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Stories of Democracy: Politics and Society in Contemporary Kuwait
Mary Ann Tétreault
2000
Chapter 4: Democratic Structures and Practices, 1921–1990
In this chapter, I examine the patterns of struggle between Kuwaiti rulers and merchants beginning with the rule of Ahmad al-Jabir (r. 1921–1950), a grandson of Mubarak. As I noted in the previous chapter, Ahmad had agreed to govern in consultation with a council, but he never called it into session. After some years, the merchants took matters into their own hands, electing two “parliaments” that challenged Ahmad’s right to govern without their consent. Successfully crushing the parliamentary movement allowed Ahmad to continue to rule in the style of Mubarak, but his successor, `Abdullah al-Salim (r. 1950–1965), chose a different path, accommodating himself not only to some of the demands coming from the traditional merchant class, but also to those from political classes that did not even exist prior to the time of his rule. He created these new classes through extensive programs to redistribute oil wealth, and empowered them politically when he inaugurated constitutional government in Kuwait. Subsequent Kuwaiti rulers have tried to reverse his actions, preferring the style of rule followed by Ahmad al-Jabir. Thus, despite the adoption of a democratic constitution, Kuwaiti politics continued to operate in the shadow of autocracy throughout most of the period covered in this chapter.
Kuwaiti Political Space
Kuwait’s constitution and parliament define the parameters of the formal public space of politics in Kuwait. Other public spaces that host limited political activities include the marketplace, voluntary associations, the mosque, and kin-based associations such as the diwaniyya, the traditional men’s meeting usually held in individual homes. These informal spaces for political action are prepolitical spaces of appearance, but they are far from ideal because they limit the representation of both individuals and points of view. Even so, such spaces are crucial to political participation in Kuwait because, despite the superior capacity and transparency of public political spaces and their nominal protection by constitutional guarantees, such spaces in Kuwait have proven unexpectedly vulnerable to closure.
The Kuwaiti regime’s interest in suppressing political activity intensifies when opposition rises. Twice in recent Kuwaiti history, in 1976 and 1986, challenges to the regime were perceived as so threatening that public political spaces were shut down completely. This action took the form of suspensions of constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties and the dismissal of the parliament. Although the Kuwaiti constitution does permit the amir to dismiss the parliament for cause, it also requires elections for a new parliament to be held within two months of any such suspension (article 107). This did not occur in either case.
The closure of parliament and the suspension of civil liberties such as press freedom and the right to hold public meetings push politics into protected spaces. As antigovernment pressure coming from these spaces builds up, the government encroaches there as well. However, the legitimacy of government intervention in protected spaces is minimal. Even the government’s capacity to violate the boundaries of protected spaces in pursuit of its critics is tenuous, vulnerable as it is to a broadly based withdrawal of support from the regime. During both periods of constitutional suspension, the Kuwaiti regime continued by a variety of means to influence politics on its own behalf. However, it eventually found that its long-term survival required the restoration of constitutional rights and parliamentary rule. At the same time, the tacit threat of suspension exercises parallel restraints on the political opposition, even when constitutional guarantees are formally in effect. This tension between government and opposition helps to maintain a balance of power between an autocratic executive and a hypercritical legislature, but the long-term survival of constitutional government in Kuwait remains highly dependent on the persistence of protected spaces from which people can conduct politics by other means when necessary.
The line between state and society in Kuwait remains blurred despite more than a half century of state-building that institutionalized the separation of the ruling family from the rest of society. Separation enlarged the power of the ruling family to provide political leadership and also to control citizens’ access to social and economic status and resources. 1 The historic pattern of relations among Kuwaiti notables that had held the Sabah to a status of primus inter pares for more than 150 years was vastly altered by the institution of the special relationship with Britain in 1899. Change accelerated after the advent of oil revenues because of the direct power oil income conferred on the ruling family, allowing it to reduce its economic and strategic dependence on the local population. As a result, citizens’ threats to exit became virtually meaningless, while their claims to a voice in state decisions were profoundly weakened even though they were never successfully eliminated.
Oil income created and deepened already-existing channels through which the ruling family penetrates civil society. Oil wealth allows Kuwaiti rulers to manipulate elections by buying candidates and votes, and constrains the actions of voluntary associations by requiring them to obtain licenses and then funding their activities. It also enables ruling family members and their retainers to compete in the marketplace from a position of advantage. But civil society in Kuwait is so interwoven with the state that penetration works both ways. Some state employees elevate what they see as constitutional and functional responsibilities to Kuwait above loyalty to the ruling family, thereby bringing political opposition directly into the state. An official I interviewed in the fall of 1992 ended his discussion of the accomplishments of his agency by remarking that these achievements worked against the interests of “the government.” Then he paused. “I say that even though some people might say that I am part of the government.”
This attitude reflects more than a suspicion that the interests of the government and the interests of the nation might diverge. It demonstrates a readiness to behave politically under a wide variety of circumstances, a readiness that has been conditioned by repeated state suppression of public political activity. During such periods, political activity increases in spaces that enjoy a significant degree of normative, legal, and institutional protection from state intervention. This notion of “protected spaces” is an expansion of the ancient Greek distinction between the “private space” of the household and the “public space” of politics and markets. 2 According to this concept, although a man’s 3 public actions are subject to external review and sanctions by peers and superiors, what he does in private is his own business.
Modern definitions of privacy differ substantially from this ancient distinction between public and private, 4 but the residence of the family, physically as well as metaphorically, is protected by the public-private dichotomy as it is delineated in Kuwait. The English maxim, “A man’s home is his castle,” describes the vernacular understanding of Kuwait’s legal and constitutional provisions that explicitly protect the home from arbitrary intrusion. By definition, the home is the epitome of private space. Some public spaces also enjoy relative protection. Like the home, these are “protected spaces,” privileged refuges from the full force of state power. The interplay between the state and social actors mobilized in protected spaces defines the limits of legitimate state intervention in society.
