Word: kuwaiti
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While few of the policy decisions supposedly ratified during the Kuwaiti government's exile have been implemented, the single one being pursued with a vengeance concerns Kuwait's 400,000 Palestinians and the approximately 100,000 other foreigners who hail from what everyone calls "the bad countries," the nations whose leaders supported Saddam Hussein or who remained neutral. To the best of Kuwait's ability, almost all of these expatriates will be driven out or refused permission to return. It does not matter if they were born in Kuwait. The Arab way holds: you are what your parents or grandparents...
...wholesale deportation is deplorable, it is still preferable to murder. There are fewer reports now of atrocities than during the free-for-all that roiled Kuwait in March, when vigilante groups joined Kuwaiti police and military officers in seeking revenge. The Palestine Liberation Organization estimates that about 400 Palestinians were killed then. "If anything, that figure is probably low by about 600," says Abdul Rahman al-Awadi, the former Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs who continues to advise Prime Minister Saad al-Abdullah al-Sabah...
...allowed to return. Except for those expressly needed in critical government posts (perhaps 2,000 in the ministries of Health and Electricity and Water), most of the 170,000 remaining Palestinians have been fired from their jobs. At the same time, the government is demanding back rent, and private Kuwaiti landlords are doing the same. Free medical care and public schooling, heretofore rights for expatriates, are history. Private schooling is still possible, but the 50% government subsidy has been ended. "Why should we aid them?" asks Education Minister Sulaiman al-Bader. "Most of them went to school during the occupation...
...understand?" wonders Ali al-Khalifa al-Sabah, a former Kuwaiti finance minister. "We were the most vocal supporters of the P.L.O., and we gave plenty, more than $60 million in the past six years alone. And that doesn't count the 5% of Palestinian salaries we deducted for direct transmittal to Yasser Arafat. Who would not feel betrayed...
...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...