$Unique_ID{bob00378} $Pretitle{} $Title{Kuwait Chapter 2B. Politics and the Social Order} $Subtitle{} $Author{Darrel R. Eglin;Donald M. Seekins} $Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army} $Subject{kuwait kuwait's states political kuwaiti united foreign relations iraq social see pictures see figures } $Date{1984} $Log{See Modernistic Mosque*0037802.scf } Title: Kuwait Book: Persian Gulf States, An Area Study: Kuwait Author: Darrel R. Eglin;Donald M. Seekins Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army Date: 1984 Chapter 2B. Politics and the Social Order Despite its small population, Kuwait had become a country of considerable social complexity by 1984, and different communities derived various levels of status depending on their religious and ethnic identities and on the date of their or their ancestors' immigration into Kuwait. Such social stratification and cleavages were common throughout the oil-rich monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula, but the communities had little, if any, political impact in other nations, where politics was closed to all but the royal families and a number of small, nonroyal elites. In Kuwait, however, the relatively democratic and open nature of the political system, manifested especially in the National Assembly, lent a significance to nonelite groups that was of considerable interest to political observers. Although organized forms of political participation common to democratic nations, such as political parties and labor unions, were not a political factor in Kuwait, other forms of popular political expression, reflecting social cleavages within Kuwait as well as those in the Middle East region as a whole, were evident. The overriding social cleavage is between Kuwaitis and non-Kuwaitis, the majority of the latter having arrived after World War II to take advantage of the opportunities that accompanied the oil boom. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, when it first became apparent that the foreign population was becoming a significant and semipermanent presence in Kuwait, the government undertook legal measures to discriminate against the newer arrivals. In addition to being denied voting privileges and other political rights, those defined as non-Kuwaitis were restricted in their ownership of business and property and, although able to benefit from free education and health care, were denied other aspects of the government's welfare provisions, such as housing subsidies and pensions. [See Modernistic Mosque: Modernistic Mosque in capital city] The discriminatory laws were of little concern to the vast majority of non-Kuwaitis whose access to part of Kuwait's generous welfare benefits and to local job opportunities offered them a privileged position compared with conditions in their native countries or elsewhere in the Middle East. However, among a small elite of the non-Kuwaitis, consisting largely of educated and politically aware Palestinians who were residents of several generations and held high positions in government or elsewhere, the legal discrimination was a cause of growing resentment and alienation. Although long aware of this problem built into the social and political systems, the government had done little by 1984 to alleviate this ever growing, long-term problem. Journalism was the chosen profession of a number of the 300,000 to 350,000 Palestinians estimated to live in Kuwait in the mid-1980s. Until the promulgation of the stringent Press and Publications Law in August 1976, the press-which included five Arabic and two English-language dailies and some 20 other periodicals of less frequency-was known as freewheeling and open to the expression of a wide variety of political opinion. Although the 1976 law did not institute prior censorship, it did set down a number of pretexts under which the government could close a paper and administer other punishments for offending editors and publishers. The liberal use of the law between 1976 and 1984 had the effect of instituting self-censorship, and the press lost part of its previous vitality as a result. Radio and television were run by the Ministry of Information. Among Kuwaiti citizens, women were the objects of legal discrimination in that they remained disfranchised in 1984. The Women's Cultural and Social Society-one of the more active of several dozen such popular organizations that occasionally assumed a politically active stance akin to lobbying-had long been headed by Lulwa Qattami and had been in the forefront of attempts to gain women the right to vote. After unsuccessful efforts in 1981 and 1982 to pass a bill in the National Assembly calling for the enfranchisement of women, Qattami and her organization shifted their efforts to the courts, where they hoped that the discriminatory electoral law would be ruled unconstitutional in light of Article 29, which states that all Kuwaitis are "equal...in public rights and duties before the law without distinction as to sex...." Although the amir and the heir apparent supported women's right to vote, the effort confronted strong public opposition that was spearheaded by the growing Sunni fundamentalist groups. Male Kuwaitis, then, were a privileged minority. Social stratification-based on the time when an individual's ancestors arrived in Kuwait and on religion and ethnicity-did exist within