COLUMN ONE : Psyche Yet to Recover in Kuwait : Reconstruction is making headway; people’s hearts and minds are not. There is gloom, fear of a future invasion and talk of emigration.

In elegant, marble-tiled villas in this city built on oil and ease, the dinner talk is of reconstruction projects. The top priority, people say, is a new highway south to Saudi Arabia with six lanes--one way.

It is only partly a joke. A striking number of Kuwait’s brightest, best-educated citizens, deeply demoralized by the postwar political climate, say they plan to leave the country. Many who stay are hedging their bets, opening bank accounts in dollars and buying houses overseas.

“People have lost faith in the government, lost faith in the system and they are tremendously insecure,” said Ahmed Bishara, an opposition figure.

Almost five months after Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s troops were ousted from Kuwait, the emirate’s physical reconstruction is stumbling ahead. There is ample water and power; newly imported cars clog streets that slowly are being cleared of seven months of uncollected garbage; telephones and traffic lights function more often than not; many stores have reopened; there are the first fumbling signs of economic renewal.

But psychologically, socially and politically, Kuwait is a shambles.

“People are sad, very sad,” says Ghanim Najjar, a political science professor who runs a center to help war victims. “Deep down there is a great deal of sorrow. . . . And the long-term effects will be worse.”

In the heady days after the Iraqis were driven out, Kuwait was flush with patriotism and promises. Those who had survived the Iraqis--and especially those who resisted--had a newfound pride. They hoped that Kuwait would be not just rebuilt but reshaped into a more democratic, self-reliant, purposeful society.

But it is only now, as daily life slowly returns to normal, that Kuwaitis are taking stock of the effects of the crisis on their families, psyches and society.

Many are dismayed.

“The corruption is terrible,” Najjar said. “Also, there is no sound direction which could pull people together. The steps taken toward democratization are very slow. Uncertainty is the name of the game; nobody knows what the future holds.”

As a nation, Kuwait is still consumed by the horrors of the occupation. Handcuffed to the past, it seems unable to forge a postwar identity beyond that of victim. Some children still scream when they see soldiers at checkpoints; adults complain of chronic anxiety and a heightened sense of vulnerability.

“I still have trouble sleeping,” said Dr. Nidaa Bukhadour, a physician haunted by images of the rape and torture victims she treated during the seven-month occupation. “And I cry a lot, at good things and bad things. . . . I don’t know if I can go on with this, I feel so black inside.”

In May, the maternity hospital where Bukhadour works was filthy and half deserted. Now the Kuwaiti doctors have returned; administrators are trying to rehire the Filipina and Indian nurses who fled; an army of Sri Lankan cleaning women has polished the corridors to a sheen. Only the parched greenery outside hints there ever was a war.

Patient care is back to normal. But the patients are not--and may not be for years to come.

Recently, for example, on a ward reserved for what the Kuwaitis call “illegal pregnancies,” a Filipina delivered a baby boy conceived in a gunpoint gang-rape by Iraqi soldiers. The baby was born prematurely and died after two days. The woman was in the illegal pregnancy ward because her husband of 20 years had deserted her.

“I explained everything, but he didn’t understand,” the woman said. Still, she said, she would have loved and accepted her son. But she went to his incubator and found he was gone. “I feel very sad about myself,” she said. “And my husband is gone. If he will accept me again or not, I don’t know.”

Downstairs, in the ward for premature infants, a 3-week-old baby named Mubarak, meaning “congratulations” in Arabic, was struggling for life. His mother said she was unable to find the medicine during the occupation to control her hypertension. As a result, her doctor explained, blood flow to the baby was constricted. Mubarak was born weighing less than three pounds, emaciated and at risk for mental retardation. “I am very angry and hate the guts of all Iraqis,” the 34-year-old mother said.

Even those who survived the occupation with little damage to home, family or property feel shaken. Clinical psychologist Fozia Durei says many Kuwaitis suffer from post-traumatic depression. The national gloom is reinforced by the foul oil smog that sometimes smothers the city in a grubby shroud. “The burning smoke makes people depressed, and it brings back painful memories of the Iraqis,” Durei said.

Before the oil era, Kuwait city was a trading port. Graceful wooden sailing dhow rode at anchor in the harbor; pearl divers plied the blue-green Gulf waters. Luxury yachts and speedboats later joined the fishing fleet, and summer in Kuwait meant being at the sea.

