A Roadmap to Kuwait’s Dignity March

After the biggest march in Kuwait’s history on Sunday, people from different countries asked me through my blog or twitter for explanations of this demonstration and that’s why I’m writing this brief post explaining the story behind it and other relevant issues. As reported in the media, the march was planned to protest the emir’s decree to change the electoral law. The new amendment forces Kuwaiti citizens to vote for one candidate instead of four. Certainly, an outsider would not understand why voting for four is more important but this is not what is at stake.

If one imagines voting for one candidate instead of four in a country of four electoral districts, then one can understand how a candidate might win with few thousands of votes due to the small population of the Emirate, and thus will not be fairly representative of the majority of his/her district. Before 2006, Kuwait had 25 electoral districts, but with the demands of the “orange youth movement,” it was changed to five. The movement rightly campaigned that this change would decrease deals of buying votes and of candidates winning because their bases consist of their tribes, families, or sects. Meaning, the operation was made more political than social.

The major objection that led to Sunday’s “Dignity March” was against having an authoritarian regime. The decree was made under the “necessity decree” which is a right given to the emir to issue decrees if change is necessary to save the country from some danger. This particular decree states that it is made to save the country from division. Those protesting did not think that this constitutional right was used correctly and more importantly thought that such a law was only made to manipulate next December’s election results. The protesters and the Islamist-conservative opposition stated that such a change should be made by the elected parliament.

The decree became more problematic after the constitutional court turned down the government’s request to rule out the electoral law as unconstitutional. It shows how the current government in Kuwait is paying for a reformative decision made in 2006 by popular demand. Right after the court’s decision, the head of the judiciary in Kuwait resigned from his position and took back his resignation in 24 hours. This shows how there is a conflict between the higher powers of the state.

The state foolishly decided to crack down on thousands of protesters this Sunday. There were over 20 arrested (released the next day to calm the situation down) and tens injured. Such oppression is not usual in Kuwait, but in the past months everything turned upside down. Some Kuwaitis exaggerated saying “the shield of the peninsula” will come to repress Kuwaitis. However, I think it is true that the country has radically changed its foreign policies lately. Last year and before, the foreign policy was based on staying away from any regional conflicts but now is based on cooperating with fellow Gulf monarchies. A good example is the one billion Kuwaiti Dinars aid given to the Bahraini regime. The latter was upset with Kuwait for not sending troops last year to repress the February 14 Revolution.

Where is Kuwait going with this? No one can tell. I can only tell that the way authorities are dealing with this situation is completely meaningless and does nothing but further complicate the situation.

* Published in Al-Akhbar

Kuwait: The Country's Biggest Protest?

Tear gas and stun grenades were used to disperse a protest in Kuwait against changes to the electoral law. The call for the Karamat Watan (A Nation's Dignity) march, which took place on Sunday, was made on Twitter, and attracted about 150,000 out of the country's population of 3 million. Media outlets considered this number to be the biggest in the small Gulf emirate's history.

The protest came in reaction to the Amir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah decree to change the electoral law, making a citizen vote for one candidate instead of four, as it used to be in the elections of Kuwaiti parliament. The protest was not only an objection for making such a change but more importantly to protest the change of a law without the parliament or the people having their say in it. Since last June, Kuwaiti parliament has been frozen by the Amir and then dissolved by the constitutional court for ‘wrong procedures' in dissolving the parliament before it.

The opposition has been protesting since but was never able to gather such a huge crowd; even the liberal “Tahalof” and Pan-Arabist “Manbar” took part in Sunday's demonstration despite their disagreement with the Islamist-Conservative opposition.

* Continue reading this post in Global Voices

On Being a Khaliji Ikhwan

To draw the political map of the Gulf, one is always asked to use the terms set by a shared Arab reality; Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood), Salafis, conservatives, liberals, leftists, and so on. As someone from the Gulf, I always wonder: How can the Ikhwan of Kuwait brag about the power of their counterparts regionally when they do not hold the same position on certain issues as their brethren do? How can you be a Kuwaiti Ikhwan and support Saudi Arabia, Hamas, and fight Iran that supports Hamas and is the enemy of Saudi Arabia? Do the Ikhwan of Kuwait even have a political program other than their rhetoric of “reclaiming Islam”? Can the Ikhwan of Kuwait win any elections without the support of their candidates’ tribes? This pushes us, as a result, to redefine our political map in the Gulf differently; or at least attempt to.

