Saad Ajmi: The curse of Kuwait stalks Saddam

On July 1, the world watched history in the making as charges were read against an Arab dictator by an Arab judge in an Arab court - all via satellite TV. Saddam Hussain and 11 of his top aides had at long last been brought before an Iraqi court.

Seven charges were levied against Saddam in court: killing Shiites in southern Iraq in the 1991 uprising, waging war against Iran in 1980, gassing the people of Halabja in Kurdistan in 1989, killing thousands of the Barzani clan, killing numerous Shiite clerics, responsibility for the multitude of mass graves in Iraq, and invading Kuwait in 1990.

Of the seven charges, only one seemed to upset Saddam - invading Kuwait. In response to that charge, Saddam's legendary vicious nature became evident as he erupted in a flow of foul language.

Expressing sorrow at the charge, he said: "What a shame that this charge is brought against an Iraqi by another Iraqi." He went on to decry Kuwait, saying: "The Kuwaitis wanted to make the Iraqi woman as cheap as ten dinars…. Those dogs (sic) wanted to deny Iraq its historical rights…."

Obviously, the six other charges of genocide and war crimes were no less severe than his crimes against Kuwait. So, what was it about Kuwait that caused Saddam to lose his temper?

Before Saddam invaded Kuwait, he engaged in a smear campaign, accusing Kuwait and the UAE of stealing Iraqi oil and flooding the international oil market so as to destroy Iraq's economy and "humiliate" Iraq.

In July 1990, he amassed troops on the Kuwaiti border and began rattling his sabre. Although he assured a number of Arab leaders that he would not attack a fellow Arab nation, in the early hours of August 2, 1990, Kuwait, and the world, were shocked to see Saddam's troops roll into Kuwait City, and move on to occupy the entire country.

Initially, he claimed that Kuwait had revolted against its ruling family, and Iraqi troops were in the country to aid the rebels, at their request. Young Kuwaiti military officers were paraded on Iraqi TV meeting with the great Arab "patron" Saddam.

Shortly thereafter, those same young Kuwaiti officers issued a communiqué declaring Kuwait's unification with Iraq and the return of the "branch to its origin".

Under duress

Later in his exile in Norway, the leader of the alleged revolution, Alaa' Hussain, explained to me that they had been forced to do whatever Saddam and his men asked. In 2001, a Kuwaiti court reduced a death sentence levied against him in absentia to life imprisonment, although the other members of his "government" were acquitted of all charges as it was adjudged that they had been acting under duress.

When an unprecedented army from more than 30 countries amassed in Saudi Arabia to liberate Kuwait from the Iraqi forces, Saddam offered to withdraw from Kuwait if Israel were to withdraw from Arab land it had occupied since 1967, and if Syria were to withdraw from Lebanon.

The international community rejected such a conditional withdrawal, and Saddam refused to budge. Operation Desert Storm routed Saddam's army after an air campaign of only 40 days and a mere 100 hours of combat, and in March 1991, in a tent in Safwan, Saddam was forced to sign what was in effect a treaty of surrender.

Although he promised to comply with United Nations Security Council resolutions, for the next 13 years, he dodged and delayed both international inspections for weapons of mass destruction and international demands for the release of Kuwaiti PoWs. In fact, he denied the existence of any PoWs until the demise of his regime last year.

So far, the remains of more than 120 Kuwaiti PoWs have been identified among the remains found in mass graves in Iraq.

On that black day in 1990, when Saddam woke with the idea of invading Kuwait in mind, he thought that there was no chance that the world would go to war over a tiny Arab state with nothing of significance save for oil. He was wrong.

For a variety of reasons, the world decided that the aggression against Kuwait was not to be tolerated. Had the world not ejected Iraq from Kuwait, Saddam would still be in power and would control more than 35 per cent of the world's oil reserves. He would most certainly have developed a nuclear bomb, and may have gone even further in developing armaments and weaponry of all kinds.

Had the world not acted, other countries would have been vulnerable to similar acts of aggression. When the world decided to draw a line in the sand in 1990, it effectively put an end to the ambitions of a small-time Middle Eastern Hitler.

Feared

Likewise, when the United States, Britain and the other members of the Coalition made the decision to resume military action against Iraq to topple Saddam's regime last year, they rid Iraq and the world of perhaps the biggest WMD around: Saddam himself.

Before the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Saddam was feared throughout the Arab World. So feared was he that, according to a veteran Kuwaiti diplomat, "In international conferences, most Arab countries, including Kuwait, would see where the Iraqi vote on any matter was going, and we would simply follow." Saddam was a megalomanical psychopath who fed on more and more power.

He was on course to achieving his ambitions when he invaded Kuwait, a move that marked the beginning of the end for him. The curse of Kuwait stalked him relentlessly till he was caught "like a rat in a hole" in northern Iraq last December. Was it any wonder, then, that when the charge of invading Kuwait was read to him last Thursday, he went berserk?

Dr. Saad Al Ajmi is a former Minister of Information in Kuwait, an academic and analyst. He can be contacted at sajmi@gulfnews.com