Now, even on bright days, when clean desert winds sweep away the smog and the temperature soars, the ocean is off-limits, as is the desert. Why? There still are vast quantities of unexploded mines and bombs lurking in the water, under the sand and in all but the few areas that have been cleared.

“When we are happy, we go to the sea,” Durei said. “When we are sad, we go to the sea. Now we are deprived of this.”

Durei, a warm, bubbly woman veiled in a chic scarf, seemed energetic and cheerful. But she is making plans to emigrate. She is a Kuwaiti citizen; her husband is an Iraqi. Though he has not been accused of collaboration or any other wrongdoing, he was fired from his teaching job under a government strategy aimed at reducing the population of foreigners--especially those from countries that backed Iraq. Kuwaiti wives and their children are expected to follow.

Many Kuwaitis say that Iraqis, Palestinians and other unwanted peoples should leave the country for their own good, to preserve their own dignity. Others insist that the foreigners betrayed Kuwait once, cannot be trusted again and should be deported en masse.

But others say that assumption of collective guilt will backfire, poisoning Kuwaiti society with bitterness and prejudices. Without the skilled, diligent foreign workers, they warn, Kuwait’s economy will stagnate. Still others are ashamed of the emirate’s record of postwar human rights abuses and angry at those who have blackened Kuwait’s international reputation.

“We were just the world’s most victimized society,” Bishara said. “Now we are going to become the biggest victimizers.”

It is perhaps not surprising, then, that the Kuwaiti government has become a target for its people’s pent-up anxiety, frustration and rage. Criticism of the ruling Sabah family is not new. Ever since the emir delayed his postwar homecoming from a Saudi resort, opposition leaders and the pro-Western elite have complained that the regime is autocratic, insular, has learned nothing from the crisis and continues to fiddle while the oil fires burn.

But as the months drag on, and the pace of progress does not quicken, the public is growing irritable, its complaints more biting. Citizens express open disdain for a government they say failed to anticipate the war and now lacks the leadership to manage the peace.

Nor are the critics limited to opposition leaders, naysayers and outsiders. Some are Sabah family members. “Everybody knows that the government is weak and incompetent,” said one Sabah, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “But everybody knows it won’t change. . . . So people are gloomy.”

Across the political spectrum, people complain most about the regime’s lack of accountability. In public, even opposition leaders are reluctant to discuss in public who was responsible for Kuwait’s abject failure to defend itself when Iraqi troops rolled across the border last Aug. 2. In private, Kuwaitis mournfully ask the same questions, again and again, like a recurring chord in their national blues: Who lost Kuwait? Why are they still in power? How can they guarantee that it won’t happen again?

No military officers have been censured. That includes those who drained their tanks of gas in the days before the invasion or who fled for the border at the first sight of Iraqi troops or those who abandoned men in the field to be captured.

Nor has there been any inquiry into who allowed a large part of the Kuwaiti army to leave for vacation in July, despite accusations by Hussein that Kuwait was stealing his oil, despite his threats, despite reports that the Iraqis were massing 30,000 troops, then 100,000 troops, on the border.

Under public pressure for reform, Crown Prince Sheik Saad al Abdullah al Sabah reshuffled his 21-member Cabinet in April: 11 new ministers were appointed, only three of whom stayed in Kuwait during the Iraqi invasion. Sheik Nawaf al Ahmed al Sabah, the emir’s half brother, was removed from his job as defense minister. But as consolation, he was named minister of social affairs.

“People fear that a government of defeat cannot really be a government of reconstruction,” said Abdulaziz Sultan, chairman of the board of directors of Gulf Bank.

The government’s problems are more than symbolic, however. Despite the American, Egyptian, Saudi and other Gulf countries’ troops, the Kuwaiti government has yet to persuade its citizens that it can withstand another attack. Every few weeks, a rumor sweeps Kuwait city that Iraqi troops again are massing on the border. Most people dismiss the rumors with an uncomfortable laugh; more than a few pack their cars and prepare to leave. “We are still not feeling safe,” Bukhadour said. “They say don’t worry, but we are afraid.”

Fear is the factor Kuwaiti residents cite when asked why they refuse to hand over their guns, as the government has demanded. One story making the rounds involves a man who is caught at a checkpoint with a revolver. A Kuwaiti army officer asks the man to surrender the gun, but he refuses, telling the officer, “I need it just in case you run away again.”

