Women are still awaiting the vote. Hardly anyone expects Saddam to return anytime soon across the U.N.-monitored border. But rather than build its own army, Kuwait finances a rotating force of 5,000 American and British soldiers. Some of the old certainties are gone. Kuwait stock exchange trading volume dropped 30 percent in 2000 and is now at its lowest point in five years.
Uncounted billions pour into private bank accounts and homes abroad.
She described a painful insecurity behind the neon-lit facades of a rebuilt Kuwait. The Al Sabah family has governed this New Jersey-size enclave for 250 years. The British who ran it until 1961 left an oil industry. With the 1973 oil-price boom, Kuwait struck it rich. Kuwait's 750,000 citizens depended heavily on a work force of 450,000 Palestinians, mostly skilled workers and managers, and even more imported short-term Asian laborers.