this elite minority but under normal circumstances was not a cause of politically charged disputes because Kuwait's oil-based economy provided adequately for all. At the top of the pyramid was the Al Sabah, which, along with six other families whose ancestors were the original eighteenth-century settlers, held vast wealth. Unlike some other Arabian royal families, however, the Al Sabah did not habitually display their wealth and therefore rarely aroused the envy of the citizenry. At the bottom were the Shia whose ancestors had arrived before 1920 from Iran, Iraq, and eastern Arabia. After the 1979 revolution in Iran, the Kuwaiti Shia community became the object of considerable propaganda from across the Gulf, but five years later it had shown few signs of political disaffection-a phenomenon that some observers attributed to Kuwait's political system that, although Sunni-led, provided a comfortable existence to Shia citizens. Others pointed out that the major Shia cultural organizations received money from the Kuwaiti government. This general state of social tranquillity was severely disrupted, if only temporarily, during the early 1980s by the mid-1982 crash of Kuwait's unofficial stock market, the Souk el Manakh (see Finance, this ch.). Individuals-particularly those near the bottom of the social pyramid-had invested heavily in the Souk in anticipation of quick profits, and when it crashed, the mountain of checks totaled an estimated US$94 billion. Soon afterward the government announced that it would supply funds to compensate poor individuals for part of their losses. After the initial bitterness toward the government for having allowed the Souk to crash, tensions lingered for many months over how the government's promised compensation would be distributed. Poorer groups especially feared that the crash and the compensation scheme would result in the redistribution of wealth to the very rich. Two years after the crash a number of related problems still had not been solved, although observers noted that thus far the compensation process had been largely satisfactory to small investors and that the potentially explosive tensions evident in 1982 had dissipated to a large extent. Political phenomena elsewhere in the Middle East were also reflected in the Kuwaiti panorama. This fact could be attributed in part to the large number of Middle Eastern immigrants who, in the relatively open Kuwait political climate, could express their concerns with respect to events in their home countries. Other phenomena, such as Islamic fundamentalism and Arab nationalism, were national expressions of regionwide social and political currents. Perhaps because Kuwait is such a small nation, its political concerns-particularly those involving matters of internal security-often involved its neighbors (see Kuwait, ch.7). The dissolving of the National Assembly in 1976, for example, supposedly was undertaken at the urging of the conservative Saudi Arabian monarchy. It was also reported that Kuwait's rulers consulted at length with those in Saudi Arabia and other peninsular states in the wake of the December 1983 terrorist bombings in Kuwait. In a major sense these two events in Kuwait were manifestations of events elsewhere: the closing of the Assembly was linked to the civil war in Lebanon; the 1983 bombings, to the Iran-Iraq War. In these and other instances, loyalties among non-Kuwaiti residents that varied from official Kuwaiti policies led to the government's viewing portions of the community of alien residents as a political, and potentially a security, threat. Thousands of non-Kuwaiti Arabs were reportedly deported following the closing of the Assembly; further deportations were expected in 1984 after the trial of the 25-many of whom were non-Kuwaitis-accused of participating in the December 1983 bombings. Although Kuwaiti officials feared that the militant Shia ideology imported from revolutionary Iran would have a major impact on Kuwait's sizable Shia population, this fear had not been borne out. Instead, another type of Islamic extremism-Sunni fundamentalism-did make significant inroads into Kuwait during the early 1980s. This regionwide movement continued to grow in Kuwait after five fundamentalists were elected to the National Assembly in 1981. In 1983 elections at the University of Kuwait, for example, 14 of the 20 student societies were won by slates that were designated "Islamic." At the time officials did not view this growth with alarm; the conservative nature of most of the Islamic movement did not fundamentally threaten the status quo and served to counter popular leftist sympathies, which historically had been viewed as a threat to the stability of the monarchy. A large number of Islamic cultural organizations were to be found in Kuwait; analysts divided the Sunni fundamentalist groups into four distinct currents. The smallest, though it was growing in the early 1980s, was Sufism (sometimes known as Islamic mysticism). Avoiding direct confrontation with authorities, it was relatively inactive politically. Another relatively small current was the so-called New Ikhwan Movement, whose largest group was the Society for Islamic Guidance. It made a special appeal to the Kuwaiti intelligentsia not only by opposing established Islam but also by criticizing the more militant and dogmatic fundamentalist groups. The last