DESIGNER GUERRILLAS

Charles Glass finds that his interview

with a member of the Kuwaiti resistance was not as exclusive as he had hoped

The Saudi-Kuwaiti border THE concept, like so many in this zone of impending battle, seemed a good one: a secret rendezvous with the leader of the Kuwaiti resistance. Two men from the underground opposition to the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait would meet me in a hotel lobby in Saudi Arabia and drive me into the desert to meet Sheikh Ali Sabah Sallem As-Sabah and the brave men under his command. That was the plan, but people in this land learned long ago the futility of predicting, let alone attempting to determine, their futures. The foreigner must relearn this lesson with the rising of each morning sun.

A half-dozen journalists were already waiting in the hotel lobby when I came in. They sat around with cameras or note- books, pretending not to notice one another and dreading the obvious conclu- sion: none of us was to enjoy an exclusive interview with Kuwait's Charles de Gaulle. Would this be another group tour, like the hundreds provided by the American armed forces and the Saudis? Each of us wanted to believe the others knew nothing of the secret rendezvous and the Kuwaiti resist- ance. Alas, we all rose when two Kuwaiti men in their thobes, white gowns like those worn in Africa by the White Fathers, walked into the lobby.

The two young men, Ali and Anwar, appeared to be disappointed we were so few. Ali said, `Before we go to the meet- ing, we must stop at the other hotels.'

Other hotels? `To collect the other journal- ists.' Other journalists? And so it was, as the Kuwaiti Pied Pipers led us in convoy from hotel to hotel, collecting more and more rodents of the international press. We had lost precious hours of daylight in the process, meaning the camera crews would have to film in the dark. So much for any pictures of the brave fighters and their secret bases. To complicate matters, the French — cameras round necks, silly hats on heads, Gauloises dangling from lips — had joined our happy band.

For more hours, our convoy made its way along desert roads north towards the border with occupied Kuwait. We drove 'We're finding finding it rather hard to make ends meet.' past slow-moving convoys of American tanks and armoured personnel carriers.

The Kuwaitis in the lead car drove so slowly along the highway that I stopped to talk to some American soldiers waiting by the road. 'Hey,' a young sergeant from an airborne division said. `Have you guys heard any news? What's going on? We don't hear anything out here.'

We told them Presidents Bush and Gorbachev were meeting in Helsinki, that sanctions seemed to be taking a toll in Iraq and that a few more foreign women and children had been able to leave Baghdad. One soldier said, `We hear they shot an American.'

`The Iraqis wounded him in Kuwait,' I said, having heard the news on the BBC World Service. `He's in a hospital, but the Iraqis won't let any diplomats see him.'

`Why not?' the soldier asked.

I remembered the water and fruit juice in an ice chest in the back of the car. `Would you guys like some cold water and drinks?'

`Hell, yes.' We gave them bottles of water and cans of juice, colder than the warm water in their metal hip-flasks. They could not have been more grateful or polite. Then we caught up with the Kuwaitis and the other journalists, follow- ing them slowly to a Saudi government office near the border. There we sat in an entrance hall for half an hour or so, before our Kuwaiti hosts moved us into a large reception room. After some prompting on our part, they gave us tea and we waited another hour.

I asked some of my colleagues how they had known about the meeting. 'We got a call,' they said.

'From Hill and Knowlton?'

'You too?'

The Kuwait resistance is probably the only guerrilla force on earth represented by a New York public relations firm. Hill and Knowlton staff sit in Taif, western Saudi Arabia, as far as possible from Kuwait, with the Kuwaiti royal family and the Kuwaiti government-in-exile. There they guide the Kuwaitis through the novel experience of being nice to the press. Hill and Knowlton's director, ex-Bobby Ken- nedy press secretary Frank Mankiewicz, lobbies for the Kuwaitis in Washington. If you need any information from him, by the way, his number in Washington is 202 333 7400, and his office should be able to explain why only 65,000 adult males out of a population of nearly two million had full, or first-class, Kuwaiti citizenship. Hill and Knowlton created the inappropriately named `Citizens [sic] for a Free [sic] Kuwait'. (Another lobbying group, the US Iraqi Business Forum. has for the time being suspended its campaign to increase American aid to and trade with Iraq.) Although they represent the resistance, Hill and Knowlton did not send anyone with us to the border. II they had, things might have gone a bit more smoothly.

