million foreigners who worked in Kuwait in tax-free jobs, ranging from doctors and engineers to maids and chauffeurs.

The notion that this is another war between haves and have-nots is “Iraqi propaganda,” Ibrahim asserted. Iraq is also a “have,” he said, but Hussein has chosen to put his country’s wealth into a war machine.

A benevolent, peaceful, progressive Kuwait is how an American woman who used to live there describes her adopted country during visits to civic groups and high schools. A few weeks after the invasion, the Riverside native fled with her two children, leaving her Kuwaiti husband behind. She uses the alias “Charlotte Smith” to protect her husband.

On a recent day, she spoke to a series of history classes at Riverside’s La Sierra High School.

The teen-agers were silent, their attention riveted, as Smith described one atrocity after another. Some of her stories are first-hand; most were passed through the grapevine. The Iraqis are so ruthless, she said, that the invaders took premature babies out of incubators, then shipped the incubators off to Baghdad.

Her own 5-year-old, Smith tells the students, asked Santa Claus to free Kuwait so he could see his father.

After one class, a few students lingered to hear more. Smith had won some converts.

Before hearing Smith, said 16-year-old Shannon Rhinehart, “It had all seemed like a Rambo movie. Now I think it’s more of a moral obligation.”

“It’s not blood for oil,” agreed classmate Jerry Bui. “It’s our blood for their blood, really.”