In Kuwait there are two social spaces that are substantially protected, by tradition and law, from state intrusion. As I have noted, the first is the home and, by extension, the family and kin-based institutions and associations such as the tribe, the family business, and the diwaniyya. The home is protected explicitly under articles 38 and 44 of the 1962 constitution and is the only secular space that enjoys such a high degree of formal protection. Ironically—but logically—this quality enhances its attraction to political organizers whenever public meetings are restricted or banned. Even during the worst of these times, such as the period of the 1989–90 pro-democracy movement, the privacy of the Kuwaiti home was rarely violated. When it was, the strength of citizen outrage forced the regime to moderate its behavior.
The mosque 5 is the other social space in Kuwait that enjoys extensive protection from state intrusion. The mosque occupies public space and is one of the few legal social structures anywhere in the Middle East available for mass political mobilization. The mosque’s protection comes from a higher authority than the constitution; the space that it occupies is not only public but also sacred. This confers legitimate authority on religious leaders and groups independent of the authority of the state. During the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, the authority of the mosque was strong enough to protect members of the Kuwaiti Resistance from molestation by Iraqi troops, and the secular as well as the religious relied on it to shield their political activities. 6
Islamic principles often are interpreted as insisting that the state and the religious community are one and the same. However, in practice, Muslim societies accept a distinction between politics and religion similar to the distinction between church and state in Christian societies and analogous to the separation between politics and markets in capitalist societies. 7 Thus, these political, religious, and/or economic institutions are interdependent rather than either independent or identical, and their relations are marked both by cooperation and by interinstitutional struggles for power.
The 1938 Paradigm
The 1962 constitution was not the first document of its kind in Kuwait. Its antecedent was a charter written in 1938 by a small group of merchants who had more-or-less elected themselves to be the first Kuwaiti parliament. These merchants seized the initiative against the then-ruler, Ahmad al-Jabir, whose profound self-centeredness at the height of the Great Depression threatened to divert the entire income from Kuwait’s newly discovered oil to his personal use. 8 The merchants cited their grievances against the ruler to establish claims to a share in the wealth generated by Kuwait’s natural resources and to regain some of the political authority lost after British intervention had altered the balance of power between state and society in Kuwait.
By the late 1930s, Kuwaiti merchants and other dissatisfied citizens had accumulated a long list of political and economic grievances against the ruler. They criticized his lack of attention to affairs of state and the administration of justice; his rigging of local elections; his religious regulations that interfered with the normal conduct of business; and his sequestration of state income, which resulted in a lack of money for education, health care, and exploration for domestic sources of water. 9 Popular discontent was fanned by a propaganda campaign masterminded by Iraq’s King Ghazi, who hoped to annex Kuwait to Iraq. 10 It “crystallized in . . . the flogging, etcetera, of one [Muhammad] al Barrak, guilty of anonymous wall writings, ante-autocratic (sic) propaganda and intrigues, by the Sheikh’s town lieutenant.” 11
Muhammad al-Barrak was a taxi driver whose business had been hurt by new regulations forbidding women to go outside the town walls after sundown. His leadership of a taxi strike against the regulations had resulted in a public beating followed by imprisonment in 1937. 12 This probably explains his antigovernment activities the following year. Popular reaction to the 1938 flogging was so intense that the British political agent, Capt. Gerald de Gaury, worried about its effects on “the smoothness of the relations of the Kuwait Oil Company with the Kuwait Ruler.” De Gaury also recommended that the British appoint a minister of finance to deal with the fiscal issues. 13
Before the British government could decide what to do, Kuwaitis took the initiative themselves. A coalition of citizens that included merchants, proto-Arab nationalist proponents of a political union with Iraq, and the amir’s cousin, `Abdullah al-Salim, made formal proposals for reform organized around the institution of a legislative council. 14 Their position was backed by de Gaury, who believed that Ahmad al-Jabir’s abuses of power had reached a height justifying British support of curbs on the ruler. 15 De Gaury formally protested the treatment of Muhammad al-Barrak to the ruler and at the same time suggested that “any new democratic movement should be drawn by him into useful channels,” an idea de Gaury regarded as “beyond [Ahmad al-Jabir’s] comprehension.” 16
But Ahmad al-Jabir did understand and agreed to accept a legislative council that had already been elected by “140 persons consisting of the entire accepted heads of important families, communities, Sects, Localities (Firjis), etc. in Kuwait, without consideration to their being poor or rich, Sunnis or Shi`as, Arabs or Persians.” 17 The council convened that summer and wrote Kuwait’s first constitution. It passed legislation abolishing monopolies; forbidding the ruling family to command forced labor or goods; and canceling taxes such as export duties, some import duties, and the pearl fishing tax. It also dismissed several corrupt public officials. 18 The council took positive steps as well, instituting a regular police force, trade and public health regulations, and a public works program. 19 As long as the council concentrated on domestic affairs, the British supported it. But when it intervened in the army and foreign policy, both the British and the ruler balked, the British because the council was transgressing on territory their several treaties with Kuwait had allocated to them, and the ruler because the council also had requested that he turn over his December check from the oil company. 20
When [Ahmad al-Jabir] first requested British intervention to deal with “troubles in the town” in August 1938, the British political agent responded evenhandedly, requesting the council to moderate its demands and pressing the amir to sit with the council instead of plotting against it. But later, as the council expanded its purview to include the army, British support for it cooled. When Ahmad al-Jabir dissolved the council in December, the British supported him. 21
After he had dissolved the first council, Ahmad al-Jabir agreed to the election of a new one. This election was monitored by three groups. One represented the council and one represented the ruler, and each of these ran candidates. A third group served as official arbitrators. The second council pleased Ahmad al-Jabir no more than its predecessor. The two councils had many members in common even though the second was larger, had been elected by nearly three times the number of persons (four hundred), and “thus must be considered really representative of Kuwait.” 22 The second council’s chief sin was its opposition to the ruler’s proposed new constitution, a charter that changed the council from a legislative to a consultative body and restricted its power to appoint officials and regulate the ruler’s finances. 