They’ll Never Forget!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the 2^nd of August 1990, Kuwait, the small country in the corner of the Persian Gulf was invaded by Iraqi troops. The tanks overran the tiny post Abdaly, about 50 km north of the Al Mutlaa ridge. Saddam Hussein was pretty certain that the US would not interfere. He had enjoyed, for many years, a sort of friendship among rogues, and the handshake with Donald Rumsfeld in 1983 is unforgotten, when the first war in the region, against America’s arch-enemy Iran, culminated with poison gas on one side and children with little plastic keys sent into the mine fields on the other. Stunningly, both parties, Iraq and Iran, had been eagerly supported by the West. Israel had even sold arms to Iran. It was a worldwide desire that both bastards, Saddam’s and Khomeini’s regimes, should better bleed to death, and vanish. But dictatorships do not vanish easily. One million had died when this war, which saw battles in trenches and usage of mustard gas, 70 years after WWI, ceased in August 1988.

 

As other Arab states, Kuwait had supported Iraq during the war with Iran. But soon Saddam blamed Kuwait that it had drilled for oil during the war in Iraq’s territory. There were long-standing disputes about the northern borders of Kuwait with Iraq and the tiny Emirate. Britain had configured (apparently with straight edge and compass) the borders in the Middle East. Kuwait’s boundaries were defined in 1922 in the Uqair protocol signed by Percy Cox, the High Commissioner to Baghdad who met his colleague John More, the British Political Agent to Kuwait, and Abdul Aziz ibn Abdur Rahman ibn Saud, the first Saudi monarch.

 

For Saddam a safe access to the Persian Gulf was of strategic importance. Iraq has a coast line of not more than 40 km with the Shatt al-Arab defining the boundary to Iran. But there are two muddy islands, Warbah and Bubiyan, which are just located in the northern offshore sands of the Gulf without providing Iraq with any reasonable harbor. An impressive, 2400 m long concrete girder bridge links the Kuwaiti mainland with Bubiyan Island. It had been constructed in 1983. The wonderful “Bridge to Nowhere” (in fact, the road ends at the small Bubyian post in the swamps of the marshland), spanning the shallow Khawr as Sabiyah, was heavily damaged in the events which follow but quickly restored in the aftermath of the war. The shores are very muddy here. Chalets in small villages are used, as everywhere on Kuwait’s seaside, as getaways. But there is still a lot of rubble, remains from the war.

 

In the beginning of August temperatures usually reach their annual highs, 50 degrees Celsius (122 F). Saddam’s Iraqi Republican Guards came at early in the morning at 2 am. The Amir of Kuwait, HH Jaber Al-Ahmed Al-Jaber Al-Sabah had fled already to the neighbouring Saudi Arabian deserts. His half-brother Sheikh Fahad, was shot and killed in the Royal residence Dasman Palace by the invaders. Kuwait became what Saddam has always claimed: Iraq;s 19^th province.

                                                        

Tired of the ongoing bad news from the Middle East, the international community at first only shrugged it off. Of course, Saudi Arabia was alarmed. And so were the USA. Saddam was suspected of going ahead with invading the oil fields in the eastern provinces of the weak monarchy, too.

 

How persistent lies and war-time propaganda may lead to a change in the World’s public opinion has been better learned 12 years later, in the preparation of the next, the 3^rd Gulf War. In 1990, after Saddam had ruthlessly invaded the tiny Emirate in the corner of the Persian Gulf, it was not about weapons of mass destruction what finally led to Kuwait’s liberation by a broad coalition force. There was a bizarre story which suddenly found its way to the mass media: the incubator lie. A 15-year old Kuwaiti nurse reported atrocities of Iraqis in hospitals. In verbal testimony to the US Congress she alleged that she had witnessed that infants were taken out of incubators (which were taken to Baghdad later-on). The contentious Californian Representative, Democrat Tom Lantos put forward, as a co-chair of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, this story. Later it turned out that ‘Nurse Nayirah’ was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US and her allegations baseless propaganda. Lantos played, by the way, a similar sinister role on the eve of the next Gulf war in 2002.

 

There were other liars involved in the incubator case. A Kuwaiti dentist, Dr. Ibraheem Behbehani, who was at that time head of the Kuwaiti Red Crescent, testified (as a “Dr. Issah Ibrahim”) that he had supervised the burial of 120 newborn babies after the Iraqi invasion, and personally buried 40 newborn babies “that had been taken from their incubators by (Iraqi) soldiers”. He later admitted that he had never seen babies taken from the incubators. Dr. Behbehani is now an Assistant Professor at Kuwait University working in the Department of Diagnostic Sciences.

 

“Truth is always the first casualty”, as Alexander Cockburn wrote in the Los Angeles Times on January 17, 1991.

