KUWAIT: There are many who would hesitate at the thought of investing their hard-earned cash in a potential war zone, but that is just what Kuwaitis are doing.
With the threat of war looming against Iraq, hundreds of millions of dollars of Kuwaiti capital is being withdrawn from the US and invested back in Kuwait.
Kuwait's stock market has soared by over 30 per cent in the past year, and last month $90 million alone was removed from investment projects in the US.
The reason according to one Kuwaiti investor is simple, "People in Kuwait are looking at what happened to America on September 11, and all the threats of further terrorists, and have reached the decision that its safer to keep the money at home," said the investor.
The possibility of a war against Iraq which would remove Saddam Hussein has also been inspiring rather than depressing investor's confidence.
Mr Hashim al-Azmi is one such investor who has withdrawn over $2 million from an portfolio of US shares and has plans to begin a luxury car company to target what he hopes will be a new generation of wealthy Iraqis with money to spend following a war against Iraq.
There are, however, deeper reasons for the turning tide of Kuwaiti capital investments in the US, estimated at being over $2 billion annually.
Following investigations into the September 11th attacks there has been a clampdown on financial transactions with the Arab world, especially for countries, like Kuwait, which have been sources of al-Qaeda financing in the past. Informal money transfers which bypass the international banking system, highly popular in the middle east, have also come under scrutiny.
The recent allegations that the Saudi royal family has been indirectly involved in financing the September 11th hijackers has also angered many in Kuwait.