Since 1990, the apprehension of fear and loss has hung over February each year: fear because the Iraqi regime headed by the tyrant was still in existence, threatening and plotting. And in spite of its humiliating defeat in the Mother of Battles , it regarded its continued survival on the throne of besieged Iraq as a victory in itself that deserved all its aggressive threats to be repeated over it. And the loss was because most homes in Kuwait were and still are living the tragedy of the capture or disappearance of a large number of their sons in Iraqi prisons. The former regime insisted on denying the existence of prisoners. But the days proved that it was lying, when a large number of their corpses were discovered in mass graves.

February this year has a different flavor, although the chaos left behind by the fall of the regime is still damaging, and our prisoners of war the Kuwaiti ones have so far been returning as corpses, and none of them has returned walking on his feet. But that fascist regime which held our brothers in Iraq by the neck has gone. The sight of its president crouching in a hole for scorpions, quivering in terror from the occupation troops, was a tragic end for an atrocious regime, which had suffocated the Iraqi people for thirty years.

The Neighbor and the Apprehension

Geography has its coercive laws, as they say. Thus the history of Iraq has been part of Kuwait s situation, whether we like it or not. In spite of the differences between the characters of the two countries, there has been a constant state of mutual influencing and being influenced through all phases of history. Kuwait, more than the remainder of the Gulf states, has had its full share of this turmoil which has befallen Iraq, and fell under the grip of this tyrannical regime. The matter does not only go back to the 1990s, with the entry of the first tanks of the invasion, but it goes back many long years during which Iraq was transformed, as far as Kuwait was concerned, from a neighbor into an apprehension of fear and anxiety.

With the beginning of the Iraq-Iran war, and the escalation from the war of the cities to the war of the tankers, and from fighting within borders to bombardment outside them, the effects of this war extended to the Kuwaiti street, and brought a state of tension to it which it had not known before. There were attempts to cause explosions and assassinate public figures, foremost of which was the attempt to assassinate the Amir of Kuwait. The internal economy was destabilized and began to slow down and contract. The longer the war dragged on, the more its problems became aggravated, and the pressure of the financial bill paid in order to support the machine of destruction commanded by the Iraqi regime became heavier.

Kuwait, which had been a peaceful country that placed all its efforts in the service of major Arab causes like that of Palestine and getting gout of the circle of Arab backwardness, was turned into a country dominated by security apprehensions, suffering from economic stagnation, and not knowing from where the next blow would come. And this blow came in August 1990.

There is no doubt that the Kuwaiti democratic experiment, which was new at that time and was manifested in an elected parliament, a free press, an open university, and a society in which all currents of Arab thinking interacted which were brought by groups of Arab academicians, scientists and intellectuals who found in Kuwait a safe refuge from the restriction of their societies and their rulers, towards them and their ideas. I say that this experiment became the target of the invasion. The Baathist regime in Iraq strangled all liberties, killed its opponents and those who disagreed with it, compelled scientists, university professors and intellectuals to emigrate and turned its press into propaganda leaflets with photographs of the president on the first pages. This regime could not put up with a free and open system next to it with the ability to exercise its political rights. It could not endure the comparison, which was not at all favorable to it.

It imagined that extinguishing the blaze of the democratic experiment and economic vitality in Kuwait could provide it with a gloomy stability internally. But what happened was that this invasion exposed what was inside this regime, the aggressiveness and savagery which it commits against those people who stood beside it and helped it with financial backing and political and moral support during its war with Iran.

In fact the political experiment of Kuwait was not the product of a transitory moment, it had its roots which extended into the depths of the Kuwaiti people and their way of life. The oppressiveness and tyranny of the Iraqi political system were also not the product of a transitory moment. Saddam was no more than a new image of dictatorship, which changed its masks and names but the tyrant did not change, as happens in the well-known novel by Marquez, The Autumn of the Patriarch. Perhaps a survey of the history of the region will give us more eloquent indications of that.

People of the River and People of the Sea

We talk a great deal according to the traditional literature of Arab nationalist rhetoric about the inevitable factors which unify us, in terms of religion, language and destiny. These things are true in general, theoretically at least, but these literary writings ignore the diversity between areas and countries of this geographical and cultural expanse. They are the factors of cultural anthropology which make every group its own lifestyle and its response to the challenges it faces.

