No, Mein Kuwait

The Day the ground war was launched against Iraq, I hooked up with the Kuwaiti army to witness the initial thrust to reclaim its homeland. I figured the Kuwaitis would be the first to strike, then enter and liberate, the prize of the war, Kuwait City. They would be accompanied by an overwhelming Allied force, of course, but the political realities at the front held that the honor of spearheading the assault would rightly belong to an Arab army, presumably the Kuwaitis.

There was an important historical precedent to back up this speculation. In World War Two, the Allies permitted Charles de Gaulle's Free French forces to enter Paris and triumphantly reclaim the country from the occupying Germans. De Gaulle's troops in that war, like Kuwait's in this one, actually played a minor role in the liberation of their country. But from the moment the French troops marched down the Champs Élysées, France was indisputably French again. The symbolism became the reality of the postwar world.

I got my first hint of the new reality in the Middle East in the military liaison office of the Kuwaiti embassy, which was based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Although the Kuwaitis were enthusiastic about having me write about their part in the war, it was clear that they could authorize nothing without Saudi acquiescence. In the end, it was the Saudi commander in chief, Prince General Khalid bin Sultan, who granted me permission to accompany the Kuwaiti army. "It would be good for the Kuwaiti morale," he said grandly, and arrangements were quickly made.

•

The morning the ground war began, the two Kuwaiti brigades--the Shaheed (Martyrs) armored brigade and the Tahrir (Liberation) infantry brigade--crossed the 15-foot sand pile, or berm, at the Saudi border. Within a mile or two, we came across the first line of what had once been Iraqi defenses. The mine fields were all clearly marked, and the vaunted flaming trenches were, in fact, little more than smouldering ditches. The Iraqis had simply left their trucks, weapons, clothing, ammunition, personal possessions, food, everything they possessed. They had surrendered or fled. There were no spent cartridges or other signs of resistance. There were no dead. There was no rattle of gunfire. The desert was filled only with the roar of Allied vehicles heading north.

We arrived at the infantry-brigade commander's camp an hour after crossing the border. At that point, we were well in advance of the main body of Saudis, and the armored brigade of the Kuwaiti army was well in advance of the infantry. All had been ordered to hold in place. This was the pattern while I was with the Kuwaitis: Each time their forces advanced beyond what the Saudis found tolerable, they were ordered to halt.

On our first night out in the desert, I was told that Kuwait City was only 70 kilometers to the northeast. The Kuwaitis were jubilant: They would be there the next day! But that night, as we held our position, there was constant traffic heading northeast. Convoys of Saudi military vehicles and men streamed past us toward Kuwait City.

We weren't going anywhere, so I went over to have a chat with some U.S. Special Forces troops, who'd just returned from a reconnaissance patrol and were camped next to the Kuwaitis. The commanding officer was a pleasant man in his early 40s. He was built like a long-distance runner and spoke with a Boston-Irish accent. He seemed relaxed and easygoing, and so did his troops. Ignoring the ban on press access, he offered me some Oration coffee, and we talked for several hours about the war and the Special Forces' role with the Kuwaitis.

He said that the Special Forces units had been with the six Kuwaiti brigades (only two were at the front) for the past half year, about 10 Americans per brigade. Their mission was to mold the Kuwaitis into a fighting force. But their success was "limited," in the words of another Special Forces man who joined the conversation. The Kuwaitis just weren't made of fighting stuff.

It was hard to argue. Although they had spent billions of dollars on top-of-the-line British, French and American military equipment, the Kuwaiti army and air force, along with the emir and his entire government, had fled Kuwait just ahead of the Iraqi invasion. They're a gentle, polite people--but they make better warriors in board rooms than on battlefields. Only a third of the native-born population remained inside Kuwait after the invasion. Many of those who fled ended up in the five-star hotels of Saudi Arabia, Bahrein and assorted European capitals. The biggest wartime concern shared by most of these Kuwaiti refugees was whether or not the hotel buffetscould offer a sufficient variety of foods to stave off boredom.

It was during this conversation that the officer let it drop that he didn't think the Kuwaiti army was going to enter Kuwait City for a while. I asked him why. Well, he said tersely, the Saudis are in command here.

•

Living in the desert with members of both the Kuwaiti brigade and the Special Forces, I came to share their separate anxieties as we made our advance--uncontested by anyone but the Saudi army--toward Kuwait City. Like the military men around me, I desperately wanted to get there. When it became apparent that we might be denied that goal, I convinced the Special Forces commander that we should make an early-morning reconnaissance patrol. It was the perfect subterfuge: a tactically sound move in support of what we all wanted to do anyway.The Kuwaiti colonel agreed and we left at dawn the next morning.

