Internal Political Situation: Kuwait p.12

FO 371/148912 1960
1

1

for
/the policy you suggested. Fraser said, however,

that he would be coming to Kuwait during October,
either before or after the Beirut oil conference,

and that he would discuss these matters with you.

You may then be able to persuade him that "Arabisation
now" is in the Company's interests. I
cannot say I am convinced as yet.
7. It seems to me that there may be some thing of a vicious circle in all this: because
the non-Kuwaiti Arabs know that they cannot

hague w sense y security &
become Kuwaiti citizens, th y feel no loyalty
towards the State of Kuwait and, by extension,
the Company, and therefore are unreliable
employees from the Company's point of view.
since they have no sense of security".
I cannot help thinking, however, that, at any

rate as regards the first generation of

NOTHING TO BE WRITTEN IN THIS MARGIN

non-Kuwaiti Arabs, they are probably more
like the French who venture abroad, than like
the British in that, having made a nice little
nest-egg in Kuwait, they intend to spend their
declining years in their country of origin

or somewhere more salubrious than Kuwait,
and even if they had acquired Kuwaiti nationality
they would probably here dropped it unless it

paid them to be a foreigner in the place to

which they retire. In addition Fraser pointed
out that all the expatriates living ñ Kuwait
(and he calculated these as being about
100,000 as against 150,000 Kuwaiti-born) a
large proportion, perhaps 80%, constituted the
labour force required in Kuwait during the
period of expansion, but likely to go home when

verron
expansion ceased, inorder to make their well 
d make there
gotten gains go further among their own kith