I do not wish to talk about all the other political forces in the Gulf: leftists being dead or petty-bourgeois, liberals being old-money capitalists, Salafis being the troops of Saudi Arabia, conservatives pushing for the power of the tribe, etc. The Ikhwan are now the most dominant in the Arab region and are surely pushing to be more powerful in the Gulf under a Qatari-Turkish project that can present nothing but a ‘capitalist Islam,’ yet dangerously, with less individual freedoms and more oppression than that of contemporary Turkey.

Years ago, Saudi Arabia made a wave of arrests of Ikhwan youth who were mostly objecting to their country’s relationship with the west, to the “immorality” of the ruling family, and to their corruption. Right after that, suddenly, we had a huge group of liberals coming out of Saudi Arabia; becoming a liberal was the only option for Saudi Ikhwan to escape jails. Their rhetoric changed and we were faced with people calling for “shared power,” reforms, and accountability. After the Arab spring, the ghost of the Ikhwan is once again haunting Saudi Arabia and it is not able to fight it back except through oppression and flooding revolting countries with conditional funds.

Just next door, the UAE holds more than 60 men in detention. Its centralized media consistently uses one accusation in their propaganda against the detainees: they are Ikhwan, traitors, want to overthrow the regime; they are loyal to the Murshid in Cairo. The UAE’s Ikhwan do not differ much from their Saudi counterparts; they have the same problems with the ruling family. Surely, though, the Ikhwan of Bahrain have a whole different story, they are even more irrelevant and inconsistent than the Kuwaiti ones as they see their battle against the Shia and no one else.

Where can the Ikhwan go with their ‘struggles’ in the Gulf? Nowhere really! None of the political powers in the Gulf can be more powerful than the ruling families. This particular region consists of a bunch of monarchies supported by the US, who hold all the economic power to survive for at least several decades. Both the regimes and the Ikhwan in the Gulf are using religion as their tool to approach people, when Ikhwan in other places were successful because of the lack of state-religion, because of oppression, devastated social services, and poverty. What can possibly empower Ikhwan in the Gulf? Nothing really! they are forced to be liberal in Saudi Arabia, tribal in Kuwait, and loyalist in Bahrain. Their godfather, Qatar, is also not interested in empowering them in their neighboring countries.

Unless minorities on the one hand, and people of different political views, on the other, push for political reforms in the Gulf, change will not happen. This is why, I believe, the families of thousands of detainees in Saudi Arabia are more capable of change than Ikhwan-liberals; the Bedoon of Kuwait have a just cause and are more capable of engendering change than the Kuwaiti Ikhwan who have no defined political ideology and survive purely on tribal power.

* Published in AlAkhbar

The Myth of Kuwaiti Democracy

Kuwaiti activist arrested in a Bedoon protest

“We just want to be like Kuwait” is a sentence that one might often hear from people of the Gulf – specifically Saudis and Bahrainis. The sentence reflects either their desire for greater individual freedoms or to be able to express themselves freely in politics. In the 1960s and '70s, Kuwait was one of the centers of the Arab world in hosting politicians, intellectuals, and a dominant, powerful progressive opposition – a place where movements of all kinds were active in demanding change and greater freedoms. Kuwaiti women were involved in sports, the arts, and politics decades before their counterparts in the rest of the Arab Gulf. It is for all these factors that Kuwait has been referred to as the only democracy in the Gulf – factors that have disappeared in the past three decades.

In the 1980s, supporting political Islam was the government’s response to counter the dominance of leftist movements. The game did not succeed at the beginning, but it surely did after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The stance of Arab regimes and Arab leftists in support of Saddam’s invasion was the bullet that killed leftism in Kuwait. A new page was turned and the political map was dominated by the Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood), Salafis, old-money conservatives, tribes, and liberals (as the alternative to leftists).

Right now, the political map in Kuwait is confusing and points to a state totally dominated by the government since the constitutional court dissolved the parliament last June. The country is waiting for the reinstalled 2009 parliament to be dissolved by the emir and for new elections to take place. All of this comes after last February’s victory by the Islamist-Conservative majority. The Arab Spring is definitely having an impact on Kuwait; on political citizens and on the stateless (Bedoon) community.

All this time, authorities in Kuwait have been trying to fabricate proof against anyone political in Kuwait. It has been trying to conceal its violations against the stateless and migrant workers. It has been silent towards all those online users sentenced to jail for criticizing authorities or expressing their views toward religion. Why? Simply because the country does not want its ‘democracy’ to die; at least not in front of the world.

All those violated in Kuwait have been paying the price for this dead myth; the councilors of Kuwait keep warning of the perils of letting this myth die. Kuwait does not receive the criticism it deserves, not only because it ‘pays’ to stave off attention, but because violations and conditions across the Gulf are comparatively worse and well-publicized, especially in the media. But there is no Kuwaiti democracy; tear gas and shotguns have already arrived and are in use!