23 The council refused to accept Ahmad al-Jabir’s constitution. On March 7, 1939, the ruler dissolved the council and immediately set to work to appoint—not elect—a new one. 24 He also asked the outgoing council to hand over its papers, including its handwritten copy of the first constitution. The council replied that it had sent the papers away for safekeeping and asked for time to retrieve them. Meanwhile, members continued in session as a sort of rump body that soon became a magnet for persisting Iraqi propaganda. On March 9 a Kuwaiti resident of Basra, Ahmad bin Munais, addressed the rump council in its temporary chamber. He charged that the Sabah were unfit to rule Kuwait and advised council members to resist them until the Iraqi army should arrive. The council sent word to the ruler that night that it would turn over its papers the following evening, but the police came the next morning anyway, to arrest Ahmad bin Munais. On the way to the jail they were met by a small group of Kuwaitis protesting the arrest. During the resulting altercation, three Kuwaitis were shot. Yusuf al-Marzook was wounded; a police official who sided with the council, Muhammad al-Qatami, was killed after he fired at another policeman; and a shopkeeper was hit in the crossfire. Ahmad bin Munais was taken on to the jail where he was tried and convicted in a matter of minutes, shot, and then hanged in the main square until evening. Ahmad al-Jabir was himself a witness to some of these proceedings. He was reported as having been “slightly injured” in the fracas outside the jail, though not sufficiently to prevent him from doing a war dance in the main square at the end of the day to celebrate his conviction that “any hope of an elected council peacefully aiding him in the administration, [was] gone for a long time, if not for good.” 25
The tumultuous events of those few days in March 1939 marked the effective end of parliamentary democracy in Kuwait for a generation. Many council members and their supporters fled the country; those unwise enough to remain were arrested and imprisoned until 1944, when an amnesty freed them and also permitted the exiles to return home. Meanwhile, put off by the violence, Kuwaitis showed little enthusiasm for the ruler’s opponents once the excitement had died down. Ahmad al-Jabir was further assisted in his efforts to restore the political status quo ante by the convenient death of King Ghazi on April 4. The ruler dealt with demands that he govern with the assistance of a council by choosing as his advisers a group of men in which members of his family were heavily represented. He had begun to incorporate family members into the government the previous year at the urging of de Gaury. 26
Alongside this apparent restoration of the traditional order, a new Kuwaiti myth took root. It recast Kuwait’s national history in terms not only of ruler-merchant equality but also in terms of a “tradition” of democratic opposition. 27 When the British departed in 1961 and a democratic constitution was written and then approved by the amir in 1962, Kuwaitis embraced democratic ideology and practices as homegrown elements from their national past rather than rejecting them as alien grafts from the imperial West. This myth has endured in spite of vigorous propaganda campaigns by religious and secular leaders in Kuwait and throughout the Middle East that insist on the foreignness of democracy and its unsuitability to local traditions and values. 28
The events of the “year of the parliament” had other effects on Kuwaiti political institutions, ideologies, and practices. The ruling family became embedded in government as members of an elite state class with a large stake in the preservation of the regime and the position of the family as the supplier of its rulers. 29 At the same time, the British role in the crisis alienated many Kuwaitis, especially the merchants, from Britain and the West. The crisis thereby strengthened an already evident and distinctive Kuwaiti nationalism, as well as a larger Arab nationalism that linked domestic politics to events and movements taking place elsewhere in the region. 30
Recursive Patterns
The style of the two elections in the year of the parliament confirmed already-prominent tribalist patterns in Kuwaiti politics. 31 For example, the ad hoc committee nominated as electors persons whose status was conferred by their positions as heads of families, sects, and associations. Unfortunately, they then failed to elect members from each of these groups to serve as direct representatives in the council, denying the losers both political status and assurances of security. The Shi`a were the most prominent among the groups omitted from direct representation. Terrified at the possible implications of their exclusion, thousands applied for British nationality. 32 Excluded groups also sought the ruler’s protection. Shi`a, along with members of the tribes that functioned as military retainers of the ruling family, were among the ruler’s main allies in the suppression of the assembly. Their rallying around the ruler no doubt confirmed the utility of balance-of-power politics in the domestic as well as the international arena.
Some of the patterns laid down during this crisis were repeated in subsequent clashes between Kuwaiti amirs and parliaments. Confrontations between the amir and the National Assembly in 1976 and 1986 resulted in the dissolution of the parliament and suspension of the constitution for long periods. During these suspensions the amir tried to change the electoral base of the parliament and otherwise limit its range of powers before calling it back. In 1981 he redistricted the country, changing the number of constituencies from ten to twenty-five and reducing the number representing each district from five to two. This diminished the electoral chances of the liberal/left opposition which, despite its minority status, had dominated the 1963 and 1967 assemblies. It also reduced the size of other voting blocs such as the Shi`a and the larger tribes, though not of the tribes per se. 33 In 1990, in what was advertised as an interim arrangement, the ruler persuaded a majority of Kuwaiti voters to accept a consultative council in place of a body with legislative powers. 34 The Iraqi invasion saved the contemporary generation of Kuwaitis from having either to accept the end of representative government as their grandfathers had in 1939 or, alternatively, to take to the streets to fight for it. But the same issues returned after liberation, even though the invasion and occupation had interrupted the post-1938 pattern.
The strategies of legislative assemblies and councils also carried over into the constitutional period. The decision of the second council to continue meeting, even after its official dissolution, was repeated by a large remnant from the 1985 National Assembly. 35 The membership of this rump parliament grew over time from twenty-six to thirty-two legislators and went on to organize a mass movement after repeated attempts to petition the amir to restore the parliament and the constitution were rebuffed (see below). 36 The concern of the 1938 council to take control of state finances also was mirrored by subsequent parliaments. Kuwaiti parliaments hastened the process of oil nationalization in the 1970s over the government’s objections. They scrutinized and criticized government expenditures and investigated corruption and malfeasance so vigorously that their investigations are widely believed to have precipitated the 1976 and 1986 suspensions. In the 1990s, the 1992 and 1996 parliaments mounted investigations culminating in the legislation of oversight controls on government investment policies and defense expenditures. Both parliaments faced recurrent threats of dissolution. In May 1999 the 1996 National Assembly was dismissed under circumstances similar to those preceding previous parliamentary closures—with one notable exception. This time, the dismissal announcement was accompanied by a call for new elections within two months. This conforms to constitutional requirements for a legal dissolution (article 107). Despite this difference, however, the substantial persistence of these patterns of behavior reflects the persistence of divisions over the same key issues throughout the modern history of Kuwait. It also reflects a divergence in assumptions about the relative positions of citizens and governments and poorly developed repertoires of strategies to alter them. The consequence is the persistence of a family romance whose grip on political actors constrains their choices more than they might realize.