 

“Just how rapidly this happens can be illustrated by the case of the premature Kuwait babies, supposedly left to die last August by Iraqis who then removed the incubators to Baghdad. It has become the tale used by the Kuwait government in exile, as well as by President Bush, who invoked Iraqi horrors inflicted upon the innocent children of Kuwait in his speech. It should be said right away that there are thousands of examples of such Iraqi brutality and denial of elementary human rights, not just in Kuwait but in Iraq. But the story of baby mass murder is untrue.”

 

Anyway, an international coalition force (of the keen and willing) launched Operation Desert Storm, which lasted from January 17 until February 26, 1991. Iraqi troops were wiped out of Kuwait within a couple of weeks. Kuwait was freed, and the Kuwaiti will never forget, grateful and humble. Saddam then showed the World another unbelievable escalation of war, with finally setting the oil wells on fire, an ecological warfare never having been seen before. He was hanged for his crimes against Humanity on December 30, 2006.

 

The day of Liberation, February 26, is celebrated in Kuwait every year together with its National Day on February 25.

 

Congratulations, people of Kuwait! And God bless you!

 

When I asked one of my students at Kuwait University, what event is celebrated on National Day, she responded: “Oh, we became independent in 1961. But, actually, we have never been dependent!”  

First published at Salmiya.

 

     

Profit over People

 

 

This summer has seen riots of Bangladeshi cleaners in Kuwait who had been cheated by companies who had hired them from their home country to the Gulf. ‘Troublemakers’, as strikers had been called in the media, had been ‘calmed down’ by teargas and batons, and numerous had even been deported to their home countries with vague promises of later payments of outstanding wages with the help of their Embassy. The glitter and glamour of this week’s opening of Dubai’s Atlantis and other projects of hubris in this artificial world of the ‘few rich’ are entirely backed on the sweat, sorrows, and tears of underpaid and underprivileged laborers, as well. The situation of the workforce of, in particular, South Asia in Kuwait and all the other Gulf States is an enduring scandal which has eventually to be addressed properly by international intervention.

 

In last week’s Doha Debate, broadcast by BBC, the audience voted 75 percent in favor of the motion that ‘Gulf Arabs value profit over people.’ Dr. Mansoor Al-Jamri, co-founder and Editor-in-chief of Bahrain’s daily Alwasat newspaper admitted that foreign workers from the subcontinent have sometimes to live in conditions “[t]hat cats and dogs would not accept.” He warned that, if the situation of treating certain foreigners as third class citizens’ international bodies might ultimately intervene in the affairs of the Gulf States. “[T]he governments have a philosophy based on oil wealth, but instead of letting it trickle down to the people they use it to silence the elite or by-pass their citizens.”

 

What a shame! I had been among the more privileged ‘Western’ academic workforce in Kuwait for a couple of years and experienced only great hospitality, civilized manners, a society shaped by deep religious feelings. Is it compatible with the faith when underprivileged laborers are discriminated and even treated such as slaves?

 

Last week, the hard-hit Kuwaiti stock exchange was shut by an unprecedented court order. Stock exchange had fallen by 43% since June. Some investors criticized this directive and urged their privileged countrymen to stop acting like ‘spoiled babies’. It is sad but interesting to see that, in a conservative country such as Kuwait, gambling had abounded and greed has led to complete ignorance of strict religious rules. To make matters worse, the country’s democracy is, once again, on the brink of failure. Three Islamists, Salafist members of the Parliament, are about to grill His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammed Al-Sabah who has let the controversial Iranian cleric Mohammed Al-Fali, a persona non grata, into the country. It is said Al-Fali had offended Kuwaiti’s predominantly Sunni Muslim population by insulting some of the Prophet Mohammed’s companions. The old sectarian quarrels between Sunni and Shi’a in the small Gulf country, which might even lead to an unconstitutional dissolution of the Parliament.

 

Religious zeal on the one hand and greed and exploitation on the other: a sign of mere demise of the societies in the Gulf States.

 

 

 

Falsafa

The work of Greek philosophers, mainly Aristotle but also few of Plato, had been translated into Arabic very early after the Abbasid revolution in the 8^th century and continued down to the 10^th century. In fact, these great works of humanity were preserved by Muslims. Baghdad was the center of Science and Arts in the medieval world. Great Muslim philosophers of that time include al-Farabi (d. 950) in Baghdad, Ibn Sina (d. 1037) in Persia, Ibn Rushd (d. 1198) in Andalus.

 

Patricia Crone [1] writes in her fabulous “God’s Rule” that “[a] historian of mainstream Islam is apt to dismiss all philosophers as marginal (except in so far as they had other strings to their bows), for mainstream Islam was shaped by religious scholars, who were prone to rejecting philosophers and Ismailis alike as heretical.” On the other hand, the great theologian al-Ghazali (d. 1111) was also a philosopher. He rejected metaphysics as incompatible with Islam but insisted that nothing was wrong with the natural sciences, mathematics, logic, politics. Especially in Persia, Greek philosophical ideas were continuously absorbed into general Muslim culture. Nevertheless, in medieval times philosophers were often condemned as heretics or infidels. One famous example might be Omar Khayyam (d. 1122).

