Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 31, 1991 TAG: 9103310250
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: KUWAIT CITY LENGTH: Medium
The contention stems historically from the way oil wealth transformed this tiny emirate into a unique society.
On one level, the opposition demands the restoration of Parliament and is critical of the way the Sabah-dominated government has performed.
But the struggle also involves efforts by Kuwait's major merchant families to regain the predominance they held before the oil boom that followed World War II, and before the emergence of a new, educated class, without influential families, created by the petro-welfare state.
Also involved are divisions between Kuwaitis who stayed in the country to resist Iraqi occupation and those who sat out the war in comfortable exile, and a population and work force in which Kuwaitis have been vastly outnumbered by foreigners and an electorate that is only a tiny fraction of the minority who are Kuwaiti citizens.
What styles itself a democracy movement here is really an oligarchy movement, diplomats and others say. They add that Iraq's virtual destruction of Kuwait has given rise to harsh questions about the way the country has been run by the Sabahs. How the questions are resolved could change the country profoundly.
American officials here have been working behind the scenes to press the Sabah family into reforms. It is the Americans, particularly U.S. Army civil-affairs troops, who are actually administering most of Kuwait. In some cases, American soldiers have interferred as Kuwaitis were beating Palestinians.
The crown prince, Sheik Saad Abdullah Sabah, has been holding meetings with opposition leaders, citizens from prominent families outside his own, in an attempt to form a new government since the Cabinet he headed as prime minister resigned in the face of widespread criticism 10 days ago.
But according to Kuwaitis and diplomats, the meetings with the opposition have foundered on the crown prince's refusal to set a date for an election to restore Parliament, which was suspended in 1985.
Opposition leaders, in turn, have refused to take posts in any broader-based government until a date for parliamentary elections is set.
There seems little question that if and when a new government is formed, Saad will be prime minister, for the job goes with the title, just as the crown prince - named by a council of elders of the Sabahs - has always been the successor to the ruling emir.
Nor has there been any demand by the opposition that the Sabah family step down. That would be far too radical here.
But the Kuwait Democratic Front, the umbrella for most of the opposition groups, has gone so far as to call for a "serious consideration of the selection of a prime minister from outside the Sabah family."
In addition to the prime minister, the Sabahs have always controlled the key ministries of foreign affairs, defense, interior, and oil production, among others.
Even before the Iraqi invasion on Aug. 2, this was a society with deep internal divisions, held comfortably together by the common denominator of plenty of money.
"All the different groups - the big merchant families, the Shiite, the Palestinians, and other non-Kuwaitis - were held together by affluence," a Western diplomat said.
"Enough money trickled down to keep everyone happy."
"Kuwait was a divided society before the Iraqi invasion, but it is even more so now," the diplomat said.
Of the 2.2 million people that the government estimated were living here at the beginning of August, only about 28 percent, or about 700,000 people, were Kuwaitis, according to Planning Minister Aldul Razek Mutawa.
Those actually eligible to vote if there should be elections - literate males over 21 who can trace their origin to families here before 1920 - number about 62,000, less than 10 percent of the citizenry.
by CNB