A Very Civil War : Despite Fighting at Home, Kuwait and Iraq Envoys Honor Diplomatic Niceties in U.S.

If the chief diplomats from warring Kuwait and Iraq were to run into each other on one of Washington’s sidewalks--now spackled with spray-painted anti-war slogans and littered with “Free Kuwait” fliers--they would probably pause, shake hands somberly and then briskly walk their separate ways.

Such are the niceties of the Arab diplomatic world.

Although their embassies are close by, the diplomats rarely see each other these days. And if they do, it’s on television.

Unlike the early months of the Persian Gulf crisis, the Kuwaiti ambassador no longer races around fighting for support from American leaders for his beleaguered country. For him, that war ended once the U.S.-led military forces attacked Iraq on Jan. 17.

“We’ve done our part. Now we just wait for the military,” said the Kuwaiti ambassador, Sheik Saud al Nasir al Sabah, as he settled into a plush white chair in the expansive sitting room of his residence while his embassy next door buzzed with activity.

At the same time, the top Iraqi diplomat surfaces only for tongue-lashing sessions at the State Department. The deputy chief of mission, Khalid J. Shewayish, has been in charge since Ambassador Mohammed Mashat was recalled to Iraq last month and the staff was officially reduced to four.

At a time when Americans are baffled by the complexities of world politics and Arab culture, this tale of two embassies and their polished diplomatic maneuvering reflects the struggle unfolding between two Arab nations halfway around the world.

The Kuwaitis have acted like a wounded animal, using moral outrage to draw military support. The Iraqis, on the other hand, have stalked around with a stay-out-of-my-region attitude, demanding understanding. When their paths have crossed, the emissaries have been cool but polite. And now, as war rages in the Gulf, they have retreated to the confines of their televisions and telephones.

Open hostility between these representatives of warring nations might seem understandable to Americans. But to Arabs, “bitterness, anger, would not serve any purpose,” explains Kuwaiti Ambassador Sabah in a demure, aristocratic tone.

“I went through this crisis for 2 1/2 months with my wife and two of my children back in Kuwait, not knowing if they were safe or murdered,” said Sabah, suddenly looking tired and less debonair despite his British double-breasted suit and French silk tie.

“But to feel anger would have been a mistake, because when things happen like this, you have to be cool and collected. If (the Iraqis) try to make you angry, you just play the game” by ignoring them, he adds with a confident smile. “Anger is of no use.”

On the other hand, Sabah doesn’t pity Mashat, who was called back to Iraq, possibly under Saddam Hussein’s disfavor, after he predicted wrongly to Hussein that Congress would not back Bush in using force in the Gulf.

Mashat last week was in Vienna, never having made the connecting flight to Baghdad, and the Kuwaitis claim he has been seeking to defect. But in a radio interview from Austria, Mashat denied the report, insisting he did not immediately fly home because his wife had fallen ill en route.

Sabah had a grim prediction for his former counterpart’s future under Hussein.

“No one is promoted in that regime,” he said, implying that Mashat faces severe criticism, and perhaps worse, in Baghdad. But he is not sympathetic: “I don’t feel sorry for anyone who is involved in this whole criminal activity. I’m sorry to say that, but this is really the fact.”

Sabah’s self-assurance deserted him only when asked whether Kuwait had an image problem these days. As Kuwaiti leaders abroad shield themselves from public exposure, their children are shown in the media living it up on the Riviera and in Cairo nightclubs, infuriating Americans whose sons and daughters are on the front line for their country.

“Our emir keeps a very high profile in the Kuwaiti media and among the Kuwaiti people,” says Sabah, who is the emir’s nephew. In an effort to rise above the issue, he adds, “Our emir is a quiet man; he is not like Saddam Hussein, who is loud. He is from a royal family.”

The emissaries handle the crisis as differently as the leaders they represent.

Before the war, Mashat was a whirlwind of activity, appearing at every opportunity on television and at press luncheons to tell Baghdad’s side of the story. His goal was to prevent the attack, but his brash, aggressive demeanor and his arrogant dismissal of worldwide outrage over the invasion of Kuwait rapidly lost, rather than won, sympathy.