Many Kuwaitis calmly predict another invasion within 10 years. Depending on the ideology of the speaker, the likely aggressor is Iran, an unrepentant Iraq or even Saudi Arabia. “It’s depressing to have a neighbor like Saddam Hussein,” said Sana Humoud, a Kuwaiti feminist. “Even if you rebuild, you don’t know when he will do it again.”

Humoud does not fault the Kuwaiti army for collapsing in the face of the giant Iraqi force. But like many Kuwaitis, she blames the autocratic government and the censored Kuwaiti press for failing to recognize the threat in time to summon help.

Guaranteeing security--both real and perceived--is perhaps the most important hurdle the government must face if it is to regain legitimacy in the eyes of its people. Kuwait is guarded by 3,000 troops from Egypt, 3,000 from Syria and 6,000 from Saudi Arabia, as well as a final contingent of 3,800 U.S. troops, scheduled to ship out Sept. 1. U.S. and Kuwaiti officials have made clear that they now do not want a permanent American military presence inside Kuwait. But most Kuwaiti citizens say they would feel much safer with American bases.

Although the Kuwaiti government has been conducting security talks with its neighbors, it has done little to reassure the anxious population. On the contrary, earlier this month, in a newspaper interview in the United Arab Emirates that was reprinted in Kuwait, Prince Saad was quoted as saying that Hussein continues to cherish aggressive designs on Kuwait. He said Kuwait must be prepared to resist. The next day, there were lines at Kuwait city banks and supermarkets.

Once burned, ordinary Kuwaitis are quite unapologetic. “We left Kuwait with 40 dinars,” about $132, said Ferial Ferih, who fled with her children to Saudi Arabia about a month after the invasion. “If it happens again, I don’t want to be in the same situation.”

Some Kuwaitis note with bitterness that one of the government’s first steps on returning from exile in Saudi Arabia was to reinstate the very press censorship blamed for lulling Kuwaitis into ignoring the Iraqi threat.

“What Kuwait needs, what the government lacks, is accountability,” said Araf Adwani, a 27-year-old aviation engineer who is considering emigrating. “They shroud all their decisions in secrecy, which is silly. For the government to be successful, it has to open up.”

But many Kuwaitis complain that the postwar policy appears to be to tell citizens as little as possible. As in most Persian Gulf countries, the media is tightly controlled, either owned, subsidized or censored by the government or members of the ruling family.

The leading government-controlled newspaper is called “the New Dawn.” It is so uninformative that Kuwaitis have taken to calling it “the New Dark.”

In many Arab countries, such controls are taken for granted. But Kuwait’s press has been, relatively speaking, the most liberal in the Persian Gulf; its constitution, suspended by the emir in 1986, guarantees free speech and a free press. Similarly, Kuwaitis pride themselves on a practice of limited democracy and consultation. The war raised expectations further; resentment now runs deep. Some Kuwaitis say the United States betrayed them by abandoning its push for democracy just when it had come within their grasp.

“People suffered from the Iraqi invasion, and they saw firsthand what a ruthless dictatorship can do,” said Sultan. “They have developed an appreciation for democracy and freedom.”

Even Sultan, who is by Kuwaiti standards a radical pro-Western reformer, does not advocate the emir’s overthrow. Instead, he calls for a “constitutional emirchy,” in which the emir would reign--but not rule--over an elected government of commoners chosen on ability, not family ties. The chances of that happening in the near future, Sultan concedes, are “very slim.”

Time and petrodollars have traditionally favored incumbent regimes; many predict this one will weather the postwar discontent. The Sabahs are not tyrants. Their strategy has been to rule not by terror but by balancing and appeasement, smoothing over conflicts with what may be the most generous social welfare system in the world.

During the invasion, every Kuwaiti living abroad received a generous allowance. When the government returned, it gave each Kuwaiti $1,650, forgave consumer loans and mortgages and reinstated unlimited free medical care. Now there are unconfirmed rumors that the government may give each family about $33,000 in compensation for wartime suffering.

Critics scoff, saying the idea is far too expensive and a transparent attempt to bribe a disgruntled citizenry into submission.

Others are not so sure. Though a grant may not solve Kuwait’s underlying problems, it would be a dramatic, if inflationary, pick-me-up. And they predict that once Kuwaiti oil production resumes, the rich, luxurious, tax-free emirate again will be able to cushion any social discord.

“We’re satisfied as long as we’re kept comfortable, well-fed, a roof over our head, VCR, new car. . . ,” Adwani, the aviation engineer, said. “Their idea has always been to pay us off. And it works.”