When Iraq Erupts, Kuwaitis Still Get the Jitters : Persian Gulf: Reaction to recent crisis with Baghdad shows how insecure emirate feels in turbulent region.

Hussein Abdelrahman, a former Kuwaiti resistance fighter, was in the office when news came of the allied air strikes against Iraq. Within minutes, his young son was on the telephone with an urgent question: “Should I get the gun out again?”

Elsewhere in Kuwait, hundreds of Kuwaitis lined up at gas stations and automatic teller machines, and supermarket shelves were picked bare. Al Jahra Hospital, near the main highway from Iraq, and two other hospitals sent home all non-critical patients, freeing beds for an expected new onslaught of victims.

Six hours before the attack began, the official Kuwait News Agency telephoned the American Embassy, wondering if it was true that the U.S. Army had invaded Iraq. More calls came in an hour later with reports that Kuwait Airlines had called in its fleet and was preparing to fly the planes out of the country.

An Oil Ministry delegation canceled a planned trip to Bahrain, not because of fears of war but out of concern that a rumor-frenzied public would believe that the government--as it did the day Iraq invaded on Aug. 2, 1990--was about to leave the country again.

Two years after the end of the Persian Gulf War and a subsequent deep re-examination of future security in the turbulent region, and after Kuwait itself launched a $12-billion rearmament program and signed comprehensive defense pacts with the United States, Britain and France, the crisis with Iraq earlier this month dramatically pointed up just how far Kuwait remains from any real sense of security.

“People still have no confidence in the power of the Kuwaiti military,” one influential Kuwait businessman confided. “I feel safe enough. For now. But in the future, what then? How long is this going to go on?”

“Two years later, it’s deja vu ,” added a Kuwaiti academic. “Nothing has changed. We’re still vulnerable. We’re still reliant 100% on the U.S.”

Kuwait, said one Western analyst, suffers from the syndrome of a nation that has been raped--and whose attacker remains just next door.

“Kuwaitis have a very deeply ingrained sense of insecurity. They recognize that as a small country, they really can’t ever defend themselves alone. They don’t really have a great sense of assurance that their own military could ever defend them, or might not, in fact, do exactly what it did in 1990.”

In fact, Kuwait’s armed forces are a third smaller than they were when Iraq invaded, because of the thousands of Kuwaitis who left the country. And the army has been slow to rebuild its facilities, leaving Kuwait--in its first real crisis since the war--to measure the strength of the promise the West signed to come to the emirate’s aid in time of need.

As it happened, a battalion of U.S. troops was on its way to the Gulf less than a day after the first allied bombing raid on Iraq. And U.S.-made Patriot air-defense missiles, hedges against a possible retaliatory missile strike by Iraq, were deployed in Kuwait city less than a week later. French and British troops were scheduled for deployment. The United Nations said it would consider dispatching more than 3,000 peacekeeping troops to the Iraq-Kuwait border.

But some Kuwaitis wonder whether relying on outside help to arrive from the West is the answer for the kind of military threat that might be posed by such an adversary as Iran, whose hostility might express itself through internal uprisings rather than invasions.

And an increasing number of Kuwaiti intellectuals, including many in the Islamic movement, pose the question of what price Kuwait will pay for the help of outsiders.

“Reliance on the Americans is a fact of life right now. But there are some who have had it with the U.S.,” said Kuwait University political scientist Abdullah Shayji. “The argument is, will the reliance on the U.S. undermine our independence in foreign policy, domestic policy, oil policy? The answer is yes. When you need somebody so badly, he’s going to call the shots, not you.”

U.S. Ambassador Edward W. Gnehm Jr. has been the focus of an unusual series of press attacks, first for his calls for increasing democratic participation in the emirate, then with his strong suggestions earlier this month that Kuwait improve its human rights record by treating its foreign workers better and allowing women to vote.

“He behaves like a representative of an occupying force, the messenger of the American protection,” complained the newspaper Al Rai al Amm in a Jan. 12 editorial. “As if the keys of power were handed to him, making him the critic and the guide. . . . His interference has changed the protection agreement to a slavery pact.”

Kuwait has sought to take some of its defense into its own hands, launching a massive $12-billion, 12-year rearmament program that in December included the signing of an agreement to purchase an estimated $2 billion worth of U.S.-made Abrams tanks, in addition to earlier contracts to buy 40 new U.S. F/A-18 fighter-bombers.

“Since Kuwait was liberated with the help of the superpowers, it’s ridiculous to say now we can depend on ourselves,” said Ahmed Baqer, a senior member of Parliament. “The superpowers must work to see Kuwait independent until it can defend itself. This, of course, could be a matter of some years. And until that time, Kuwaitis fear only one thing: that the superpowers may change their minds.”

Abdullah Bishara, a Kuwaiti who heads the six-member alliance of Gulf Arab states, the Gulf Cooperation Council, said there is no reason for Kuwaitis to panic at the prospect of hostilities with Iraq.

“They’re scared for no reason,” he said. “Kuwait today is more solid and its independence and legitimacy are more certain than before August of 1990. Before August, Kuwait lived off goodwill, and now there’s a realization that goodwill is no good in international politics, especially when you have a monster as a neighbor.”

Yet panic is precisely what many Kuwaitis did in the early stages of the last crisis, beginning as early as Dec. 29--two days after U.S. warplanes shot down an Iraqi jet over the “no-fly zone” in southern Iraq--when a resounding sonic boom hit Kuwait city at 2:30 a.m. Many Kuwaitis, already edgy, believed that the next Iraqi attack had begun.

Within hours, officials received telephoned reports that (a) the emir’s palace was under siege, (b) the National Assembly building had been bombed, (c) Iraqi tanks were moving into Kuwait city and (d) security forces had taken to the streets (they had--to check out the false invasion reports).

By the end of the third allied air strike on Iraq, Kuwaitis appeared more ready to take the crisis in stride. Hardly anyone was at the gas stations, and at the luxurious Sultan Center, the supermarket with virtually every known foodstuff on sale--for a price--Kuwaitis were back to buying lamb chops and Brie.

“He’s always speaking like that, even before the war. He’s a big liar,” said schoolteacher Ali Brahim Abbas of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s latest blustery rhetoric, as he pushed a shopping cart down the aisle.

“He did it once before. He can’t do it again, because America’s with Kuwait, and England and France. Don’t listen to him. God willing, one day he’ll be gone.” He tossed another loaf of bread in his cart. “And his people are not very brave.”