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Stories of Democracy: Politics and Society in Contemporary Kuwait
Mary Ann Tétreault
2000
Chapter 7: Back to the Future: The Return of Normal Politics
The 1992 campaign in Kuwait was like a wedding feast, a gigantic party celebrating the reunification of Kuwaitis with their country and their history. The 1992 election was generally seen as a victory for popular government, the constitution, and much of what Kuwaitis value in themselves and their political traditions. However, it also brought back the long-running conflict between the government and a sitting parliament, always more difficult for the opposition to manage to its advantage than the conflict between the government and “the people,” which is how politics in Kuwait tends to be framed when the parliament is suspended.
The Kuwaiti parliament is both subject and object of contending myths and conflicting interests. Despite how deeply it is embedded in Kuwaiti mythic history, the parliament remains an insecurely rooted organ of practical governance. Ever since the 1981 redistricting which made cultural conflict between hadhar and badu understandings of citizenship and loyalty a constant feature of legislative decision-making, the parliament’s internal culture has been unstable. Interpersonal relations have become more contentious and, as a result, institutional autonomy has suffered. Yet even though the parliament is a fragile governing institution, it remains the primary base upon which constitutional democracy in the country can be constructed and maintained. In Kuwait, voluntary associations and the highly institutionalized and protected network of diwaniyyas are important arenas for direct political participation—populism; the parliament is the embodiment and guarantor of constitutionalism and the rule of law.
The Prime Minister and the Cabinet
Kuwait’s political system incorporates aspects of parliamentary regimes and systems where the executive and the legislature are separate institutions. The Kuwaiti system also has a number of unique features affecting the separate and joint operations of the parliament and the cabinet. Led by the prime minister, the cabinet sets much of the political agenda and directs the work of government agencies. However, unlike what happens in parliamentary systems such as Britain’s, the Kuwaiti parliament cannot bring the cabinet down, get rid of the prime minister, or force new elections. The Kuwaiti cabinet is not an extension of the parliament but rather is a fusion of the executive and the legislature. 1 Without parties to connect programmatic leadership and government policy, and without an electoral or a parliamentary role in choosing the prime minister, the head of Kuwait’s government often is the chief antagonist of the National Assembly.
In the Kuwaiti system, the cabinet is an arm of the rulers. If elected members move too far away from the cabinet’s positions, the arm tightens in a choke-hold, giving parliament the unhappy choice of retreating or being throttled. Sitting parliaments have been so throttled three times in Kuwaiti history, yet the ethos of the institution demands an independent role for elected representatives. The cabinet and parliament are both weakened by the blending of these two institutions caused by including cabinet members as members of parliament and appointing parliamentarians to the cabinet.
Every cabinet minister automatically becomes a member of parliament, whether he was elected to the National Assembly or not. Consequently, Kuwait’s rulers prefer to minimize the number of elected parliamentarians appointed to the cabinet, leaving more places to fill with their supporters, who then become full members of the National Assembly. This shifts the balance between the opposition and the supporters of the regime in parliament toward the latter, and dilutes the power of all the elected representatives. Another reason for keeping the number of elected parliamentarians in the cabinet as small as possible is to reduce demands for accommodation from within the cabinet, a much easier prospect when those most likely to make such demands are excluded. A third objective is to keep key ministries—Foreign Affairs, Interior, and Defense, and one or more among Information, Finance, and Oil—in the hands of members of the ruling family. 2 Although the proportion of cabinet offices held by ruling family members has declined since the constitution first went into effect, the first three of these key ministries have been monopolized by ruling family members.
The crown prince in his role as prime minister is the linchpin of this system. Together with the amir and their close advisers, he chooses the cabinet, leads the government, and exerts continual psychological and political pressure on the parliament as an institution and its members as individuals to surrender their limited autonomy to the demands of the ruling family. The Kuwaiti constitution does not require the crown prince to be the prime minister. As a result, the KDF-led campaign to separate the prime ministership from the crown princeship constituted a potent threat to the architecture of ruling family control of Kuwait’s political system. Their desire to defuse this demand prompted the rulers to orchestrate an elaborate charade to undermine the movement by Kuwaiti constitutionalists to formalize an institutional separation between rulers and parliament. It also provided an opportunity for the rulers to pull off a smaller coup with respect to the assignment of cabinet portfolios. This scenario was played out so rapidly that the opposition could not open a political space quickly enough to take the issue of the prime ministership into the public arena.
In the midst of speculation and maneuvering regarding the choice of ministers for the new cabinet, the crown prince made a sudden and unexpected move. On October 10 he told a number of people that he was giving up the post of prime minister because he didn’t have the unanimous support of the Kuwaiti people. The announcement fell like a bombshell on the political opposition. The newly elected parliamentarians were exhausted from the campaign and from fulfilling the social obligations of winners to receive the congratulations of supporters and constituents. 3 At the time, they were meeting in daily strategy sessions aimed at maximizing the number of potential cabinet ministers from among themselves. Meanwhile, the lack of unity among the new members had already begun to make itself felt in rumblings against the reelection of Ahmad al-Sa`doun to the speakership. As a result, there was no ready-made “game plan” on hand to respond to the apparent capitulation by the crown prince to what had been, up to that time, a theoretical argument opposing his monopoly over the prime ministership.
The novelty and timing of the crown prince’s offer created a situation similar to the amir’s 1990 speech outlining the plan for the Majlis al-Watani. The opposition was caught flat-footed, without an alternative ready in the wings. Into the vacuum created by the rulers’ challenge and the opposition’s lack of a comeback, supporters of the regime moved from behind the scenes to create an illusion of a popular endorsement of the crown prince that was even less grounded in democratic formalities than the illusion of parliamentary elections that had produced the Majlis al-Watani. This began immediately after reports of the “resignation” appeared in the press. A stream of individuals and groups from among the regime’s supporters paraded to the palace, reportedly to beg the amir to persuade the crown prince to change his mind. Recalling the traditional custom of shura, consultation, stories about the petitioners made the rulers’ choice of the crown prince to be prime minister appear to be the people’s choice. The populist mood was intensified that night when, at nearby diwaniyyas, men were urged to go home and mobilize their wives. Soon a crowd of shouting women, some of them weeping, converged on the Bayan Palace in a “spontaneous” demonstration against the resignation of the crown prince. The next day, citing “popular demand,” the crown prince announced that he would stay on as prime minister and form a new government. 4 Some said that the crown prince had demanded that Shaikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jabir return to head the foreign ministry, the post he had held at the time of the invasion. 5 Whatever the role of the crown prince in his rehabilitation, the appointment of Sabah al-Ahmad was a warning to members who had campaigned against the incompetence of the preinvasion leadership and were threatening to “open the files on August second” as soon as parliament convened. It let them know that any attempt to extend their investigations all the way to the top would meet with resistance. 6
It was difficult for the opposition to criticize the rapidity of the resolution of this minicrisis, which came and went in something like twenty-four hours (though news coverage was spread out over several days, making it appear to have taken longer). Kuwait’s constitution requires that the new National Assembly convene two weeks after an election (article 87). Choosing a new prime minister, even one from the ruling family, would have required delicate negotiations among competing claims. 7 This may have been impossible given the time constraints. The end result was that the crown prince’s coup delegitimated the movement to free the prime ministership from its bondage to Kuwait’s rulers, keeping the Sabah’s chief mechanism for parliamentary penetration intact.
The opposition had not considered alternative candidates for the prime ministership, but it did devote a great deal of time and effort to devising a strategy to strengthen its position in the cabinet. On the same day that the crown prince withdrew his promise to resign, the Group of Forty-five named a ten-member committee, including two of the four men being mentioned for the speakership, to ask the amir to broaden the “popular platform in the formation of the new cabinet.” 8 The delegation reportedly went to the amir armed with the names of seven parliamentarians who had agreed to serve in the government and whom the group had agreed to support.
According to Hamad al-Jou`an (85P), a member of the core leadership of the opposition, the crown prince had approached members individually to ask if they would accept ministerial appointments. Those who answered yes then went to the Group of Forty-five, which had begun to see itself as the coordinating organization for all the opposition groups in parliament, to ask for the group’s endorsement. The Forty-five asked prospective ministers seeking its endorsement to get the prime minister to agree that parliamentarians would be given half the seats in the cabinet, and that appointees would have a say about which portfolios they would accept. The Forty-five also wanted a pledge that the crown prince would not appoint ministers from outside the parliament who had been associated with antidemocratic activities—that they “will be from non-corrupted backgrounds.” 9
The decision to send a delegation from the Forty-five to the amir reflected the group’s desire to assert its authority to speak for the opposition and also its understanding that aspiring ministers would need help putting forward the collective demands of the group, given the intensity of each aspirant’s private desire for cabinet office. In addition, as parliamentarian `Adnan `Abd al-Samad (INA) was quick to point out, by dealing with members as individuals rather than going through the political blocs, the crown prince could sidestep even these much smaller organizing institutions and help perpetuate personality politics in Kuwait. 10 Hamad al-Jou`an confirmed this, also noting that after the crown prince had refused the demands of the Forty-five, the ministerial candidates did not withdraw their names. 11 In the end, the rulers refused to appoint half the cabinet from the parliament, but they did agree to hold the cabinet to fifteen members and thereby limit the relative weight of the “government vote.” This was a significant concession to opposition forces. 12
Newspaper articles predicted that as many as eight of the new ministers would be from the parliament, and other predictions were offered regarding the portfolio each would hold. Ahmad al-Rub`i (I = Independent), a member of the ten-man Group of Forty-five delegation and also on the list as a potential minister, was reported as being considered for the Information portfolio; Jasim al-`Aoun, an ICM delegate with IPA backing, was touted as the next minister of either Oil or Housing. The incumbent oil minister, Hmoud `Abdullah al-Ruqbah, also was seen as a strong contender for the oil portfolio, and there was a great deal of speculation regarding which ruling family members would get cabinet positions and which one each might hold.