The Kuwaitis, with more money as well as sophistication, hired one of the most prestigious public relations firms in Washington, Hill and Knowlton, for more than $5 million to fight the political war of words here.

Now “the war in Washington is over,” Sabah says, entirely at home under the barrel-arched high ceiling of his residence. As the red winter sun sets beyond 18 full-length windows, with stained-glass Moroccan lamps softly lighting the reception room and a fountain gurgling in the tiled entryway, the ambassador describes the war as he sees it.

“This war was fought here first in Washington before it was fought in the desert. It was an uphill fight for us, because we didn’t have as much access to the media as the Iraqis had,” he says, still harboring anger. The months of the prewar crisis, in his view, were the “longest roller coaster in history.”

“It has been very difficult for all of us, but we keep to ourselves. Sometimes I let myself cry, but only for five minutes,” said Nawaf Sabah, the ambassador’s 19-year-old son, who has taken a year off from Princeton University to work in the embassy. “Then I sit up and say, ‘This will not help.’ ”

After frantic lobbying efforts over many months, the embassy staff was relieved last month when White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater announced to the American people: “The liberation of Kuwait has begun.” More than a few people at the embassy beamed when they noted Fitzwater’s brief as a high point--the victory on the Washington battlefield.

Now the aura of the Kuwaiti Embassy, behind the rather cold phone receptions, is “cautiously jubilant,” says Nawaf Sabah, with a bright, coltish smile.

But at the Embassy of Iraq, the Iraqi flag hangs listlessly outside the building’s drawn shades.

Beyond the bright yellow “Do Not Cross” police line, past a metal detector and an imposing black iron gate, the Iraqi receptionist looks like an effective Georgetown bouncer. He greets a woman and pats a child on the head, then looks fiercely at the door.

The imposing orange brick Iraqi Embassy building, constructed in 1890, was the first Washington headquarters of the American Red Cross, and from that era the word Peace is still inscribed above one of the great fireplaces.

The embassy seems far from peaceful now. Its official staff has been cut more than threefold since diplomatic relations with the United States soured--and it is unusual that it remains open in time of war.

Within weeks of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the State Department had closed the Japanese Embassy, labeling it “enemy property,” and gathered Japan’s envoys. For their safekeeping, the U.S. government took the diplomats to Homestead, a posh resort in Hot Springs, Va. Later, the Japanese envoys were exchanged for U.S. diplomats in Tokyo who had been interned by the Japanese.

German and Italian diplomats were given the same type of luxurious accommodations at the Greenbrier Hotel in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., until it became apparent that the Axis allies were unable to get along. They had to be separated, and the Italians were dispatched to another mountain resort in North Carolina.

So far in the Persian Gulf War, Iraq has retained its property near Dupont Circle. But those inside seem content to stay inside.

“Of course the news affects us,” one member of the embassy said hours after Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, held an upbeat televised briefing from the Pentagon last month. The young, sharply dressed diplomat, an assistant to Mashat, asked like all the other Iraqis interviewed not to be named.

“The announcers on the networks like CNN seem to get excited as they announce targets that have been hit. What do they think? That those white rectangles we see through the radar are just buildings? They are people too,” said the diplomat, losing some of his polite Arab diplomacy.

“To say the phone is ringing off the hook is an understatement,” said a staff worker, one of an undetermined number of Iraqi non-diplomats who have started showing up regularly at the embassy to keep it running since the staff was reduced.

“We get all sorts of calls of support, of anger, and questions,” another Iraqi said.

One staffer said he has not encountered much harassment in Washington, and he does not consider the periodic protests outside the building anything more than “ignorance.”

But there is an uneasy feeling around the embassy.

“You don’t know if the guy following you is FBI or the cameramen getting so close are really fanatics who are going to pull a gun,” one staff member said.

Still, it’s not really fear. “I believe in my faith,” this staffer said. “When it’s time to die, it’s time to die. I don’t feel threatened.”