Iraq was always a cradle for historical civilizations. The first agricultural communities settled on the banks of its two rivers, the first massive edifices like temples and palaces were built, and the first central governments arose which passed laws, apportioned water and collected taxes.

I do not want here to talk about the severity and fear associated with the Babylonian and Assyrian civilizations, nor about the stern laws, and legends that are a mixture of harshness and terror that these civilizations bequeathed us. But they were weighty civilizations, whose roots extended into the muddy soil, and they depended on arbitrary and extremely oppressive religious and monarchical institutions. The river as in the cases of ancient Egypt, China and India always created the need for a central government to organize life between the scattered villages on their banks. Otherwise disagreements would prevail between them over who would benefit first from the water, and who would seize the largest piece of land. An individual in them was caught between the grip of this government, which was one of the first forms of Asian despotism, and the cycles of flood and drought caused by the river.

As the opposite of that, the picture was different to the south on the shores of the Arabian Gulf. Harsh nature and the barren land did not give people the blessing of stability, but forced them constantly to move about in search of water and pasture. They did not build massive edifices on land, but they built ships with sails that carried them across the waves. The people of the Gulf in this were like the Phoenicians. They did not carve their history and their memories on clay tablets or slabs of rock. Sand has no memory. Thus they carried their family trees, their poems and the stories which they related in their own memories. They created a light, mobile civilization, ready to receive any ideas and interact with them. They did not have a central government, nor were they the center of the universe. They were part of its rotating orbits, in grazing their flocks and in trading, in the few moments of comfort and the long days of hardship.

Everyone the people of the Gulf and the people of Iraq entered the melting-pot of Islam, and all were fused together in the melting-pot of language and common destiny. But the environment continued to have its own conditions, and differences continued to exist between the north and the south of the Gulf.

The phase of independence came, and states were formed here and there, and took diverse and different courses. This resulted in diversity and differences in political and economic development, and the speed of growth in both the regions.

A Difficult Equation

A review of aspects of the thorny relationship between Iraq and Kuwait was a necessary thing in order to attempt to anticipate the future of this relationship. The collapse of Saddam s regime, and the entry of US forces to the capital Baghdad, were not an easy, straightforward event for us to argue about according to our old method which reduces all colors to white and black. Nor is it a reason for new differences. The Arabs have differed enough about questions, and we must all be aware that this war has not yet ended. Even Rumsfeld himself, the US Secretary of Defense has admitted that the shooting war is over and the war of ideas has begun. Everybody including the Americans believed that the war would end with the entry to Baghdad and the collapse of Saddam s statue from its base. Then some people believed that it had ended when Saddam himself fell into the hands of the American forces. But everyone is certain now that the battle for the stability of Iraq, which is the most important, is still going on.

However, who will achieve this desired stability? Is it foreign troops which can remain for a long time on the pretext of achieving this aim? Or the Iraqis who are split among themselves by religious divisions between Sunna and Shia, or ethnic divisions between Arabs, Kurds, Turcomans, Sabians and others? Or the Arabs who are incapable of offering an exemplary experiment in stability?

Without abbreviating the answer in specific shades, we want an Iraq that is neither occupied nor partitioned nor in turmoil. All these are extremely difficult things, because the Iraqi situation at this moment is the opposite of all that. Saddam Hussein destroyed Iraqi society during the 35 years of his rule, and the American war destroyed the institution of the state in 52 days. Nothing remains of old Iraq except an impoverished people who live in a country that used to be one of the rich countries in the region. Perhaps the farce of this regime reached its climax when Saddam Hussein was discovered in his hiding place and put his hand up to surrender, crying out, I am Saddam Hussein, the President of Iraq, and I want to negotiate. The paradox here is that he was no longer President of Iraq, and there was no longer anything for him to negotiate about. But there was an occupied country whose occupation costs $90,000 per minute, according to US estimates, while rebuilding it requires astronomical figures in billions of dollars, and its debts amount to billions of dollars more.

What is our position, as an Arab world, towards this difficult equation?

