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Kuwait
Territorial Disputes
Before the oil era, the gulf states made little effort to delineate
their territories. Members of Arab tribes felt loyalty to their
tribe or shaykh and tended to roam across the Arabian desert according
to the needs of their flocks. Official boundaries meant little,
and the concept of allegiance to a distinct political unit was
absent. Organized authority was confined to ports and oases. The
delineation of borders began with the signing of the first oil
concessions in the 1930s. The national boundaries had been defined
by the British, but many of these borders were never properly
demarcated, leaving opportunities for contention, especially in
areas of the most valuable oil deposits. Until 1971 British-led
forces maintained peace and order in the gulf, and British officials
arbitrated local quarrels. After the withdrawal of these forces
and officials, old territorial claims and suppressed tribal animosities
rose to the surface. The concept of the modern state- -introduced
into the gulf region by the European powers--and the sudden importance
of boundaries to define ownership of oil deposits kindled acute
territorial disputes.
Iran has often laid claim to Bahrain, based on its seventeenth-century
defeat of the Portuguese and its subsequent occupation of the
Bahrain archipelago. The Arab clan of the Al Khalifa, which has
been the ruling family of Bahrain since the eighteenth century,
in turn pushed out the Iranians in 1780. The late shah, Mohammad
Reza Pahlavi, raised the Bahrain question when the British withdrew
from areas east of Suez, but he dropped his demand after a 1970
UN-sponsored plebiscite showed that Bahrainis overwhelmingly preferred
independence to Iranian hegemony. The religious leaders of the
Iranian Revolution revived the claim to Bahrain primarily on the
grounds that the majority of Bahrainis were Shia Muslims. Iranian
secular leaders subsequently renounced the claim in an attempt
to establish better relations with Bahrain.
In 1971 Iranian forces occupied the islands of Abu Musa, Tunb
al Kubra (Greater Tumb), and Tunb as Sughra (Lesser Tumb), located
at the mouth of the gulf between Iran and the UAE. The Iranians
reasserted their historic claims to the islands, although the
Iranians had been dislodged by the British in the late nineteenth
century. Iran continued to occupy the islands in 1993, and its
action remained a source of contention with the UAE, which claimed
authority by virtue of Britain's transfer of the islands to the
amirates of Sharjah and Ras al Khaymah. By late 1992, Sharjah
and Iran had reached agreement with regard to Abu Musa, but Ras
al Khaymah had not reached a settlement with Iran concerning Greater
Tumb and Lesser Tumb.
Another point of contention in the gulf is the Bahraini claim
to Az Zubarah on the northwest coast of Qatar and to Hawar and
the adjacent islands forty kilometers south of Az Zubarah, claims
that stem from former tribal areas and dynastic struggles. The
Al Khalifa had settled at Az Zubarah before driving the Iranians
out of Bahrain in the eighteenth century. The Al Thani ruling
family of Qatar vigorously dispute the Al Khalifa claim to the
old settlement area now in Qatari hands as well as laying claim
to the Bahraini-occupied Hawar and adjacent islands, a stone's
throw from the mainland of Qatar but more than twenty kilometers
from Bahrain. The simmering quarrel reignited in the spring of
1986 when Qatari helicopters removed and "kidnapped" workmen constructing
a Bahraini coast guard station on Fasht ad Dibal, a reef off the
coast of Qatar. Through Saudi mediation, the parties reached a
fragile truce, whereby the Bahrainis agreed to remove their installations.
However, in 1991 the dispute flared up again after Qatar instituted
proceedings to let the International Court of Justice in The Hague
decide whether it had jurisdiction. (Bahrain refused the jurisdiction
of the court, and as of early 1993 the dispute was unresolved.)
The two countries exchanged complaints that their respective naval
vessels had harassed the other's shipping in disputed waters.
As one pretext for his invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Saddam Husayn
revived a long-standing Iraqi claim to the whole of Kuwait based
on Ottoman boundaries. Ottoman Turkey exercised a tenuous sovereignty
over Kuwait in the late nineteenth century, but the area passed
under British protection in 1899. In 1932 Iraq informally confirmed
its border with Kuwait, which had previously been demarcated by
the British. In 1961, after Kuwait's independence and the withdrawal
of British troops, Iraq reasserted its claim to the amirate based
on the Ottomans' having attached it to Basra Province. British
troops and aircraft were rushed back to Kuwait. A Saudi-led force
of 3,000 from the League of Arab States (Arab League) that supported
Kuwait against Iraqi pressure soon replaced them.
The boundary issue again arose when the Baath (Arab Socialist
Resurrection) Party came to power in Iraq after a 1963 revolution.
The new government officially recognized the independence of Kuwait
and the boundaries Iraq had accepted in 1932. Iraq nevertheless
reinstated its claims to Bubiyan and Warbah in 1973, massing troops
at the border. During the 1980-88 war with Iran, Iraq pressed
for a long-term lease to the islands in order to improve its access
to the gulf and its strategic position. Although Kuwait rebuffed
Iraq, relations continued to be strained by boundary issues and
inconclusive negotiations over the status of the islands.
In August 1991, Kuwait charged that a force of Iraqis, backed
by gunboats, had attacked Bubiyan but had been repulsed and many
of the invaders captured. UN investigators found that the Iraqis
had come from fishing boats and had probably been scavenging for
military supplies abandoned after the Persian Gulf War. Kuwait
was suspected of having exaggerated the incident to underscore
its need for international support against ongoing Iraqi hostility.
A particularly long and acrimonious disagreement involved claims
over the Al Buraymi Oasis, disputed since the nineteenth century
among tribes from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, and Oman. Although
the tribes residing in the several settlements of the oasis were
from Oman and Abu Dhabi, followers of the Wahhabi (see Glossary)
religious movement that originated in Saudi Arabia had periodically
occupied and exacted tribute from the area. Oil prospecting began
on behalf of Saudi oil interests, and in 1952 the Saudis sent
a small constabulary force to assert control of the oasis. When
arbitration efforts broke down in 1955, the British dispatched
the Trucial Oman Scouts to expel the Saudi contingent. After a
new round of negotiations, a settlement was reached whereby Saudi
Arabia recognized claims of Abu Dhabi and Oman to the oasis. In
return, Abu Dhabi agreed to grant Saudi Arabia a land corridor
to the gulf and a share of a disputed oil field. Other disagreements
over boundaries and water rights remained, however.
The border between Oman and Yemen remained only partially defined,
and, as of early 1993, border clashes had not occurred since 1988.
Improving relations between Oman and the People's Democratic Republic
of Yemen (PDRY, also seen as South Yemen)-- which was reunited
with the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR, also seen as North Yemen) in
1990--offered some hope that the border would be demarcated. Earlier,
the physical separation of the southeern portion of Oman from
its territory on the Musandam Peninsula (Ras Musandam) was a source
of friction between Oman and the various neighboring amirates
that became the UAE in 1971. Differences over the disputed territory
appeared to have subsided after the onset of the Iran-Iraq War
in 1980.
Data as of January 1993
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