I. IDENTIFICATION
1. The Issue
During the Persian Gulf War from the fall of late 1990 to early 1991, Iraq embarked on a systematic destruction of Kuwait's oil industry, and Iraqi forces set fire to 789 individual Kuwaiti oil wells. The attendant results were catastrophic both from an economic and ecological standpoint. Kuwait's economy suffered a precipitous drop in export revenues immediately after the Gulf War, due to the inability to make up the production differences from the damaged oil wells. The ecological landscape of Kuwait and the Persian Gulf was irrevocably damaged due to the destruction unleashedsed by the burning oil wells, and it may be generations before this environment is restored to its pre-war balance. This case study examines the impact of the Gulf War on the Kuwaiti economic and ecological systems.
CASE NUMBER:
CASE MNEMONIC: KUWAIT
CASE NAME: The Economic and Environmental Impact of the
Gulf War on Kuwait and Persian Gulf
2.
Prior to Iraq's invasion in August 1990, Kuwait was one of the most prosperous nations in the world, due to its small population (roughly 1.7 million) and its inordinate oil reserves (Kuwait controlled ten percent of the world's oil reserves) which generated billions and billions of export revenues. Kuwait's staggering wealth before the Iraqi invasion was due to the rise in global oil prices during the mid-1970s and the steadily increasing production of Kuwait's oil reserves of 94,525 billion barrels.
By the eve of the Iraqi invasion, Kuwait had set production quotas to almost 1.9 million barrels per day, which coincided with a sharp drop in the price of oil. By the summer of 1990, Kuwaiti overproduction had become a serious point of contention with Iraq, as it needed to service almost $70 billion in debt it had accrued as a result of financing the Iran-Iraq War. While Iraqi officials continued to warn Kuwait that it would not tolerate the artificial depression of oil prices due to Kuwaiti overproduction, Kuwait did not heed these admonitions. Some analysts have speculated that one of Saddam Hussein's main motivations in invading Iraq was to punish the ruling al-Sabah family in Kuwait for not stopping its policy of overproduction.
The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 became a seminal event in modern Middle Eastern history, and became the first time that an Arab nation usurped the territorial integrity of a fellow Arab state. The Gulf crisis also became the watershed event for the post-Cold War era, as many believed that it would be close to impossible to craft a truly global coalition to combat Iraqi aggression in the Persian Gulf. During the coalition buildup of Desert Shield, much was made over the potential use of Iraq's putative weapons of mass destruction (WMD) arsenal and the concomitant effects of such weapons. In addition, some experts predicted that the coalition was in for a protracted battle, due to the numerical strength of the Iraqi armed forces and due to Saddam Hussein's penchant for accepting high casualties in combat, a prospect that most coalition members were not willing to even contemplate.
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
At the beginning of the crisis, little attention was devoted to the potential impact of a sustained, combined arms form of warfare on the regional environment. However, many environmentalists and concerned scientists soon began to discuss the potential ramifications of such activity, given the the scale of the oil holdings in the Kuwaiti theater of operations (KTO). By December 1990, experts began to postulate as to the exact magnitude a deliberate plan of eco-terrorism by Iraq, and analyses varied that this action would cause the release of anywhere from three million to almost ten million barrels of oil per day. Dr. Paul Crutzen, a top scientist at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, estimated that the sustained burning of ten million barrels of oil per day for one hundred days would effectuate environmental hazards on an order of magnitude greater than any prior man-made environmental disaster. He postulated that such a campaign would produce a blanket of soot and smoke that would cover half of the northern hemisphere. After the first oil wells were discovered ablaze in January 1991, Carl Sagan stated "'We think the net effects will be very similar to the explosion of the Indonesian volcano Tambora in 1815, which resulted in the year 1816 being known as the year without a summer.'" Sagan was concerned that the resulting soot and plumes from the oil fires would wreak havoc on the monsoon patterns in southern and central Asia, thereby shutting off rains and leaving hundreds of millions of people in the region with nothing to harvest. Dire predictions such as these were generated on the basis data generated from the computer modeling data of the ecological results of a Soviet-American nuclear exchange, or the concept which became known as "nuclear winter".