Democratization and Political Crisis
The pro-democracy movement of 1989–90 evoked a large number of contemporary comparisons to the democratization crisis of 1938–39. The driving forces behind the pro-democracy movement were similar to those that had produced the 1938 parliament. Both movements were rooted in widespread popular convictions that the government was corrupt, inept, and unresponsive to domestic needs, and both were led by elites who were personally threatened by government encroachments on their political autonomy, status, and liberty.
Beginning in July 1989, a broadly based popular movement seeking to liberalize the Kuwaiti regime organized in an attempt to force the amir to reinstate the constitution, much of which had been suspended in July 1986. Pro-democracy proponents, many from the political opposition, were invigorated by news of the progress of democratization in Eastern Europe. 37 The immediate goals of the movement, led by members of the 1985 parliament, 38 included restoration of the suspended portions of the constitution and elections to a reinstated National Assembly. 39 The regime defended its 1986 actions as responses to the “abuse of democratic life, exploiting the constitution for personal gains, spreading dissention and obstructing cooperation between the legislative and executive powers.” 40 The opposition saw the amir’s reasons differently. Parliamentary investigations into allegations of corruption and malfeasance in the Central Bank and four important ministries, including the Ministry of Oil and the Ministry of Finance, were widely credited with having triggered the suspensions. 41
Allegations of government corruption and ineptitude persisted into 1990 and they arose from several sources. One was the continuing domestic economic crisis that had originated with the collapse of Kuwait’s illegal stock market, the Suq al-Manakh, in September 1982. The crash swallowed financial assets held by individuals and firms at every level of Kuwaiti society, triggering a sharp contraction of the local economy. 42 Some of the biggest speculators in the Manakh transferred large sums of money out of the country to avoid its seizure for debt repayment. 43 Meanwhile, the prices of real estate and other assets fell as smaller investors liquidated to settle their debts. All but one commercial bank went into the equivalent of government receivership, and a number of local firms holding shares of the speculative Gulf company stocks traded on the Manakh went bankrupt. The government intervened by buying up depressed shares to support stock prices. In 1986 recession moved the government to purchase thirty-three of the “closed” companies, but both stock and bond markets remained depressed and the unresolved remainder of the Manakh debt continued to hang over the economy. 44 The largest debts, some rumored to be owed by members of the ruling family, including Crown Prince Sa`d al-`Abdullah, remained unresolved in March 1990 when the government agreed to adopt a new debt resolution plan proposed by the Kuwait Chamber of Commerce.
A second element feeding popular dissatisfaction centered on the state’s controversial oil investments. Particularly aggravating to critics of the government was the 1981 purchase of Santa Fe International by Kuwait’s national oil company. 45 The Santa Fe purchase was castigated as more than a money-loser. In 1983 the then-U.S. secretary of the interior, James Watt, cited Santa Fe’s Kuwaiti ownership as his reason for curtailing the company’s activities on land it had leased from the U.S. government. Although Kuwait sued and won its case, Kuwaitis were appalled at the foolhardiness of a government that would risk retaliation by the United States over an investment most of them thought was unwise to begin with. Santa Fe’s poor economic performance following its purchase by Kuwait increased condemnation of the investment, especially by prominent private economists like Jasim al-Sa`doun, the head of the Al-Shall Economic Group. It also fueled parliamentary criticism of the oil minister, Shaikh `Ali al-Khalifa. A member of the ruling family and protégé of the amir, Shaikh `Ali’s activities were under investigation when the National Assembly was closed in 1986.
A third factor contributing to perceptions of government corruption and incompetence was the persistent economic recession. The Kuwaiti economy began to stagnate in the backwash from the crash of the Suq al-Manakh, but the slowdown was aggravated by other local factors 46 such as the Iran-Iraq war, which disrupted oil exports and also diverted Kuwaiti reexport trade to the Saudi ports of Dammam and Jubail. But the most critical contributor to Kuwait’s economic difficulties in 1990 was the sharp drop in world oil prices which had begun in the fall of 1985. 47 The consequent drop in government income led to reductions in non-oil-related government expenditures, especially for construction projects, further aggravating the domestic recession. 48 The persistence of the recession, along with its continual deepening, added greatly to the sense of insecurity inside Kuwait. It also amplified what Kuwaiti political scientist Abdul-Reda al-Assiri calls Kuwaitis’ “siege mentality.” 49
Popular uneasiness mounted following the 1986 suspensions. In a manner similar to the continuation of meetings by the 1938 parliament, twenty-six members of the 1985 parliament, led by assembly speaker Ahmad al-Sa`doun, continued to meet regularly, often in the speaker’s home. In July 1989 this group (which by then numbered thirty-two) broadened its base by recruiting thirteen nonparliamentarians who were selected to represent various social groups in Kuwait, including women, who are not allowed to vote or run for office under the state’s electoral laws. The Forty-five petitioned the amir to restore the constitution and parliament. This petition was signed not only by the Twenty-six, the only ones to sign two similarly worded petitions submitted earlier, but also by thousands of other Kuwaiti citizens, most of them voters. Like its two predecessors, this petition too was rejected. The representatives taking it to the Amiri Diwan (the amir’s executive office) also were refused an audience with the amir. Unsure of their next move, the Forty-five began a series of regular weekly meetings at preselected diwaniyyas. There they reported on events and sought the advice and assistance of their fellow citizens. 50
Following the rule of thumb that politicians should go where the voters are, National Assembly candidates had been campaigning at diwaniyyas since the Kuwaiti constitution was adopted and the first elections under its aegis were held in 1963. 51 During the two constitutional suspensions, diwaniyyas became the primary sites for political activity because public political meetings were banned and censorship of the usually lively and informative Kuwaiti press made it impossible to carry on a critical dialogue about government actions in the media. This history made the earmarking of particular diwaniyya meetings for mass mobilization the next logical step. These special diwaniyyas were held on successive Monday nights, each time in a different location and nearly all at the homes of opposition leaders. The first was held on December 4, 1989, at the home of Jasim al-Qatami. Jasim is a brother of the policeman who was killed in the confrontation with the 1938 parliament and also was a member of the Group of Twenty-six. According to Ahmad al-Sa`doun, the primary purpose of the first Monday diwaniyya was to tell those attending “what was going on.”
