Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 14, 1991 TAG: 9103140467
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: KIM MURPHY LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: KUWAIT CITY LENGTH: Long
Seven months ago, a woman even making such an offer would have been unheard of. A Muslim woman from the Persian Gulf did not work side by side with a man, especially a foreigner, and certainly not in a hospital setting.
A Kuwaiti doctor who had recently returned to Kuwait after living in London for several months greeted Mughni politely, then declined her services. "I'm sorry," he said, "but we would rather have a man than a woman."
Between two Kuwaitis of approximately the same age, whose families lived within blocks of each other, who studied at the same university, a gulf of seven months of war and occupation had opened.
Mughni was dumbfounded, unable to explain to the man what had happened in Kuwait in his absence: the frightened nights she had spent drinking whiskey to hold back the terror with men she would never before have been allowed to see except in the company of her family; the pleasant days she spent with strict, bearded Muslim fundamentalists in her form-fitting jeans, her traditional long, black cloak cast aside, plotting food distribution plans for the neighborhood; the close friendships she had developed with Shiite Muslims, the historic rivals of the Sunnis, trying to learn the whereabouts of friends and relatives captured by the Iraqis.
"Under occupation, everybody was the same," said Mughni, a sociologist. "We all needed water, we all needed food. There wasn't division between Sunnis and Shia, between Palestinians and Kuwaitis. There was a particular period of time where we felt nobody was judging us. There was a lot of feeling and love between us, and that's what I wish they would all realize now."
In the weeks since allied troops marched into Kuwait City, a widening gap has emerged between the Kuwaitis who remained in the country and fought the Iraqi occupiers and those coming back after fleeing to safety in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Cairo and London - a gap that is already polarizing the country and complicating the political landscape at a time when the government is seeking desperately to re-establish a unified Kuwait.
The gap is reflected in day-to-day confrontations - a man becomes unaccountably upset when his sister returns home bringing tea, not realizing that it is vegetables and batteries that Kuwaitis want most - and increasing resentment against the government that spent seven months planning the rebuilding of Kuwait from the Saudi mountain resort of Taif.
There is a bitter sense among Kuwaitis here that the government should have consulted the citizens who successfully kept Kuwait operating during the occupation before hauling in large truckloads of supplies that were not needed and setting up distribution systems that failed to take into account the intricate supply networks developed by the Kuwaiti resistance.
"This society's been split in two parts - the people inside, and the people outside. The people inside have experienced everything, and they know who is doing what in this city," said Nasser Asfour, a prominent Kuwait City merchant.
"The people who are coming back and running this country now are the chickens of the country, the ones who ran the first night, and now they come back and pretend as if they are the heroes who liberated the country. They didn't do [expletive] to liberate this country; it's the coalition forces who liberated this country. If it was up to them, this country would've been lost long ago."
After a minute, Asfour tried to explain it more simply: "They didn't change. I think we changed, and I think everybody who stayed here changed. But they didn't change."
Kuwaitis returning from outside, primarily government officials and a few businessmen and contractors hired to help with the emergency rebuilding, express anger that Kuwaitis who remained do not appreciate the work the exiles did to mobilize the international community against Iraq, to pursue U.N. resolutions, publicize the plight of the Kuwaitis, work to hold the allied coalition together, push the ruling Sabah family for democratic reforms and continually prod the allies to pursue liberation quickly, before it was too late to save those trapped inside.
"Did we ask them to stay?" asked Sulaiman Mutawa, Kuwait's planning minister. "Did we ask the others to leave? What could we do? If some wouldn't have left, we would have had a hell of a time holding the coalition together, and if some wouldn't have stayed, the Iraqis would have had a field day."
Kuwaitis who remained said the returnees are having the most difficult time understanding that many of the old social taboos disappeared under the occupation.
Men and women felt free to spend time together. People of different nationalities, religious sects and social classes - including some Palestinians and Iraqis - worked side by side, both in the resistance and in the food-distribution networks. Women performed traditionally male duties, at some times even carrying weapons for the resistance.
In a country where alcohol is banned, liquor trucked in from Iraq suddenly became widely available, and Kuwaitis often gathered and imbibed to help ease the overwhelming tension surrounding them.
Through it all, they say, there was a sense of cooperation that has been absent in the days since Kuwait was liberated.
"My wife delivered my first child on Feb. 24. Do you know what day that was?" asked Nabil Nassar, an investment broker, referring to the beginning of the ground assault that eventually freed Kuwait.
"It was so tense here, even cats disappeared in the streets. At 3:30 in the morning, an Iraqi doctor took my wife to the hospital. What nationality is he? Did I care? At 12 o'clock she delivered, at 3 she's back home. A Palestinian friend took her home. Do you see? The people outside, they don't know anything about here. They just think all the Iraqis raped Kuwaiti women and killed Kuwaiti people, that's all. They don't know what it was really like."
Many Kuwaitis say that those returning seem to expect the country to go on from where it left off, without recognizing that those who lived through the occupation expect fundamental changes. Gone, they say, are the affluent lifestyles in which many Kuwaiti households had half a dozen servants or more and the Kuwaitis discovered at the beginning of the occupation that they were almost helpless to do anything for themselves.
"Kuwaitis used to use two, three maids, and cooks, and drivers. But will this thing continue in the future? I hope it won't, because it has developed a very lazy people in this country," said Nabil Loughani, a professor at Kuwait University.
"During the invasion, we didn't depend on any expatriates. We took our own garbage and burned it, we baked our own bread. We learned many things. We learned how to fix our water pumps, to fix our generators, to cook, to farm. There was a lesson, and we should make use of it. The lesson is, we have to rely on ourselves. But the Kuwaitis outside haven't learned this, and this is what worries me."
by CNB