As the hour grew later, we went outside to drive to yet another destination, an office where a 'leader of the resistance' awaited us. Before the photographers could snap or the camera crews set up their tripods, the man told us, 'There are limita- tions I would like you to bear in mind. I don't want you to mention the place. My photo is not to appear on the television. Also, I don't want to answer any political questions.' He sat in a large chair behind a desk, and he asked that the cameras film his press conference with his chair back turned to us. So large was the chair that the cameras would have seen nothing else, not even the top of his head, which seemed fine to the French. I suggested the man cover his face with his red keffieh, delicate- ly explaining that disembodied voices from backs of chairs made worse television, at least in Britain and the United States, than keffieh-covered faces. He wrapped the headcloth around his face and put glasses over his eyes. The cameras rolled. Was this the first press conference with Sheikh Ali Sabah Sallem As-Sabah, whom we had been told that very day was the putative commander of the resistance?

'No.' He said he was neither Sheikh Ali nor any other member of the As-Sabah family who ruled Kuwait until last August. 'I can't tell you my name, but I am a member of the committee,' he said. When someone asked where he came from, his evasion was worthy of Yasser Arafat: 'I came from nowhere, but I will be there.'

For the next half hour, he read a statement in broken English: 'Resistance started from the second day of the enemy invasion of Kuwait. This resistance covers the whole area of the state of Kuwait. Our aim is to liberate our country and enable the legitimate government of Kuwait to return to take power under the leadership of Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmed al-Jaber As- Sabah and the Crown Prince, Sheikh Saad Abdallah. And the people of Kuwait will not accept anybody to govern Kuwait. When we achieve that, we will lay [sic] our During the long questioning that fol- lowed, he said that his resistance had killed between one and two thousand Iraqi sol- diers ('and I'm sure about that. If we want, we can do more, but we don't.'); that under his committee's command were thousands of men and women with rifles, anti-tank weapons, grenades, machine guns and explosives; that the Iraqis had executed about 50 resistance fighters and sympathisers, including an Iraqi colonel 'who was helping us'; that the resistance was hiding Westerners from the Iraqis; that Palestinians in Kuwait were helping the resistance; that '78 per cent' of the resist- ance fighters were under his committee's command; that he had received no money or weapons from the United States; and that he was ready to accept any help offered.

'Do you have some Iraqi prisoners?' a Frenchman asked.

'We used to have some, but where can we keep them? Sometimes we kill them.' A moment later, he corrected himself. 'This is a war, we don't kill them. We don't kill the prisoners of war. And I insist on that.'

Among the crowd of journalists were seven Kuwaitis, who sat listening. The scene reminded me of nothing so much as the early days of the Palestinian comman- dos in Beirut, the same awkwardness with the press, the covered faces, the confusing answers, the incredible claims. But this was a resistance movement with a difference: like the Palestinians, they opposed an occupying force, but their spokesman nev- er condemned 'imperialism', 'colonialism', 'capitalism' the standard demonology of guerrillas from Algeria to Vietnam. In fact, the Kuwaitis are inveterate capitalists, and more than anything else they want the American imperialists to rescue them. The committee member said of the Americans, 'I want them to attack as soon as possible.'

Resistance to the Iraqis, despite the comic opera press conference at the bor- der, is impressive. The Iraqis have found no serious collaborators among Kuwaitis, unlike the experiences of Israelis in Leba- non and the West Bank and the Germans in France. Individuals and small, indepen- dent groups who have no connection with the 'resistance committee' at the border and its public relations machine have laun- ched attacks on Iraqi soldiers, despite the real danger of reprisals, during the six weeks of the Iraqi occupation. Passive resistance is almost universal. Resistance, however, will achieve nothing substantial on its own. The Emir will return to Kuwait if and when some, perhaps all, of the young Americans we saw on the road lose their lives.