two currents were far more influential. The Social Reform Society was the major representative of the Al Aslah current. As the Kuwaiti embodiment of Egypt's influential Al Ikhwan al Muslimun (Muslim Brotherhood), this current had been a part of Kuwaiti politics since the 1950s. Under the leadership of Umar Bahair Amiri, it gradually evolved from a position of opposition into an important component of the nation's Islamic establishment. The Speaker of Kuwait's National Assembly, Yusif al Adasani, was an active member of the Social Reform Society. If the Al Aslah was the least dogmatic of the fundamentalist currents, the Salafiyyin (literally, Forerunnerists) was the most dogmatic and extreme. Its profoundly reactionary goal was to transform society into a mirror image of that during the time of the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century. The largest organization within the Salafiyyin current was the Society for the Revival of Islamic Heritage, led by Khalid Sultan. The Salafiyyin was perhaps the fastest growing of all fundamentalist currents, and it had a considerable impact on the debate in the National Assembly during the early 1980s. Foreign Relations For a nation of its small size, Kuwait had an active and diversified foreign policy; in the early 1980s it maintained formal diplomatic relations with over 90 nations. Kuwait prided itself in having an independent and pragmatic foreign policy stance that "opened its windows to the world" of both conservative and radical Arab nations and of both capitalist and communist superpowers. This stance on the nonaligned middle ground was less a matter of ideological conviction, however, than a product of Kuwait's small size, its geographic location, its military vulnerability, and the composition of its population. Since first assuming responsibility for its foreign policy from the British in 1961, the ruling Al Sabah has viewed a centrist position-from which it can appear as all things to all nations-as a key to its survival. The maintenance of national security was, indeed, Kuwait's most vital foreign policy concern. Other major concerns included the maintenance of amiable commercial relations with its oil customers and those nations in which its surplus oil revenues were deposited and the pursuit of Arab solidarity in the conflict with Israel, with particular attention paid to the Palestinian problem. A key tool in the quest for these goals was the prodigious use of its oil wealth to win foreign allies, conciliate enemies, and spread goodwill in the name of Kuwait. Major foreign policy decisions were made by Amir Jabir and Prime Minister Saad in consultation with their senior advisers. Minister of Foreign Affairs Sabah, who by 1984 had held that post for well over a decade, was the most publicly visible of these secondary decisionmakers and was viewed as the architect of the government's nonaligned posture. The ministers of defense and of oil also played important advisory roles in their respective areas of concern. Foreign policy debates in the National Assembly added a measure of Kuwaiti public opinion to the decisionmaking equation. In the early 1980s, for example, this factor made it more difficult for the government to continue its subventions to Syria while the latter was warring on Palestinians in Lebanon. During that time the Assembly also raised objections to supporting the Iraqi war effort while longtime border differences between Iraq and Kuwait remained unresolved. Kuwait's security concerns centered on its relations with its three large neighbors-Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia-and its efforts to avoid "being caught in the cross fire" among these frequently antagonistic regional powers. In 1984 these relations continued to be dominated by the fierce Iran-Iraq War being waged less than 100 kilometers from Kuwait's northern border (see The Impact of the Iran-Iraq War, ch. 7). Kuwait's initial stance in this conflict had been one of neutrality, but in 1981, fearing an Iranian victory, it began to support Iraq through loans that totaled US$6 billion over a two-year period and by allowing Iraqi-bound trade to enter Kuwait ports and traverse its northern border. In October 1981 Iranian jets attacked Kuwait's oil facilities at Umm al Aysh as a warning against this support of Iraq, and most Kuwaitis interpreted the December 1983 terrorist bombings in Kuwait City as another warning to be cautious in supporting Iraq. Kuwait's support for Iraq was hardly steadfast; in fact, it feared a victory by either antagonist, for both were viewed as potential enemies. Revolutionary Iran, on the one hand, threatened all the Sunni monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula by its revolutionary propaganda aimed at foreign Shia Muslims, who in Kuwait made up over 20 percent of the population. A resurgent Iraq, on the other hand, would be in a strengthened position to press its historical territorial claim to Kuwait. Tensions caused by its 1961 claim to the entire territory of Kuwait were greatly eased in 1963, when a new Iraqi regime granted formal recognition of Kuwait's independence. This action did not involve an acceptance of Kuwait's borders, however, and in 1973 Iraq briefly occupied a Kuwaiti border post in order to press its claim. In May 1975 Iraq, in effect, altered its claim by proposing that Kuwait