The government reacted to this new tactic in an inconsistent and hysterical fashion, sending riot police and police dogs to block access to the second Monday diwaniyya, held on December 11 at the home of Mishairy al-`Anjari. The interruption of a gathering in a private home was offensive to most Kuwaitis, and the use of dogs, animals that are ritually unclean in Islam, was particularly offensive. Many Kuwaitis sent telegrams to the amir to protest the police action. Seven members of the Group of Forty-five, including Ahmad al-Sa`doun, were invited to meet with the foreign minister, Shaikh Salim al-Sabah. According to the assembly speaker, Shaikh Salim “apologized for closing the diwaniyya and promised that it would not happen in the future.” On the following Monday, the group’s meeting at the Fatima Mosque in `Abdullah al-Salim neighborhood attracted no police. Two weeks later (there was no special diwaniyya on Christmas day, which fell on the Monday of the intervening week), at Mohammad al-Marshad’s diwaniyya in Khaldiya, there also was no sign of police.
On January 8, the Monday diwaniyya was held outside of Kuwait City, in Jahra.’ The host was Ahmad al-Shriyan, a member of the Group of Twenty-six. Kuwaitis arriving for this meeting found their host sealed in his diwaniyya and troops surrounding the house. The troops refused to let anyone pass without showing their civil identification cards. As groups of guests coalesced around the sealed area, the troops attempted to dislodge them. “So we had a little scrimmage there,” one guest told me. A number of persons were beaten, including an elderly former member of parliament, Mohammad Rushaid, and Mohammad al-Qadiri, a former ambassador. Several guests were arrested and detained overnight. Opposition leaders were permitted to use police loudspeakers to ask the crowd to disperse. They did so and also let everyone present know that there would be another diwaniyya the following week.
Two days after the disastrous encounter in Jahra’, police arrested Ahmad al-Shriyan, charging him with attempting to hold an illegal gathering. They permitted him to make one telephone call, and he did, to Ahmad al-Sa`doun, who was presiding over a meeting of the Group of Forty-five that day. Ahmad al-Shriyan was taken to Kuwait City, another lucky break for the opposition because this was a more convenient as well as a more public location for demonstrations. Soon the jail was surrounded by protesters and, in a short time, the commotion ended in the release of Ahmad al-Shriyan. According to a friend, he was accompanied home by a “motorcade. We walked from the checkpoint to his house and then we had the speeches. So our diwaniyya was [just] delayed for two days.”
Ahmad al-Sa`doun and the Group of Forty-five sent another strongly worded telegram to the amir to protest the police action in Jahra.’ This time there was no change in policy. At the January 15 diwaniyya, hosted by Faisal al-Sana`, the police used barbed wire for the first time, completely wrapping Faisal’s house. As Ahmad al-Sa`doun recalls, “The diwaniyya was completely isolated. No one could reach it. Faisal al-Sana` was almost under house arrest. We could see him, but he could not come out and join us.”
On January 22, 1990, the series of special diwaniyyas ended in what for Kuwait at that time was a shocking display of force. Two days before this meeting, the amir had made a televised speech calling for a dialogue with the opposition. Ahmad al-Sa`doun insists that he had responded in the same spirit of conciliation, sending a press release to the newspapers about the January 22 meeting scheduled for Farwaniya. He said that the press release announced that the meeting would not include speeches by the opposition, but that the organizers planned to present information about the amir’s address and report how the Group of Forty-five had responded to it. However, government censors refused to allow the newspapers to publish the press release. When crowds of citizens and opposition leaders came to Farwaniya on the evening of January 22, they faced regular police, the Kuwait National Guard, riot police, and tanks shooting chemical foam. “For the first time, [the foam] was used. Stun grenades were also used, and tear gas. Even when the people went into the mosque, they put foam and tear gas inside the mosque.” Six Kuwaitis were detained incommunicado for three days, and held an additional four days after that. The correspondents for Reuters and Le Monde also were detained by the police, and the Reuters correspondent was asked to leave the country following his release.
The level of violence, the desecration of a mosque, and the targeting of notables and members of the foreign press led the Forty-five to suspend the special Monday diwaniyyas. Widespread disquiet and tension continued, prompting Crown Prince Sa`d al-`Abdullah to hold a series of meetings with citizens’ groups and members of the opposition in February and March 1990. During Ramadan, which began in mid-March, pro-democracy leaders made the rounds at various diwaniyyas to mobilize supporters. The government did not send police to interdict or interrupt these gatherings during Ramadan. Instead, government representatives also went to diwaniyyas to speak against the opposition, accusing it of being provocative and irresponsible. The opposition responded by criticizing the government, defending its strategy of mobilizing large numbers of citizens to make public demands on the amir as the only way to reinstate the constitution and the parliament. As in 1939, many Kuwaitis were reluctant to push the regime too far for fear of what might happen next. Yet even though the parliament had plenty of critics, its political legitimacy remained high, increasing pressure on the amir to act. As Ramadan drew to a close, the whole country waited for an announcement from the amir. Virtually everyone expected that he would either denounce the opposition, signaling renewed confrontation, or—what most hoped for—that he would call for new parliamentary elections and agree to the full restoration of constitutional freedoms and institutions.
On the first day of the `Eid holiday following Ramadan, the amir made a brilliant speech. In it, he called for the election of a National Council, a Majlis al-Watani. The Majlis al-Watani was to be composed of fifty elected representatives, to which the amir would add an additional twenty-five appointed members. The speech and the subsequent Amiri decree outlining the purpose of the council and its manner of election noted that it was “designed for a transitional period during which it will have a special assignment of evaluating the country’s previous parliamentary experience and proposing `controls’ for the future parliamentary process so as to avert `a third crisis.’ ” 52 The council was portrayed as an interim body whose term would end with the election of a new parliament, though no prospective date for such an election was mentioned. While it sat, the Majlis al-Watani would not amend the constitution, but it would define relations between the parliament and the government. The cleverness of the proposal lay in its form and even more in its unexpectedness. Although the Majlis al-Watani was to have only advisory powers, the trappings of election and the promise of a forum in which elected representatives could air their grievances swayed many moderates to support the amir.
