Page 174 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

Sorcerers’ Apprentices I7I

and the area made into a neutral zone in which Najd and Kuwait were to enjoy
equal rights of sovereignty.
The new ruler of Kuwait, Ahmad ibn Jabir, who had succeeded on the death
of his uncle Salim in February 1921, never forgave the British government for
what it had done to him at Uqair. He forgot, or preferred to forget, that if it had
not been for British intervention and protection in the two years preceding the
settlement of the frontier, Kuwait might well have been overrun by Ibn Saud’s
forces and annexed to his dominions. He had, in truth, lost little, but there was
no convincing him of the fact. As an expression of his resentment he refused for
years thereafter to consider awarding an oil concession to a British company,

even though he was required by an agreement concluded by Mubarak ibn
Sabah in 1913 to secure the consent of the British government to the grant of
any such concession. His obstinacy was largely offset by the lack of interest on
the part of the main British oil company in the Gulf, Anglo-Persian, in securing
a concession in Kuwait, primarily because it doubted whether oil was to be
found there in any quantity. What eventually made Anglo-Persian seek a
concession was the prodding of the British government and the growing

possibility that a concession might be awarded to the Gulf Oil Company of
Pittsburgh. The outcome was a compromise: Anglo-Persian and Gulf Oil
together formed the Kuwait Oil Company in December 1933, each holding a
50 per cent share, and twelve months later Shaikh Ahmad awarded the
company a concession for seventy-five years. He had got what he had wanted
all along - the participation of the Americans in the exploitation of Kuwait’s oil
and the retention of the goodwill of the British government upon whom he
depended for the preservation of his independence. Without this protection

Kuwait might well have been swallowed up by Iraq and Saudi Arabia in the
years between the wars.
Ahmad ibn Jabir died in 1950, by which time Kuwait was on its way to
becoming the richest principality per capita in the Gulf. Under his successors
(Abdullah ibn Salim, 1950-64 and Sabah ibn Salim, 1964—77) the practice of
appeasement as the guiding principle of state policy was developed to the level
of a higher art form. Kuwait took shelter behind Britain as the protecting

power in the Gulf against the boisterous winds of nationalism which blew from
Cairo and Damascus in the 1950s; and then, when the moment was opportune
m 1961, she trimmed her sails to these same winds by abrogating her engage­
ments with Britain. Iraq immediately preferred a claim to sovereignty over the
shaikhdom and threatened to enforce it, whereupon the Kuwaitis swiftly
turned to Britain to protect them from invasion. When the crisis was past — it
will be described more fully in Chapter 6 below — Kuwait sought to avert any
uture threat by buying off the Iraqis with a substantial ‘loan’. It was thought
prudent, however, to retain the assurance given by Britain in 1961 to assist

uwait should the need arise. The announcement by the British government
in January 1968 of its intention to withdraw from the Gulf by the end of 1971