By February 1991, reports indicated that up to 190 oil
wells had been set ablaze by Iraqi occupation forces in Kuwait, and
after the coalition forces ejected Iraqi troops from the KTO in mid
March 1991, almost 800 oil wells had been given similar
treatment. It was soon estimated that six million barrels of oil
were burning per day circa March 1991 in Kuwait, and the initial
assessment of the environmental impact was staggering. Concerns
ranged from across a wide variety of environmental disasters. The
amount of soot generated was one such cause of concern, as one gram
of soot can block out two-thirds of the light falling over an area
of eight to ten square meters. Accordingly, scientists calculated
that the release of two million barrels of oil per day could
generate a plume of smoke and soot which would cover an area of
half of the United States. Weather patterns and climactic
conditions could have carried such a plume great distances so as to
severely hamper agricultural production in remote areas of the
world. Another concern centered around the
effects of the height of such a smoke plume, where upon reaching a
specified height (35,000 to 40,000 feet) and temperature (400
degrees Celsius), such a plume would cause a serious erosion of the
ozone layer which could be highly hazardous to plant and animal
life. Scientists attempted to draw attention to the potential
effects of acid rain from the Kuwaiti oil fires. Kuwaiti crude
contains 2.44% sulfur and .14% nitrogen, and it was estimated that
the daily sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions would be
between 750 and 10,000 tons per day, thereby causing inordinate
damage to agricultural production in the region. In
February 1992 a Wall Street Journal article offered data from a
scientific that rebutted the fatalistic projections made directly
after the war. While the article noted that the Kuwaiti oil fires
significantly impaced the Persian Gulf, their scope was not as
deleterious to other regions of the world. The study estimated
that the fires produced almost 3,400 metric tons of soot per day,
which was significantly lower than earlier projections. The
researchers found that the smoke never rose more than six
kilometers into the atmosphere, even though smoke plumes traveled
1,600 kilometers. However, the Kuwaiti smoke plumes were
short-lived in the atmosphere because they were dissipated by
clouds and precipitation. The study noted that the rate of sulfur
dioxide emissions from the oil fires amounted to 57% of that from
all U.S. electric utilities. In addition, the dissemination of
other gases such as carbon monoxide, ozone, and oxides such as
nitrogen and carbon dioxide, were "well below typical urban levels"
in the United States.
Despite the findings of this study, the magnitude of the
damage to the Gulf ecosystem continued to flow in to researchers
and scientists. Perhaps the greatest fear from the Kuwaiti oil
fires was effect of the vast amount of raw crude that seeped into
the Persian Gulf. The Gulf already comprised one of the most
fragile ecosystems on the planet, and prior to the Iraqi invasion
this ecosystem was attempting to recover from the damage inflicted
upon it during the Iran-Iraq War. As a result of the Iraqi
scorched earth policy, it was estimated that 250 million gallons of
oil - more than 20 times the amount spilled in the Exxon Valdez
disaster in Alaska - flowed into the Gulf, causing irreperable harm
to the biological diversity and physical integrity of the Gulf.
Oil soaked over 440 miles of Saudi Arabia's coastline. Due to the
Gulf's sluggish circulation system, it will take years before the
oil is swept away by the natural forces of the water.
By November 1991 the last of the burning oil wells had been
capped, but the scale of damage to the Kuwaiti economy and
ecological environment was just beginning to be assessed. Hundreds
of miles of the Kuwaiti desert were left uninhabitable, due to the
accumulation of oil lakes and of soot from the burning wells. The
impact of the oil spillage on the biodiversity of the Gulf has yet
to be fully assessed, yet based on the biologics that inhabitated
the region prior to the Gulf War, it can be adduced that they are
now at serious risk. One to two million of migratory birds visit
the Gulf each year on their way to northern breeding grounds, and
it has been documented that thousands of comorants, migratory birds
indigenous to the Gulf region, died as a result of exposure to oil
or from polluted air.
The fishing industry in the Gulf was deleteriously affected by
the oil spillage into the Gulf, which was important due to the fact
that it is one of the most vibrant productive activties in the
region after the production of oil. As an example of the vibrancy
of this industry, prior to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait the Gulf
had yielded harvests of marine life of up to 120,000 tons of fish
a year; after the oil spillage, these numbers significantly
dropped. In addition to this degredation to an economic activity,
many people living on the Gulf coast depend on fishing as purely a
subsistence activity, and the oil spillage has disrupted the
spawning of shrimp and fish. Other species effected by the oil
spillage included green and hawksbill turtles (already classified
as endangered species), leatherback and loggerhead turtles,
dugongs, whales, dolphins, migratory birds like comorants and
flamingoes, and sea snakes. Interestingly, environmentalists have recently raised concerns
that 'normal' pollution in the Gulf (caused by frequent spillages
of oil and emissions of dirty ballast from passing tankers) poses
a greater environmental threat than any damage inflicted by the
Kuwaiti oil fires. Official statistics indicate that the Gulf is
polluted by 1.14 million tons of oil per year (equivalent to 25,000
barrels of oil per day), which is dispersed by 40 percent of the
more than 6,000 oil tankers which transverse the Gulf each year.
