كاتب بريطاني: 40 % من الكويت شيعة 'بصراويين'

روبرت فيسك كاتب بريطاني شهير يكتب في صحيفة الاندبندنت البريطانية ذائعة الصيت، كتب اليوم مقالا تعلق بالكويت وقضية التعويضات العراقية، واشار في مقاله أن المبالغ المستحقة للكويت لا تقتصر على التعويضات، ولكن أيضا قرض بقيمة 16 مليار دولار للعراق ابان حربه ضد ايران في عقد الثمانينات.

وأضاف فيسك ' الكويتيين معروف عنهم البخل' ولكنه يعتقد أن هذا غير صحيح فالكويت أنفقت العديد من الأموال في الأعوام السابقة ووهبت الأموال للفلسطينيون واللبنانيين وأيضا خذلهم الفلسطينون بتأييدهم للغزو العراقي في عام 1990م .

غير أن روبرت فيسك يطالب عبر مقاله الكويت بأن تسقط التعويضات العراقية ويضرب مثالا في ذلك بإسقاط الإمارات العربية المتحدة لديونها المستحقة على العراق والتي قدرت 7 مليار دولار، متسائلا ' هل هذا هو الشح الكويتي؟' فالكويت بلد يقطر نفطا ومتوسط دخل الفرد فيها 41 ألف دولار مقابل العراق متوسط دخل الفرد سنويا 4 آلاف دولار.

وينتقل فيسك بعد ذلك في مقاله إلى التركيبة السكانية وتحديدا 'مذهبية' سكان الكويت حيث يرى من وجهة نظره أن 40 % من سكان الكويت هم من الطائفة الشيعية وليس من السنة مضيفا بهذا الجانب أن شيعة الكويت أصبحوا 'بصراويين' ويضيف فيسك بقوله ' أبناء الشيعة في جنوب العراق أصبحوا رجال أعمال ويعملون بالتجارة مع الكويت' وهنا يصبح تداخل بين البلدين من خلال الحدود ومن خلال تشابك اقتصاد البلدين.

ويضع فيسك في نهاية مقاله سوابق تاريخية غير مستحبة للكويتيين على حد قوله وأن يعوا تلك السوابق ، فالديون الساحقة التي نصت عليها إتفاقية فرساي على ألمانيا في السابق درس كاف للكويتيين الذي عليهم أن ينظروا للمستقبل وينظروا لعراق المستقبل بعد عشرين عاما حيث سيكون هناك زعيم جديد للعراق، وفي ما يلي نص مقال روبرت فيسك :

He was speaking to the deaf. Kuwait is currently being as ruthless – or greedy – in its demands as it was before Saddam invaded on 2 August 1990. In the weeks before the attack, Kuwait had raised its oil production from 1.5 million barrels a day – the Opec quota – to 1.9 million. Saddam claimed that a fall of just $1 a barrel – it had already fallen from $18 to $14 – would cost Iraq, which had only two years earlier finally concluded its eight-year war with Iran, $1bn a year in lost income.
Saddam also claimed that Kuwait had been stealing oil from Iraq's southern fields by boring northwards along their mutual frontier; in other words, Kuwait was thieving the resources of the nation whose armies saved it from Iran's revolution.
Exclusive as these claims appeared to be – although no one could contradict the rise in Kuwaiti oil production – this formed part of the background to the frontier dispute which Kuwait is still haggling over.
Kuwait is still demanding not only reparations but another $16bn in loans that funded the war with Iran, a conflict that has already entered the history books. No wonder, then, that poor old Iraq – whose current oil revenues have fallen from $7bn just over a year ago to just over $2bn in May – is considering a request for $7bn in loans from the International Monetary Fund.
Since the current Iraqi government is effectively a Shia Muslim administration, Mr Maliki has reason to feel aggrieved. The Shia suffered more from Saddam than the Kuwaitis, and Iraq today is a friendly nation – if it really is a state – rather than an international pariah. The debt burden to Kuwait is beginning to sniff like that other outrageous set of reparations levelled against another state, Germany, in 1919. Which is why a number of countries to whom Iraq owed debts – the United Arab Emirates has just written off $7bn – have abandoned their reparations demands after the usual American pressure.
So is this just typical Kuwaiti meanness, an oil-dripping emirate with a per capita income of $41,000 further crushing a nation with a per capita income of less that $4,000? Middle East oil analysts have their doubts. 'The Kuwaitis have always had a reputation for stinginess,' one said yesterday in despair. 'But I think there is more to this than you think. Kuwait was a founder of the Gulf development fund and in the '60s, '70s and '80s, treated Palestinians and Lebanese without restrictions – and the Palestinians then betrayed the Kuwaitis by falling in with Saddam after the 1990 invasion.'
But there is more – and it involves the ethnic balance in the two nations' populations. 'Maybe 40 per cent of people in Kuwait are now Shia rather than Sunni Muslims and these people are now investing heavily in southern Iraq,' the oil man said yesterday. 'The Kuwaiti Shias are becoming 'Basra-ites' and vice versa. More and more Shia from the south of Iraq are becoming businessmen and trading with Kuwait. This causes a blurring of the border between the two countries, a feeling that the two economies are becoming linked. No wonder the Kuwaitis want to stand by the letter of the law.'
There are some unpleasant precedents for the Kuwaitis. The crushing debt which the Treaty of Versailles heaped upon Germany was lesson enough; Germany's financial loss became Hitler's gain. Maybe the Kuwaitis should pull out some history books and ponder what Iraq will look like – and who its leader may be – in 20 years' time.

Robert Fisk