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National Geographic : 1969 May
Contents
Kuwait, Aladdin's Lamp of the Middle East told, Kuwait's proved reserves of crude oil are estimated at more than 10 billion tons about 15 percent of the world's supply. So plenteous is the flow that the Emir, as head of state, receives a yearly income of $28,000,000 from state revenues (of which he voluntarily returns a fifth). At latest count the nation's annual revenues from oil had skyrocketed to $759,000,000. Wondrous City Springs From the Desert How are such huge sums being spent? What is little Kuwait doing with it all? Any night from the balcony of my seventh floor room at the Kuwait-Sheraton I could see the vibrant answers in the expanding city's spangles of light. Two decades ago, where I stood was the southwestern limit of the mud-walled capital. Now, illuminated highways spoked out for miles; roofs sprouted an aluminum forest of television antennas; quality shops of Fahad al-Salim Street, glit tering below, sold everything from miniskirts to skin-diving equipment. Where, in the tran quil past, Bedouin shepherds had prodded their jostling animals through dusty lanes, there was now a cosmopolitan city of concrete and-glass office buildings, marble banks, cinemas, public gardens, mosques, hospitals, schools, and lavish houses (following pages). And not only the physical aspect of Kuwait but also the mellow traditions of its people, their desert ways, and their prospects for the future-all had changed irrevocably, for bet ter or worse. The Kuwaiti primarily responsible for his country's transformation was a tall, heavily built sheik of imposing dignity-the late Emir of Kuwait, His Highness Sheik Abdullah al Salim al-Sabah. He assumed office in 1950 as the eleventh consecutive member of the al-Sabah family to rule Kuwait. His younger brother, the present Emir, His Highness Sheik Sabah al-Salim al-Sabah, who began his rule in 1965, is the twelfth (page 646). Kuwait's revenues from oil were slight at first-an estimated $500,000 in 1946 when commercial production began. But by the early 1950's income had leaped to hundreds of millions of dollars a year.* Sheik Abdullah thereupon made two basic decisions. I heard about the first even before I left America, when I talked in Washington with His Excel lency Talat al-Ghoussein, Kuwait's Ambas sador to the United States. "What may surprise you most about Ku- wait," the ambassador had said, "is the way oil revenues are distributed. Sheik Abdullah simply decided to buy land from Kuwaiti owners and pay for it at high prices." Land was constantly needed for new roads, new houses, new office buildings, new schools and government ministries, said the ambas sador, and prices began to soar. "Often the same land was sold and resold, and always at a higher price," he continued. "But the government kept on buying. This was one of the methods the Emir had cho sen to distribute oil revenues-and the land purchases continued." They still continue-though on a limited scale. Since 1953 about $2,500,000,000 has been paid out for land by the Kuwait treas ury to more than 20,000 families-about 50 percent of the Kuwaiti citizenry. Only Ku waiti citizens can own, buy, or sell real estate. Large landholders, including members of the ruling family and leading merchants, became millionaires almost overnight. And even Ku waitis who owned only small tracts of land awoke to find themselves affluent. The former Administrator of the American Mission Hospital, Haider Mohammed al Khalifa, told me, "In 1949, my father bought a plot in the capital for $1,260 and built a house on it for $4,200. In 1961 the government bought the house and land for $105,000." Nor was that the end of his family's good fortune. Haider and his father and four brothers purchased another plot outside the city wall, near the present International Air port, for $2,100. "We sold that to the govern ment," he said, "for $44,100." Poverty No Barrier to a Secure Life But what about those who owned no land -the desert wanderers, the poor of the docks, the laborers and fishermen who toiled for a low daily wage? How have they fared? Among them are many of the foreigners mainly Arabs from other lands and Iranians, Indians, and Pakistanis-who make up slight ly more than half of Kuwait's population. And many Kuwaitis also fall into the low-income group. The minimum daily wage of govern ment employees is $2.25, and some Kuwaitis as well as foreigners still live in squalid tin shacks on the edge of town. It was for such Kuwaitis that Sheik Abd ullah arrived at his second basic decision: *See "Boom Time in Kuwait," by Paul Edward Case, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, December 1952. 643
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