 

Wahhabism, which started in the 18^th century on the Arabian Peninsula, has effectively stopped that development and is now regarded the main reason for the present day stagnation and even retardation of Islam. The highly conservative movement has its main proponents in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. There is not really a culture of philosophy in these countries any more. It was with some amazement, thus, when reading in the latest issue of Forschung und Lehre the report of a German female philosopher [2] who has been appointed the first full Professor in Philosophy at UAEU. Reading the article, I remembered my own enthusiasm in 2001 when having been called to help build up a new Faculty at Kuwait University. However, that was not in the Humanities but rather in Medicine. The new Philosophy Professor describes the procedures when having been appointed from a German point of view which sounds somewhat weird. In fact, it doesn’t fit my own experiences. I do not think that, for example, short-listing is actually done. Once you are invited for an interview, you will get the job offer. On the other hand, negotiations should take place, of course. I couldn’t find anything on intercultural competence in her article, which is by far the most important prerequisite when working and living in the Middle East. It is not only respect for the local culture but a kind of fond curiosity what is most helpful.

 

It will be interesting to follow-up Dr. Nicole’s, as she is called already by students and colleagues, further experiences and adventures in such an exotic place. And I am also more than curious to see whether the Arab culture will eventually listen to philosophers again.

 

 

Notes

[1] Crone P. God’s Rule. Government and Islam. Six Centuries of Medieval Islamic Political Rule. Columbia University Press, New York 2004.

[2] Karafyllis NC. Zwischen Wüste und Hightech. Forschung und Lehre 2008; 10(08): 692-694.

 

 

 

 

Obstacles

 

 

The almost four-decade-old territorial dispute about the Persian Gulf islands Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs again culminated this week when the Secretary General of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Abdulrahman AlـAttiyah, compared Iran with Israel occupying Arab land, as Kuwait’s Al Watan reported on Thursday this week, quoting the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al Awsat.

 

The statement reveals, if not simply stupidity, exorbitance in arguments and the usual striking double standard of Arab leaders and authorities whenever dealing with US interests and issues regarding Israel.

 

Here are some facts about the islands. Greater (Tonb-e Bozorg) and Lesser Tunb (Tonb-e Kuchak) are two tiny islands about 20 km south of the larger Qeshm Island. The Greater Tunb (about 10 km²) might be inhabited by a few dozens of people. The Lesser Tunb (about 2 km²) is uninhabited. The islands are lying in the middle of the main sea lanes of the Persian Gulf making them strategically important.

 

As regards to Abu Musa, oil comes into play. The 12 km² large island is located more centrally in the Persian Gulf and inhabited by several hundred people, Iranians and Arabs. The island harbors a rich supply of untapped oil deposits. Currently, oil is being extracted from a filed close to the shores of Abu Musa.

 

The UEA, in claiming these islands, which are close to the main sea lanes near the Strait of Hormuz, may indeed be under misapprehension. The issue has quite a long history and may be seen under different perspectives, much depending on how former allies of the US are seen today. Iran has more or less controlled Abu Musa since 1971 when Britain ended its protectorate of the region, which included also Bahrain and Qatar. When the small Emirate Sharjah signed an agreement with Iran accepting Iranian presence on the island with neither side yielding its claim of total sovereignty, Ras Al Khaymah refused and Iran occupied the Tunbs. The Iranian take-over was acquiesced by the US and Britain since the pro-western Shah-regime was considered more reliable in providing stability in a by and large uncertain region. Thus, the Shah’s control over traffic through the Strait of Hormuz was welcomed as the by far better solution.

 

In 1992, one year after Kuwait had been freed from Saddam Hussein’s occupation, the UAE claimed that Iran had annexed also Abu Musa and Arab inhabitants even expelled from the Island, a frank violation of the agreement with Sharjah. Iran never acknowledged that claim. In a series of military exercises in the Gulf Iran had also sent its message of not accepting any US hegemony in the region.

 

The again shrill tone by the Emiratis may well be seen as a prelude to new threats imposed on Iran. While the preparations for a naval blockade of the country (most probably in accordance with House Resolution 362) have been denied last week by Strategic Studies Think Tank (Stratfor) it might still be one option of the outgoing Bush Administration ‘on the table’. Tehran had, in the meantime, openly announced a possible closure of the Strait of Hormuz in order to protect its sovereignty.

 

The anew dispute about the Gulf islands may indicate how leaders of UAE are under pressure of the US. The possible obstruction of the world’s most important lifeline is the main obstacle for a more diplomatic approach.