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...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
