ABSTRACT
Educated Kuwaitis look at their rising Islamist population—which has nothing to do, at least so far, with Al Qaeda, but which could become fertile soil for the movement’s expansion—and their thoughts go to the 1970s. The continuing and intensely activist presence of the Islamist population here raises a number of thorny questions directly related to everything from a war in Iraq, to the reform of anti-Western, anti-Christian and anti-Jewish curricula in the schools, to how to deal with tribal loyalties in the entire region. The real story of Iraq is that Saddam is rooted in the xenophobic, darkly suspicious and very slowly changing world of the village—as is much, if not most, of Iraq. The Kuwaiti experience makes this country both an example and a warning signal to America as it stands on the brink of war in Iraq with still another people and another history it little understands.
