Word: kuwait
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Salem suffers no illusions. He knows his efforts are merely temporary. "I've given up freeing them so they can live in Kuwait," he says, "even though most have no charges filed against them. The best I've been able to do is improve conditions and try to organize a few subsidized charter flights so some can leave. And believe me, none of it would be possible if the government weren't made to see that the $60,000 a year to keep each one of them in jail was stupid. It is less expensive simply to kick them...
...Kuwaitis were known as shrewd traders. They plied the seas from the Indian subcontinent to the East African coast and almost always turned a profit. So it is not surprising that today, with the oil fires still burning and a return to normal life nowhere in sight, Kuwait's greatest effort involves merchandising its destitution...
...foreigners doing business in Kuwait must deal through Kuwaiti agents, and the trials of PVE, a California-based environmental company, are illustrative. A Saudi businessman familiar with PVE invited the concern to bid for the monumental job of cleaning up Kuwait's oil fields. The final count of blown wells, not yet officially released, is 732 out of a total of 1,000. At least 248 well fires have been doused, but the hardest to cap, the high- pressure wells, have yet to be seriously tackled. In the meantime, giant lakes of oil have formed, covering an estimated 1 million...
...weeks after liberation, PVE vice president Michael Taylor joined scores of other foreign businessmen at the ransacked Kuwait International Hotel. PVE was ready to move immediately, but Kuwait was not. The Saudi intermediary, it seems, lacked sufficient clout. Five months later, a network of agents is finally in place, and a contract should be signed soon. But the delay -- and the need to pay astronomical agency fees -- has pushed the estimated cost of the two-year project to approximately $1.2 billion. "More than $100 million of that will go to the agents," says an aide to the Prime Minister...
...fact, the scheme merely refines a centuries-old compact. Kuwait was founded in the 1700s by three families. Two continued as lucrative merchants while the Sabahs were charged with protecting the state. Major decisions were a product of consultation. The merchants held the upper hand and set policy; the Sabahs executed it. When the oil began flowing seriously in the 1950s, the Sabahs were suddenly the wealthiest of all, and the power relationships inverted. A succession of farsighted emirs distributed billions of dollars to the populace, and Sabah-generated patronage is still central to the family's power. "These days...