This unanticipated “third” alternative, which resembled Ahmad al-Jabir’s proposal for a consultative council to replace the 1939 parliament, left the regime’s opponents all but speechless. After some initial fumbling, most opposition leaders united against the Majlis al-Watani, root and branch. They made the rounds of diwaniyyas yet again, this time urging their fellow citizens neither to run for the Majlis al-Watani nor to vote in the June election. The police came back too, but with a different strategy this time. Rather than spraying homes with tear gas or wrapping them in barbed wire, the police simply plucked from them the primary sources of irritation to the regime. Several of the opposition’s most prominent members, among them Arab nationalists Ahmad al-Khatib, `Abdullah Nibari, Jasim al-Qatami, and Ahmad al-Rub`i, were arrested and detained, one by one from diwaniyyas where they were speaking. The arrests and detentions turned elite opinion against the amir. On May 20, `Abd al-`Aziz al-Saqr, president of the Kuwait Chamber of Commerce, presented the amir with a declaration opposing the Majlis al-Watani that had been signed by two hundred merchants, professionals, and former members of parliament.
The amir retreated, but only a little. The charges were dropped against those arrested, and all were released within a few weeks. 53 However, the local press remained under strict censorship. Meanwhile, the government made strong efforts to recruit candidates to run for the Majlis al-Watani, and the elections were held, as scheduled, on June 10. Official turnout figures indicate that 62 percent of the eligible voters participated in the election, 54 far more than opposition leaders had predicted. Several individuals working for government agencies told me that they and their peers had been pressured heavily to vote. There is no reason to think that these reports are not true, but the relatively high turnout level also leads one to believe that many ordinary Kuwaitis continued to support the regime.
However, the opposition was successful in deterring all but a few politically prominent Kuwaitis from running for seats in the Majlis al-Watani. In the words of Ahmad al-Rub`i, candidate slates were dominated by “taxi drivers,” that is, nonelite Kuwaitis from tribal backgrounds. Most of the winners, among both the few former parliamentarians and the many political newcomers, were “service candidates,” men content to act as intermediaries between their constituents and the regime. In the brief time between its election and the Iraqi invasion on August 2, and during the period following liberation in 1991 when it reconvened, the Majlis al-Watani functioned primarily as a body dedicated to providing tangible benefits to voters and their families.
Democratization on the Eve of Invasion
The capacity of the Majlis al-Watani to defuse pressures for democratization in Kuwait remained untried. Tens of thousands of Kuwaitis left the country shortly after the June 1990 election to spend the hottest months of the summer abroad. Many were disgusted at the turn of events, but few had ideas about how to regain the initiative that had characterized the pro-democracy movement prior to the amir’s shrewd riposte. Meanwhile, the government continued efforts to alleviate the economic problems fueling much of the discontent that the Forty-five had mobilized so skillfully. Chief among these was a policy it had pursued since mid-1989, when the pro-democracy movement leadership had reached beyond its base in the dismissed 1985 parliament to recruit active participants among various groups in the Kuwaiti population. This was to increase state income by selling additional crude.
The continuation of oil production above Kuwait’s OPEC quota was neither a unique nor a novel tactic. It was something that virtually every other OPEC member with excess oil production capacity also was doing, and for much the same reason: to compensate for the fall in per-barrel revenues resulting from depressed oil prices. In fact, several were producing far more excess oil than Kuwait. The United Arab Emirates, for example, was producing up to a million barrels per day (bpd) over quota. In comparison, Kuwaiti overproduction reportedly averaged only a quarter of a million bpd. 55 At whatever level, the flaws in adopting overproduction as a strategy are obvious. Persistently applied, overproduction depresses prices even further. More serious for the future of Kuwait, however, was that its rate of oil production had triggered the rage of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi president whose money problems were even more serious than those of the Kuwaiti amir. 56
The relationship between domestic pressure on the regime and a desire to produce class-abatement—in this case, an abatement of the antagonism of Kuwaitis generally against the state class—is likely to have contributed to the government’s decision to assume the risks of overproduction. The pro-democracy movement may have had another, more direct, impact on Saddam’s decision to invade Kuwait. To the leader of a country where political opposition is forbidden, 57 evidence that citizens can oppose their government openly and survive is likely to be interpreted as a sign of serious weakness in the regime. Also, the prominence of Arab nationalists among the leadership of the Kuwaiti opposition may have convinced Saddam that his invasion not only would be welcomed but also would find a pool of potential quislings ready to lead the postinvasion government as his surrogates.
Instead, the Iraqi invasion demonstrated both the loyalty of Kuwaitis to their leaders and the loyalty of the leaders to the population, or at least to their own positions within Kuwaiti society as it had existed prior to the invasion. At the same time, the invasion deepened most Kuwaitis’ democratic values and taught them new techniques for expressing these values in their daily lives. During the occupation, Kuwaitis inside Kuwait mobilized in protected spaces to maintain their society as best they could, aided by resources from outside smuggled to them by their fellow citizens. Kuwaitis inside and outside turned the occupation itself into a protected political space, one from which they continued, publicly and privately, to press their leaders for the restoration of the constitution after liberation. Thus, the Kuwaiti pro-democracy movement continued to work effectively during the occupation of the country by a foreign power, despite the upsurge in extranational influences on the domestic politics of Kuwait that the occupation and its rollback introduced.
Endnotes
Note 1: Crystal, Oil and Politics in the Gulf, chs. 3&-;4; Tétreault, “Autonomy, Necessity, and the Small State,” 575ff. Back.
Note 2: Modern writers using these concepts include Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition; Eli Zaretsky, Capitalism, the Family, and Personal Life; and Robert N. Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Back.
Note 3: Here the use of “man” is not a synonym for “human being” but a gender-specific reference to male human beings. Back.
