The Political Interest Our Man in Kuwait

By Michael Kramer

On Friday evening, March 1, an advance guard of six Kuwaiti Cabinet ministers arrived home to reclaim control of their nation. The news was all bad. The oil-well fires were worse than expected, food and medicine were in short supply, water and electricity were memories. But the prime topic of conversation that night was the "Skip problem."

The "Skip" in question was Edward ("Skip") Gnehm Jr., 46, the U.S. ambassador to Kuwait. The "problem" was really a fear. Many Kuwaitis were afraid that the U.S., after having freed their country from Iraq's domination, aimed to run the place as an American colony and that Skip Gnehm was George Bush's designated proconsul.

There never was a real problem, of course. The Kuwaitis themselves have been running the show all along (with disastrous consequences). "Skip is an adviser, a facilitator," says Ali Salem, a Kuwaiti resistance leader who stayed behind when the government fled to exile last August. "It's the government's own incompetence that has made them wary of someone who knows what he's doing. The fact is, we would probably be in better shape today if we had made Gnehm proconsul."

A native of Georgia whose two great-grandfathers fought on different sides during the Civil War, Gnehm has a reputation for navigating successfully through difficult straits. In the wake of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, when relations between the U.S. and Syria were restored, it was Gnehm who ran the U.S. interests section in Damascus. When Washington wanted a presence in Riyadh, the Saudi Arabian capital, Gnehm was selected. When the sensitive issue of reflagging Kuwaiti oil tankers arose during the Iran-Iraq war, Gnehm was a key negotiator. "He is unassuming and unflappable," says Ali al- Khalifa al-Sabah, Kuwait's Finance Minister, "exactly the kind of guy to deal with Arabs like us."

As ambassador to a government without a country, Gnehm found his diplomatic skills tested almost daily at the Sheraton Hotel near Taif, Saudi Arabia, where the Kuwaiti leadership waited out the occupation. Tempers frayed, decisions were postponed, depression was common. A real crisis arose when Iraq started dumping Kuwaiti oil into the gulf in January. The Saudis and Kuwaitis argued over what to do. It took 48 hours of patient haggling, but Gnehm finally got both sides to agree: U.S. bombers would blast Al-Ahmadi oil facility's manifolds to stem the flow. Gnehm's best trick was getting Kuwait's Oil Minister to believe the idea had been his all along.

These days, it is more of the same. It is Gnehm who has prodded the government into revamping its food-distribution system; Gnehm who watches over the American troops trying hard to minimize Kuwaiti retaliation against those who collaborated with the Iraqis; and Gnehm who has insisted that the government's ministers cease promising the imminent return of services, something they are weeks if not months away from accomplishing. In a particularly significant triumph shortly before he welcomed home Kuwait's Emir last Thursday, Gnehm persuaded the electrical-repair teams to begin toiling around the clock; previously, they were putting in eight-hour days. "Imagine," says another Western diplomat, "Kuwait is falling apart, and something that obvious has to be counted as a diplomatic coup."

Through it all, Gnehm speaks softly and smiles constantly. What he knows is simple: most governments are like most people. An outsider can educate and elucidate -- and even kick butt. But in the end, no government can be saved from itself.