Priorities

On the 27th of November 1965, shortly after the demise of his loving brother, HH Sheikh Abdullah AlSalem, Sheikh Sabah Al-Salem Mubarak Al-Sabah became the new Amir of Kuwait. At once one of his priorities was to solve the chronic frontier problem, so, he went to Baghdad in person (in 1966) for a final agreement with the Iraqi government, which was avoiding solving the issue under the pretext of technicalities related to survey maps.

Finally a joint technical committee was to carry out the demarcation of frontier, but it was never implemented because of Iraqi dawdling.

In 1967 the encroachment of Iraqi forces at Abdaly, at Safwan and at the Rumailah oilfield overrunning Bedouins grazing their livestock in the region, evoked heated protests in Kuwait. Iraq quickly changed its attitude when it received a large loan from Kuwait to finance a dam project. Then taking advantage of the British departure from the Gulf region in the late sixties, and the deterioration of Iran-Iraq relations over the issue of Shat Al Arab, Iraq deployed its troops at the island of Bubiyan in 1969, under the pretext that, Kuwait did carry out talks with the Iranian Government concerning the partition of the continental shelf region without consulting Iraq.

Supposedly the deployment of Iraqi troops at Bubiyan was to be a temporary measure against an Iranian threat on the port of Umm Qaser. But after the threat subsided the Iraqi troops still remained in