Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 2, 1991 TAG: 9102010525
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Joe Kennedy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"The claim is that the territory that today is Kuwait was part of the Ottoman Empire and was administered from the city of Basra in southern Iraq," said William Ochsenwald, professor of history at Virginia Tech.
"The Iraqis also claim that Kuwaitis are Arabs and Iraqis are Arabs and there are no technical or cultural differences between them."
Here is some history from U.S. State Department materials.
Once known as Mesopotamia, Iraq was the site of flourishing ancient civilizations, including the Babylonian. It was conquered by Muslims in the seventh century A.D. In the eighth century, Baghdad was made its capital. It developed into a well-known center of learning and the arts and by 1638 was a frontier outpost of the Ottoman Empire, based at Constantinople (which is now known as Istanbul, Turkey).
After World War I, Iraq became a British-mandated territory. It gained independence in 1932.
Contemporary Iraq is about the size of California (not including the land it seized in Kuwait) and has a population of about 16 million.
Kuwait's modern history began in the 18th century with the founding of the city of Kuwait by the Uteiba section of the Anaiza tribe, who wandered north from Qatar.
In the 19th century, Kuwait tried to obtain British support for maintaining its independence from the Turks and other groups on the Arabian Peninsula.
In 1899, ruler Sheikh Mubarak Al Sabah "the Great" pledged himself and his successors not to cede any territory nor receive representatives of any foreign power without the British government's consent.
The British agreed to grant an annual subsidy to the Sheikh and his heirs and to give them the protection of the United Kingdom's armed forces.
On June 19, 1961, Kuwait, which is slightly smaller than New Jersey, became fully independent. Prior to the invasion last summer, its population approached 2 million, approximately 750,000 of whom were Kuwaiti citizens. Others came from other Arab states, with the remainder drawn from India and elsewhere.
Kuwait's northern border with Iraq dates from an agreement between Great Britain and Turkey in 1913. Although the agreement was never formally ratified, Iraq accepted it in 1932 when it became independent from Turkey.
After Kuwait became independent in 1961, Iraq claimed that the territory was rightfully Iraq's. The Iraqi goverment contended that before British intervention, Kuwait had been part of the Ottoman Empire under Iraqi control.
However, the rest of the Arab world rallied to Kuwait's side. Within two weeks, 6,000 British troops were near the Kuwait-Iraq frontier, ready to defend against an Iraqi invasion. A week later, Abdul Karim Kassem, the Iraqi premier, said his policy was peaceful and unaggressive, but would not repudiate his country's claims.
Iraq began to restate its claim in the early 1970s.
Is the claim legitimate?
"That depends on what period of history you go back to," said Brad Geisert, assistant professor of history at Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg. "One could make a historical claim that Iraq itself has a dubious claim to nationality in that it cross-cuts several ethnic zones and has different ethnic groups as citizens."
But it is true, he said, that boundaries in the Middle East were largely drawn by European powers with little regard for ethnic divisions.
"It's been argued that Britain used a divide-and-rule strategy - that they purposely divided up ethnic groups . . . so they could more easily control the people," Geisert said. "A lot of historians would agree with that."
Ochsenwald, at Virginia Tech, is "very skeptical" about Iraq's claims to Kuwait.
"Up until the 1940s no one really cared at all who controlled Kuwait," he said. "It was a very small town for a long time. It only really grew after oil came along in the 1940s."
Oil plays a role in the present conflict, of course. Most recently, Iraq had complained that Kuwait used slant drilling to take $2.4 billion worth of Iraq's oil from the Rumaila oil field they shared.
Kuwait also had been exceeding its OPEC production quotas, driving down prices and hurting other OPEC members, especially Iraq, which was burdened with debt from its 8-year war with Iran. Iraq demanded up to $15 billion in reparations from Kuwait.
Saddam Hussein accused Kuwait of moving its border 45 miles north during the Iran-Iraq war. He wanted Kuwait to give him a long-term lease on Warba and Bubiyan islands so Iraq could improve its access to the Persian Gulf, and he insisted that Kuwait forgive $10 billion in war debts Iraq owed.
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