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Sorcerers' Apprentices 175

cause of the native Kuwaiti ‘workers’ and the Arab masses generally, and
continually inveighing against the evils of Western ‘imperialism’ and Zionism.
The adoption by the ANM after the Arab defeat by Israel in 1967 of a
Marxist-Leninist strategy of the armed struggle of the Arab peoples against
Zionism, ‘imperialism’ and Arab ‘reaction’ split the Kuwaiti branch of the

movement as it split every other branch. At an ANM conference on the Gulf in
Beirut at the end of 1967 Ahmad al-Khatib and his comrades were severely
criticized for their ‘bourgeois’ tendencies and for resisting the application of
the new strategy to Kuwait. The criticism was not without some point, for the
radicalism of the Kuwaiti ANM was all too clearly of the plump and affluent
variety. Although at a second conference on the Gulf in July 1968 the Kuwaiti
delegate protested that the situation in the shaikhdom did not call for

revolutionary violence (‘There are no toiling groups in the country’, he said,
‘except the Bedouins and the Arab workers’ - a statement which afforded an
interesting insight into his attitude to the non-Arab labourers who performed
all the menial tasks), he failed to convince the other delegates, who proceeded
to strip the Kuwaiti branch of its responsibility for ANM operations in the
Gulf. This decision in turn split the membership of the branch, the majority
siding with Ahmad al-Khatib. What the political orientation of the Kuwaiti
ANM has been in the years since then it is difficult to determine for want of

proper information. It would seem, however, to have kept up a flirtation with
extremism, if the reports of Ahmad al-Khatib having remained a member of
the central committee (and perhaps of the politburo) of the PFLP are correct.
Just as the Kuwaiti oligarchy has so far successfully bought off potential
troublemakers at home, it has also managed to avert threats from outside by the
payment of‘protection’ money, largely in the form of grants and loans from the

Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development. Apologists for the fund - and
they are many, not all of them disinterested - insist that it is a model of
enlightened philanthropy, and that to view it as a ‘slush’ fund for political
purposes is the rankest cynicism. Cynicism, rank or otherwise, however, is
difficult to avoid in looking at the record of the fund’s disbursements. These
fall roughly into three categories: money invested for predominantly financial
reasons, i.e. to secure a good return on capital while running no risk that the
principal will not be repaid in full and on time; money loaned to Arab states like

Egypt and Jordan to help with development projects and to earn political
goodwill in return; and money given (sometimes in the guise of loans) to other
Arab states and organizations to secure immunity from interference or subver­
sion. There is nothing particularly reprehensible in all this, especially as
Kuwait is by no means the first small country to purchase its survival by the
payment of Danegeld. What is objectionable is the attempts made by
Kuwaitis, or by others speaking on their behalf, to present these disburse­

ments as inspired chiefly by a generous urge to help their less fortunate fellows.
The Al Sabah have never been exactly noted for their philanthropy, or for