Note 4: Nazih Ayubi argues that the ancient distinction is still dominant in the Arab world, where privacy as it is known in the West is at a rudimentary stage of development (see Over-stating the Arab State, 439). Back.
Note 5: The term mosque is used here not simply to refer to a physical place of worship but also metaphorically to embrace the individuals, institutions, and organizations—including those whose purposes go beyond conventional definitions of “religious” but which still identify themselves as “Islamic.” The term is analogous to the use of “the church” in the context of politics in Christian countries—see, for example, Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics, who uses the term in this way to discuss the very different theological, institutional, and structural contexts of Protestantism and Catholicism in Germany. Back.
Note 6: Interviews with Kuwaitis, March, September-October 1992, in Kuwait. See also Jehan S. Rajab, Invasion Kuwait: An English Woman’s Tale, 21–22; Shamlan Y. al-Essa, “The Political Consequences of the Crisis for Kuwait,” in Ibrahim Ibrahim, ed., The Gulf Crisis: Background and Consequences, 169–85. Back.
Note 7: See, for example, Charles E. Lindblom, Politics and Markets: The World’s Political-Economic Systems; Mary Ann Tétreault, “Regimes and Liberal World Orders,” Alternatives 13 (January 1988): 13–16. The shift in the nature of the dominant interdependent institutions and their relationships in Europe is traced in Polanyi, The Great Transformation, chs. 4–5. The divergence between Islamist ideology regarding the integration of religion with every other aspect of life, and the practices of Muslim societies throughout history is discussed in the context of mosque-state relations in James P. Piscatori, Islam in a World of Nation-States. The relevance of such practice to democratization is discussed in Mernissi, Islam and Democracy. Back.
Note 8: The measure of Ahmad al-Jabir’s acute self-regard can be assessed from a report on Kuwait compiled by the British Political Agent c. 1937–38, reprinted in Alan de Lacy Rush, ed., Records of Kuwait, 1899–1961 2:27–45. The author reports on cronyism (27–28), the country’s and the amir’s budgets—which include only Rs 2000 in unambiguously public expenditures out of a total of Rs 121,000 in “Shaikh’s expenses private and public” (30), and the arrangements by which the amir and his family got free medical care while “charges are made for medicine and for all attentions, including those to out-patients, and even the poor—and they are very poor in Kuwait—have to bring something in kind, if not in cash” (42). After oil was discovered in Kuwait, Ahmad al-Jabir insisted that all revenues from it belonged to him by right, even though there was no support for such a position in tribal tradition and, as David Finnie notes, such an assertion was politically untenable as well. In the concession agreement outlining the relationship between the Kuwait Oil Company and the amir, Ahmad al-Jabir had “[taken] care to stipulate . . . that revenues . . . were to be paid to his personal account” (Finnie, Shifting Lines in the Sand, 88). Back.
Note 9: Rush, ed., Records of Kuwait 2:46; also Crystal, Oil and Politics in the Gulf, 52. Back.
Note 10: Phebe Marr, Modern History of Iraq, 78. Marr notes that this was the first time that an Iraqi ruler claimed sovereign rights to Kuwait. Crystal places the beginning of Iraqi efforts to tie Kuwait to Iraq in the early 1930s, with a campaign to woo the ruler to agree to voluntary merger in the face of the Saudi threat (see Oil and Politics in the Gulf, 52–53). Back.
Note 11: Rush, ed., Records of Kuwait 2:117. Back.
Note 12: Crystal, Oil and Politics in the Gulf, 52. Back.
Note 13: Rush, ed., Records of Kuwait 2:118–19. Back.
Note 15: Ibid., 27–46, 134, 138–40. Back.
Note 18: Ibid., 208–209. Back.
Note 20: Crystal, Oil and Politics in the Gulf, 49. Back.
Note 21: Tétreault, “Autonomy, Necessity, and the Small State,” 576. Back.
Note 22: Rush, ed., Records of Kuwait 2:225. According to British records, the first council consisted of fourteen persons plus a president, the amir’s cousin `Abdullah al-Salim. The members in order of their vote totals were: *Muhammad bin Shahin al-Ghanim (103), *Shaikh Yusuf bin Issa (100), *Abdulla bin Hamad Al-Sagar (100), *Mash’an Al-Khudair (82), *Sulaiman Al-Adsani (77), *Sayid Ali Sayid Sulaiman (76), *Mishari Al-Hasan Al-Badur (62), *Sultan Al-Kulaib (62), *Abdul Latif Al-Thunayyan (61), *Yusuf Saleh Al-Humaidhi (59), *Saleh Al-Othman Al-Rashid (50), Yusuf Al-Marzook (45), *Hamad Al-Marzook (39), and *Khalid Al-Abdul Latif Al-Hamad (37)—see Rush, ed., Records of Kuwait 2:149. The twelve marked (*) were also elected to the second council, along with Ahmad bin Khamis, Ali al-Banwan, Ali al Abdul Wahhab, Mishairi al Hilal, Muhammad al Ahmad al Ghanim, Husf bin Yusuf, and Yusuf al Adsani. `Abdullah al-Salim was again appointed president of the council. (Spellings of names are taken from the source.) Back.
Note 23: Rush, ed., Records of Kuwait 2:240–47. Back.
Note 24: The events of March 9–10, 1939, are drawn from the following sources: Rush, ed., Records of Kuwait 2:258–65; interviews with Jasim al-Qatami, veteran member of the political opposition and brother of a policeman slain in an altercation with anticouncil forces (see main text, later this chapter), March 17 and 21, 1990, in Kuwait; Alan Rush, Al-Sabah, 52–53; Crystal, Oil and Politics in the Gulf, 49–50. Back.
Note 25: Rush, ed., Records of Kuwait 2:260, 265. Back.
Note 27: Crystal, Oil and Politics in the Gulf, 58. Back.
Note 28: Mernissi, Islam and Democracy, esp. ch. 3; Jamal al-Suwaidi, “Arab and Western Conceptions of Democracy: Evidence from a UAE Opinion Survey,” in David Garnham and Mark Tessler, eds., Democracy, War, and Peace in the Middle East, 86–89; Shukri B. Abed, “Islam and Democracy,” in ibid., 120–26. Back.
Note 29: Tétreault, “Autonomy, Necessity, and the Small State,” 577. Back.
