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But Mustafa had one. As he once confessed to another neighbor, Mustafa had always resented his uncertain status. Whether he also was a longtime spy for Iraq's secret police, as Mike believes, is debatable. What Mike and several other resistance members know for certain is that Kuwaiti army officers operating with Mike's cell began to disappear whenever Mustafa took part in the group's deliberations. "So we began watching his movements," says Mike. "He was informing. There was no doubt."
When the resistance was certain Mustafa was aiding the Iraqis, Mike invited him to stay at his home. "That way I could better keep an eye on him," says Mike. "I used him to help me get through checkpoints and to move some weapons around. It was minor stuff, and it bound us more closely together. We kept the important things from him, of course, but I am sure he thought he was continuing to penetrate us." Shortly after the liberation, Mustafa was arrested by the Kuwaiti intelligence service and removed to the local jail. "But he was mine," says Mike, "and one night I prevailed on the guards to turn him over to me. I wanted to kill him myself. I cooked him a last meal and told him I was going to turn him in as a POW. I told him he would be traded for allied prisoners. I told him to get his things, and we walked to a wall about a hundred yards from my house, which is where I did it. And that was it. I have no regrets. He was also helping to run Palestinians who informed on Kuwaitis. How could I let him go?"
When the allies first rode into Kuwait City, on Feb. 26, they were led by Arab forces, though not by Kuwaitis. Earlier in the campaign, a Kuwaiti soldier killed a surrendering Iraqi and shoved his body into a ditch. "From that moment," says a U.S. military officer, "we were determined to restrain the Kuwaitis," and American special-forces troops now regularly accompany Kuwaiti patrols. But the resistance still operates. Mike says he knows of at least 80 "proven collaborators" who have been executed. "The word has gone out to be calm for now," says a resistance leader, "to cool it until the journalists leave."
"That's right," confirms a senior Western diplomat. "The government is operating with a light hand. The country is an arsenal. Everyone has weapons. They turn some in, to be perceived as cooperating with the call to lay down arms, but everyone is keeping some -- just as they are keeping the names of some collaborators to themselves when turning over their lists to the army." The problem, another Western diplomat says, is the government's poor credibility. "No one really knows if cracking down on the resistance would work, or whether they'd tell the ministers to shove it," he says. "All the government knows for sure is that at the end of the day, it doesn't want Kuwait perceived as no better than Saddam. We hope that the idea of sanctioning an open season later on won't really come to pass. We're counting on the passage of time to calm emotions."