Word: emirs
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...great debate leading up to the gulf war, the real issue was whether this fight was about Kuwait or about Iraq. For those who opposed the war, it was about Kuwait -- and restoring the Emir to his throne, as many Senators argued, is not exactly the stuff that moral crusades are made of. For those prepared to risk war, the real issue at stake was Iraq. It was not that one small innocent country had been violated but that one large criminal country was on the march and had to be stopped...
When the oil money started accumulating seriously in the early 1950s, the Sabahs concocted a sophisticated scheme for distributing the windfall. Kuwait City, where 80% of the population still lives (or lived before August), was a town of mud huts. The Emir set about building a modern metropolis, a place not unlike Houston, with its skyscraper business center surrounded by villa-style suburbs. In Kuwait, too, each "suburb" became a self-contained microcosm of a city. The neighborhoods were established as cooperatives. Each had its own supermarkets, schools, medical centers and municipal services...
Still, an interesting anomaly existed. Even before the invasion -- which has naturally caused Kuwaitis to unite behind their leaders -- most of those depressed by Kuwait's democratic failings supported the Emir and Kuwait's system of government. Part of the reason is simple. To a Western eye, the list of authoritarian transgressions is chilling, but to those who live in the Middle East, Kuwait was something of a model of political openness. "The fact is that we could criticize everything, even the Emir, without fear of reprisal," says Abdulatif al-Tourah, a KPC employee. "If you spoke out as freely...
...Kuwait ever comes to exist, the complaints about a lack of democracy may be moot. The Emir has promised to restore the parliament and increase political freedoms in general. No one claims to have spoken to a Kuwaiti who doubts that pledge. "After liberation," says Professor Ibrahim, the Egyptian sociologist, "I foresee Kuwait as an ever more democratic state -- and for that alone it is worth fighting for. But more, you would be fighting for all the principles that the people in the Arab world aspire...
Negotiation could do the trick, but what would Saddam give up, and what would he demand in return? Bush has ruled out a territorial compromise -- the Kuwaiti islands Iraq covets, for example -- and he repeated that stance to the exiled Kuwaiti Emir in a phone call shortly after his press conference. But the Kuwaitis themselves had been willing to discuss leasing some territory to Iraq before the Aug. 2 invasion. Such a deal might still be possible if, say, Saddam were willing to downsize his military and destroy his weapons of mass destruction...