The “slate” supported by the Group of Forty-five is reported in table 7.1. It includes Islamists as well as secularists, reflecting an effort to balance the interests of the major factions among the opposition. `Ali al-Baghli is a Shi`a (though he ran as an independent). Two others were from the outlying areas and one of them, `Abdullah al-Hajri, had won a tribal primary and been endorsed by the ICM. Of the two experienced parliamentarians, only one, Mishairy al-`Anjari (85P), had had prior cabinet experience. All were new men and ambitious, and their backers expected great things of them.
| Table 7.1: Cabinet Formation, October 1992 | ||
| Group of 45 | Touted For | Post Received |
| Delegates and Delegate-Nominees | ||
| Ahmad al-Sa`doun (85P)a | — | — |
| Ahmad al-Rub`i (85P)b | Information | Education |
| Ahmad al-Khatib (KDF) | — | — |
| Jasim al-`Aoun (IPA)b | Justice or `Awqaf | Social Affairs and Labor |
| Khaled al-`Adwa (T = Tribal primary/ICM/IPA) |
— | — |
| `Abd al-Mohsin al-Mud`ej (IPA) | — | — |
| `Ali al-Baghlib | Transportation | Oil |
| Ghanim al-Jamhour al-Mutairi | — | — |
| Mubarak al-Duwailah (ICM/IPA) | Oil or Housing | — |
| Mohammad Sharar | — | — |
| Nondelegate Nominees from Parliament | ||
| Ismail al-Shati (ICM) | Oil or Housing | — |
| `Abdullah al-Hajri (ICM)b | Education | Commerce and Industry |
| Mishairy al-`Anjari (85P) | Commerce | Justice |
| Non-Nominees from Parliament | ||
| Jam`an Faleh al-`Azemy (ICM/T)b | — | `Awqaf |
| Nonparliamentarians | ||
| Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jabirc | — | Foreign Affairs |
| Dhari al-Othmand | — | Cabinet Affairs |
| Ahmad al-Hmoud al-Jabir | — | Interior |
| Ahmad Mohammad Saleh al-`Adsani | — | Electricity and Water |
| Habib Jowhar Hayat | — | Communications |
| Sa`ud Nasir al-Sabahb | — | Information |
| `Abd al-Wahhab al-Fouzan | — | Health |
| `Ali Sabah al-Salim | — | Defense |
| Nasir al-Roudhan | — | Finance and Planning |
|
a = Speaker of the National Assembly Source: Arab Times, various issues. |
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The rulers picked and chose from this list, destabilizing the balance of the slate endorsed by the Group of Forty-five in several ways. `Ali al-Baghli and the IPA’s Jasim al-`Aoun received portfolios, but neither of the ICM hopefuls, Mubarak al-Duwailah and Isma`il al-Shati, was picked for a ministry. The lack of Sunni Islamist opposition representation in the cabinet reduced opposition cohesion, a situation aggravated by the distribution of portfolios. Ahmad al-Rub`i was chosen to head Education. This was taken very badly by supporters of Mubarak al-Duwailah (ICM), whose star as the top challenger of Ahmad al-Sa`doun (85P) for the speakership had begun to dim. 13 Education is a critical political arena for Kuwaiti Islamists. They controlled the student union at Kuwait University and, in the previous parliament, had succeeded in blocking what they said were anti-Islamic policies advanced by another professor-minister, Hasan `Ali al-Ebraheem, who had held this portfolio before the 1985 parliament was dissolved. 14 Finally, an ICM parliamentarian not endorsed by the Forty-five, Jam`an Faleh al-`Azemi, was given the Ministry of `Awqaf and Islamic Affairs. His appointment was a subtle jab at the Sunni Islamist opposition and also undermined the emerging role of the Group of Forty-five as a forum where parliamentary ministers could work out common positions. As a result of these maneuvers, headlines proclaiming the parliament’s victory in gaining six seats in the cabinet, although technically correct, were misleading; meanwhile, the authority of parliament was diminished by a distribution of portfolios different from what prospective ministers and their supporters had hoped for. To professor Ahmad al-Rub`i, Education was a wasps’ nest. Despite the authority conferred by professional expertise, Ahmad’s secularist positions were resisted from the outset by powerful Islamists in the upper echelons of Education’s bureaucracy. These conflicts soon spilled over into the parliament. There, battles over Islamist proposals, such as a bill to permit female medical students to wear veils during clinical and laboratory work, and an education bill that included a provision to end gender-integration in the university, widened the division in the opposition between secularists and Islamists and contributed to the rapid erosion of the initial commitment of members on both sides to work together.
A slightly different but similarly unhappy situation greeted `Ali al-Baghli at the Oil Ministry. Oil is another wasps’ nest, notoriously corrupt and a key channel directing financial rewards to the high rollers in and out of the ruling family who form the backbone of the regime’s support. The ministry’s rejection of accountability and its resistance to external controls had become legendary during the long reign of `Ali al-Khalifa as oil minister. Oil would have been a challenge to any of the men seeking it and presented formidable obstacles to the man it eventually was handed to. The natural allies of the new oil minister were the technocrats at KPC, equally hostile to corruption in the ministry and very anxious to halt the policy drift that had characterized the hydrocarbon sector since liberation. However, `Ali al-Baghli was associated with that segment of the opposition most hostile to KPC. In chapter 5, I noted that KPC technocrats were equally hostile to the opposition, a result of the rulers’ manipulations during the occupation and the early days of the liberation. Many of the oil technocrats I interviewed in 1992 were at first cautiously optimistic about the new minister. However, his words and actions—for example, he did not begin his tenure by visiting affiliate managers or inviting them to see him at his office, a disregard of their expertise, authority, and interests that they noted and resented—reinforced the negative impressions of the opposition they had acquired during the tense days of 1990 and 1991. This mutual ill will prevented the formation of a coalition that might have been useful to both sides. 15
While the parliamentary ministers struggled to get a grip on their new responsibilities, the parliament as a whole struggled to put itself in order and cope with the enthusiasm of individual members eager to follow through on the issues that had been prominent in their campaigns. Judicial reform had many supporters in the parliament and the population, though Islamists were conspicuous by their absence among them. Veteran legislators Mishairy al-`Anjari and Hamad al-Jou`an each submitted proposals to make the judiciary an independent branch of government rather than part of the Ministry of Justice, a course of action that had engendered fierce government opposition when it was proposed during the 1985 parliament. 16 Other initiatives provided clearer evidence of ideological and policy differences among parliamentary factions. Even before the new parliament convened, Mufrej al-Mutairy (IPA), from District 19 in the outlying area, called for amending article 2 of the constitution to make Shari`a “the source of legislation.” 17 Soon the parliament was full of proposals, but few attracted the broad support that could have transformed them into laws.
Parliamentary Institutions
The outcome of elections for speaker and members of parliamentary committees is emblematic of the impact of intraparliamentary factionalism on the effectiveness of the Kuwaiti legislature. The speaker is elected by the body as a whole. Candidates for the speakership may run on the basis of an agenda setting out their legislative priorities, 18 but their peers vote for them because of their personalities, a desire to honor them for past achievements, or because they share an ideological outlook or a cultural base.
Of the three most prominent candidates for speaker in 1992, Jasim al-Saqr (CB) was the least enthusiastic about running. He had already enjoyed a long and illustrious career that had included a policy-making position in the oil sector, election to two previous parliaments, and work in his family’s private-sector enterprises. 19 Jasim would take the job if it was offered but was reluctant to compete for it. He withdrew from the speaker’s race shortly after the election when he realized that he did not have the support of members from the outlying areas. Such support was critical if he were to win over Ahmad al-Sa`doun, the favorite of most urban-based opposition groups.
Mubarak al-Duwailah was keen to become speaker and ran as the candidate of the outlying areas. Mubarak had previous political experience as a member of the 1985 parliament. He ran a strong race in 1992, coming in first by a very wide margin over the second-place winner in his district. Mubarak’s supporters emphasized his having avoided confrontations with the government, stressing this quality as a guarantee that the 1992 parliament would be accommodating if he were elected. 20 Mubarak’s campaign for the speakership was viewed by some as an embarrassment to the ICM, formally part of the opposition which nominally was united in support of Ahmad al-Sa`doun. 21 However, as Hamad al-Jou`an points out, the ICM had its own agenda, part of which was to create a separate constituency for itself by playing up the division between hadhar and badu. 22 This was the crux of Mubarak’s campaign strategy; together with his ICM affiliation, it indicated that his election would exacerbate already troublesome tensions within the parliament. Observers in and out of the assembly expected that Mubarak would use the speakership to push the ICM’s Islamist agenda.
The man who was elected speaker, Ahmad al-Sa`doun, was backed by most opposition members. Although he has programmatic and issue preferences, Ahmad’s primary loyalty—perhaps obsession is not too strong a word—is to the parliament and its role as the democratic institution of Kuwait. From a long interview with him in February 1990, and interviews before and since with his associates, a portrait emerges of Ahmad al-Sa`doun as the quintessential constitutionalist. His uncompromising stand against the amir’s July 1986 violation of Kuwait’s political pact included using his position as speaker of the 1985 parliament to keep the large remnant represented by the Group of Twenty-six together. Ahmad also led the Group of Forty-five, which coordinated the pro-democracy movement and took its battle for political liberalization into the streets of Kuwait. Ahmad’s leadership throughout this time was grounded on his strong advocacy for the return of constitutional government in Kuwait, including basic civil rights guarantees and the resumption of parliamentary life.
Ahmad al-Sa`doun’s election sent a very different signal from the one that would have resulted from the election of Mubarak al-Duwailah. No one expected Ahmad to be accommodating to the regime, least of all the appointed representatives among the cabinet whose candidate for speaker was `Abd al-`Aziz al-`Adsani (I), the former head of the Kuwait municipality. Forty-six of the fifty-nine votes cast were for Ahmad al-Sa`doun, who received the gavel from the hand of the temporary speaker and his nominal rival, Jasim al-Saqr. 23 However, this apparent victory for the opposition also was deceptive. Most of the opposition had in fact united behind Ahmad al-Sa`doun, but elections for other assembly positions highlighted the Islamist-secularist split that cut across so many other cleavages in the parliament. Saleh al-Fadhala, a member of the 1985 parliament who was endorsed in 1992 by both the ICM and the IPA, was reelected deputy speaker. To every formal post other than speaker, including membership on parliamentary committees, all those elected were Islamists or sympathetic to Islamist positions with the sole exception of Hamad al-Jou`an. 24 The dominance of the Islamists in the 1992 parliament guaranteed the prominence of religion in National Assembly politics.
The National Agenda
The cleavages separating various parliamentary factions interfered with the ability of the National Assembly to pass needed legislation, and none was more destructive of parliamentary cohesion than the antagonism between secularists and Islamists. The government became progressively dismayed at rising hostility among members and the consequent paralysis of policy-making on a wide spectrum of issues. This was especially serious where broadly based coalitions were needed to support initiatives requiring economic sacrifices from key constituency groups, sacrifices urged by the regime to compensate for the heavy expenses arising from occupation, liberation, and reconstruction. Even addressing such issues was difficult because neither the government nor the opposition spoke with one voice on any of them.
One example is imported labor. As I noted in the previous chapter, a desire to minimize imported labor was articulated by many candidates during the 1992 election campaign. However, the postcampaign reality brought the opposite, a rapid increase in labor imports. This is because labor is a no-win issue for both the government and the opposition. Virtually every Kuwaiti benefits from foreign unskilled labor, and curtailing labor imports requires making distinctions among workers and employers. For example, any substantial reduction in foreign labor by necessity implies the employment of more domestic labor, a shift known locally as “Kuwaitization.” However simple and sensible this might sound as a process, however, Kuwaitization as an outcome is not unproblematic. Kuwaitization of household help would effect an immediate drop in living standards and leisure time because Kuwaitis would have to do all their own housework, childcare, driving, gardening, and the myriad other jobs that in most families are done by foreign labor.
Work outside the household is difficult to Kuwaitize for other reasons. Under article 41 of the constitution, “Every Kuwaiti has the right to work and to choose the type of his work. . . . The State shall endeavor to make [work] available to citizens and to make its terms equitable.” In practice, this translates into a system of wage differentials that favor Kuwaiti over foreign labor and confirms the role of the state as employer of last resort. 25 Worker discipline is another problem, one heightened by comparison to the excessive amount of control that Kuwaiti law permits employers to exercise over foreign workers. 26 Kuwaiti nationals are protected legally from what would be violations of their civil rights, and the concentration of Kuwaiti workers in public-sector jobs reflects additional protections. Supervisors are reluctant to discipline Kuwaiti workers in an environment suffused by wasta, or political influence. Workers denied promotions they believed themselves ready for, and some fired from government jobs for what their supervisors say was extreme provocation, have been successful in appealing to a cabinet minister or even the crown prince for intervention on their behalf. In one of the many cases I heard about during my fieldwork studying the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, the supervisor who had dismissed a problem worker was himself disciplined for this action after the worker was reinstated on order of the crown prince.
