Optimism Fuels Kuwaiti’s Plans : Rebuilding: Back in Irvine with his wife and children, the economist looks forward to returning, and to more than mere restoration of his nation’s oil-rich comforts.

When Abdul Majeed al Shatti left Kuwait almost a year ago to visit his in-laws here, his homeland was a glamorous sheikdom where even the poor had servants. When he returns for good early next month, it will be to a smoldering ghost town littered with the wreckage of war.

Between the prosperity and the devastation, the 35-year-old economist was drafted by the Kuwaiti government in exile and served three months as a U.S. Army volunteer in charge of 125 Kuwaiti intelligence workers.

Back in Irvine briefly to regroup with his wife and two children, who are living with her parents, an optimistic al Shatti looks forward to his family’s repatriation and the opportunity to help rebuild Kuwait. He would like not only to restore Kuwait’s oil-rich comforts but also to make the country a symbol of the “new world order” described by President Bush.

“We will have a better world to live in because of this issue,” he said.

One of the youngest of a 16-member, middle-class Kuwaiti family, al Shatti was educated at Stanford, where he met his wife, Golnar, a native Iranian who is now a U.S. citizen, as are their two children, Deena, 8, and Sammy, 2.

In 1984, al Shatti returned to Kuwait and headed the economic department of the country’s think tank, the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research. His wife ran two clothing stores.

They returned at least once a year to the United States for business or to visit his in-laws, Kambiz and Nikki Mahmoudi, Iranian natives who left that country with the fall of the shah.

Al Shatti and his family were on vacation Aug. 2 when they learned from the media that Iraqi forces had invaded their country. Shocked, he frantically sought information about how he could join the resistance.

Eventually, the Kuwaiti Embassy in Washington notified more than 1,000 Kuwaitis in the United States to be screened for service as translators and guides for the U.S. Army. About 600 Kuwaiti citizens were accepted as volunteers.

After eight days of training at Ft. Dix, N.J., they arrived in Saudi Arabia on Jan. 15--a day before the air war began. Al Shatti led a group of Kuwaitis attached to the 18th Airborne Corps of the Army, which was scattered throughout the Persian Gulf.

As Arabic interpreters who could distinguish between Iraqi, Egyptian and Kuwaiti dialects and accents, they intercepted Iraqi communications, interrogated prisoners of war, helped civilian refugees and worked in hospitals.

Two weeks after the air war began, al Shatti said, the Kuwaitis reported to U.S. analysts that Iraqi morale was down. They had heard that soldiers were complaining about shortages of food and water.

As an unpaid volunteer, al Shatti received many thank-yous from schoolchildren, the central command and military wives, who sent him cookies. But he said the appreciation made him feel bad: “It should be the other way around. Americans were helping me liberate my country.”

Al Shatti was not among the Kuwaitis (including the Kuwaiti army) who joined the allied forces in liberating Kuwait city. While he wanted to share in the glory and the emotion, he felt his duty lay elsewhere.

“My mission was not finished until the Americans told me it was finished,” he said. “It was very important for me. What I did was saying a small thanks for Americans who liberated Kuwait.”

Three weeks later, he entered his country and photographed the devastation he had seen on TV: beaches mined and undercut with bunkers, hotels burned out and looted.

First he checked his father’s house. He had already learned that his father had died of natural causes during the invasion. A cousin, though, had been tortured in front of his family, all of whom were later shot.

Then he saw his own apartment. A vault had been ripped out of a closet. His stereo, videocassette recorder, television and clothing were gone. He went on to the Kuwaiti Institute for Scientific Research. “It was charcoaled,” he said. Large mainframe computers were missing. In his wife’s stores, nothing remained but hangers.

“You feel sad,” al Shatti said. “Not just because of Kuwait, but (because) you think, ‘How can somebody do this for no reason whatsoever?’ ”

While the families of an estimated 6,000 Kuwaitis killed in the war are bitter, he said, the country is full of jokes--mostly about Iraqis, characterized as jealous bumpkins. In one joke, an Iraqi soldier watches a Kuwaiti use an automated teller machine. “Look!” he says to his companion. “Didn’t I tell you even the walls in Kuwait give money?”

As much as al Shatti himself, his fellow Kuwaitis seemed impressed by and adoring of the American troops who offered them food and medical services. During the Islamic holy week of Ramadan, when Muslims fast during the day, Americans asked whether al Shatti would be offended if they ate in front of him.

In Kuwait, he said, slogans written on walls have been altered to read, “God, Nation, Bush and the Emir.”

If Bush ran for president of Kuwait, he would be a shoo-in, al Shatti said. “Put it this way: If it were not for the States, Kuwait would be gone,” he said.

Before the war, Kuwait was a “super welfare state” that gave al Shatti and his family free health care, education and all the basic services. Even though he is more at home in the United States, al Shatti remains a loyal Kuwaiti citizen and believes that his duty now is to help rebuild and restructure the country.

His wife, Golnar, will join him with their children in September, when they believe the oil fires will have been extinguished and the air will be safer to breathe.

A U.S. citizen with a master’s degree in communications, Golnar al Shatti prefers Kuwait to Southern California as a place to raise children. “There is a code of honor, a moral code, and a lot of respect for elders. It’s a cleaner society,” she said. “They don’t have problems with drugs in school, and I don’t think someone will kidnap my daughter off the street.”

Kuwaiti women, she said, can choose between modern and traditional lifestyles and are respected the same as in the United States, she said.

Everyone in their family is extremely proud of Majeed and his service, she said. “When he went into Kuwait, everyone was showing their appreciation. He didn’t do it for that. It’s his country and his land.”

Al Shatti said the invasion inspired a realization among Kuwaitis that “the system we were in is wrong,” He cited Kuwait’s dependence on foreign labor, its tribal system of leadership and an education system that stressed Islam and Arab nationalism more than the identity of Kuwait.

A popular pro-democracy movement now emphasizes a revitalized parliamentary system with the continued rule of the al Sabah family.

“After seven months of occupation, hopefully we learned something: to be productive, not live day to day,” al Shatti said. “Most important, we know who our friends are.”