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The biggest losers in Kuwait are its Palestinian residents, who numbered 400,000 before the invasion. About 180,000 stayed behind. The resistance estimates that 50,000 actually collaborated with the Iraqis. But even those who helped Kuwait resist the occupation are likely to suffer. "The Palestinians were invaluable," says al-Towgari. "They got us through checkpoints and got us fake identity papers saying we were foreigners. We know who the good ones are, and we want to tell the world about them. But they say no. They are scared of P.L.O. retribution. It is a vicious circle. Maybe when things calm down, people will realize how much we need the Palestinians just to get on here."
Maybe later, but not quite yet. Last Sunday at the Doha power plant, a Kuwaiti army lieutenant who had spent the past seven months in exile refused to allow six Palestinian workers to enter the facility. His orders, he said, came straight from the Defense Minister: no Palestinians. Arguing with the soldier was the plant's director, who patiently explained that the whole country was waiting for electricity and that it would never be restored until the Palestinians were admitted, because they were the people who knew how to do the work. Still the lieutenant was unmoved. Finally, and just by chance, Minister of State al-Awadi arrived. For a time, even he could not budge the soldier. He succeeded eventually, but as the Palestinians walked toward the plant, the soldier spit at them.
"The worst hatred toward the Palestinians is coming from those who left," says al-Awadi. "On the outside we heard about the atrocities and had to listen to Yasser Arafat's support of Saddam. Perhaps after people have come back and have a chance to assess the real situation, their attitudes will change." For the time being, the Palestinians who remained in Kuwait through the occupation will be allowed to stay, but even those who did not collaborate may never be trusted again. "For a time," says Major Mohammed Hamoud, a Kuwaiti air force Hawk missile battalion commander, "we let some Palestinians into the army, mostly the sons of longtime residents. I had 30 or so in my battalion, and they performed well on the first day of the invasion when we shot down 12 Iraqi planes and helicopters. But now, you can never be sure if they will turn, and so they must go."
One goal of Fawzi al-Sultan's disbanded reconstruction team has survived Kuwait's internal politics: the proposal to cut the country's preinvasion population of 2 million almost in half by shedding many of the country's non- Kuwaiti resident workers. "Demography is the key," al-Sultan says. "We want Kuwaitis to work, to have incentive, to be productive. We want a merit system in education and at work, without guaranteed government jobs. The way to make Kuwaitis not be lazy is to force them to fend for themselves. And the way to do that is to strip away the foreigners who do most of the hard work while Kuwaitis lie about."
The process has already begun. On March 2, the Gulf Bank ran an advertisement in the daily newspaper Voice of Kuwait seeking Kuwaitis to be trained as bank clerks in Dubai. "That's the start," says Salah al-Awadi, who works for the bank. "What will happen in my office is that we will gradually replace foreigners with Kuwaitis. I am sure that others will follow."