Free Kuwait
"liberation" a commando tried to assassinate an exdeputy who was distinguished by his criticisms of the As-Sabahs' financial extravagances.
A climate of repressive terror is being progressiveof Baghdad's troops, opinion among Kuwaiti Palestinians swung round. More than half of them fled the country in the direction of Jordan.
The great majority of these can hardly hope to return: the Kuwaiti regime is not only planning to prevent those non-
ON MARCH 14, the Emir of Kuwait finally returned to his country, two weeks after the "liberation" of his principality by the American forces. No doubt he would have preferred to wait for one of his numerous marble, gold and crystal palaces to be repaired and law and order thoroughly reestablished. But faced with criticism from all sides, the Emir felt obliged to
Kuwaiti citizenship who tion of the Emirate, so that the majority curtail his gilded exile in Saudi Arabia.
SALAH JABER
A
CTING under the friendly of the United supervision
States ambassador, now High of this new
Commissioner
American colony, the ruling family of the
As-Sabahs has set about restoring its regime and rebuilding war-torn Kuwait.
The first object of the ruling caste has not been the reestablishment of essential services and the relief of the population that stayed in the Emirate under extremely difficult conditions. It has, of course, been the restoration of the prewar order, as a fruit of the new order of George Bush.
From this point of view the two main problems are, on the one hand, the postwar political regime, and on the other, the make-up of the population. The ruling dynasty had never shown much respect for the apology for democracy conceded in 1962, on British advice, to the rich opposition.
Of the 700 to 800,000 Kuwaiti citizens, who form about 40% of the emirate's population, less than 10% have the right
Profoundly reactionary criteria to vote.
exclude women and those whose Kuwaiti citizenship dates from after 1920. Even so, the emir and his many brothers found the parliament, wherein the liberal or nationalist bourgeoisie questioned their monopoly on power and their privileges, an irritation.
In exasperation, the emir dissolved the recalcitrant assembly in 1986 and suspended the constitution. Today the opposition - businessmen, members of the liberal professions and religious leaders
— are speaking up, blaming the incompetence of the As-Sabahs for the disaster which overtook Kuwait. They have been protesting energetically against the government's imposition of martial law and demanding the setting of a date for new
• clections. The reaction of the ruling fami
20ly was not long in coming: soon after the
International Viewpoint #204 • April 15, 1991 ly installed in the Emirate, in the framework of martial law. The regime's armed forces, who have returned with the barons, have set about disarming the population that stayed in Kuwait under the Iraqi occupation and who have seized the arms abandoned by the Iraqi soldiers.
The men and women of stayed behind - less than a third of the total number of
Kuwaitis and the same in number as the Palestinians who remained — are usually those least able to afford a comfortable exile. A large part of them, perhaps the majority, belong to the Shi'ite minority (40%), an oppressed section of the
Kuwaiti population.
demanding the right to oversee the affairs of the state, considering themselves to have won more legitimacy than the exiles. Kuwaiti women, who, paradoxically, have probably never been so free as under the Iraqi occupation, have also been demanding their emancipation and the right to vote.
Palestinians made into scapegoats
Faced with this wave of criticism, the restored regime is combining repression and division. Under the heading "repression", the country's only newspaper, which was launched by the
"resistance" even before the
Iraqi withdrawal, was shut down on March 19 for criticizing the government. Under
"divide and rule" the Palestinians are being made scapegoats, accused, above all by
Kuwaitis who have returned from exile, of collaboration with the Iraqi occupation.
It is true that a sizeable section of the community of Palestinian origin - 400 to
500,000 pcople, including many who were born in
Kuwait or have lived there for decades - showed sympathy, at least at the beginning, for an invasion from which they could only hope for an improvement in their situation.
Subsequently, and faced with the appalling behaviour natives who left from returning, but to expel those who have stayed. The Kuwaiti Palestinians are thus now being subjected to a treatment half way between what they have undergone in the Christian areas of Lebanon and what they suffer under the Israeli occupation. The Kuwaiti officials are openly talking about only allowing some tens of thousands of Palestinians to stay in their territory.