Kuwaiti elites are equally, though differently, implicated in the nation’s labor problem. “Visa merchants,” individuals with rights to import contract labor, often are political allies of the government. In 1990, I interviewed members of one merchant family who said that identification with the opposition constrained their ability to obtain foreign workers, while merchant allies of the regime could import far more labor than they needed for their own operations. Foreign workers are lucrative not only because the wage differential makes them cheaper to employ but also, for the visa merchant, because foreign labor is a commodity he can sell to others. Trade in contract labor is profitable because of the differential between domestic and foreign wages—buying someone else’s labor contracts is still cheaper than employing Kuwaitis.
The traffic in foreign labor in Kuwait is highly political. It is part of the same system of payoffs that gives Kuwaitis economic privileges in the form of agency contracts, monopolies, and jobs as “service MPs,” candidates who, once elected, become professional conduits for wasta. Dealing with the “labor problem” in Kuwait would mean dealing seriously not only with citizen education, training, salary schedules, and worker discipline, all implicated in the foundation of regime support among Kuwaiti workers and their families, but also the system of favors underpinning elite support for the regime. This is one reason why it was easier for the government and a majority of the parliament to fold the labor issue into education policy, as I discuss below.
Structural adjustment is similarly treacherous to effect. In everyday terms, structural adjustment involves reducing or ending subsidies, pruning redundant workers from state and private payrolls, and privatizing state-owned enterprises, including services such as utilities, education, and health care that are provided free or at subsidized prices, to increase the international competitiveness of one’s economy. Achieving structural adjustment in Kuwait conflicts with building support for the regime. An example can be found in the large increase in salaries and benefits for Kuwaiti government employees instituted following liberation, a situation that the government hoped to recoup by instituting broadly based taxes and user fees.
Subsidized food prices, state employment, and a high level of social services are only a part of the welfare package offered to Kuwaitis by the state. The other part involves subsidies going almost entirely to wealthy Kuwaitis. Such wealth transfer schemes go back to the Land Acquisition Program, which transferred huge sums from the state to ruling family members and merchants. Today these schemes include agency commissions, monopoly privileges, and the permission to import labor mentioned earlier, along with government bailouts of failed corporations, collapsed stock markets, and bad debts. Islamists in particular are strong opponents of structural adjustment policies that concentrate on low- and middle-income Kuwaitis, conflating religious and class conflicts in government and parliament. Yet an across-the-board strategy would be difficult from the government’s point of view because it would mobilize multiple constituencies against what each would interpret as its social contract with the regime. In consequence, while a few new user fees were approved and others already on the books were collected more systematically, devising an acceptable fiscal policy including taxes on Kuwaitis and limits on government bailouts proved to be an impossible task for the 1992 parliament.
A third complex of contentious issues centers on investment. Kuwait’s position as a rentier state is based both on the state’s reliance on oil income and, from the mid-1980s until liberation, on an even greater reliance on returns to portfolio investment in Western markets. 27 State oil income itself has become diversified as Kuwait acquired holdings in exploration, production, processing, and marketing overseas. In consequence of its multinational vertical integration, KPC now can claim a significant share of the value added to its oil production by processing and marketing. Critics are concerned that oil investment other than in Kuwait itself raises national dependence on this single industry to dangerous levels. Yet there is no consensus on investment outside of oil. Some want the state to invest in non-oil domestic industries; others prefer that the state reduce its presence in all Kuwaiti industries and leave more opportunities for the private sector. In 1993 the World Bank completed a study of the Kuwaiti economy that included a privatization strategy which recommended extensive divestiture of oil industry investments, including the state’s monopoly of the domestic industry. 28 However, the absence of consensus in the parliament or in the government on an investment strategy made it impossible for either one to propose a coherent strategy for privatization. Instead, privatization on a limited scale has been the province of the Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA). 29 KIA is a public authority in the Ministry of Finance which is charged with managing the state’s domestic and foreign investments. The state’s domestic equity holdings were nonexistent until the 1950s, when oil income began flowing into the country and the government started investing in economic development projects. For example, KNPC (Kuwait National Petroleum Company), along with several other companies that presently are subsidiaries of KPC, started out as a joint venture among the state and private-sector investors. The state acquired equity in other Kuwaiti companies as the result of a drop in the stock market in 1976, and it bought even more shares in even more companies following the 1982 collapse of the illegal Suq al-Manakh. These purchases were made at above-market prices, both to support stock prices and to indemnify investors who wanted to get out with at least some of their capital intact. 30 The state also bought private-sector holdings in the oil industry when it consolidated the properties it had nationalized from foreign companies under KPC. While some of these purchases were voluntary—the Kuwait Oil Tanker Company (KOTC) and the Petrochemical Industries Company (PIC) had been major money-losers prior to the buyout of private-sector holdings at very favorable prices—others were not. KNPC investors still refer to the government’s assumption of their holdings as the “nationalization” of the company. 31
Shortly before the Iraqi invasion, KIA began selling small lots of shares from its non-oil holdings and continued this practice after liberation. The aim of these small transactions was to “help put these companies back on track so they could more efficiently resume their operations.” 32 In 1994, perhaps because there had been no action on the World Bank’s recommendations, KIA stepped up its asset sales, calling its activities “privatization.” KIA’s stated aims included providing opportunities for small investors to acquire holdings in “large, well-managed and financially sound companies.” However, in practice, it transferred shares through two kinds of open market auctions rather than through vouchers or some other program aimed at small investors. 33 Stimulated by the sale of large numbers of shares in going concerns, the Kuwait Stock Exchange became the most active stock market in the Middle East. KIA’s asset sales also fostered repatriation of private capital. 34 The initial success of KIA’s program, reflected in good prices for assets and a booming stock market, reduced pressure on the government and parliament to take a comprehensive approach to investment and privatization. However, it also left the government open to criticism on equity grounds, particularly after the boom faltered and stock values plummeted, events that also prompted new demands for yet another investor bailout.
Avoidance of difficult issues by the 1992 parliament was the fault both of the government and the parliament. The government failed to lead on policy and instead spent its political capital on warfare against the parliament as an institution. Unfortunately, the opposition was neither large nor cohesive enough to offer alternative leadership. Some of the most articulate members of the opposition were stifled by their positions in the cabinet. But the most serious problem for the opposition came from ideological warfare between Islamists and secularists, which blocked formation of interest-based coalitions strong enough to take a systematic approach to the economy and a balanced view of pressing social problems such as the shocking postliberation increase in violent crime. The parliament’s repeated failures to accomplish badly needed reforms, together with disgust at the behavior of a few individual members (see below), eventually turned the Kuwaiti people against the 1992 parliament.
Islamist Politics in the 1992 Parliament
Some theories explaining the rise of fundamentalist movements associate these movements with modernism. Explanations differ according to whether Islamism is seen as part of the modernizing wave—that is, as an outsiders’ attack on traditional power monopolies in society 35 —or as a reaction to that wave—indicating that activists see modernization as having gone too far. 36 A somewhat different construction of fundamentalist Islam casts it as a recurrent feature of Muslim societies experiencing economic crises, and thus a phenomenon whose origins predate the modern period. Fatima Mernissi, for example, argues that Islamism is independent of modernity, appropriating whatever is useful and condemning whatever seems threatening to its leaders and their agendas. Now, as in the past, she says, Islamic fundamentalism is a vehicle for justifying male gender interests in pushing otherwise legitimate female competitors out of public life. 37
Fundamentalist movements have unique advantages as political forces. One is their capacity to mobilize large numbers of followers from their bases in religious institutions. Also, they claim divine legitimacy to challenge the state and its representatives by whatever means they choose, including violence. Such challenges directly contradict constitutionalism, the principle that all citizens are entitled to equal treatment and protection. They also undermine the legitimacy of the nation-state which claims both supreme authority and a monopoly over the use of violence on its territory. Consequently, fundamentalist movements seem revolutionary, and their populist potential alarms not only governments but also secularists committed in principle to the rule of law. Fearing a religious war in an arena where they feel themselves vastly outnumbered, secularists also depend on the law to ensure their corporal and material survival.
Gender issues are a major axis of conflict between secularists and fundamentalists of all kinds. 38 High on most fundamentalist social agendas is to achieve an authoritatively enforced system of gender relations that subordinates women to men. For Muslim fundamentalists, whose ideologies also are influenced by a history of manipulation of gender relations by colonial administrators, politics and religion converge on what Leila Ahmed calls “the discourse of the veil” and Deniz Kandiyoti “the politics of authenticity.” 39 Veiling in this context is more than a costume denoting religious propriety. It is a symbolic position marking preferences on an entire range of policies drawing lines between women and men and also between the community of the faithful and those it sees as its opponents.
Despite the unanimity of Muslim fundamentalists with respect to the inferiority of women, the actual status of women in individual Islamist organizations varies such that the position of women is a bellwether of the political thrust of particular Islamist social movements and groups. As I noted earlier, both Ellis Goldberg and Olivier Roy point to the integration of women in Islamist movements as characteristic of what Roy calls “political Islam.” 40 Political Islam challenges the legitimacy of traditional Muslim political and religious elites who monopolize power and authority by virtue of lineage, tradition, and learning. Arguing on the basis of Islamic tenets such as that the individual is the sole judge of whether she or he is a Muslim, and is responsible before God but not before men for what she or he does and believes, political Islamists are actively revolutionary, offering themselves and their ideas as alternatives to religious and secular leaders whose ideas and actions they condemn.
Goldberg sees a resemblance between some types of Islamist and Christian fundamentalism. Drawing on Michael Waltzer’s analysis of Puritanism, Goldberg argues that Puritanism and political Islam both are reactions against rising state authoritarianism. He shows convincingly that political Islamists, like the Puritans before them, are hostile to all but the narrowest conception of the private sphere. They prefer a system of intellectual and emotional support amounting to collective surveillance of virtually every aspect of life likely to give rise to individualism and independent thought, both abhorred as violations of God’s will and thus as dangers to the soul. 41 Yet, at the same time, unlike activists Roy calls “neofundamentalists,” political Islamists argue that a woman is more than a toy for a man to enjoy in the privacy of the harem. Rather, she is a partner (albeit a junior one) in a joint enterprise dedicated to achieving God’s will on earth and an afterlife in heaven. For political Islamists, women’s roles can include political and economic labor outside the home (although from inside gender-segregated spaces and enveloping costumes that protect vulnerable men from temptation by female charms). In contrast, neofundamentalist claims to political authority inhere almost entirely in religious idioms focused on female subordination. Roy regards only political Islamists as modern but notes that all Islamists unite on the issue of coeducation.
