Things by Saturday evening had a disquieting look and continued to slide to a truly bad situation bv the hour. But it is hard to say where. Both the White House and the White Hall reacted sharph to a reported Iraqi deployment of elite divisions on its border with Kuwait. And at the UN the US ambassador had harsh words to warn Iraq against a repetition of past mistakes — the same phrase coming handy to President Clinton who pledged meeting such mistakes with the some resolve as before. And warships were sent to the Persian Gulf,,US troops and Patriot batteries moved to Kuwait. One only hopes that the situation is not indeed as bad as it is looking.

In Kuwait itself, however, the situation was far from panicky The general perception among the ordinary Kuwaiti citizen as also some responsible diplomats was that Iraqi troops movement towards south was true but it certainly did not appear like armour on the warpath. Iraq has categorically denied any plan to invade Kuwait and political analysts were convinced of there being compelling domestic reasons for Saddam to embark on such suspicious-looking military action at a time Iraq was lobbying hard for the lifting of UN sanctions against Baghdad. The wfiole exercise so far on the part of the west boils down to as if Washington and London were not taking any chances.

As it would be inconceivably foolish for the deployment to shape into a regular invasion and invite retribution harsher than before a repetition of past mistakes’ is highly improbable. On the other hand, the west is being deliberately cruel on the whole Iraqi nation by prolonging the sanctions and using these as a lever to get Baghdad eat the dust and be quick about accepting Kuwaiti sovereignty and decent about monitoring the curbing of Saddam's military might. A more cynical and hardly covert side to the sanctions is that these aim at pushing the Iraqi people to a’state of desperation leading to their rejection of Saddam. Many see in the troops movement Saddam s attempt to contain exactly such eruptions. And after all southern Iraq has the Shi’ite Muslims in the majority — a community not holding a sunni Saddam particularly in love and esteem. If it is in the interest of the nations that Saddam doesn’t anymore embark on precipitate action, it is equally, if not more, necessary for the good of all that the sanctions go. The invasion' is something as yet to materialise and the suffering of the Iraqi people is already there for years.

The Mideast scenario has since the Gulf War undergone a seachange. The emergence of a virtual Palestine state headed by PLO is having all kinds of fall-out including Jordan coming to terms with Israel and Syria taking up a rather subdued posture. The west had never had it so good in the region. These developments have seriously reduced the options open to Saddam — if he still harbours the dream of forging a pan—Arab nationalism with himself at its head, that is. In the circumstances the west would be well-advised to weigh the possible consequences of having an Iraq all anarchic and battered in the mind as a result of an assassinated or otherwise removed Saddam rather than limiting itself to muscle-flexing in reaction to internal Iraqi military action. The present state of tension to which the west has worked itself up to is all hopefully directed to Baghdad, for effect. It will be dangerous if this reaction should represent all of the west's ideas on the Iraqi-Kuwaiti-Saudi question. If you have peace and the good of the nations in your heart, pray do not push Iraq to desperation. Allow them some way out of the hell they have created for themselves.