The colonel and the Special Forces major took off in the command car and I followed with a driver and another Kuwaiti soldier in a Toyota pickup mounted with a .50-caliber machine gun. We stopped first at what had been an Iraqi battalion headquarters, or so it appeared by the number of armor, trucks and personnel carriers. They had simply been abandoned.

The Iraqi fortifications were, to put it mildly, not what I expected. The entire redoubt consisted of about 20 large ditches with corrugated-tin roofs over them. Single rows of sandbags lined the sides, and most ditches were crumbling--not from bombing, since there was no evidence whatever of that, but from caving in the way a hole on the beach might collapse. I saw no evidence of air strikes in the vicinity. Not one of the 20 or so vehicles inside the perimeter had been damaged. If this were a used-tank lot, most of those babies would fetch a good price--used in only one war and not a scratch on 'em!

For half a year, our Special Forces were virtually bumping into one another behind the lines out there in the desert. Didn't anybody tell the boys in Riyadh, fully six months before the ground war, that the Iraqi preparations weren't as awe-inspiring as the Allies had thought? Did the American military keep the specter of terrifying Iraqi ground forces alive, despite what they might have heard from the field, because it suited their purposes?

It's a tempting thought. At the start of our troop commitment, questions were raised about our goals in the Middle East. Against the static of debate, there arose a simple, dramatic theme: the potency of the Iraqi defenses--the mine fields, the poison gas, the concrete bunkers, the burning walls of oil. Next came the discussion of how our soldiers would overcome the challenges before them. The entire adventure metamorphosed into a test of the nation's character, a challenge to America's will to do the seemingly impossible.

In reality, it was something less than that. After six weeks of a pin-point bombing campaign that was unprecedented in military history, there would be no reinforced bunkers, no walls of flame; indeed, no Iraqis to fight. Had we known their true disposition in advance, the debate--and the conflict itself--might have been resolved differently and more quickly.

Even now, the American military has declined to estimate the number of casualtiessustained by Iraq in the bombing. If most of the defenses were as rudimentary as the ones I saw, the casualties must have been monstrous; indeed, the most recent unofficial estimates cite 150,000 Iraqi deaths, with untold thousands of injuries. If the American military acknowledged enormous Iraqi casualties as the action went on, would we, as a nation, have permitted the carnage to continue?

•

Our recon patrol was nearly in Kuwait City when we paused next to the main highway into the capital. The Kuwaiti commander said proudly that we would enter the city that day. We'd be the first ones in, as we had hoped.

His optimism was soon dashed. On the highway next to us, a huge Saudi convoy slowly formed. Eventually, it (continued on page 170)Mein Kuwait(continued from page 72) extended back for miles. Large green flags with the Saudi sword and Arabic inscription flew from every tank and truck. There were small Kuwaiti flags beneath them. We had orders not to advance, so we stood by and watched as the Saudi convoy headed for the city.

Although the Special Forces commander had already received word of the command, he still showed his disappointment. Some of his men had tried to enter the city and were turned back. He was told that when Saudis finally allowed the Kuwaiti forces to enter the city, the Americans were not to accompany them. In fact, they were not even to be seen with them in the city. Their job was over. They weren't with the Kuwaitis now and never had been. Like the Kuwaitis, the Special Forces were dispensable bit players in the drama of the liberation of Kuwait.

"We're only an army within an army in another country; we take their orders," the Kuwaiti commander told me. "I'll send you in alone if you wish. You'll be in Kuwait City before me."

I got a truck and a driver and we made for Kuwait City. As we approached the expressway to the city, we passed Egyptian troops stopped by the side of the road. We also came across American Marines digging in around the outskirts of the city. All were waiting for the Saudis to lead the liberation.

In retrospect, the Saudi march appeared inevitable. By sweeping past the rest of the Allied troops, the Saudis were gaining ground not only on their Kuwaiti neighbors but on the Iraqis and on their own history as a silent partner in the Middle East. By carrying off a lead role in the Gulf war, Saudi Arabia would become the dominant force in the Middle East.

If the war does produce a new world order, as President Bush has promised, then that new order is predicated on the alliance of two vastly dissimilar countries, Saudi Arabia and the United States. It is an unlikely partnership.