It is true [for both types of Islamism] that the position of women is still secondary: Islamists always speak of the weakness of women as inherent in their nature (“her sensibility is greater than her reasoning power; she is physically weaker”); similarly, they insist that family and motherhood are the natural spheres of women. But the true taboo is that of coeducation (ikhtilat). Remember that in Iran women vote and drive cars, which would be unthinkable in traditionalist fundamentalism of the Saudi variety. Those most radical in their politics are often the least inegalitarian. 42
The centrality of coeducation as an Islamist preoccupation (and one of the few points on which neofundamentalists and political Islamists can agree) explains some of the reasons why education policy is such a point of contention and the one most likely to bring Islamists of all stripes together into a single bloc. In Kuwait secondary schools and postsecondary institutions are primary venues for recruitment into the movement. Islamism claims the student body at Kuwait University as one of its strongest bases; Islamist discourse, whether conducted by adults or adolescents, is saturated with sex. Gender issues at the university, therefore, naturally attract the attention of Kuwaiti Islamist leaders. Unlike proposals to amend article 2 or extend political rights to women, questions of personal status in the setting of the university have the power to unite neofundamentalists and political Islamists, Sunni and Shi`i, in their common pursuits of political dominance over Kuwaiti secularists and new adherents to Islamist movements. The university is a focal point of both concerns because it is an economic gatekeeper—university degrees are passports to higher-paying and higher-status jobs—and, even more, because the university is the place where large numbers of young Kuwaiti men first discover how poorly prepared most of them are to compete and win in a system that is not rigged in advance in their favor.
Gender politics in Kuwait is an arena where many contradictory trends initiated by modernization collide. 43 Haya al-Mughni argues that the merchant class uses gender in a long-range strategy for defending class interests: merchants mobilize “their” women to occupy positions in a partially gender-integrated economy that otherwise would go to new men. Meanwhile, from within the separate world of Kuwaiti women, these same elite women restrain the autonomy and upward mobility of the new women of the middle class. 44 When gender is a weapon in class competition, it is aimed by and at both women and men. However, in struggles for upward mobility where interclass rivalries are less relevant, gender becomes an axis of intraclass conflict because of the disjunction between cultural values and economic and social demands imposed or intensified by modernization.
Modernity requires self-discipline that rarely is found among the male children of Kuwait’s new middle class. At the same time that traditional patterns of child-rearing place few demands and restraints on the behavior and performance of boys and male adolescents, they place many on girls and young women. 45 This translates into better work habits and superior academic performance by girls, a pattern that persists at the university where young women competing for admission to technical, high-status majors in medicine and engineering have an edge over young men if grades and performance are the primary criteria for selection and retention. 46 Interestingly, the academic achievements of young women are considered to have been unjustly earned, not only by the young men they leave in the dust but also by their own parents, professors, and peers. “Girls have to stay at home,” said a father of a high-achieving daughter and a son who left the university because of bad grades. “What else can they do but study? It’s not fair.” 47
Islamism finds ready adherents among the angry young men at Kuwait University and in Kuwait’s secondary schools. They are present admirers of and future voters for Islamist politicians who appeal simultaneously to their religious idealism and their self-interest. The Islamist agenda in parliament attracts them with highly publicized initiatives whose effects would improve young men’s chances of success at the university and eventually in the job market. Many are couched in terms of tradition and religion; they promise to redraw a system widely perceived as unfairly biased toward women to bring it back into conformity with what most Kuwaitis believe that God and nature intended it to be. Even though the family lives of several prominent Kuwaiti Islamists fall short of conforming to the picture of male supremacy they themselves advocate as the Muslim ideal, it is the image they project of female subordination and its translation into policies erecting barriers to women’s academic and economic advancement that attract large numbers of young men to support Islamists politically.
The strength of Kuwaiti Islamists in parliament does not rely entirely on the admiration of the young or the popularity of Islamism among voters. 48 Islamists also get help from the regime. Electorally favored by the 1981 redistricting, Islamists in the 1992 parliament were assisted organizationally by a commission established to encourage the implementation of Islamic law in Kuwait. The commission was inaugurated in December 1991 in response to demands by the Islamist-dominated student council at Kuwait University to restrict women’s access to classes. 49 The university is thereby implicated in both parts of the Islamist agenda in parliament: to amend article 2 of the constitution with results that are implicit rather than articulated, and to ensure that personal-status legislation continues to place explicit limits on women’s social, economic, and political autonomy.
As in other Muslim countries where Islamists constitute a large segment of potential and actual opposition to ruling regimes, Kuwaiti rulers are widely believed to be supporting particular Islamists. Their chosen allies are most often identified by Kuwaiti observers as the Muslim Brothers (the Ikhwan). However, ruler support of neofundamentalist, generally tribal, independents seems to me to have been the more consistently pursued strategy in Kuwait, with support thrown to other Islamists when expedient. Among the assumptions supporting such a government-Islamist alliance is that tradition and religious prescriptions predispose Islamists to respect the ruling family’s authority more than secularist opponents tend to do, implying that powerful Islamists are less dangerous to the regime than powerful secularists. A related assumption is that pan-Islamism is less dangerous to the regime—less revolutionary—than the pan-Arabism with which prominent Kuwaiti secularists sympathize. 50 Both assumptions might usefully be reconsidered in the light of a successful Islamist revolution in Iran, an Islamist counterrevolution in Afghanistan that toppled the secularist regime of Najibullah, and pan-Arab Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, which was applauded by movement Islamists such as non-Kuwaiti Ikhwan groups and Algeria’s Islamist political party, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS).
A different kind of assumption is that the large Shi`i minority provides enough of a check within the Islamist trend to prevent even a united Sunni segment from leading a successful popular movement against the regime. This assumption may have had some validity prior to the 1981 redistricting which cut Shi`i political representation in half; now it seems dubious. All those assumptions in turn depend on another one, which is that the government is clever enough to manipulate Islamist allies without weakening its position vis à vis Islamist rivals—Algeria’s mistake and perhaps Egypt’s as well; or without making such a hash of things that the entire opposition, Islamist and secularist, unites against it—as happened in Kuwait itself in 1986 and again in 1989–90. Thus, while I agree that the regime has done many things to favor Islamists in politics, I do not see its strategy as effective for ensuring the long-term survival of the Sabah as the rulers of Kuwait.
Islamist politics dominated the 1992 parliament. The first skirmish came in January 1993, when Islamists proposed a law to prevent the university from forbidding female medical students to wear veils during clinical and laboratory sessions. The university’s policy on veiling, which permitted women to veil at all other times, had the support of the faculty and the new education minister, Ahmad al-Rub`i. The minister’s disagreement with the demand of Islamist students that women be allowed to veil even when faculty believed it was potentially dangerous enraged parliamentary Islamists who spearheaded the introduction of the veiling bill over his opposition. 51 The proposed law had the backing of Islamist parliamentarians and the legislative committee to which it was referred. 52 Debate dragged on for weeks, embroiling the university administration, bureaucratic factions in the Education Ministry, the minister, and the cabinet in acrimonious wrangling. Meanwhile, other Islamist initiatives also were put forward, including several proposals for amending article 2 and one to create an Islamic television channel.
The secularists were ultimately successful in fending off the law on veiling at the university, 53 but this did not end Kuwait’s culture war. Both at the university and in parliament, Islamists continued to demand policies that kept the battle for the allegiance of the young going strong. Their next attempt was a bill jointly sponsored by Shi`i and Sunni Islamists to end coeducation at the university. Introduced as part of a larger bill to build a new university campus, the entire measure sailed through committee. It was defeated in a tie vote because one of its supporters, Shari` al-`Ajmy (T = Tribally endorsed), failed to arrive in time to vote on the motion for final passage. Shari` promptly introduced a new gender-segregation bill, but assembly rules forbid reconsideration in the same legislative session of a bill that already has been voted down. 54
Supporters of gender segregation insisted that the measure was widely supported throughout the country and had been defeated by government pressure and a smear campaign spearheaded by the press. 55 Government intervention also was charged as a reason why Islamists were ousted from a number of committee slots when the assembly reorganized for its second session in October 1994. But these setbacks failed to dampen Islamist enthusiasm for bills aimed at the university. In December 1995 another proposal to segregate the university was announced by Mubarak al-Duwailah, and a new idea was floated, to require female university students to wear some type of Islamically correct uniform. 56 These initiatives ensured that the university-Islamist controversy would come to the boiling point shortly before the 1996 parliamentary campaign.
The recurrent uproars pitting Islamists against secularists in the National Assembly took their toll in many ways. The ability of members to hammer out compromises on complex and difficult issues was gravely impaired by the lack of good faith across the Islamist-secularist divide. One example involved policies and procedures to resolve the bad debts crisis, one of the longest-running soap operas in Kuwaiti politics. A debt-resolution schedule was finally passed in 1993, but every repayment deadline since then has attracted vociferous opponents among the remaining debtors, who continue to be able to find allies in the government or the parliament to offer deadline-extending amendments to get them off the hook. 57 Opposition Islamists such as Ahmad Baqr oppose these amendments on equity grounds but cannot mobilize a broadly based coalition able to stop them once and for all.
Institutional Conflicts in the 1992 Parliament
As the first assembly session entered its second year, playing politics with serious economic issues like the debt crisis and defense budgets spilled over into members’ willingness to face one another in the assembly. On March 8, 1994, for example, the speaker was forced to cancel the week’s session for lack of a quorum. 58 Public complaints about inaction on critical issues concentrated on the behavior of the National Assembly, while parliamentarians insisted that the real problem was the government’s “passive strategy,” designed to make the legislature look bad. In the spring of 1994, many Kuwaitis expressed hopes that the cabinet would be reshuffled, arguing that the existing cabinet was ineffective because it included too many elected members. The reshuffling took place on April 13, and three parliamentary ministers were dismissed. `Ali al-Baghli was replaced at Oil by `Abd al-Mohsin al-Mud`ej, an independent delegate from District 12. `Abdullah al-Hajri, who had headed Commerce and Industry, and Jaman Faleh al-`Azemi, who had headed the `Awqaf, were replaced by nonparliamentarians. Parliamentary representation on the cabinet thus was reduced from six to four.
Issues involving the integrity of parliament as an institution also played a part in the contentious politics of the 1992 National Assembly. Paling into insignificance amid brawls over religion, bad debts, corruption, defense, and whether, how, and when to privatize which state-owned industries, these were problems whose publicly visible manifestations looked like personality politics but actually were clashes over principles. I discuss two of them here, both complicated by their overlap with the Islamist agenda. One, the principle of parliamentary immunity, was trivialized by a pair of inconsistent votes in the assembly. The other, a dispute over the authority of the parliament as a governing institution, was the focal point of a struggle that came close to precipitating a crisis of the same order of magnitude as the parliamentary investigations of four cabinet ministers, which had triggered the suspension of the 1985 parliament.
The immunity issue turned on the alleged behavior of two members of parliament that threatened to bring each of them into court if their immunity were to be lifted. One case stemmed from the conflict over student veiling at Kuwait University. It began with a 1993 public speech by Khaled al-`Adwa (T) that allegedly slandered four university professors for their opposition to the Islamist position on the veiling law. Khaled accused all four of being “secularists and infidels,” and referred to the one woman among them, Farida al-`Awadhi, in sexually explicit derogatory terms. The speech was distributed on cassette and provoked the four professors to file a lawsuit charging Khaled with defamation and slander. His friends prevailed upon Khaled to apologize, which he did, finally, in a February 22, 1994, speech in the National Assembly. However, the professors, with the support of their colleagues, refused to accept the apology and vowed to continue their lawsuit. The attorney general then requested that the National Assembly lift parliamentary immunity so that Khaled al-`Adwa could be questioned. If sufficient cause were found, he would be required to meet his accusers in court. However, the request was rejected by the full assembly on the recommendation of the Islamist-dominated Legal and Legislative Affairs committee, which opposed it on the grounds that the suit was a “conspiracy” to punish Khaled for his prominence among the parliamentary advocates of the proposed law on veiling. 59
In the second case, assault charges against another parliamentarian, Ahmad al-Shriyan (85P), for resisting arrest for alleged sexual improprieties, brought calls for the suspension of parliamentary immunity not only from the public but also from the accused. 60 Rumors and suggestive stories, along with large color photographs of Ahmad’s automobile, were plastered all over the newspapers for weeks. Ahmad al-Shriyan was a tribal representative from New Jahra’, a member of the Group of Twenty-six, and an organizer of the pro-democracy Monday diwaniyyas in 1989–90. The meeting called at his home in Jahra’ was attacked by the police and Ahmad himself was arrested (see chapter 4). Given this history, there was widespread speculation when the scandal broke that the charges against Ahmad had been manufactured to discredit him among his predominantly tribal constituents. The request to suspend parliamentary immunity, which Ahmad supported to enable him to clear his name, was reviewed and voted on only a week before the request to lift the immunity of Khaled al-`Adwa. Ahmad al-Shriyan’s request was approved by the Legal and Legislative Affairs committee. The full assembly passed it one week following the denial by both of these bodies of the same request in Khaled al-`Adwa’s case.
