KUWAIT: With war against Iraq only a hair-trigger away should President Saddam Hussein fail to comply with UN resolutions, support for military action has been overwhelming in Kuwait, the country which is likely to be the launch pad for any US-led invasion.
Mr Ahmed al-Jarallah, editor of Kuwait's biggest-selling English-language newspaper, the Arab Times, said: "Show me the Kuwaiti who does not want America to begin a war against Iraq. We all remember what Saddam did to us before."
Despite Mr al-Jarallah's words, support for war is not as comprehensive as at first seems. There are many voices in Kuwait which have not been heard as the US and its allies prepare for war.
They are respectively environmentalists and Kuwait's vast immigrant population: an unlikely and mutually exclusive group who nonetheless all have cogent and powerful reasons for opposing war against Iraq.
Mr Mijbil al-Mutawa is director of the Scientific Centre in Kuwait, and a pioneering environmentalist who is keenly aware of the consequences of bringing war back to the region.
He described his return to Kuwait in the aftermath of the first Gulf war: "The day after the liberation, I went with my family out into the desert, where we used to go camping and picnicking in the winter. I cried when I saw the burning oil wells and polluted desert."
But it is this experience of environmental devastation which has paradoxically dissuaded many green campaigners from speaking out against war. Unlike in the West, the environmental and the anti-war lobby remain deeply divided.
As Mr al-Mutawa explained: "We have an evil dictator a couple of hundred miles up the road who has invaded us before and has threatened to do so again. How do you weigh up which will be the greater cost to the environment: going to war now or Saddam going to war again in the future?
"And because its so difficult to find a consistent position, many environmentalists simply say nothing at all."
Silence is, however, the only option for Kuwaiti's vast immigrant community, which makes up of 60 per cent of the country's population.
The majority of these workers, drawn by Kuwait's oil wealth from other Arab countries and south Asia, are opposed to war, but within Kuwait's limited democracy they are given no political voice.
Abdullah is typical of many immigrants. Originally from Syria, he has spent the past 30 years driving taxis in Kuwait, relying on yearly work permits.
He said: "I'm against war with all my heart, but what can I do? If I, or anyone else, says anything we can easily be expelled from the country. The Kuwaitis want us to work with our mouths shut."
The dangers of war for the immigrant community, as well as the dangers of speaking out, were highlighted clearly enough during the occupation of Kuwait.
When Iraqi tanks rolled across the border on August 2nd, 1990, most Kuwaitis fled the country, leaving the immigrant population to fend for itself.
Without any source of income, many immigrants collaborated with the Iraqi forces, but when the Kuwaitis returned after liberation the immigrant community was charged with disloyalty and huge numbers were expelled.
The Palestinian population, the most vocal and organised immigrant community in Kuwait, was reduced from 450,000 to 30,000.
"The return of war with military action against Iraq will be a disaster for us," said Abdullah. "If there is any danger, the Kuwaitis will simply leave again and then immigrants will do whatever they have to do in order to live. There's nothing we can do."