cede its sovereignty over Al Warbah Island and lease half of Bubiyan Island to Iraq for 99 years. This proposal, designed to protect the approach to Iraq's second largest port at Umm Qasr, was categorically rejected by Kuwait, which argued that it would lose considerable offshore drilling rights under such an arrangement. Iraq again pressed this claim after the outbreak of war with Iran in September 1980 and the resultant closure of its primary port at Basrah. Kuwait again rejected the Iraqi claim and responded by building a causeway from its mainland to the police post on Bubiyan in order to secure its position on the island. The stalemate in the Iran-Iraq War during the early 1980s, then, temporarily served Kuwaiti interests by distracting two potential adversaries. Kuwait feared the escalation of the war, however, particularly if it were to involve the intervention of the United States and/or the Soviet Union, and therefore called publicly for negotiations that would lead to an end to hostilities. Thus, in 1984 Kuwait called on Iran to respond to Iraq's request for a mediated solution to the conflict. Although in May of that year there was no prospect of this call's being heeded, Kuwait attempted to maintain a modicum of leverage by continuing its low-profile aid to Iraq while trying to keep its trade lines open to Iran. The Iran-Iraq War also had the effect of strengthening Kuwait's ties with Saudi Arabia and the smaller monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula. The founding of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in May 1981 was a direct response to the outbreak of war in the Gulf (see Appendix C). Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman saw the GCC as a forum for coordination of policies in the fields of investments, development, trade, and finance, but it was in the area of defense that the major cooperative efforts of the GCC were directed. Most of Kuwait's aid to Iraq, for example, along with that of other member states, was channeled through the mechanism of the GCC. Although Saudi Arabia played the predominant role, Kuwait's countervailing influence-as the most politically liberal of the GCC states and the only one with diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and its allies-was felt in the defense area. Kuwait was often critical of Saudi Arabia for its close ties to the United States and of Oman for having granted military base facilities to the United States within the framework of the Rapid Deployment Force (by 1984 the United States Central Command). Analysts described these as disagreements among friends, however. The relationships among the GCC states, based on common cultures and histories, similar if not identical political systems, and a common perception of the threat posed by the Iran-Iraq War and especially by an Iranian victory, remained extremely close. The Arab-Israeli conflict was another focus of Kuwaiti attention. Although Kuwait had participated only marginally in the several wars, its absorption of a large number of Palestinian refugees and its financial aid to the combatant countries-particularly Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, as well as to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)-made it an important factor. Kuwait was one of the largest financial backers of the moderate Al Fatah wing of the PLO, and Kuwaiti leaders often voiced the PLO goal of establishing a Palestinian homeland in the territories occupied by Israel since the June 1967 War. Al Fatah was allowed a substantial presence in Kuwait on the condition that it not involve itself in local politics. Kuwait's support for the PLO overrode its support for the front line Arab states in the cases of Jordan in 1970 and Syria in 1983. On these occasions when Arab governments waged war with Al Fatah, Kuwait temporarily curtailed its subventions to the governments in solidarity with the Palestinians. Kuwait joined other Arab nations in severing diplomatic relations with Egypt following its 1979 peace treaty with Israel. Commercial relations never ceased, however, and in 1984 there were good prospects for a thaw in political relations as well. Kuwait's foreign aid program was concentrated in, but by no means limited to, the Arab Middle East. In 1974 the charter of its major foreign aid agency, the KFAED, was amended to allow funds to be distributed to non-Arab developing nations of Africa and Asia. During the late 1970s slightly less than half of over US$1 billion committed annually in foreign aid went to non-Arab states, such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Thailand, Mali, and Ghana. The Kuwait-based Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, to which Libya and Saudi Arabia also made major contributions, was another major vehicle for Kuwaiti foreign aid. Numerous observers have noted that although such Kuwaiti concerns as its antipathy toward Israel and toward the system of apartheid in South Africa are well-known to aid recipients, Kuwait's program was one of the most professionally run and least politically motivated programs of foreign aid in the world. Kuwait's commercial relations were focused in East Asia, Western Europe, and the United States. Japan was by far the largest customer for its oil exports during the early 1980s, followed by Taiwan, South Korea, the Netherlands, Singapore, and