The results of the two votes diminished further the already-damaged reputation of the parliament as a responsible body. A number of Kuwaitis who talked about these votes with me in March 1994 pointed to the Khaled al-`Adwa vote as evidence of parliamentary bad faith and irresponsibility. Khaled’s taped performance had circulated widely and no one doubted that he had said what he had been accused of saying. The vote against suspending his parliamentary immunity was seen as an example of parliament closing ranks to protect a member from having to vindicate truthful accusers. Kuwaitis also drew unfortunate conclusions from the pair of cases: a member of parliament who probably was innocent of charges made against him would request that his immunity be lifted, while one who probably was guilty would hide behind his immunity. The principle of parliamentary immunity as a civil liberty and a mechanism for protecting the separation of powers was lost in the fortuitous juxtaposition of these two votes on highly publicized scandals. Like invoking the Fifth Amendment has become in the United States, recourse to parliamentary immunity in Kuwait now is assumed by the politically naive to be tantamount to an admission of wrongdoing.
The second controversy was even more dangerous to parliament as an institution. Its outline came into focus during the lawsuit brought against five men accused of embezzling an estimated $200 million from the Kuwait Oil Tanker Company, one of the Kuwait-based affiliates of KPC. The Kuwaitis accused were KOTC’s former managing director, `Abd al-Fattah al-Badr, who fled the country to avoid prosecution, and two defendants who remained within the jurisdiction of the court. One, Hasan Qabazard, KOTC’s former deputy managing director for financial affairs, repaid about $7 million on the assumption that this would keep him from going to jail. Instead, he was arrested and jailed until the trial began a year later, on January 18, 1994. 61 The other defendant, former oil minister Shaikh `Ali al-Khalifa al-Sabah, denied all charges and remained free throughout. 62 Parliament’s involvement in the KOTC scandal turned on the legality of trying the former minister in the regular criminal court.
In 1990, during the parliamentary suspension, the government authorized a law mandating special proceedings for trying cabinet ministers accused of crimes committed in connection with their government service. This measure was one of some five hundred amiri decrees handed down during the suspension. As such, it was required under article 71 of the constitution to be reviewed and approved by the National Assembly in order to remain in effect after parliament was restored. On January 11, 1994, one week before the start of the KOTC trial, the assembly struck down the Ministers’ Trial Law by a vote of thirty-nine against it, with thirteen members abstaining. All who abstained were cabinet ministers and included the six parliamentarians then in the cabinet who refused a direct appeal by the speaker to vote against the decree.
An official opinion from the minister of justice, Mishairy al-`Anjari, affirmed that the assembly vote had nullified the 1986 amiri decree. However, `Ali al-Khalifa’s lawyers insisted that it was the nullification that was invalid, organizing their defense around the alleged illegality of the trial court. 63 The attorneys asserted that the trial court was incompetent to decide an issue of such complexity, and that the charges against the former minister were politically motivated rather than supported by facts. The defense also argued on procedural grounds, insisting that in order for the decree to be repealed properly, another law would have to be passed in its place. 64 But when a replacement Ministers’ Trial Law was passed in September 1995, 65 `Ali al-Khalifa’s lawyers shifted their position. They argued that the new law was unconstitutional and that the “previous” Ministers’ Trial Law, the one that had been nullified in the parliament, was still effective because the new law did not include explicit wording stating that the old one had been abrogated. 66 The nullified law had required that suits against a minister be initiated by the amir at the request of the cabinet, an effective procedure for squelching any proceeding that might prove embarrassing to the regime. The assembly-passed substitute leaves the initial decision to bring charges against a minister up to the public prosecutor, who presents evidence before a special committee which makes the final decision regarding whether to prosecute. 67
A public trial of `Ali al-Khalifa promised to embarrass the ruling family profoundly. `Ali al-Khalifa was said to have threatened to name names if he were convicted—presumably the names of other family members also engaged in siphoning money out of the state treasury. 68 The imminent prospect of an even wider financial scandal implicating even more members of the ruling family prompted the amir to become involved. Rather than dealing with the KOTC case directly, however, the amir framed his attack on the National Assembly by appealing the rejection of another suspension decree, a 1986 grant of authority to the government to halt the publication of newspapers. 69 This decree, a revival of one passed during the 1976&-;1981 suspension and later nullified by the 1981 parliament, was part of the press censorship apparatus imposed following the 1986 suspensions. 70
The nature of the amir’s appeal set the stage for a constitutional crisis. Rather than requesting a ruling specifically on the press censorship nullification, the amir asked the Constitutional Court for an interpretation of article 71 regarding the right of the assembly to repeal any decree adopted during a suspension. 71 The scope of his appeal violated a prior agreement between the amir and the parliament whereby the parliament had agreed to abide by the ruling of the Constitutional Court on any government appeal of a specific law which it might invalidate. 72 In February 1995 the Constitutional Court ruled that assembly approval was not necessary to keep suspension-passed decrees in force. Then the amir forced a showdown on article 71 by asserting his authority under the already-nullified 1986 press law to suspend a local newspaper (see below).
Meanwhile, the Islamist connection came into play with yet another attack on the education minister. At the end of February 1995, following his interpellation on the floor of the assembly, parliamentary Islamists succeeded in getting a majority to support placing a motion of no-confidence against Ahmad al-Rub`i on the agenda. The motion charged the minister with changing textbooks to reduce the Islamic content of the public school curriculum. A second crisis was provoked when the Islamists in the parliament split. Jasim al-`Aoun (IPA), who had been moved during the 1994 cabinet reshuffle to the Ministry of Electricity and Water, said that a second interpellation of the education minister would damage national unity. Polarization increased further in response to rumors that the crown prince, whose wife heads both an Islamist women’s organization and an umbrella organization which advertises itself as the collective voice of Kuwaiti women, would institute his own investigation of the textbooks at issue. 73
When a parliamentary vote is taken on whether a minister should be censured, no minister, elected or appointed, is permitted to vote. The motion passes only if a majority of nonministerial parliamentarians votes for it, and the Islamists were unable to mobilize a large enough number against Ahmad al-Rub`i. Four parliamentarians who had earlier declared their intention to vote against him abstained at the last minute, reportedly as the result of intense pressure from the government. 74
Shortly after the failure of the motion of censure, the regime’s assault on article 71 escalated with the five-day suspension of the Kuwaiti daily, al-Anba’, reportedly for printing interviews with opposition members advocating the separation of the crown princeship from the speakership. After a pause during which the crown prince threatened in public to resign with his cabinet while the speaker engaged in behind-the-scenes efforts to calm the members down, a full-throated outcry arose from a dozen opposition members. These secularist critics, led by Hamad al-Jou`an, found themselves in a difficult dilemma. On the one hand, the crown prince’s intervention had just turned back the Islamists’ assault on one of their number; on the other, the amir’s assault on the parliament threatened to destroy completely the already-tenuous rule of law in Kuwait.
Hamad al-Jou`an led the fight on the floor on behalf of article 71 from his wheelchair, charging that the government was attacking the fundamental idea of democracy in Kuwait and, in effect, was “turning the constitution into Kleenex paper.” 75 Before and during the debate, the government’s opponents in the assembly linked the regime’s press-suspension challenge to article 71 to the controversy over the trial of `Ali al-Khalifa. 76 During the debate on the propriety of the amir’s request that the meaning of article 71 be addressed by the Constitutional Court, the entire cabinet, including the four parliamentary ministers, 77 supported the amir’s request unanimously. Hamad al-Jou`an appealed by name to each of the three parliamentary ministers formally associated with the opposition, Ahmad al-Rub`i, Mishairy al-`Anjari, and Jasim al-`Aoun, asking them to tell the Kuwaiti people whether they had turned their backs on the pro-democracy movement. 78 But so recently reminded of the government’s power either to remove them from office or save them from ouster by their opponents in the parliament and, regardless of which, to be able to mobilize a majority on almost any issue whether they defected or not, the parliamentary ministers held firm against his entreaties. However, the magnitude of the threat to parliament as an institution did mute conflicts among the other members. Charging the elected ministers with participating in a “coup against the constitution,” the opposition mobilized a thirty-two-vote majority in favor of asking the Constitutional Court to rule on the constitutionality of the amir’s request to interpret article 71. 79
The constitutional impasse thus created was sidestepped by a government announcement a month later that the amir would withdraw his request for a ruling on article 71 from the Constitutional Court. 80 The struggle would not be over, however, until the main event, the issue of `Ali al-Khalifa’s trial, could be resolved. The passage of the new Ministers’ Trial Law in September 1995 increased the pressure on the ruling family to come up with a solution before the by-then threadbare arguments of `Ali al-Khalifa’s lawyers were completely reduced to tatters. An effort was made in October to settle the case out of court by offering $55 million to the KOTC board in return for dropping the charges. The newspaper report about the deal carefully avoided naming the defendants in whose name the offer had been made, but it also noted separate offers made on behalf of the Jordanian and the British defendants, leaving readers to surmise that it had been made on behalf of one or more of the Kuwaitis. 81 On October 17, 1995, another session of the trial was held, but despite attorney Salman al-Du`aij’s colorful appeal that the court treat `Ali al-Khalifa as generously as O. J. Simpson had been treated, the court stood firm in its claim that it had proper jurisdiction to try the case. 82
The court changed its mind shortly afterward. In November a publication of Al-Shall Economic Group reported that the court had agreed to the separation of `Ali al-Khalifa’s case from the other four and sent it to the new Ministers’ Court provided for under the September 1995 law. As part of the deal, twelve of the thirteen charges pending against `Ali al-Khalifa were dropped. “The former minister has been referred to the special court to face one charge and that is allowing the other four defendants [to carry out] transactions which are believed to have enabled them to make $200 million in illegal profits.” 83 In June 1996 the trial court found `Abd al-Fattah al-Badr and Hasan Qabazard guilty as charged. Their respective punishments were thirty-five and forty years in prison, and fines of $49.2 million and $65.7 million. 84 But by that time, Hasan Qabazard, like `Abd al-Fattah al-Badr, had slipped out of the country, beyond any Kuwaiti court’s jurisdiction. 85
Meanwhile, wrangling continued over the legality of trying `Ali al-Khalifa in a court other than the one outlined in the nullified Ministers’ Trial Law. This dispute moved closer to resolution when the Constitutional Court ruled on December 23, 1996, that the regular court was competent to try the case against `Ali al-Khalifa but that the case should be moved to the new Ministers’ Court anyway. 86 The new Ministers’ Court handed down its first decision on the matter in April 1997. It rejected the case as it had been presented for failure to conform to procedural requirements of the law in effect at the time of the initiation of the case—the old Ministers’ Trial Law—an outcome that at first had `Ali al-Khalifa’s supporters jubilant. But in a subsequent clarification of its decision, the court noted that the new law had superseded the old one. 87 I shall return to this contentious issue in chapter 8.
