Word: kuwait
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Kuwait, that Connecticut-sized sandspit at the head of the Persian Gulf, controls one-quarter of the world's petroleum, collects $600 million in oil royalties annually and boasts a greater per capita income for its 468,000 people-$3,000 a year-than the U.S. Yet Kuwait's very prosperity has brought it some economic problems. The country is so saturated with imported autos, refrigerators, TV sets and other durable goods that sales have slumped for its 17,000 shopkeepers. Making this situation worse, a flood of job-seeking immigrants from other, poorer Arab lands has raised...
Disenchanted Immigrants. Such harsh measures seem likely to cause an exodus of the immigrants, who now constitute more than half the population. Many of them had already become disenchanted with Kuwait because they are denied citizenship and have been increasingly limited in their choice of jobs by a government anxious to protect the 200,000 native (and minority) Kuwaitis. Some immigrants have sent their families back home, moved from houses into apartments and begun saving rather than spending their money. Result: a glut of empty houses, a crimp in the real estate market, and a further reduction in consumer spending...
...month ago the oil-rich sheikdom of Kuwait banned all liquor within its borders, and since then many of its thirsty citizens have been drinking everything in sight from perfume and eau de cologne to rubbing alcohol and Sterno - with predictably disastrous results. By last week, an estimated 150 Kuwaiti had died from alcohol poisoning, several hundred more had been blinded, and Kuwait's hospitals were filled to overflowing. Bathtub gin is flourishing, and bootlegging the real thing has become Kuwait's fastest growing business. A fifth of Dewar's White Label Scotch now commands a sheik...
Prohibition came to Kuwait as deviously as an Arab horse trade. In theory only Christian residents of the predominantly Moslem nation could drink, using ration cards to obtain whisky through London's Gray Mackenzie & Co. Ltd., which has had an import monopoly on Kuwait's liquor flow for decades. In fact, Moslems imbibed increasingly, and drunken-driving fatalities mounted apace. The nation's stricter religious leaders then teamed up with local merchants who resented Gray Mackenzie's lucrative monopoly to introduce a prohibition bill in the Kuwaiti Assembly. With voting a matter of public record...
Gray Mackenzie padlocked its doors, and the poisoning cases began to stagger in as sales of after-shave lotions and cologne soared tenfold. Several dozen British and American petroleum engineers served notice that they would not renew their employment contracts if Kuwait stayed dry. Several influential Kuwaitis have applied to remote countries for posts as honorary consuls, hoping thereby to qualify for diplomatic liquor privileges. Many of the thirsty began flocking to Basra in Iraq, 100 miles from Kuwait City. Their pilgrimage has also produced agitation for repeal of the law from their weekend widows left behind. They fear that...