Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah
Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah was emir of Kuwait for twenty-nine years, seven months of which he spent in exile because Iraq had annexed his country. He had run the finance ministry through the years when Kuwait became an oil state, and set up the reserve fund that invests the surplus abroad - the oldest sovereign wealth fund in the world, and the thing that kept the government solvent when it had no territory. Kuwait was a founder member of OPEC in 1960 and among the first Gulf states with an elected parliament, which he suspended twice. He supported Iraq financially through its war with Iran in the 1980s, which is part of why the invasion of 1990 was such a shock: Kuwait was the creditor. Saddam Hussein's grievances were the debt, the price of oil, and a claim that Kuwait was drilling into an Iraqi field. Iraq invaded on 2 August 1990 and declared Kuwait its nineteenth province. The emir escaped by car to Saudi Arabia hours ahead of the troops sent for him, and governed from a hotel in Taif while a coalition of thirty-five states assembled. The occupation lasted seven months and ended in a hundred-hour ground war; the retreating army set fire to more than six hundred oil wells, which burned for months. He returned in March 1991, restored the parliament in 1992, and survived a car bomb the following year. His reign ended with a succession so contested that parliament voted to remove his immediate successor nine days later on grounds of ill health.
- Lived: 1926 CE – 2006 CE
- Nationality: Kuwaiti
- Roles: head_of_state, politician