The Pathology of Normal Politics
The restoration of the constitution and parliamentary life in Kuwait had brought back a future too much like the past. The government and the parliament remained at loggerheads throughout the lifetime of the 1992 parliament. Although the amir did not dissolve it, thinly veiled threats by the prime minister that he might do so dangled like Damoclean swords over its deliberations. The opposition was hamstrung in most of its efforts to move Kuwait closer to the rule of law, and confusion about what actually was the law given the still-unresolved conflict over article 71 made this task even more difficult. The difficulties were compounded by the division between opposition secularists and Islamists, and the tendency of individuals within each group to sacrifice principles for political glory or personal gain. Meanwhile, neofundamentalists like Khaled al-`Adwa brought disrepute on the whole parliament by their outrageous behavior; by failing to take a stand against such it, more moderate Islamists tarnished their own reputations.
Secularists also sacrificed principles for popularity, most notably by acquiescing to a government-backed version of the Islamists’ gender-segregation measure shortly before the 1996 parliamentary election campaign got under way. Charges that leading members of the opposition had sold out their principles, their constituents’ interests, or both, dominated campaign discourse in 1996, and the most frequently cited example was the vote on the gender-segregation bill. In its final version, this measure netted only one dissenting vote, from `Abdullah Nibari (KDF). 88 With the exceptions of Ahmad al-Khatib (KDF) and Jasim al-Saqr (CB), who were out of the country when the vote was taken, and `Ali al-Baghli (I) and Yacoub Hayati (85P), who abstained, secularists either ducked the vote by failing to show up or leaving the floor before the vote was taken, or else they voted with the Islamists. Academic observers noted that, given overwhelming support from members representing the outlying areas, cabinet support ensured the bill’s success. Votes against it would not have changed the outcome but might well have angered devoutly religious constituents. To many, secularist support for the compromise bill seemed like the only way to get beyond the culture war to more substantive issues prior to the campaign. Instead, the gender-segregation vote dominated the campaign, particularly after foreign journalists arrived to cover the election, 89 and it was repeatedly cited as evidence of the secularists’ perfidy among Kuwaitis themselves.
Disenchantment with parliamentarians rested on more than this one vote, however. Most opposition secularists and even some Islamists had managed to alienate significant portions of their core constituencies by the time the 1996 campaign season rolled around. Some saw the writing on the wall and simply retired, but others were not so prescient. When the ballots were counted in 1996, fifteen incumbent candidates were turned out of office by the voters (see table 7.2). At the same time, the sectarian upsurge during the campaign helped to ensure that the balance among Islamists and secularists did not shift appreciably. “Official” Islamists, those formally associated with organized political groups, continued to make up a minority of members of the 1996 parliament just as they had in the 1992 body. However, as I noted above, the voting weight of Islamism in Kuwait’s legislative process comes from issue coalitions among official Islamists, tribal representatives (particularly winners of tribal primaries who are defending social patriarchy as much as religious patriarchy), and the large pool of pro-government parliamentarians, many of them service candidates. Table 7.3 shows the affiliations and issue orientations of incumbent and/or winning candidates in the 1996 election.
| Table 7.2: The Fates of Incumbents in the 1996 Parliamentary Election | ||||||||
| Member and District | Previous parliaments | 1996 results | ||||||
| 1. Sharq | ||||||||
| `Adnan `Abd al-Samad | 81 | 85 | 92 | won | ||||
| Yacoub Hayati | 85 | 92 | retired | |||||
| Hmoud al-Ruqbah | won | |||||||
| 2. Al-Murqab | ||||||||
| Hamad al-Jou`an | 85 | 92 | retired | |||||
| `Abdullah al-Nibari | 71 | 75 | 92 | won | ||||
| `Abd al-Wahhab al-Haroun | won | |||||||
| 3. Al-Qiblah | ||||||||
| Ahmad al-Nasir | won | |||||||
| Jasim al-Saqr | 75 | 81 | 92 | retired | ||||
| Jasim al-Khorafy | 75 | 81 | 85 | won | ||||
| 4. Al-Da`iya | ||||||||
| `Ali al-Baghli | 92 | lost | ||||||
| `Abdullah al-Roumi | 85 | 92 | lost | |||||
| Husain al-Qallaf | won | |||||||
| Jasim al-Mudhaf | won | |||||||
| 5. Al-Qadisiya | ||||||||
| Ahmad Baqr | 85 | 92 | won | |||||
| `Abd al-Mohsin Jamal | 81 | 85 | lost | |||||
| `Abd al-`Aziz al-Mutawa` | 85 | won | ||||||
| 6. Al-Faiha’ | ||||||||
| Mishairy al-`Anjari | 81 | 85 | 92 | lost | ||||
| Mishairy al-`Osaimi | 92 | won | ||||||
| Fahad al-Khanah | won | |||||||
| 7. Kaifan | ||||||||
| Jasim al-`Aoun | 81 | 85 | 92 | retired | ||||
| `Abd al-`Aziz al-`Adsani | 92 | won | ||||||
| Walid al-Tabtaba’i | won | |||||||
| 8. Hawali | ||||||||
| Ahmad al-Rub`i | 85 | 92 | lost | |||||
| Isma`il al-Shati | 92 | lost | ||||||
| Hasan Jawhar | won | |||||||
| Ahmad al-Mulaifi | won | |||||||
| 9. Al-Rawdha | ||||||||
| Nasir Jasim al-Sana` | 92 | won | ||||||
| Ahmad al-Khatib | 63 | 71 | 75 | 85 | 92 | retired | ||
| Jasir al-Jasir | 75 | 81 | 85 | won | ||||
| 10. `Adeliya | ||||||||
| Saleh Yousef al-Fadhala | 81 | 85 | 92 | lost | ||||
| Ahmad Khaled al-Kulaib | 92 | won | ||||||
| Sami al-Munayes | 63 | 71 | 75 | 85 | won | |||
| 11. Al-Khaldiya | ||||||||
| Ahmad al-Sa`doun | 75 | 81 | 85 | 92 | won | |||
| Mohammad Sulieman al-Marshad | 81 | 85 | 92 | lost | ||||
| `Ali al-Khalaf al-Sa`id | MW | won | ||||||
| 12. Al-Salmiya | ||||||||
| `Abd al-Mohsin al-Mud`ej | 92 | won | ||||||
| Salim `Abdullah al-Hamad | 81 | 85 | 92 | lost | ||||
| Mekhled al-`Azemi | won | |||||||
| 13. Al-Rumaithiya | ||||||||
| Nasir `Abd al-`Aziz Sarkhou | 81 | 85 | 92 | lost | ||||
| Jamal Ahmad al-Kandary | 92 | lost | ||||||
| `Abbas al-Khodary | 85 | MW | won | |||||
| Saleh Khorshaid | won | |||||||
| 14. Abraq Khaittan | ||||||||
| `Ali Salim Abu Hadida | 92 | lost | ||||||
| Hmoud Nasir al-Jabri | 85 | MW | 92 | lost | ||||
| `Abd al-Salam al-`Osaimi | won | |||||||
| Badr al-Ji`an | won | |||||||
| 15. Al-Farwaniya | ||||||||
| Abbas Habib al-Musailim | 81 | 85 | 92 | lost | ||||
| Ghannam `Ali al-Jamhour | 92 | won | ||||||
| Sa`ud al-Qafidi | won | |||||||
| 16. Al-`Umariya | ||||||||
| Mubarak Fahad al-Duwailah | 85 | 92 | won | |||||
| Mubarak Binaiah al-Khrainej | MW | 92 | won | |||||
| 17. Julib Al-Shiyoukh | ||||||||
| Mohammad Khalaf Umhamel | MW | 92 | retired | |||||
| Mohammad Dhaif al-Sharar | 92 | won | ||||||
| Musalem al-Barrak | won | |||||||
| 18. Al-Sulaibikhat | ||||||||
| Khalaf Dimethir al-`Enizi | 81 | 85 | MW | 92 | won | |||
| Rashid Salman al-Hubaidah | MW | 92 | won | |||||
| 19. Al-Jahra’ al-Jadida | ||||||||
| Mufrej Nahar al-Mutairy | 92 | won | ||||||
| Ahmad Nasir al-Shriyan | 85 | 92 | lost | |||||
| Munaizel al-`Enizi | won | |||||||
| 20. Al-Jahra’ al-Qadimi | ||||||||
| Talal Mubarak al-Ayyar | MW | 92 | won | |||||
| Talal `Uthman al-Sa`id | 92 | won | ||||||
| 21. Al-Ahmadi | ||||||||
| Khaled al-`Adwa al-`Ajmy | 92 | won | ||||||
| Shari` Nasir Sa`d al-`Ajmy | 92 | retired | ||||||
| Walid al-Jari | won | |||||||
| 22. Al-Riqa | ||||||||
| `Ayidh `Aloush al-Mutairy | 92 | won | ||||||
| Hadi Hayef al-Huwailah | 75 | 81 | 85 | MW | 92 | won | ||
| 23. Al-Subbahiya | ||||||||
| Jam`an Faleh Salim al-`Azemy | 92 | * | ||||||
| Fahad Dahisan al-`Azemy | 92 | won | ||||||
| Mohammad al-`Olaim | won | |||||||
| 24. Al-Fahaheel | ||||||||
| Abdullah Rashid al-Hajri | 92 | won | ||||||
| Husain al-Dosari | won | |||||||
| 25. Um al-Haiman | ||||||||
| Sa`d Biliq Q`am al-`Azemy | 92 | retired | ||||||
| Musaleh Hamijan al-`Azemy | 92 | retired | ||||||
| Jam`an Faleh al-`Azemy | 92 | * | won | |||||
| Marzouk al-Habini | MW | won | ||||||
|
Note: In Districts 23 and 25 an asterisk (*) denotes a parliamentary incumbent who ran in District 23 in 1992 and in District 25 in 1996.