Do we refuse to co-operate with Iraq which lies under occupation, and that government formed under the authority of that occupation, on the grounds that it is not legitimate, not elected and does not represent the Iraqi people? Bearing in mind that all the Arab countries dealt with Saddam Hussein, and he never came to power through the ballot box, and the same goes for many Arab regimes. Even worse, they dealt with him and did not punish him for his reprehensible act of occupying the State of Kuwait

Or should we deal with the Arab status quo that exists in Iraq as it exists in many Arab countries? Or should we leave Iraq to its fate and wash our hands of discussion about its future, striving after a hypothetical situation that will never be?

Then what is our attitude towards the American occupation of Iraq? Should we regard it as a hateful fact that we reject, and deal with it like we have dealt with the Israeli occupation, bearing in mind that there are many Arab regimes which deal secretly and openly with the latter, in spite of the savage crimes which it is committing? Or should we view it according to another perspective?

Let us admit that occupation of whatever kind is hateful and rejected .

But this same occupation is what removed the regime of the tyrant who oppressed everybody and destroyed his country s wealth. It is what pursued the scattered remnants of the apparatus of repression and the black guard. It is also what revealed the mass graves which contained hundreds of Iraqis, Iranians and Kuwaitis who had been killed.

The Fire which Melts

Is it not possible that this occupation in spite of our rejection of it may be the fires that purify fragmented Iraqi society, and refuse it in a single melting-pot.

Large sectors of the Arab people have surrendered under regimes of this type, and have brought out what is worst in them. They have not only received successive defeats from Israel, but also the dreams of unity, resistance to backwardness and attempts at independent development have been lost. The opinion of the well-known English historian Arnold Toynbee about us has been disappointed. He used to believe that the presence of Israel at the heart of the Arab world could be a motive for the Arabs to rise up and confront the challenge. That is, it should be rather like a dose of immunization that arouses in the Arab body all the forces of immunity it contains. But what has happened is that the Israeli dose has turned into a poison which has paralyzed our will and made us lose our balance for half a century, which is the life span of the independent Arab petty states.

Can the American occupation of Iraq be a new motivation for a nation that has lost all motives to rise up to the challenge? Is it possible to look at the positive side of the matter, which considers that this occupation was a natural result of a savage regime which no one was able to remove, and that if we all stand together to reform the collapsing Arab system the presence of this occupation will become meaningless?

The American occupation is not an idealist action. It is not devoid of self-interest for that conservative administration which carried it out. But we must not forget that the fortunes of the conservatives in this administration only rose because of Bin Laden s actions on September 11 and the empty threats of Saddam Hussein over many years. It is certain that there are real fears of a state of chaos which could prevail over the whole Islamic world and destroy American interests, unless the coalition forces can control matters in Iraq. But the United States is now paying the price of its mistakes in the first days of the occupation, when it encouraged the disintegration of security and played the card of sectarian differences. Its soldiers have paid the price of that.

Kuwait, more than any other Arab country, is eager that Iraq should be secure, stable and united, because any disruption in this equation automatically reflects on it. Kuwait has contributed to the removal of the regime of tyranny from the Iraqi people, this regime which brought misfortunes on it, as it brought them on the Iraqi people. Consequently it had a greater sense of this people s need for deliverance. Kuwait does not have any material designs on Iraq. It has enough from its oil revenues, but it does not want Iraq to become a drain on its resources as has happened in the past. Kuwait has no designs on the territory of Iraq. It has striven only for the recognition of its actual borders, and establishes relations of neighborliness and genuine brotherhood on the basis of shared interests and benefits. But it does not want Iraq to turn into a graveyard for its people.

The time for change has come. The Kuwaitis are aware of that, as they celebrate the February holidays. The ancient people of the sea are well aware when the wind blows and when to furl up their sails or spread them out. They are aware that a damaged ship cannot resist the warnings of a storm, and so they have become aware that the beginning of the change in Iraq is an inevitable necessity. They cannot live under the shadow of the apprehension of fear for long. Nor can the Iraqi people remain a prisoner of the nightmare of terror which has been sitting on them for a quarter of a century.

February has a different flavor this year, and all that we hope for our Iraqi neighbors and brothers is that one day very soon they will enjoy stability without fear, that they will make their own constitution without pressure, and that their national government will not have any interference from any foreign power. At that moment the joy of February will be complete.