Hamdi A. Hassan - The Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait, Ebooks (various), Geopolitics + Sociology
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THE IRAQI INVASION
OF KUWAIT
RELIGION, IDENTITY AND OTHERNESS IN
THE ANALYSIS OF WAR AND CONFLICT
H
AMDI
A. H
ASSAN
Press
LONDON • STERLING, VIRGINIA
P
Pluto
First published 1999 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
and 22883 Quicksilver Drive,
Sterling, VA 20166–2012, USA
Copyright © Hamdi A. Hassan 1999
The right of Hamdi A. Hassan to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library
ISBN 0 7453 1416 3 hbk
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Hassan, Hamdi A.
The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait : religion, identity, and otherness
in the analysis of war and conflict / Hamdi A. Hassan.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0–7453–1416–3 (hc.)
1. Persian Gulf War, 1991. 2. Persian Gulf Region—Politics
and government. 3. Panarabism. I. Title.
DS79.72H425 1999
956.7044'2—dc21
99–40502
CIP
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by
Chase Production Services, Chadlington, OX7 3LN
Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton
Printed in the EC by TJ International, Padstow
CONTENTS
1 Understanding the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait
1
Introduction
1
The Realist Perspective
6
The Institutional Perspective
7
The Reflective Perspective
8
2 The Realist Perspective
13
Introduction
13
The Realist Perspective: A Theoretical Outline
14
Iraq’s Assessment When Invading Kuwait
21
American–Iraqi relations 1984–90
36
3 The Institutional Perspective
55
Introduction
55
The Institutional Perspective: A Theoretical Outline
57
The Overlapping of Identities
63
The Domestic Sources of the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait
77
The Genealogy of the Political Elites in the Arab World
89
The Question of Mitigating Iraq’s Economic Needs
102
4 The Reflective Perspective 113
Introduction 113
The Reflective Perspective: A Theoretical Outline 114
Islam and Arabism: The Genealogy of a Discursive Regime 119
The Arabic Political Discourse and the Invasion of Kuwait 137
Epilogue
179
Appendix:
Writing to Understand or Mapping to Conquer:
De/constructing the Myth of
Homo Arabicus
191
Notes
200
Bibliography
249
Index
272
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Working on this book has been invigorating, maddening and wonderful.
It would have been impossible without the meticulous support of three
individuals: Dr Azza M. Karam, Professor Ziauddin Sardar, the editors
of this series, and Roger van Zwanenberg, Pluto press’ publisher. I
would like to thank Azza and Zia for the rare gifts of good counsel
and continuing faith. They both sustained me throughout, but especially
when crossing dark and barren terrain. Azza was not only a sharp,
discerning and untiring reader of several versions of the manuscript
but also an unfailing source of encouragement and wisdom. She
helped me to refine the book’s sentences and notions with astute and
penetrating comments. I am more moved than I can say by the great
amount of time Azza spent on my work, generously sharing her wide
knowledge with me.
Roger van Zwanenberg is not only a talented publisher, but also a
committed intellectual whose prompt and considerate feedback helped
me to clarify my thinking and yielded suggestions that significantly
strengthened the manuscript. Roger’s quick eye for what does and does
not work moved things swiftly along. He delivered me, as promised,
‘a personal and professional service’. In this context I am deeply
grateful to Anne Beech and Robert Webb who (together with Roger)
made my experience with Pluto a fruitful and enjoyable one. Thanks
also to Helen Skelton who meticulously copy-edited the book and
vastly improved the quality of the text.
A number of people through the years have helped in different ways
while working with this book. I would like to express my gratitude
to my colleagues Kjell Engelbrekt, Jacob Westberg, Kristina Boréus,
Eric Stern and Welat Songür who read and thoroughly commented
on earlier drafts of the manuscript. Parts of Chapter three have been
presented at the Nordic Society for Middle East Studies’ conference
(June 1995) in Joensuu, Finland, where Professor Saad Eddin Ibrahim
vi
Acknowledgements
vii
of the American University in Cairo and Dr Jørgen Bæck Simonsen
of the University of Cobenhagen (among many others) gave insightful
comments on the similarities and differences between Arabism and
European nationalism. Part of Chapter four was presented at the
conference on The Peace Process and Future Vision of the Middle
East (September 1997) at Lund University, Sweden. Many people gave
valuable comments on the significance of the contrasted collective
identities of Islam/Arabism and Zionism to Middle Eastern politics.
I am particularly grateful to Professor Jan Hjärpe and Khaled Bayomi
of Lund University; Professor Osama al-Ghazali Harb of Al-Ahram
Foundation; Professor Raymond Cohen and Dr Paul Rivlin of the
Hebrew University; and Dr. Helena Lindholm Schultz of Gutenberg
University.
Dr Essmat Abdul al-Maguid, The Arab League’s Secretary General
and Egypt’s Foregin Minister 1987–91, was very generous in granting
me time on several occasions to interview him and discuss the events
that took place before the invasion of Kuwait. In this context, I would
like to thank Egypt’s ambassador to Sweden, my friend Hamdi Nada,
and before him ambassador Ibrahim Alaam, who helped to facilitate
my contacts with Arab officials. Mr Abdullah Jasem al-Sane, Under-
secretary for Scholarship and Cultural Relations in the Kuwaiti Ministry
of Education, showed a great interest in my research. Besides sending
me much valuable material pertaining to the Iraqi-Kuwaiti dispute before
the crisis, Mr. al-Sane has helped to grant me a six month scholarship
in 1993 from the Amir Sabah al-Salem Foundation, which helped to
facilitate my travel around the Middle East to collect much-needed
material and documents. My friend Zaid al-Sherida, the Kuwaiti
ambassador to Sweden, was an invaluable source of moral support and
encouragement, who during our frequent discussions enriched my
knowledge of Kuwaiti and inter-Arab politics. In addition, I would
like to express my deep gratitude to Mr. al-Sane, the Amir Sabah al-
Salem Foundation and to Ambassador al-Sherida.
Many people have offered very different kinds of help. My close
friends Dr Ibrahim Gouda, (Golfpro) Sayed Cherif, Samir al-Rafie,
Taha Mowafi, Dr Gail Ramsay and Dr Ali Yaklef have shared their
vision of the world with me. Their generous support was decisive in
times of near-despair. In this context, I would like to express my
gratitude to Lise-Lott Ã…hman, Omar Sheikhmous, Donald Levery and
Alan Dixon. Despite the intensity of the daily focus on the rehabili-
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