Sources: Arab Times, October 9, 1996, 6–7; voter tallies for 1981, 1985, 1992, and 1996 |
||||||||
| Table 7.3: Bloc Affiliations and Political Leanings of Incumbents and Winners, 1996 | |||||||
| Member and District | Political leanings | 1996 results | |||||
| 1. Sharq | |||||||
| `Adnan `Abd al-Samad | Shi`a, opp | won | |||||
| Yacoub Hayati | Secular, opp | retired | |||||
| Hmoud al-Ruqbah | Pro-gov, Cab | won | |||||
| 2. Al-Murqab | |||||||
| Hamad al-Jou`an | Secular, opp | retired | |||||
| `Abdullah al-Nibari | Secular, opp | won | |||||
| `Abd al-Wahhab al-Haroun | Secular, opp | won | |||||
| 3. Al-Qiblah | |||||||
| Ahmad al-Nasir | Issue opp | won | |||||
| Jasim al-Saqr | Secular, opp | retired | |||||
| Jasim al-Khorafy | Pro-gov, Cab | won | |||||
| 4. Al-Da`iya | |||||||
| `Ali al-Baghli | Secular, Cab, opp, Shi`a | lost | |||||
| `Abdullah al-Roumi | Secular, opp | lost | |||||
| Husain al-Qallaf | Shi`a, opp | won | |||||
| Jasim al-Mudhaf | Pro-gov, pro-Islamist, SP | won | |||||
| 5. Al-Qadisiya | |||||||
| Ahmad Baqr | Salaf, opp | won | |||||
| `Abd al-Mohsin Jamal | Shi`a, issue opp | lost | |||||
| `Abd al-`Aziz al-Mutawa` | Pro-gov, pro-Islamist | won | |||||
| 6. Al-Faiha’ | |||||||
| Mishairy al-`Anjari | Secular, opp, Cab | lost | |||||
| Mishairy al-`Osaimi | Secular, opp | won | |||||
| Fahad al-Khanah | Salaf | won | |||||
| 7. Kaifan | |||||||
| Jasim al-`Aoun | Salaf, Cab | retired | |||||
| `Abd al-`Aziz al-`Adsani | Issue opp | won | |||||
| Walid al-Tabtaba’i | Salaf | won | |||||
| 8. Hawali | |||||||
| Ahmad al-Rub`i | Secular, opp, Cab | lost | |||||
| Isma`il al-Shati | Ikhwan, opp | lost | |||||
| Hasan Jawhar | Shi`a, opp | won | |||||
| Ahmad al-Mulaifi | Pro-Islamist | won | |||||
| 9. Al-Rawdha | |||||||
| Nasir Jasim al-Sana` | Ikhwan | won | |||||
| Ahmad al-Khatib | Secular, opp | retired | |||||
| Jasir al-Jasir | Pro-gov | won | |||||
| 10. `Adeliya | |||||||
| Saleh Yousef al-Fadhala | Pro-Islamist | lost | |||||
| Ahmad Khaled al-Kulaib | Pro-gov, pro-Islamist, Cab | won | |||||
| Sami al-Munayes | Secular, opp | won | |||||
| 11. Al-Khaldiya | |||||||
| Ahmad al-Sa`doun | Secular, opp | won | |||||
| Mohammad Sulieman al-Marshad | Secular, opp | lost | |||||
| `Ali al-Khalaf al-Sa`id | Pro-gov | won | |||||
| 12. Al-Salmiya | |||||||
| `Abd al-Mohsin al-Mud`ej | Issue opp | won | |||||
| Salim `Abdullah al-Hamad | Secular, opp | lost | |||||
| Mekhled al-`Azemi | Pro-gov, T | won | |||||
| 13. Al-Rumaithiya | |||||||
| Nasir `Abd al-`Aziz Sarkhou | Shi`a, opp | lost | |||||
| Jamal Ahmad al-Kandary | Ikhwan, pro-gov | lost | |||||
| `Abbas al-Khodary | Shi`a, Pro-gov | won | |||||
| Saleh Khorshaid | Pro-gov | won | |||||
| 14. Abraq Khaittan | |||||||
| `Ali Salim Abu Hadida | Pro-gov. | lost | |||||
| Hmoud Nasir al-Jabri | Pro-gov | lost | |||||
| `Abd al-Salam al-`Osaimi | T | won | |||||
| Badr al-Ji`an | Pro-gov | won | |||||
| 15. Al-Farwaniya | |||||||
| `Abbas Habib al-Musailim | Secular, opp | lost | |||||
| Ghannam `Ali al-Jamhour | Pro-gov, pro-Islamist, T | won | |||||
| Sa`ud al-Qafidi | Pro-gov | won | |||||
| 16. Al-`Umariya | |||||||
| Mubarak Fahad al-Duwailah | Ikhwan | won | |||||
| Mubarak Binaiah al-Khrainej | Pro-gov | won | |||||
| 17. Julib Al-Shiyoukh | |||||||
| Mohammad Khalaf Umhamel | Pro-gov | retired | |||||
| Mohammad Dhaif al-Sharar | Pro-gov, pro-Islamist | won | |||||
| Musalem al-Barrak | Issue opp | won | |||||
| 18. Al-Sulaibikhat | |||||||
| Khalaf Dimethir al-`Enizi | Pro-gov | won | |||||
| Rashid Salman al-Hubaidah | Issue opp | won | |||||
| 19. Al-Jahra’ al-Jadida | |||||||
| Mufrej Nahar al-Mutairy | Salaf | won | |||||
| Ahmad Nasir al-Shriyan | Secular, opp | lost | |||||
| Munaizel al-`Enizi | Pro-gov | won | |||||
| 20. Al-Jahra’ al-Qadimi | |||||||
| Talal Mubarak al-Ayyar | Pro-gov | won | |||||
| Talal `Uthman al-Sa`id | Pro-gov | won | |||||
| 21. Al-Ahmadi | |||||||
| Khaled al-`Adwa al-`Ajmy | Salaf, T | won | |||||
| Shari` Nasir Sa`d al-`Ajmy | Pro-gov | retired | |||||
| Walid al-Jari | Ikhwan, T | won | |||||
| 22. Al-Riqa | |||||||
| `Ayidh `Aloush al-Mutairy | Ikhwan, T | won | |||||
| Hadi Hayef al-Huwailah | Pro-gov, pro-Islamist, T | won | |||||
| 23. Al-Subbahiya | |||||||
| Jam`an Faleh Salim al-`Azemy | Ikhwan, Cab | * | |||||
| Fahad Dahisan al-`Azemy | T | won | |||||
| Mohammad al-`Olaim | Pro-gov, pro-Islamist, T | won | |||||
| 24. Al-Fahaheel | |||||||
| `Abdullah Rashid al-Hajri | Pro-gov, Ikhwan, T | won | |||||
| Husain al-Dosari | Pro-gov | won | |||||
| 25. Um al-Haiman | |||||||
| Sa`d Biliq Q`am al-`Azemy | Pro-gov | retired | |||||
| Musaleh Hamijan al-`Azemy | Pro-gov | retired | |||||
| Jam`an Faleh al-`Azemy | Pro-gov, Ikhwan, Cab * | won | |||||
| Marzouk al-Habini | Pro-gov, T | won | |||||
|
Notes: In Districts 23 and 25 an asterisk (*) denotes a parliamentary incumbent who ran in District 23 in 1992 and in District 25 in 1996. Abbreviations:
Clarification: In 1996, unlike 1992, political blocs were less important, particularly for Islamists. The Shi`i group was disbanded and did not endorse candidates. The ICM (Ikhwan) and IPA (Salafin) did not follow consistent rules on endorsements, so I have listed affiliation rather than endorsements in this table as more informative regarding the policy placement of the candidates. “Pro-Islamists” endorsed one or more major Islamist issues, the most important of which is amending article 2. “Secular” candidates may be religious persons, but they do not promote a religious agenda. Some candidates who are members of tribes refused to participate in tribal primaries and are not shown as tribal candidates. Sources: Arab Times, various issues; voter tallies for 1996 from `Ali Murad at the Kuwait elections office, photocopy; interviews with Sa`oud al-`Anezi and others in Kuwait, 1996. |
|||||||
Disordering and discrediting the parliament did not bring unalloyed benefits to the rulers, however. Islamist politics proved to be politically and economically costly, preventing the government from mobilizing allies to support and therefore share the blame for unpopular measures such as economic rationalization. Academic analysts argue that such blame-sharing is a primary impetus behind political liberalization elsewhere in the region. 90 However, parliament’s weakness coupled to government ineptitude blocked consensus on such issues as how to raise revenues from Kuwaitis and how to privatize which state-owned holdings. Especially in view of the fact that the government did go ahead with limited privatization coordinated by KIA, the failure to arrive at even general guidelines or procedures left the regime open to charges of corruption (see the discussion in the next chapter).
Kuwait’s governance problems coincided with multiple small-scale border violations by Iraqis and a couple of well-publicized incidents of Iraqi troop movements just north of the border. Such incidents probably helped the parliament in that they kept Kuwaiti rulers painfully aware of the need to avoid antagonizing the United States by any blatantly antidemocratic move against the National Assembly. Even so, rulers and opposition both were impaled on the horns of Kuwait’s political dilemma. To end the policy paralysis required a degree of trust and cooperation that was impossible to achieve.
Endnotes
Note 1: I am indebted to Jorgen Rasmusen for his comments on earlier drafts of this chapter, and his suggestions with regard to selecting criteria for evaluating governing institutions. Back.
Note 2: Abdul-Reda al-Assiri and Kamal al-Monoufi, “Kuwait’s Political Elite: The Cabinet,” 49–50. Back.
Note 3: Winners do not sit at home and read congratulatory telegrams. They hold court every night in their diwaniyyas. Hundreds of well-wishers stand in line for hours to embrace them, reminisce about everything from the childhood of their grandparents to the heat of the just-finished campaign, and confide their needs and expectations. No Kuwaiti politician can afford to sidestep these ceremonies and few would even want to. Back.
Note 4: Arab Times, October 11, 1992, 1; October 12, 1992, 1; October 13, 1992, 1 (the issue with a photo of the women); interview with a demonstration participant. Back.
Note 5: Arab Times, October 13, 1992, 1. Back.
Note 6: The outcry against the inner core of the preinvasion cabinet had been strong enough to force a reshuffling in April 1991 that saw Shaikh Sabah al-Ahmad, a brother of the amir, dumped in favor of a member of the al-Salim branch of the ruling family to which the crown prince belongs. The reinstatement of Shaikh Sabah al-Ahmad is more likely to have come at the behest of the amir and his branch of the family than from the crown prince. See Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), “Kuwait Country Report no. 2, 1991” (London: EIU, 1991), 10–11. Back.
Note 7: The difficulty of choosing a member of the ruling family in such a situation can be inferred from the history of conflicts over selecting the heir apparent. It should be noted that article 4 of Kuwait’s constitution allots a period of one year for this process, unlike the two weeks between the election and the convening of the parliament allotted by article 87. Ruling family members with political ambitions see the parliament as an avenue for achieving them. This is reflected in their attempts to run for seats—attempts that were squelched by the amir in 1992 and 1996 (see chapter 9). Back.
Note 8: Arab Times, October 12, 1992, 1. Back.
Note 9: Interview with Hamad al-Jou`an, October 21, 1992, in Kuwait. Back.
Note 10: Arab Times, October 14, 1992, 1. Back.
Note 11: Interview with Hamad al-Jou`an, October 21, 1992. Back.
Note 12: Because the cabinet—including the parliamentary members—votes as a bloc on important issues. See discussion later in chapter. Back.
Note 13: Mubarak’s flagging campaign for the speakership was revealed in the results of an “unorthodox private ballot” taken among parliamentarians at the diwaniyya of Nasir al-Sana`, an independent and the top winner in District 9. The straw poll gave a large majority to Ahmad al-Sa`doun. Arab Times, October 18, 1992, 1. Back.
Note 14: Interviews with Hasan `Ali al-Ebraheem and others, spring 1990. Back.