Abdul-Rahman al-Awadi, executive secretary of the Regional
Organization for the Marine Environment (ROPME) lamented "'If we go
on like this, we won't need a war to complete the destruction of
our marine environment - normal (tanker) operations will do it.'"
Another concern raised about the spillage of oil into the
Gulf stemmed from the overall reliance on water in the region.
Seventy to ninety percent of the populace depend on desalination
plants for fresh water supplies, and the oil spillage threatened
the precious desalination plants, as well as power plants and
industrial facilities all along the Gulf coast. As to the direct
impact on human health, health experts noted that the residual
effects of hydrocarbons in the air or in peoples' bodies would
precipitate a dramatic increase in lung cancer and birth defects
across the region in as little as fifeteen years. Other scientists
predicted that Kuwait's death rate could rise by as much as ten
percent within a short time frame. There has been intense
speculation in the United States that the mysterious "Gulf War
Syndrome", which currently affects almost 10,000 U.S. troops who
served in the Gulf, may have been caused by the release of
chemicals from the burning oil wells.
In 1993 Farouq al-Baz, director of Boston University's Center
for Remote Sensing, stated that more than 240 oil lakes had been
discovered in the Kuwaiti desert. He added "'Birds, plants and
marine life are still suffering from the effects of the war and
damage to the desert itself could persist for decades.'" In
addition, the mixture of sand and oil residue in the Kuwaiti desert
created large areas which effectively had been reduced to
semi-asphalt surfaces.
By the fall of 1995, disturbing reports were filed from
Kuwait claiming that sunken Iraqi warships filled with chemical
munitions off the coast of Kuwait posed a serious and urgent threat
to the regional environment. While the Kuwaiti government did not
directly mention the chemical munitions on the sunken Iraqi ships
(due for political reasons, and for a lack of hard data confirming
the existence of such munitions), the Kuwaitis dispatched a Dutch
salvage team to investigate these allegations. After learning of
such reports, environmentalists began to fear the possible polution
of the Gulf from the chemical munitions, and expressed their
concern over the potential impact on the Gulf desalinization
plants.
In addition to these concerns, experts also warned that up to
100,000 tons of crude oil could be released from the Amuriyan, a
sunken Iraqi tanker in the northern Gulf. The Amuriyan lies
half-submerged in about 120 feet of international waters almost 15
miles northeast of Kuwait's Bubiyan Island in the northern Gulf,
close the Shatt al-Arab estuary. By September 1995, Kuwait
filed a $385 million claim against Iraq for compensation for
environmental damage due to Iraq's occupation of Kuwait. More
specifically, Kuwait submitted five claims to the United Nations
for environmental damages covering health, costal areas, maritime
environment, ground water resources, and desert environmental
damages. ECONOMIC IMPACT While the environmental
impact of the Iraqi scorched earth policy has been well documented,
the economic impact of this Iraqi policy has not been as well
investigated. At the most basic level, the Iraqi acts severly
deflated the Kuwaiti economy for almost a two year period from
early 1991 to late 1992, as the Kuwaiti oil industry suffered a
massive drop in production due to the destruction imposed on so
many oil wells. Table 1 reflects the impact the Gulf War had on
the Kuwaiti oil industry.
Table 1
Source: International Financial Statistics, August
1995 Table 2 displays the precipitous drop in the Kuwaiti
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Gross National Product (GNP) from
the loss of oil revenues as a result of the Gulf War. Table
2 Source: International Financial Statistics, August 1995
Kuwait's GDP increased from 1993 to 1995 as a result of the
resurgence of its oil industry. Oil exports are once again on the
rise after they hit an all time low between 1990-1991, and Kuwait
expects to produce three million barrels per day by 2005. Kuwait
currently produces almost two and one half million barrels per day.