How can there be a Kuwaiti democracy when the country gives money to the regimes of Bahrain and Jordan without parliamentary approval? How can there be a Kuwaiti democracy when the parliament is dissolved and frozen at whim? How can there be a Kuwaiti democracy when protesting is continuously criminalized by the state despite all constitutional rights? How can there be a Kuwaiti democracy when women are still unequal to men despite having obtained their political rights and being publicly elected? How can there be a democracy when the stateless (Bedoon) of Kuwait are always illegally arrested, interrogated, tortured, and threatened? How can there be a Kuwaiti democracy when migrant workers are beaten, tortured, insulted and raped without legal recourse to protect themselves?

On Tuesday, a Bedoon protester was shot in the eye. Let’s open our eyes to the real state of Kuwaiti democracy.

* Published in Al-Akhbar

Kuwait: Shotgun Used Against Stateless Protesters

On the International Day of Non-Violence, the stateless community of Kuwait decided to protest to demand their right to citizenship. The community has been protesting, on and off, since February 2011. Over the past two years, the self-acclaimed ‘Gulf democracy' has arrested more than 200 protesters, put them on trial, fabricated charges against them, and then acquitted them. This Tuesday, the protest was different as it attracted more than 3,000 protesters, foreign media, and several NGOs.

In the past weeks, the protesters were way smaller, comparatively, of a community estimated to be about 120,000 of Kuwait's 3 million population. Bedoon translates to without - and in this case refers to Kuwaitis with no official documents like passports and ID cards.

* Continue reading this post on Global Voices

Whose Refugees Matter More?

In my previous post, I wrote about the recent meeting of the United Nation’s Human Rights Council about Bahrain. Recommendations “demanded” Bahrain to stop its systematic violations that include killing protesters, arresting hundreds, torture cases, and many other things. Will Bahrain take the recommendations seriously? If not, will the United Nations put sanctions on Bahrain? Will it send observers to Bahrain? Will it discuss any kind of intervention? The answer is: of course not!

It is no surprise that the United Nations with all its bodies has brought nothing but disappointment to the Arab world, but when it comes to the regimes of the Gulf and their practices, the story is even worse. Another establishment of the United Nations that should be looked at is the UNHCR – or the UN Refugees Agency. If you are constantly following up the statements made by the agency’s representatives, you will not be surprised to know how double their standards are. In Syria, for decades, the Agency did not bother to fight for the Kurdish community, stating that they would rather work in Syria according to the regime’s rules than lose their place in the country and thus be unable to help other refugees.

Similar statements were made in all the interviews with the Agency’s representatives in Kuwait. Although the agency includes the stateless (Bedoon) community in Kuwait under the umbrella of refugees, the agency offers no help to them and makes no comments on Kuwait’s continuous violations against them. A few days ago, Hanan Hamdan, the head of the Agency’s office in Kuwait, enraged the Bedoon by stating: “Naturalization of Bedoon is a decision up to Kuwaiti authorities.” She also suggested that Kuwait should organize a conference to speak about its “leading experience” in dealing with the issue of statelessness; surely she wasn’t referring to the state’s experience in arresting more than 200 protesters, torture cases, and denying Bedoon their rights to documents, health care, employment, and education. The meeting covered by Kuwaiti press showed Hamdan with Saleh al-Fidala; the man assigned by the Kuwaiti government to solve the issues of Bedoon despite his being openly racist against the stateless community.

This meeting and Hamdan’s statement came right after Kuwait’s donationof a million dollars to Syrian refugees. Certainly, no Bedoon or Kuwaiti objects to the offering of aid to Syrian refugees, especially after seeing their government, in the absence of a parliament, give billions to the regimes of Bahrain, Jordan, and Oman a couple of weeks ago. The objection comes to the policies of the United Nations establishment that cares more about keeping donations from Gulf regimes coming by complimenting their “brilliant” plans in dealing with statelessness!

Shortly after that scandalous meeting, three international human rights organizations published a letter addressed to the Emir of Kuwait calling him to grant rights to the Bedoon community. The statement confirmed that Kuwait hasn’t fulfilled any of its promises made to international committees regarding the issue of Bedoon. It also states that Bedoon are facing continuous abuse and discrimination and are denied their basic rights, documents, and deserved naturalization.

So what should we expect from UN bodies in the Gulf? Well, nothing really. As long as Gulf regimes keep throwing money at them, we will never see them standing clearly against the violations of their donors. The better option is not to expect much of them and to, instead, keep unveiling their hypocrisy.

* published in AlAkhbar