Note 15: I discuss some of these difficulties in The Kuwait Petroleum Corporation. `Ali al-Baghli’s problems were aggravated by his lack of experience—unlike Ahmad al-Rub`i, he was a new parliamentarian as well as a new minister. Cherished for his integrity by his patrons and supporters in the Shi`i business community, `Ali’s initial lack of political skills interfered with his ability to accomplish what they—and he—hoped he could achieve as oil minister. He performed well in his second showcase position, as head of the parliament’s human rights group (see chapter 8, this volume). During the 1996 campaign, the managing director of one of KPC’s Kuwait-based affiliates told me that he thought that `Ali al-Baghli had begun badly but had become a good oil minister as well. Back.
Note 16: Nathan Brown, The Rule of Law in the Arab World: Courts in Egypt and the Gulf, 158–59. Back.
Note 17: Arab Times, October 13, 1992, 3. Back.
Note 18: See, for example, the priorities listed by Jasim al-Saqr in an interview published in the Arab Times, September 19, 1992, 1, 2. Back.
Note 19: Interview with Jasim al-Saqr, May 1990, in Kuwait. Back.
Note 20: Arab Times, October 15–16, 1992, 1. Back.
Note 21: EIU, “Kuwait Country Report no. 4, 1992,” 9. Back.
Note 22: Hamad al-Jou`an, interview, October 21, 1992. Secularists outside the parliament analyzed the situation similarly in interviews also conducted in late October. Back.
Note 23: EIU, “Kuwait Country Report no. 4, 1992,” 10. Back.
Note 24: Ibid.; also interview with Hamad al-Jou`an, October 21, 1992. Back.
Note 25: Longva, Walls Built on Sand, 55 (table 3.1). Back.
Note 26: This includes requiring a worker to stay with his employer for a certain length of time and giving the employer custody of the employee’s passport. See ibid. Back.
Note 27: For the growing importance of investment income over oil income, see Thomas Stauffer, “Oil Revenues: Income or Capital?” Middle East Economic Survey (hereafter, MEES) 27 (November 7, 1983): D1–D4. Back.
Note 28: The World Bank, “Kuwait: A Privatization Strategy,” four parts, October 29, 1993. Back.
Note 29: Information on KIA privatization comes from “The Kuwait Investment Authority’s Privatisation Sales: An Update,” Economic and Financial Quarterly (a publication of the National Bank of Kuwait) 2 (1996): 34–39; and on an interview with KIA managing director `Ali al-Badr, October 8, 1996, in Kuwait. Back.
Note 30: Interviews with bank managers in Kuwait, spring 1990. Back.
Note 31: The early histories of the KPC domestic subsidiaries are told in Tétreault, The Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, ch. 5. Back.
Note 32: “KIA Privatization: An Update,” 35. This page includes a table reporting dates and amounts of sales through September 1994. Back.
Note 34: Interview with KIA managing director `Ali al-Badr, October 8, 1996, in Kuwait. Back.
Note 35: See, for examples, Goldberg, “Smashing Idols and the State,” 195–236; Roy, The Failure of Political Islam; and Gabriel Warburg, “Mahdism and Islamism in Sudan,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 27 (May 1995): 219–36. Back.
Note 36: For example, Aziz al-Azmeh, “Populism Contra Democracy,” 112–29. Back.
Note 37: Mernissi, Islam and Democracy. Back.
Note 38: See, for example, the essays in John Stratton Hawley, ed., Fundamentalism and Gender, and in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, eds., Fundamentalisms and Society: Reclaiming the Sciences, the Family, and Education, especially those in part 2, “Family and Interpersonal Relationships.” Back.
Note 39: Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam, ch. 8; Deniz Kandiyoti, “Introduction,” in Kandiyoti, ed., Women, Islam, and the State, 1–9 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991). Back.
Note 40: Goldberg, “Smashing Idols and the State”; Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, 58–59. Back.
Note 41: Goldberg, “Smashing Idols and the State,” 219; Tétreault, “Spheres of Liberty,” 282–83. Back.
Note 42: Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, 59. Back.
Note 43: On this issue, see Haya al-Mughni, Women in Kuwait, and “Women’s Movements and the Autonomy of Civil Society in Kuwait”; Tétreault, “Civil Society in Kuwait,” 275–91, and “Whose Honor? Whose Liberation?” 297–315. See also four jointly authored essays: Mary Ann Tétreault and Haya al-Mughni, “Modernization and Its Discontents,” 403–17; “Al-Mar’at wal Demuqratiyya fil Kuwait,” Abwab (January 7, 1996): 9–23; “Gender, Citizenship, and Nationalism in Kuwait,” 64–80; and “Citizenship, Gender, and the Politics of Quasi-states,” in Suad Joseph, ed., Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East. Back.
Note 44: Al-Mughni, Women in Kuwait; also al-Mughni and Tétreault, “Citizenship, Gender, and the Politics of Quasi-States.” Back.
Note 45: These patterns in child-rearing are similar throughout much of the Middle East. For another example, see Susan Schaefer Davis, “Growing Up in Morocco,” in Donna Lee Bowen and Evelyn A. Early, eds., Everyday Life in the Muslim Middle East, 23–33. Back.
Note 46: Tétreault, “Kuwait’s Democratic Reform Movement,” 17–18. These patterns also are class-based. Upper-class families are far more likely than middle-class families to restrict their male children, and are more likely to send them abroad for university training. At the same time, fewer women than men study abroad regardless of social class. One result is that the population of Kuwait University has been well over 50 percent female for some years, and includes large numbers of young women who are highly able along with average and poor performers. The top performers among young Kuwaiti men of every social class tend to study abroad, leaving the less able in their age cohorts to compete against a pool of women whose overall intellectual ability and social skills are better than theirs. Back.
Note 47: The speaker is a manager at the Kuwait Oil Company who was interviewed in April 1990. This rationale came up repeatedly in interviews with students, professors, and parents, both before the invasion and after liberation. Back.
Note 48: It is important here to remember that most parliamentary Islamists are independents or tribally endorsed rather than members of organized Islamist political blocs. Back.
Note 49: EIU, “Kuwait Country Report no. 1, 1992,” 7. Back.
Note 50: Ayubi, Over-stating the Arab State, 142. Back.
Note 51: Theoretically, women also are supposed to refrain from veiling when driving, another safety-oriented prohibition, but veiled women continue to drive. Police are loathe to ticket a veiled woman, and Islamist organizations offer to pay fines, making ticketing a losing proposition. Back.
Note 52: See Arab Times, various issues, particularly January 5, 1993, 3, and February 6, 1993, 3. Back.
Note 53: A compromise was reached with university officials, who agreed that girls could veil “in case of utmost necessity,” sidestepping the demand for formal legislation. Arab Times, March 2, 1994, 2. Back.
Note 54: Arab Times, December 8–9, 1994, 1. Back.
Note 56: Arab Times, December 2, 1995, 1, 8, and December 12, 1995, 6. Back.
Note 57: Their most recent success as of this writing occurred in August 1998. MEES 41.31 (August 3, 1998), from the MEES Archive. Back.
Note 58: Arab Times, March 10–11, 1994, 1. Back.
Note 59: See various issues of the Arab Times, particularly March 1, 1994, 1, 8, and March 2, 1994, 1–2, which summarize these events. Quotes in the text are from the March 1 issue. Back.
Note 60: Kuwait Times, January 31, 1994, 1; Arab Times, March 7, 1994, 1, 6. Back.
Note 61: At the first session of the trial, Hasan pled his innocence and asked to be released on bail. His attorneys also requested the return of the money he had paid a year earlier—with accrued interest—on the grounds that they were family resources and not embezzled funds. Back.
Note 62: Information about this case came from various issues of the Arab Times; proceedings of the March 22, 1994, session of the trial held in Kuwait City; and interviews with defendant Hasan Qabazard on March 22, 1994, and Salman al-Du`aij al-Sabah, attorney for `Ali al-Khalifa, March 24, 1994. Back.
Note 63: Arab Times, January 12, 1994, 1, and January 19, 1994, 1. Back.
Note 64: This would require approval by the government and therefore was unlikely to happen. The arguments on both sides of this issue are analyzed in Brown, The Rule of Law in the Arab World, 170–79. Back.
Note 65: Provisions of this law are reviewed in Arab Times, August 8, 1995, 1, 6. It includes significant protections for accused ministers. Back.
Note 66: Arab Times, October 10, 1995, 1, 6, and October 18, 1995, 1, 8. Back.
Note 67: Arab Times, April 23, 1997, 8. Back.
Note 68: Issues 4.5 (June 1995): 2; also, interviews in Kuwait, March 1994. Back.
Note 69: In the debate on the amir’s action, members of parliament identified the KOTC trial as the root cause of the amir’s decision to reopen the issue of article 71. See Arab Times, April 12, 1995, 1. Back.
Note 70: Arab Times, March 21, 1995, 8. Back.
Note 71: EIU, “Kuwait Country Report no. 2, 1995,” 6. Back.
Note 73: Arab Times, March 11, 1995, 1, 8. Back.
Note 74: EIU, “Kuwait Country Report no. 2, 1995,” 7. A foreign diplomat told me how he had sat listening while the prime minister called various members on the telephone, promising whatever it would take to get them to refrain from voting to censure. Back.
Note 75: Arab Times, April 17, 1995, 1. Back.
Note 76: Arab Times, April 4, 1995, 1, and April 17, 1995, 1. Back.
Note 77: In the 1993 cabinet reshuffle, `Ali al-Baghli (I) and `Abdullah al-Hajri (T) had been removed. Back.
Note 78: Arab Times, April 17, 1995, 8. The fourth, `Abd al-Mohsin al-Mud`ej, had run as an independent and was not associated with the Forty-five. Back.
Note 80: EIU, “Kuwait Country Report no. 2, 1995,” 8–9. Back.
Note 81: Arab Times, October 10, 1995, 1, 6. Back.
Note 82: Arab Times, October 18, 1995, 8. Back.
Note 83: Quoted in Arab Times, November 25, 1995, 8. Back.
Note 84: MEES 39.40 (July 1, 1996). Back.
Note 85: But not beyond the jurisdictions of other nations’ courts. In late February 1998, a case for recovery of the embezzled funds, titled KOTC and Another v. Al-Badr and Others began seventy-four days of litigation in a London court in an attempt to recover embezzled funds for KOTC and the state of Kuwait. See chapter 8 for a discussion of this trial and its results. Back.
Note 86: Arab Times, December 24, 1996, 1. Back.
Note 87: Ibid.; also, Arab Times, April 29, 1997, 1, 8. The decision made reference to the fact that the new law bore the amir’s signature. Back.
Note 88: The original bill, which had passed on the floor with a smaller majority, required the segregation of private schools (government schools are already segregated) as well as of the university and postsecondary technical schools. Cabinet approval is necessary for a bill to be sent to the amir for his signature. The cabinet did approve gender segregation for the university and the technical schools, but removed the provision requiring segregation in private schools before sending the measure back to the assembly for a final vote. Back.
Note 89: Gender segregation interested foreign journalists in part because it was one of the easiest issues to explain to readers and viewers unfamiliar with the Kuwaiti political scene. Also, as Leila Ahmed and Judy Mabro note, Westerners have been obsessed by gender relations in the Middle East for hundreds of years and are avid consumers of stories feeding their orientalist preconceptions. See Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam, esp. ch. 8, and Judy Mabro, Veiled Half-Truths: Western Travellers’ Perceptions of Middle Eastern Women. Back.
Note 90: For example, Roger Owen, “Socio-economic Change and Political Mobilization: The Case of Egypt,” in Salamé, ed., Democracy Without Democrats?, 184. Back.
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