In spite of the current strength of the Kuwaiti oil industry,
Kuwait has accumulated almost $40 billion in external debt in order
to finance the cost of internal reconstruction. Prior to the Gulf
War, Kuwait's public debt hovered at a more manageable amount of
eight billion dollars. Kuwait has suffered severe economic and environmental
dislocations as a resultof Iraq's scorched earth policy during its
occupation of Kuwait during the Gulf War. The forecast for the
recovery of Kuwait's economy appears optimistic, given the
increased productive capacity of the oil industry. However, it may
be years, if not generations, before the full extent of the damage
to the physical integrity of the region and to human, animal, and
plant life, is fully assessed. These environmental costs may have
repercussions not only for the region, but for other countries in
central and south Asia. For example, some scientists have
speculated that a 1994 cyclone in Bangladesh which killed 100,000
people was precipitated due to climactic changes from the Kuwait
oil fires. The conflagration in Kuwait demonstrates the danger in
conducting large scale modern combat in an environmentally fragile
area, and shows how vulnerable all oil-producing nations are to
this type of environmental and economic disaster in the future.
At a bare minimum, the Kuwaiti environmental disaster has
galvanized Gulf policymakers to pay closer attention to the
potential economic and environmental ramifications of conflict in
their region. Kuwait and the other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)
member states have sought to tighten existing environmental
regulations so as to preclude any similar environmental disasters
in the future. In November 1995, the GCC states met to discuss the
prospects for unifying their environmental laws, drafting new
uniform standards for environmental protection, and setting up
environmental safeguards in the Gulf.
3. Related Cases
Key Words: OIL PERSIAN
4. Author Javed Ali, Comparative and Regional
Studies, Middle East II. 5. Discourse and Status: DISagreement and COMPlete
6. Forum and Scope: KUWAit and UNILateral
While there is no dedicated forum for Kuwait to air its
grievances against Iraq, it has been able to damage claims to a
United Nations Gulf War Compensation Committee.
7. Decision Breadth: Immediate effects on KUWAit;
residual effects on other GULF countries.
8. Legal Standing: LAW
As mentioned above, while there is no specific treaty
that covers Iraq's actions against Kuwait, Kuwait has been able to
submit claims to a UN compensation committee. In addition, the GCC
nations have met in an attempt to coordinate environmental
regulations for the entire region, and have attempted to establish
environmental safeguards throughout the region.
III. 9. Geographic Locations
Geographic Domain: MIDEAST
Geographic SITE: PERSIAN gulf
Geographic Impact: KUWAit
10. Sub-National Factors
SUB-STATE: YES
The oil fires in Kuwait have severely damaged the
economic and environmental infrastructure of Kuwait, and the damage
assessments are only now being calculated.
11. Types of Habitat
HABITAT TYPE: OCEAN
KEY PRODUCTS: Aquatic and marine life, coral reefs, migratory
birds, snakes, turtles, etc.
IV. TRADE CLUSTER
12. Type of Measure: NAPP
There is no type of trade measure in effect as a
result of the Kuwaiti oil fires.
13. Direct vs. Indirect Impacts: INDirect
14. Relation of Trade Measure to Resource Impact
Directly Related to Product:
15. Trade Product Identification: OIL
16. Economic Data
2.5 million barrels of oil per day, accounting
for roughly 95% of $12.337 billion in export
revenue (1995 data).
Kuwait has a labor force of roughly 570,00,
almost 70% of which is comprised of non-Kuwaiti foreign nationals
(who depend on their relatively generous salaries to remit back to
their families in other Arab nations or in various South Asian
countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Philippines, and
Thailand). The Kuwaiti oil fires caused a precipitous drop in
foreign worker remittances to their homelands, which in turn caused
their families to suffer from a lack of sustained income.
17. Impact of Trade Restriction
In direct damage costs, Kuwait calculates that it
suffered $170 billion in losses, and that this figure may rise to
as high as $700 billion. In order to pay for reconstruction costs
while Kuwait suffered a precipitous decline in oil revenues from
August 1990 to early 1992, Kuwait has amassed an enormous $70
billion dollar debt, an almost tenfold increase from its prewar
debt of $8 billion.
It will take years, if not generations, to assess the
environmental damage costs of the Kuwaiti oil fires, and in
September 1995 Kuwait just recently submitted a $385 million
environmental damage claim against Iraq to the UN.
