Special to The Japan Times UMM QASR, southern Iraq -- The Iraqi-Kuwaiti frontier officially ranks as one of the world's most dangerous flash points. But these days, the only threat to man or beast beneath a ferocious sun is the snakes and scorpions that inhabit these burning sandy wastes. "This is the world's most successful peacekeeping operation," said Ireland's Major Gen. John Vize, who commands the small United Nations force that observers and patrols it -- successful by the yardstick that his men have almost nothing serious to do.

UNIKOM is there because on Aug. 3 1990, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein sent his army across this frontier.

The Zionist takeover of Palestine aside, Hussein thereby dealt the greatest single blow to the existing Middle Eastern order since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, when most of its frontiers were drawn. He posed a dire and immediate threat to the rest of the Persian Gulf and its fabulous oil riches, lifeblood of the industrialized world. He threw the Arabs into unprecedented turmoil. U.S. President George Bush called him "the new Hitler," and five months later, in Operation Desert Storm, an American-led coalition force liberated Kuwait and swept deep into southern Iraq, bringing the Saddam regime to the very edge of collapse.