Kuwait: A Man for All Arabs

In his 15-year reign, Emir Abdullah as Salem as Sabah transformed his Connecticut-sized sheikdom of Kuwait from a poverty-plagued sand pile at the head of the Persian Gulf into the world’s most prosperous Arab state. With a national income of $30,000 a year per native family, his 468,000 people became the wealthiest on earth. The rea son: beneath the waterless desert lies one quarter of the world’s oil. Though that fortune was all his own by dynastic right, Sheik Abdullah squandered none of it on sybaritic pleasures, used his billions in royalties to drag the once backward country from the 10th into the 20th century. Without collecting a dinar of taxes from Kuwaitis, he wiped out unemployment in a land of underfed illiterates, created an elaborate school system and the world’s most lavish welfare state, rebuilt the mud brick capital city of Kuwait into a tidy little air-conditioned marvel of modern office buildings and apartments and tree-lined boulevards.

Tears on the Air. A frugal patriarch who kept only one wife and one Cadillac, Sheik Abdullah became a sugar daddy to other Arab nations by financing their projects with giant loans ($470 million last year). So it was that when he died at 70 last week from congestive heart failure, that much of the Arab world joined in Kuwait’s mourning.

Flags flew at half-mast in a dozen countries. Chanted verses from the Koran replaced other programs on Iraq and Sudan television. Lebanon’s Parliament stood five minutes in silent tribute. Kuwait radiomen wept over the air as they described his funeral. Behind his flag-draped casket walked both wailing women and men in tears. They weren’t all Kuwaitis. Sobbed a visiting Jordanian: “I wish it had been me who had to die instead.”

Such veneration was shrewdly earned. Having negotiated Kuwait’s independence from Britain in 1961, Abdullah (with British help), resisted Iraqi threats to occupy his realm, then turned enmity to friendship with a loan. He created a Parliament to share his power and refused to veto its actions even when he disapproved of them. With $700 million a year in oil income, Kuwait became one of the world’s major financial powers; its millions on deposit in London are a principal prop for the hard-pressed British pound. While his people enjoyed free education, medical care and telephone service plus air-conditioned homes for as little as $1.40 a month, Abdullah lived in a mud-walled house, dressed and ate simply. On his deathbed, too weak to speak, he gestured for a writing pad and scrawled his last wish in shaky Arabic: “Carry on in the most enlightened way.”

Slender Successor. As Abdullah wished, the Council of Ministers quickly proclaimed his brother, Premier Sabah as Salem as Sabah, 51, as Kuwait’s new Emir. Like his brother, Sabah is a kind and conservative aristocrat, and a devoutly religious nondrinker. The resemblance ends there. Abdullah was tall and portly, and had a commanding, fatherly presence. Sabah is short (5 ft. 5 in.), slender, and a good deal less commanding. “Sabah is quietly weak.” said one Kuwaiti official, “while Abdullah was quietly strong.”

Balancing family rivalries, Sabah’s first move was to name the leader of the other faction. Sheik Jaber al Ahmed as Sabah, Kuwait’s dynamic Finance Minister, as Acting Premier. Though considered pro-West, Jaber acts like a nonaligned nationalist, this year sent trade missions to Moscow and Peking “to broaden our horizons.” At week’s end, as the new ruler took his oath (and began drawing his $28,000-a-day salary), Kuwaitis predicted that he would soon designate Sheik Jaber as crown prince too. With that peaceful transition, the world’s oilmen, bankers and diplomats could feel relieved.