War’s Changes Leave Kuwait a Split Society

Two days after the liberation of Kuwait, Haya Mughni heard there was a Swiss doctor at the Red Crescent headquarters who needed an assistant. The doctor spoke no English or Arabic, and Mughni, who speaks French, volunteered.

Seven months ago, such a thing would have been unheard of. A Muslim woman from the Gulf did not work side by side with a man, especially a foreigner, certainly not in a hospital setting.

A Kuwaiti doctor who had recently returned to Kuwait after living in London for the last several months greeted Mughni politely, then declined her services. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but we would rather have a man than a woman.”

Between two Kuwaitis of about the same age--whose families lived within blocks of each other, who studied at the same university--a gulf of seven months of war and occupation had opened.

Mughni was dumbfounded, unable to explain to the man what had happened in Kuwait in his absence: the frightened nights she had spent drinking whiskey to hold back the terror with men she would never before have been allowed to see except in the company of her family; the pleasant days she had spent with strict, bearded Muslim fundamentalists in her form-fitting jeans, her traditional long, black cloak cast aside, plotting food distribution plans for the neighborhood; the close friendships she had developed with Shiite Muslims, the historic rivals of the Sunnis, trying to learn the whereabouts of friends and relatives captured by the Iraqis.

“Under occupation, everybody was the same,” said Mughni, a sociologist. “We all needed water, we all needed food. There wasn’t division between Sunnis and Shia, between Palestinians and Kuwaitis. There was a particular period of time where we felt nobody was judging us. There was a lot of feeling and love between us, and that’s what I wish they would all realize now.”

In the weeks since allied troops marched into Kuwait city, a widening gap has emerged between the Kuwaitis who remained in the country and fought the Iraqi occupiers and those coming back after fleeing to safety in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Cairo and London--a gap that is already polarizing the country and complicating the political landscape at a time when the government is seeking desperately to re-establish a unified Kuwait.

The gap is reflected in day-to-day confrontations--a man becomes unaccountably upset when his sister returns home bringing tea, not realizing that it is vegetables and batteries Kuwaitis want most--and increasing resentment against the government that spent seven months planning the rebuilding of Kuwait from the Saudi mountain resort of Taif.

There is a bitter sense among Kuwaitis here that the government should have consulted the citizens who successfully kept Kuwait operating during the occupation before setting up distribution systems that failed to take into account the intricate supply networks developed by the Kuwaiti resistance.

“This society’s been split in two parts--the people inside, and the people outside. The people inside have experienced everything, and they know who is doing what in this city,” said Nasser Asfour, a prominent Kuwait city merchant. “The people who are coming back and running this country now are the chickens of the country, the ones who ran the first night, and now they come back and pretend as if they are the heroes who liberated the country. They didn’t do (obscenity) to liberate this country; it’s the coalition forces who liberated this country. If it was up to them, this country would’ve been lost long ago.”

After a minute, Asfour tried to explain it more simply: “They didn’t change. I think we changed, and I think everybody who stayed here changed. But they didn’t change.”

Kuwaitis returning from outside, primarily government officials and a few businessmen and contractors hired to help with the emergency rebuilding, express anger that Kuwaitis who remained do not appreciate the work the exiles did to mobilize the international community against Iraq, to pursue U.N. resolutions, publicize the plight of the Kuwaitis, work to hold the allied coalition together, push the ruling Sabah family for democratic reforms and continually prod the allies to pursue liberation quickly, before it was too late to save those trapped inside.

“Did we ask them to stay?” asked Sulaiman Mutawa, Kuwait’s planning minister. “Did we ask the others to leave? What could we do? If some wouldn’t have left, we would have had a hell of a time holding the coalition together, and if some wouldn’t have stayed, the Iraqis would have had a field day.”

“You’ve got a very interesting situation where they’re all back now, they’re all talking to one another, and the fact is that really both sides were needed,” said one diplomat. “I think each side played a part, but being separated, the coming back together is difficult. It is like two people enter a room, and you know they’re going to have an argument, and the sooner they have it, the better, to clear the air.”

Kuwaitis who remained behind said the returnees are having the most difficult time understanding that many of the old social taboos disappeared under the occupation.