Note 30: Crystal, Oil and Politics in the Gulf, 51–53. Back.
Note 31: Gavrielides, “Tribal Democracy.” Back.
Note 32: Rush, ed., Records of Kuwait 2:54. Back.
Note 33: Rush, Al-Sabah, 28–31; Gavrielides, “Tribal Democracy,” 165; and chapter 7, this volume. Back.
Note 34: Tétreault, “Kuwait’s Democratic Reform Movement,” 17. Back.
Note 35: The Kuwaiti constitution provides for a National Assembly to resume meeting two months after a dissolution, “restored to its full constitutional authority . . . as if the dissolution had not taken place,” and authorized to continue until the election of a new assembly (article 107). However, the 1975 assembly did not resume after the two-month period had ended. See Abdo Baaklini, “Legislatures in the Gulf Area: The Experience of Kuwait, 1961–1976,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 14 (August 1982): 372–76. Back.
Note 36: The Group of Twenty-six refers to the parliamentarians who began meeting after the dissolution of the National Assembly. Its members are the core of the parliamentary opposition. They were joined gradually by six additional parliamentarians, and together composed the Group of Thirty-two. In 1989 the Thirty-two decided to enlarge its direct representation of groups in the Kuwaiti population by inviting selected members of these groups to join the leadership core. This body, augmented by nonparliamentarians, became the Group of Forty-five. (Interview with Ahmad al-Sa`doun, March 17, 1990, in Kuwait.) Back.
Note 37: During the spring of 1990, in scores of interviews with politically active Kuwaitis, people referred over and over again to the events in Eastern Europe as harbingers of democratization in Kuwait and elsewhere in the Middle East. Back.
Note 38: Kuwaiti parliaments are identified by the year of their election. Back.
Note 39: Information about the opposition movement and conditions in Kuwait prior to the invasion was gathered in interviews conducted in Kuwait in the spring of 1990. Among those I interviewed were leaders of the opposition, including five members of the Group of Twenty-six, government officials, professors and students at Kuwait University, Kuwaiti businessmen, and members of expatriate communities in Kuwait. Back.
Note 40: Kuwait Times, April 23, 1990, 1. The newspaper notes that these were almost the same reasons cited for the 1975 suspensions by the amir at that time, Sabah al-Salim. See also Baaklini, “Legislatures in the Gulf Area,” 373–74. Back.
Note 41: Other causes possibly contributing to the amir’s actions included a series of terrorist attacks by Kuwaiti Shi`i supporters of the Iranian regime, and the nervous debility of the amir, whose mental state following an assassination attempt the year before was said to have remained fragile. However, the suspensions are “overdetermined,” and reasons coming from other perspectives will be noted in subsequent chapters. Back.
Note 42: John Whelan, “Kuwait ’88: A Model for Development,” G2. The mechanics of the illegal Manakh market relied on dealings in postdated checks. In Kuwait a postdated check can be presented for payment even before the date indicated. The presentation of a large postdated check in September 1982 set off the crash. See John Train, Famous Financial Fiascos, 20. Back.
Note 43: When I interviewed him in Kuwait in May 1990, then Finance Minister Jasim al-Khorafy denied that debtors’ assets had been transferred out of the country, but bank economists in Kuwait contradicted his statement. Back.
Note 44: Economist Intelligence Unit, Kuwait Country Profile, 1986–87 (London: Business International, 1986), 21–23. Back.
Note 45: Tétreault, The Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, 34–39. The opposition also criticized the price KPC paid, which was appreciably in excess of the market value of the company’s shares. Back.
Note 46: The economic situation in Kuwait, as in the Gulf as a whole, also was affected by external factors such as the long recession in the West which vastly reduced employment and the consumption of oil, the region’s major export. Back.
Note 47: Shireen T. Hunter, “The Gulf Economic Crisis and Its Social and Political Consequences,” Middle East Journal 40 (Autumn 1986): 593–613. Back.
Note 48: National Bank of Kuwait, Kuwait & Gulf Cooperation Council Economic & Financial Bulletin 11 (Fall 1987): 9–11. Back.
Note 49: Al-Assiri, Kuwait’s Foreign Policy, 129. In 1990 this insecurity was fanned by pressures from Iraq and Saudi Arabia. According to a military officer whom I interviewed in late February, these included separate incursions into Kuwait by armed forces from each country. Back.
Note 50: Information about the pro-democracy movement and the activities of 1989–90 were obtained from interviews with speaker Ahmad al-Sa`doun, March 17, 1990, in Kuwait, and four other members of the 1985 parliament in March and May 1990; interviews with other participants, including members of previous parliaments and members of the press, in spring 1990 and fall 1992. Quotes in the text other than those attributed to someone else are from the interview with Ahmad al-Sa`doun. Some of these events also were discussed by Shafeeq Ghabra in a talk entitled, “The Democratic Movement in Historical Perspective,” given at the Conference on Political Participation and Constitutional Democracy in Kuwait, sponsored by the National Republican Institute for International Affairs, Washington, D.C., April 29, 1991. Back.
Note 51: Interviews with `Abdullah Nibari, former member of parliament, April and May 1990. Back.
Note 52: Arab Times, April 28, 1990 (quote from 1); April 23, 1990, 1; Kuwait Times, April 23, 1990, 1. Back.
Note 53: When each prisoner was released from jail, his friends sent piles of cards and letters congratulating him and wishing him well. One of `Abdullah Nibari’s messages of congratulation was posted on his office wall, a four-foot-long computer printout spelling out “mabrouk”—congratulations—in Arabic. Back.
Note 54: International Herald Tribune, June 18, 1990, 19. Back.
Note 55: Testimony by the company’s managing director in the London suit for recovery of funds embezzled from the Kuwait Oil Tanker Company indicated that Kuwaiti production in this period went as high as three million barrels per day (bpd), but I have no supporting information from another source for this figure. The quarter-million bpd estimate comes from the trade press. Back.
Note 56: Tétreault, “Independence, Sovereignty, and Vested Glory,” 96. Back.
Note 57: Samir al-Khalil, Republic of Fear: The Inside Story of Saddam’s Iraq. Back.
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