The regime is intending to drastically reduce the size of the non-native populaof the inhabitants should henceforth be composed of Kuwaitis and beneficiarics of oil rent. The plan is to replace labour with modern technology. For tasks which require a knowledge of Arabic, Palestinians will be replaced by Egyptians in recognition of the Egyptian government's
For the rest, and notably for domestic labour - there were 500,000 domestics in Kuwait before the invasion, that is, 25% of the total population - the Emirate will continue to favour recruits from south and south-east Asia, who can be exploited mercilessly and have no intention to stay permanently in the Gulf
Kuwait is an artificial state, firstly and above all in its social structure, where most of the native population is privileged or simply parasitic (a third of Kuwaiti males have no job), living from
This population enslaves and exploits a majority of "immigrants", who the sheikhs have now promised to reduce to a minority. *
Continued from page 28 giving an account of the commission's findings will be presented at a public meeting at the end of May or the start of June; information will be made available to the press and interested associations from April onwards, through public testimonies, and in time through a bulletin that at each stage will present the facts as established by the inquiry.
ALGERIA / GULF WAR
The "sponsorship committee" is not intended to be a sort of "supreme antiwar movement". Its purpose is to ensure the largest possible diffusion of the commission's results.
Every movement or association will retain its independence to continue its activities. But all are united on one common demand: "The truth about the war, the truth about the massacre."
— Alain Mathieu
"We have decided to create a women was adopted by the 13th World
Congress of the Fourth International
Commission of Inquiry"
which was held in February this year
(see report in IV 202):
THE Intifada of October 5, 1988 allowed the workers, the youth, women and all the popular masses to express and organize themselves, but the rise of fundaion have reached new heights in the history of falsification using modern mentalism threatens these liberties which means of communication. According to AFP, the American authorities have were so dearly paid for.
recognized that: 'they had to a certain extent manipulated their own media in
Preoccupied by its opening to the world order to deceive the Iragis.' But it was not only the Iraqis that were deceived, market, the Algerian regime, which has multiplied the obstacles placed in the path of the democratic movements, has
• How many Iraqi soldiers and civilians were killed during the 40 days of shown extraordinary complacency in the face of fundamentalist attacks against
• What type of arms were used by the coalition armies — were napalm, vac non-Islamic meetings, and limitless toleruum bombs or fragmentation bombs used?
ance of violence against women. It has
• What really happened on the highway from Kuwait City to Basra as thouaccepted without any action Islamic milisands of civilians and soldiers fled back to Irao?
tia laying siege to university students'
• Why is the embargo being maintained when Iraq has a greater than ever residences.
The Islamic Salvation Front (FIS)
need for drugs, provisions and the means to reconstruct their devastated coun threatens the few gains made by Algerian women and enjoys the support of the con-
• What have been the ecological effects?
sensus in Algeria's patriarchal society. In
• What is the balance-sheet of the attacks on liberties in France, as a consethis country, the Family Code of 1984 obliges a women to have a guardian in
• What have been the real costs of this massacre, who has profited from it, at order to marry, enjoins obedience to the a time when the Third World is crushed under the weight of the debt?
husband and his family, makes divorce
• And now, what is happening to the Palestinians in Kuwait? And what about almost impossible, ensures loss of chilthe repression that Saddam Hussein is now undertaking against the Kurdish dren in case of re-marriage and so on.
Women hold only 4% of jobs, but the
• What really happened in Kuwait after the Iraqi invasion on August 2, 1990?
fundamentalists are still attacking women's right to work.
"We, who participated in the different movements opposed to the war, now education and male and female employcommit ourselves to seeking the truth about this war. We call for the bringing ees are kept apart in town halls under funtogether of all the suppressed evidence, the accounts of civilians who lived damentalist control. In fact, women's through the war, the Western soldiers who saw it, the journalists who were cenright to study and to move around freely sored. To this end we have decided to create a commission of enquiry to gathwithout wearing hidjab (the veil) are er together these accounts, and to make public at a united public meeting the under threat.
Women have reacted with courage.
The initial signatures to this appeal have established a sponsoring com-
They have formed associations, have mittee for the commission of enquiry, which can be contacted at: "Collecdemonstrated against the violence and tif pour la vérite", 33, rue du Faubourg-Saint-Antoine, 75011, Pare, against the threats to their jobs and their right to study. They have denounced the
The commission of enquiry itself, compozed of 15 independent personelectoral law which allows enemies of alities, appeals for witnesses to come forward. It can be contacted at:
women to vote on their behalf by proxy.
Maître Dominique Tricaud, 9, avenue Hoche, 75008, Paris, France, tel:
They have been treated as agents of
"the party of France", "the cats' paws of colonialism". Nonetheless 4,000 demonstrated on March 8, 1989 and 20,000 on
March 8,
1990.
They are building, through an inclusive coordinating body, a big united movement with the Mudjahitates — women who fought in the national liberation struggle.