Men and women felt free to spend time together. People of different nationalities, religious sects and social classes--including some Palestinians and Iraqis--worked side by side, in the resistance and in the food distribution networks. Women performed traditionally male duties, at times even carrying weapons for the resistance. In a country where alcohol is banned, liquor trucked in from Iraq suddenly became widely available, and Kuwaitis often gathered and imbibed to help ease the overwhelming tension surrounding them.

Even dress styles changed, as men found it difficult to haul garbage and bake bread in their long, traditional dishdashas and women alternated between their traditional black cloaks, worn on the street to avoid attracting attention from Iraqi soldiers, and jeans or exercise suits that they wore at home, even in front of male friends.

Through it all, they say, there was a sense of cooperation that has been absent in the days since Kuwait was liberated.

Abdulaziz Sultan, a well-known businessman, sat at his dining room table one afternoon this week and attempted to explain what it is he believes the returning government has failed to do.

Sultan, a Western-educated banker with an American wife and a vacation home in Boston, spent the occupation organizing aid deliveries to needy families and comforting people whose sons, daughters and fathers were taken prisoner or killed.

Now, he was explaining the Muslim tradition of offering condolences to families whose loved ones have been lost, and wondering aloud why the returning government had as yet made no public or private mention of the thousands of Kuwaitis who disappeared during the occupation.

“I was sitting at a diwaniyah yesterday,” he said, referring to the traditional gathering spot of Kuwaiti men at which they discuss everything from family issues to affairs of state. “Here comes a man I don’t know, and he starts talking about a family who lost 12 kids, all of them 18 to 20 years old, shot in front of their mothers.

“Now, the government comes back to Kuwait. The first thing they should do is announce on the radio their sympathy for these families. Those people who lost (someone) should have at least a black flag, so all will go and visit them. This had not been done. Five thousand people died, and nobody even went to see them.”

Sultan, overcome with emotion, walked out of the room, then returned, his face streaked with tears. “I’m angry,” he said, and broke down again for several minutes, holding his face quietly in his hands. “This government has no compassion. A government that has no compassion should not be a government.”

Many Kuwaitis say those returning seem to expect the country to go on from where it left off, without recognizing that those who lived through the occupation expect fundamental changes. Gone, they say, are the affluent lifestyles in which many Kuwaiti households had half a dozen servants or more and Kuwaitis discovered at the beginning of the occupation that they were almost helpless to do anything for themselves.

“Kuwaitis used to use two, three maids, and cooks, and drivers. But will this thing continue in the future? I hope it won’t, because it has developed a very lazy people in this country,” said Nabil Loughani, a professor at Kuwait University.

“During the invasion, we didn’t depend on any expatriates. We took our own garbage and burned it, we baked our own bread. We learned many things. We learned how to fix our water pumps, to fix our generators, to cook, to farm. There was a lesson, and we should make use of it. The lesson is, we have to rely on ourselves. But the Kuwaitis outside haven’t learned this, and this is what worries me.”

Some Kuwaitis have gone so far as to argue that those who remained during the occupation should be compensated. Kuwaitis in exile were given generous living allowances, they say; why shouldn’t those who stayed behind be paid for the loss of their businesses, their jobs, their homes, their cars, their loved ones?

The proposition elicits indignation from Mutawa, the planning minister. “I’m morally shocked,” he said. “These people who stood up against aggression, who fought the occupiers, for the sake of Kuwait, and now they’re saying, ‘Please pay me?’ That is shame, with a great big capital S.”

Nonetheless, the compensation question is likely to become part of the new political agenda, along with calls for more democratization, as all the old political factions move to re-establish themselves in a new Kuwait. The Sabah family, Kuwait’s traditionally powerful merchant families and the London-based opposition are all jockeying for support inside the country, and each has lined up individual resistance factions in its camp in a bid to tap into the network of Kuwaitis who remained inside during the occupation.

“These people have been depending on themselves and cooperating and helping each other out and doing things they never thought they could do,” said one diplomat. “If somebody comes in with the pre-Aug. 2 mind-set and starts to behave in an arbitrary way, they’re in for trouble.”

“I hope we don’t end up with two Kuwaits in Kuwait, like the West Bank and the Palestinians outside,” said one Kuwaiti businessman. “But we’re not afraid anymore--after seven months of occupation, what else can happen to us?”