Saudi Arabia remains a feudal society devoid of basic human rights. There is no freedom of speech: The penalty for criticism of Islam is death. Nor is there even the most primitive form of representative government. The country is ruled entirely by members of one family. Nepotism and corruption within the government are endemic.

The U.S. can overlook this, of course, because Saudi Arabia is about oil, the elemental substance of the world economy. Whoever controls the majority of the world's oil supply controls its price as well and, therefore, the primary cost of doing business. Together, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait possess about 35 percent of the world's supply of oil. With the control of both sources, Saudi Arabia would instantly emerge as an economic superpower. The United States and the Saudis are fashioning a new economic and political order in the Middle East, and with it, a new international order has been born.

If all goes according to plan, the U.S. economy, badly battered by competition from Japan and Germany, will no longer be at the mercy of unpredictable market forces. With control of an oil supply on which Germany and Japan depend, the United States can, from a discreet distance, manage its rivals' principal cost of doing business. Facing that kind of American leverage, the Germans and the Japanese may become a little more eager to resolve the thorny issues of trade imbalance. If they don't, America will be in a position to see that its citizens have to take out mortgages if they want to buy Hondas or Mercedeses.

•

When I finally arrived in Kuwait City, it was absolutely chaotic. There were no organized troops. Armed Kuwaiti resistance fighters, dressed in odd bits and pieces of military uniforms, manned check points around the city. I was, it seemed, the first American the Kuwaitis had seen, and I was overwhelmed by their display of gratitude. Many of them literally kissed my hand. Some shouted, "Israel, yes; Arafat, no!" while others were so overjoyed that they fired their weapons into the air, leading to a rash of deaths from falling bullets.

We made our way through the streets to the Kuwait International Hotel, located on the beach front. It had been trashed and looted by the Iraqis. There was no water, no electricity, no food. I took a room, then headed for the beach to check on yet another set of fortifications. There were no reinforced bunkers, no oil-filled ditches--just mines neatly fenced off and marked.

By the time I returned, the hotel was filling up with the media royalty. Dan Rather showed up, Tom Brokaw was there and I found Sam Donaldson wandering around the garage, looking lost. Ted Koppel was said to be on his way. When the network stars decamp from the plush hotels to the front, it's a sure sign that the shooting war is over. The ratings war was about to escalate.

A new PR firm--the Rendon Group, out of Washington--had taken over the management of Kuwait's world image. They distributed pictures of the emir and the crown prince to the anxious Kuwaiti citizenry who had been forced to do without for many months.

No official of the Kuwaiti government arrived in the city for several days. But the Saudi commander in chief, Prince Khalid bin Sultan, was available for a photo opportunity, posing triumphantly with his troops, who now commanded the city. He toured as a conquering hero, and the Kuwaitis went delirious with joy as he passed by in his Mercedes. Not until later that week did the Kuwaiti crown prince arrive, while the emir remained in Saudi Arabia for an extra two weeks.

As the Kuwaitis straggled back home, the Saudis occupied Kuwait City and manned check points. They also built a huge tent city on the road to Kuwait to house returning Kuwaitis. In other words, no citizens of Kuwait would be allowed into their own country without first passing Saudi inspection. Not even emergency supplies were being allowed past the border without intense Saudi scrutiny. The Saudis intend to maintain a permanent military presence in Kuwait to protect their brethren; it may be assumed that it will not countenance anything but a rigidly Islamic country.

The United States is adamant that the Sabah family return to the Kuwaiti throne. But that family now owes its allegiance to the Saudis. If democratic reform is not in the interest of Saudi Arabia or the Sabahs--and both care about stability above all else--it may not be in the interest of the U.S., either.

•

On my last night in the desert outside Kuwait City, I was speaking with another Special Forces officer. We were huddled against the side of a tank, which shielded us from the wind and rain. We drank C-ration coffee and tried to figure out what had really happened in Kuwait. He mentioned that he had been in Panama for the U.S. invasion. "That's it," I said. "This was Big Panama."

He thought for a moment and finally said with resignation, "Yeah, I guess it really was--Big Panama."

Not much changed in Panama after the U.S. invasion. Some say things got worse. There is still corruption, drug running, gun smuggling and money laundering--all the crimes that existed during Noriega's reign. We liberated Panama, but we didn't change a thing.

We may have liberated Kuwait, but we haven't made it free.

In our January issue, we went behind the scenes to describe Saddam Hussein's politics of fear and aggression. This month, we present an updated view of the Arab world.

"Like the Kuwaitis, the Special Forces were dispensable bit players in the liberation of Kuwait."