Kuwait Sinks to Saddam’s Level : U.S. must try to put a stop to this cruelty

The savagery that Iraq inflicted on Kuwait over seven months of occupation goes on. This time, though, the perpetrators are Kuwaitis.

Palestinians and other foreign Arab residents of the sheikdom who are suspected of collaborating with the occupying forces are being seized, imprisoned, brutalized and sometimes killed. Some of this appears to be at the hands of vigilantes, usually Kuwaitis who lived under the occupation and saw friends and family members suffer at the hands of Iraqi forces. Most of the brutality, or so say its victims, seems to be the doing of the Kuwaiti army.

THE FACTS: Crown Prince Saad al Abdullah al Sabah, Kuwait’s prime minister and a member of the ruling family, flatly denies that any extralegal detention or torture has taken place. But the claims of abuse rest on far more than rumor, as the prime minister would have it, and support for the stories of the grisly things that have been done is far more than anecdotal.

U.S. military police, stationed at the Kuwait-Iraq border where scores of former prisoners of the Kuwaitis have been dumped, have seen case after case of vicious mistreatment. The experiences related by those who have endured Kuwaiti jails ring true. The traumatic signs of beatings and burnings are not faked.

Would it be overstating matters to suggest that the U.S. government bears a particular moral responsibility to try to put a stop to this cruelty? We don’t think so.

The United States was the primary instrument of Kuwait’s liberation. Had President Bush not organized a coalition to reverse Iraq’s aggression, Kuwait, as an independent entity, would have been erased from the map. The emir and all of his clan would have been condemned to spend the rest of their lives in opulent exile.

THE REACTION: Uniformed U.S. civil advisory units are in Kuwait even now, helping to re-create the institutions that Iraq destroyed. Washington can’t dictate the kind of government Kuwait should have or what laws should regulate official conduct. But Washington can, publicly and unambiguously, express its disapproval and abhorrence of the rights violations now going on in Kuwaiti jails. The standard is simple: Torture is unconscionable and in every instance condemnable, whether practiced by Iraqis or Kuwaitis.

The wanton ruin carried out by Iraq in Kuwait--the destruction of priceless artifacts, of libraries and museums and the physical foundations of organized society--constitutes a crime against civilization. During the occupation Iraq had some local help, from Palestinians and others. These collaborators should be held to answer for their crimes. But the summary, lawless, indiscriminate methods of account-settling now going on are wholly unacceptable.

Yes, all this is happening in the Persian Gulf, where Western ideas of due process and human rights are largely alien. Yes, vengeance follows all wars. No matter. That torture continues in Kuwait is an outrage. Washington, which took the lead in liberating Kuwait, should take the lead in condemning it.