Britain, in that order. Although the United States was insignificant as a consumer of Kuwaiti oil, it was second only to Japan as a source of imports (United States exports to Kuwait in 1981 and 1982 exceeded US$900 million). The United States, along with Britain and France, were the major suppliers of military equipment to Kuwait; the Soviet Union and West Germany were minor suppliers. Finally, in the commercial field an estimated two-thirds of Kuwait's US$80 billion or more surplus from oil revenues (the profits from which had become a major source of government revenues by the early 1980s) was invested overseas. The bulk of these investments was believed to be in Britain and the United States (see Foreign Trade and Balance of Payments, this ch.). Relations with the United States were broadly based and generally good despite some tensions over the United States role in the Middle East. During the early 1980s the quasi-official Kuwaiti media often criticized the United States military presence in and around the Gulf, expressing fears that it would accomplish little, other than to increase regional tensions and encourage the Soviets to increase its regional profile. Close United States relations with Israel were also criticized, particularly because they were felt to dampen prospects for what Kuwait termed "a just solution" to the Palestinian problem. The status of Jerusalem entered the equation of the United States-Kuwaiti relations in August 1983, when the United States nominee as ambassador to Kuwait was rejected on the grounds that he had served previously as the American consul general in Jerusalem. This incident caused increased strain in United States-Kuwaiti relations. Kuwait argued with its fellow Arabian monarchies in the GCC that their refusal to establish diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union left them at the mercy of United States policies in the region. Kuwait's Soviet ties, which date back to 1963, were better explained, however, as an effort to neutralize its domestic leftist political opposition and to gain the trust of Iraq and other regional nations that had Soviet links rather than as an effort to gain leverage over the United States. The 1975 visit to the Soviet Union by Minister of Foreign Affairs Sabah and the subsequent conclusion of a Soviet agreement to sell a variety of missiles to Kuwait marked a significant departure from previous ties, which had been limited to economic, technical, and cultural cooperation. No Soviet advisers accompanied the US$400 million deal, however, and no further arms purchases were recorded until 1981. On August 15, 1984, Kuwait and the Soviet Union signed an arms agreement that provided for Kuwait's purchase of various air defense weapons and for Soviet personnel to train Kuwaitis in their use (see Kuwait, ch. 7). In September 1981 Amir Jabir made an unprecedented trip to Eastern Europe that included stops in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. Erich Honecker of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) visited Kuwait in 1982. Kuwait was also active in more than 20 multilateral organizations, including the United Nations (UN), the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries, the League of Arab States (Arab League), the Nonaligned Movement, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. It was accepted as the one-hundred-and-eleventh member of the UN in 1963 and in 1978-79 served on its Security Council. In 1960 it had been a founding member of OPEC along with Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, and Venezuela. * * * Kuwait: Urban and Medical Ecology, by G.E. Ffrench and A.G. Hill, presents a wealth of information on a variety of subjects. Harry Winstone and Zahra Freeth's Kuwait: Prospect and Reality offers a more general but still useful survey. A brief treatment of Kuwaiti education can be found in A.L. Tibawi's Islamic Education. A useful but dated survey of the Kuwait economy was prepared by economists of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development in The Economic Development of Kuwait. David Sapsted's Modern Kuwait presents a broad picture of the economy up to 1980. The article "Kuwait Adopts Measures to Adjust to the Impact of Reduced Oil Revenues," in the IMF Survey, August 8, 1983, contains a brief summary of economic developments. Between 1973 and 1984 the Financial Times of London published annual reviews of Kuwaiti developments. The Kuwait government publishes many statistical series; the Annual Statistical Abstract contains a broad range of data, though not as up-to-date as one would like. Many current statistics are carried in the International Monetary Fund's monthly International Financial Statistics. Hassan A. Al-Ebraheem's Kuwait: A Political Study is an excellent introduction to the political system of Kuwait. Kuwaiti attempts to develop democratic institutions within a constitutional framework are analyzed in various works by Abdo I. Baaklini, such as "The Legislature in the Kuwaiti Political System." Kuwait's role in regional and international relations is covered in depth in Soliman Demir's The Kuwait Fund and the Political Economy of Arab Regional Development and David E. Long's The Persian Gulf: An Introduction to Its People, Politics, and Economics. (For further information and complete citations, see Bibliography.)