Half a Century and the Kuwaiti Compass!

Since I began writing, in my twenties nearly half a century ago, my first article was titled “What Have the Revolutions Done to the Arab World?” I sought to open the eyes of those who were misled, admiring, or sanctifying the leaders of Arab coups and revolutions—of whom there were many at that time—by challenging them to name an Arab state that had undergone a coup or revolution and seen its condition improve, replacing poverty with wealth, misery with happiness, or backwardness with progress. ***

In a later phase, when Yasser Arafat and I sanctified every erroneous move he made, while the Palestinian people paid the price with rivers of their own blood, we wrote in 1983 calling for his removal from office in an article titled “Has the Time for Change Come?” We also criticized Saddam Hussein for failing to demarcate the border with Kuwait, despite all the harm we were enduring, in an article titled “We and the Brothers.” On another front, through a series of articles, we warned against dragging Kuwaiti and Arab youth into the Afghan holocaust, arguing that it was an American war to avenge the humiliation inflicted on the Soviet Union by the Vietnam War, and that we should leave the Afghan war to the Americans and the Afghans, refraining from paying for it with the blood of our sons. This was especially true given that reports in global newspapers at the time indicated that many Afghan leaders revered and granted sanctified halos to, and labeled as senior mujahideen, were in fact major drug traffickers—a claim made then and later confirmed after the Soviet withdrawal and the onset of wars among them to control drug fields. ***

The final point: 1. The matter extended to domestic affairs and severe criticism of practices in parliamentary, municipal, student, and union elections, as well as in cooperative societies, where there was no shame in displaying alternative loyalties—some below the nation, others above it—such as partisan, ideological, or purchased loyalties that crossed borders. 2. Therefore, we urge that, in this era of reform and firmness, traitors to the nation and the system be held accountable in exactly the same way as those who betray financial trust and fiduciary responsibility. All these groups are destructive to the stable foundations of the Kuwaiti state. Traitors to the homeland are no less harmful than thieves of the homeland. The greatest catastrophe lies with those who combine both evils: neither financial integrity nor loyalty to Kuwait restrains them from transgression and harm. 3. In summary, what protects a person from slipping and erring against their country is having a compass with a single, unwavering direction: allegiance to Kuwait as the only alternative homeland, with no other allegiance or loyalty except to the established system, rather than to other regimes and states that glorify everything they do despite their grave mistakes, while criticizing whatever achievements we attain, no matter how significant. If you adhere to this, you will protect yourself from error and the reach of the law, which delays but does not neglect.