Two eminent Arab scholars look behind the scenes of the war in the
Gulf and delve into history in an attempt to shed a more balanced
light on the causes of the war. They analyse Kuwait's historic ties
with Britain and how the balance of power has changed in the region
following the decline of British influence. They also study the
factors that prompted the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, such as
Kuwait's lowering of the oil price at a time when Iraq was losing
income from oil. Although the authors' aim appears to be to
challenge Western certainties about the conflict, such suggestions
as that within the Arab 'brotherhood' it was somehow Kuwait's duty
to defer to its bigger brother will do little more than harden
resolve that the inviolability of sovereign nations, however small,
should always be defended. (Kirkus UK)
For most Americans, the war against Iraq lingers in memory as a
vast morality play, a drama offering ready made heroes and
villains: a glowering dictator in military uniform, hapless Kuwaiti
refugees with tales of persecution, plucky pilots with high-tech
wizardry, and a defiant American president, ringing Churchillian as
he drew a line in the sand. But this characterization of the war is
greatly oversimplified, a one-dimensional portrait, lacking in
context and nuance. In War in the Gulf, 1990 91, eminent scholars
Majid Khadduri and Edmund Ghareeb paint a very different picture,
one that brings historical depth to the portrait, and displays the
actions of many of the participants in a new and revealing
light.
Khadduri and Ghareeb offer a far more accurate and complex
portrait of the Iraq-Kuwait conflict, providing a wealth of
background information not readily available before. They made a
distinction between the differences between Iraq and Kuwait over
frontiers, territory, and sovereignty and the method pursued by
Iraqi leaders to resolve those differences. They explore, for
instance, the history of relations between Iraq and Kuwait,
revealing that Kuwait had once been a part of Basra (in southern
Iraq) during the Ottoman rule, and only became a separate country
while under British control (it was the British in fact who drew
the much-disputed boundary line between Iraq and Kuwait). Khadduri
and Ghareeb describe the many decades of struggle to resolve the
boundary issue, examining the repeated attempts by other Arab
states to mediate according to Islamic traditions of consultation
and peaceful resolution within the faith. The authors also show how
Saddam Husayn's war with Iran exacerbated the boundary tensions.
Because of the decade-long war, Iraq badly needed oil revenue to
repay wartime loans and to rebuild, but Kuwait persisted in pumping
far beyond its OPEC quota, driving down prices, and costing Iraq
billions of dollars of revenue. The book reveals how Kuwait spurned
Arab attempts to mediate this clash over oil prices as well as the
longstanding boundary dispute, frustrating efforts to resolve this
crisis by peaceful means. In one particularly interesting section,
the book examines the diplomatic talks during the early summer of
1990, both among various Arab nations (most notably, Iraq, Saudi
Arabia, Egypt, and Kuwait), and with Saddam Husayn and the United
States (they show how messages from Washington and a visit by a
congressional delegation lead by Senator Dole convinced the Iraqi
leaders that they would be allowed to settle their problems with
Kuwait without outside interference). Khadduri and Ghareeb carry us
through to the present, exploring the war and its aftermath, from
the uprisings against Baghdad, to the continuing U.N. sanctions, to
the recent defections from Saddam's inner circle.
War in the Gulf is a balanced, eye-opening account of one of the
central events of recent years. It corrects the Western views of
most reporting, explaining the frame of mind of the participants as
no one has done before and causing us to examine anew such
questions as who was responsible for the conflict, and what might
have happened if the United States had not intervened so rapidly.
General
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