The competitive effect of the Kuwaiti oil fires on Kuwait has
also yet to be clearly assessed. Kuwait's pre-war production
levels fell from 1.9 million barrels per day after the Iraqi
invasion. It was only until mid 1992 that the Kuwaiti oil industry
was able to launch a vigorous revitalization program. Current
production stands at roughly 2.5 million barrels per day, and the
Kuwaitis estimate that by 2005, it can sustain levels of three
million barrels per day.
18. Industry Sector: OILGAS
19. Exporters and Importers:KUWAit and other GULF
countries
V. ENVIRONMENT CLUSTERS
20. Environmental Problem Type: POLA, POLL, POLS
The Kuwaiti oil fires generated a host of
environmental crises, which effected the air, land, and water in
Kuwait and around the Gulf. The burning oil wells released harmful
gases and oxides into the atmosphere, and generated enormous smoke
plumes that carried soot and ashes over great distances (almost
1,600 kilometers). The oil fires caused almost one and one half
billion barrels of oil to flow in to the Persian Gulf, which
covered almost 440 miles of Gulf coastline. The contamination of
the Gulf threatened the existence of a diverse expanse of animal
life,
21. Number of Species
A wide variety of flora and fauna are at risk due to the
oil spillage and pollution in the Gulf caused by the Kuwaiti oil
fires. A partial list includes various types of turtles, fish,
migratory birds, whales, dugongs, and coral reefs.
22. Impact and Effect
Impact: EXTREMELY HIGH
Effect: 10s of Years, if not entire generations
23. Urgency and Lifetime
1. Urgency: EXTREMELY HIGH
2. Lifetime of Species:
24. Substitutes: CONSERVATION
Timely conservation efforts may lessen the deleterious
impact of the Kuwaiti oil fires, but the degree will be minimal at
best, since the majority of the damage has been inflicted. It is
only the residual effects that can now only either be controlled or
prevented.
Substitutes: SYNTH
The broadening of the Kuwaiti export base, so as
to halt its overreliance on the production and export of oil, may
help to mitigate any future environmental disasters in the future.
This message can be transmitted to most of the Arab OPEC nations,
who continue to rely almost singularly on oil revenues to finance
development and generate government revenues. However, such a
transition may not be imminent, due to the fact that such a
diversification policy would entail widespread economic changes
(e.g., privatization) and political changes (e.g., democratization)
that are currently untenable.
VI. OTHER FACTORS
25. Culture: YES
Iraq's deliberate act of aggression and eco-terrorism
against Kuwait was a seminal event in modern Arab history, for it
represented the first invasion of one sovereign Arab state against
another. The possibility of such an event was heretofore dismissed
as impossible, given the cultural affinity between all Arabs.
Therefore, while individual Arab states may have had grievances
vis-…-vis each others, most Arabists predicted that such
differences would never manifest themselves through armed combat.
Saddam Hussein broke this Arab cultural taboo, and his act of
aggression against his fellow Arab Kuwaitis came a serious shock to
any lingering notions of pan-Arab unity (if there was any resonance
of this left by the time of the Gulf War). Prior acts of Iraqi of
profligate acts of violence against Iranians and Kurds did not
alarm fellow Arabs, since these peoples were not Arab, and Saddam
Hussein had championed himself as the "Sword of the Arabs".
Moreover, Hussein's brutal repression of his own Arab countrymen
was tolerated, for every nation in the region repressed internal
dissent, each to a varying degree.
26. Human Rights: YES
Iraq's aggression against Kuwait was a violation of
the UN Charter, and for causing an act of "aggressive war", Saddam
Hussein could have been indicted as a war criminal. Furthermore,
during its occupation of Kuwait, Iraq forces engaged in the
systematic denial of human rights to Kuwaiti citizens, as
thousands, were murdered, tortured, abused, raped, jailed, and
looted. As Iraq's commander in chief, Saddam Hussein bears direct
responsibility for these actions.
Iraq's systematic campaign of eco-terrorism also
amounted to a flouting of human rights, as tens of thousands of
innocent civilians suffered the deleterious effects from the
Kuwaiti oil fires. The most tragic aspect of the oil fires are
the residual effects that will continue to manifest themselves for
years, if not generations, in Kuwait, the Gulf, and around other
parts of the world.
27. Trans-Boundary Issues: YES
The devastating effects of the Kuwaiti oil fires have
not been limited to Kuwaiti proper, as the entire Gulf physical
landscape and ecosystem has been negatively impacted. As stated
above, almost 440 miles of Gulf coastline has been soaked with oil
from the burning wells, and the smoke plumes generated from the
fires carried up to 1,600 kilometers. Some scientists have
calculated that the Kuwaiti oil fires precipitated climactic
changes were significant enough to cause environmental turbulence,
such as the 1994 cyclones in Bangladesh that killed over 100,000
people. It will takes years to calculate the precise
trans-national effect of the Kuwait oil fires.
28. Relevant Literature
Cable News Network (CNN) Transcript #358.
"Scientists Say Persian Gulf Shoreline Still Devastated", May 11,
1993.
CIA World Factbook, 1995 (Washington, D.C.: Central
Intelligence Agency, 1995).
Cooper, John. "Kuwait: Project Plans Add to Oil Asset
Value", Middle East Economic Digest, April 14, 1995.
Ersan, Inal. "Much Gulf War Pollution Cleared but Leaks
Pose Risk", Reuters, August 24, 1995.
Kemp, Penny. "For Generations to Come" in Phyllis Bennis
and Michael Moushabec, Beyond the Storm (Brooklyn, New York:
Olive Branch Press, 1991), p. 327.
Mardini, Ahmad. "Gulf Environment: Gulf Takes a Unified
Stand on Environment", Inter Press Service, September 11,
1995.
Naj, Amal Kumar. "Kuwait - Oil Well Fires Did Little
Damage To the Global Environment, Study Says", The Wall Street
Journal, May 15, 1992.
Reuters. "Kuwait Environment Still Scarred by Gulf
War", October 27, 1993.
Reuters. "Kuwait Oil Output Nears Pre-Gulf War
Levels", December 26, 1993.
Reuters. "Kuwait Cabinet Debates Reports on Gulf
Chemicals", September 24, 1995.
Reuters World Service. "Kuwait to Ask UN to Help
Check Iraqi Sunk Boats", September 25, 1995.
United Press International (untitled), November 1,
1995.
The Xinhua News Agency. "Kuwait Claims 385 Million
Dollars for Environmental Damage", September 5, 1995.
Zimmer, Carl. "Ecowar", Discover, January 1992, p.
37.
Penny Kemp, "For Generations to Come" in Phyllis Bennis and
Michael Moushabec, Beyond the Storm (Brooklyn, New York: Olive
Branch Press, 1991), p. 327.
"Kuwait Oil Output Nears Pre-Gulf War Levels", Reuters,
December 26, 1993.
Kemp, op. cit., p. 327.
Carl Zimmer, "Ecowar", Discover, January 1992, p. 37.
Ibid., p. 38.
Kemp, op, cit., p. 327.
Ibid., pp. 327.
Ibid., pp., 327-328.
Amal Kumar Naj, "Kuwait - Oil Well Fires Did Little Damage To
the Global Environment, Study Says", The Wall Street Journal, May
15, 1992.
Ibid., p. 332.
Zimmer, op. cit, pp. 38-39.
Kemp, op. cit., pp. 332-333.
See Inal Ersan, "Much Gulf War Pollution Cleared but Leaks Pose
Risk", Reuters, August 24, 1995.
Kemp, op. cit., p. 333.
"Scientists Say Persian Gulf Shoreline Still Devestated", Cable
News Network (CNN) Transcript #358, May 11, 1993.
"Kuwait Environment Still Scarred by Gulf War", Reuters,
October 27, 1993.
"Kuwait Cabinet Debates Reports on Gulf Chemicals", Reuters,
September 24, 1995.
"Kuwait to Ask UN to Help Check Iraqi Sunk Boats", Reuters
World Service, September 25, 1995.
See United Press International (untitled), November 1, 1995.
The total cost of Kuwait's direct damage compensation claims
against Iraq are valued at up to $170 billion, and these costs do
not cover the cost of Kuwait's liberation and reconstruction.
Kuwait has estimated that the direct damage value of Kuwait's
losses sustained during the Iraqi occupation may reach $700
billion. See "Kuwait Claims 385 Million Dollars for
Environmental Damage", The Xinhua News Agency, September 5, 1995.
John Cooper, "Kuwait: Project Plans Add to Oil Asset Value",
Middle East Economic Digest, April 14, 1995.
CIA World Factbook, 1995 (Washington, D.C.: Central
Intelligence Agency, 1995).
See Ahmad Mardini, "Gulf Environment: Gulf Takes a Unified
Stand on Environment", Inter Press Service, September 11, 1995.
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