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Two years after the start of the Arab Spring, the political battle in Kuwait is growing increasingly more tense over Twitter. At the current rate, Kuwait will soon be able to compete with neighboring Bahrain in the number of prosecutions brought against Twitter users. Within weeks of the February 2011 uprising, Bahrain had arrested large numbers of people using Twitter and Facebook to spread their messages. Meanwhile, Kuwaiti authorities also apparently decided to intimidate their critics and others through the arrest and trolling of influential Twitter users. In addition, tens of protesters have been arrested during the opposition’s dignity marches and in demonstrations by the country’s stateless community. The government, it seems, is no longer interested in defending Kuwait's reputation as the ‘most democratic’ state in the Gulf.
Kuwait Cracks Down on Dissent, Twitter
Can the People Speak?
When the uprisings first hit our region, most of us were driven into clichés and slogans praising the people for being brave to fight for change and speak. Since the 1980s, the people have been seen by ‘the elite’ as pacified and silent. Right now, as we enter the third year of Arab revolutions, we are faced with new realities, and the utopia of having the people speak up and form their new countries can no longer remain idolized.
In the Gulf, protests took place in almost every country. Bahrain had a revolution, Kuwait protested and succeeded in changing its prime minister, Saudi’s eastern province spoke against discrimination and long imprisonment, the Islamists tried to mobilize in the UAE, workers went on strike in Oman, and citizens in Qatar protested against their country’s relations with Israel and the US.
The Gulf still didn’t possess a momentum similar to Tunisia and Egypt’s, but much can come out of those movements as they destabilize the monarchies.
A few weeks after the Bahraini revolution, the people felt bitter and angry when some members of the opposition decided to dialogue with a regime that still has hundreds detained. This story keeps repeating itself as different powers keep trying to foster dialogue between the regime and the opposition, all in the name of saving the country from economic and political devastation.
In Kuwait, the youth are trying to separate themselves from the opposition so that other social groups who feel alienated by the conservative-Islamist opposition can join; especially the Shia minority and women. Some of them issued statements calling for a political change in the system that grants more power to the parliament. So far, those attempts have failed. In Kuwait, like in Bahrain, eyes are looking for new political forces that can push for change without having to be part of the current group of key players.
After the uprisings, the question is no longer about the need to speak as much as it is how to speak. The protests in both countries are intermittent, but none of the players have offered an exit for the crises. Knowing that both regimes feel intimidated, political forces need to get to a point in which change can be negotiated.
In the Bahraini example, the people clearly state during protests their demand to see the fall of the royal family. The leaders who first expressed this demand during the revolution ended up in jail or were already in exile. If the people can no longer tolerate dialogue with the royal family then the opposition needs to realize that taking the middle ground is no longer an option for them. Bahrain has passed the stage of calling for reforms.
In the Kuwaiti example, the opposition keeps emphasizing that their fight is not against the ruling family or the Emir. As the Emir insists on his decree to change the voting law, which produced a puppet parliament last month, the opposition should have a clear list of demands that don’t threaten other groups in society.
Clearly, the Kuwaiti opposition is too amateur to achieve anything. They believe that time and stubbornness will produce victories. This is why new players need to take over the scene. The youth attempted this take-over, but they ended up under the opposition’s wing out of fear of being divided and inexperience.
Certainly, seeing more pressure in the streets against the regimes is a necessity. Yet if the political leaders do not reflect what the people want and are incapable of reading the situation, the people will not be as easily mobilized to fight for change.
* Published in AlAkhbar
Bahrain Police Attack on Woman Stirs Anger
As Bahrain was pretending to be secure enough to hold a regional sports event, its security men were attacking a woman protester in the middle of Manama, the capital. Last July, Zahra Al-Shaikh was released from prison after being detained and tortured. She stated, in an interview with Bahraini journalist in exile Lamees Dhaif, that the police wanted to force her to work for them. This time, Zahra was arrested in a protest during the football tournament for Gulf countries, which was won by the UAE team. News, pictures, and videos of her arrest were circulated online on the day of the final game, on January 18.
* Continue reading this post here
Nudity as an Intervention
When Alia first posted naked pictures of herself on her blog last year, the visitor-counter did not stop ticking. Having written about the reactions to her pictures, I received tens of disgusting messages from Egyptian men, as if I were Alia herself. When she showed up in front of the embassy in Stockholm, her message, this time, included a context that was lacking in her past controversies. What triggers me to write this is the after-debate that is raging on one of the extremes.
First, we might want to look at the reactions to Alia’s naked photos last year and her subsequent naked protest. I see a person like Alia normalizing an individual and personal practice (whether we agree or disagree) by breaking a taboo. Last year, the mainstream spoke of Alia for weeks and attacks against her continued. The reactions were less tense this time, not because she was less controversial but because the taboo is being challenged continuously. Last year, “the elite” criticized Alia for defaming the image of the Egyptian revolution. There was this sense of a Utopia from which they wanted to expel a woman for her form of expression.
I do believe that what FEMEN does can promote Islamophobia among other things. This is where having a world-wide feminist movement becomes problematic because one act is being imposed upon different contexts. In the Ukrainian example, FEMEN came radically to overturn the sexualized and objectified image of the Ukrainian woman who is portrayed in the mainstream as a whore. The group is growing worldwide and targets all religions for their sexist and homophobic views. In Alia’s case, thousands were protesting near Mursi’s palace in Cairo when she decided to pose naked in front of the embassy in Stockholm. Alia drew attention to what she cares about: women’s rights in the new constitution.
Feminist voices of different ideologies, just like the voices of minorities, have been subdued since the revolution. They have been considered secondary in priority because what matters most is achieving justice against the criminals of Mubarak, SCAF, and now the Ikhwan. The unquestioning nobility of this goal is used to silence others. It is fine to disagree and criticize Alia but it is not fine to exclude her from this entity called ‘the revolution.’ A young woman like her took part in the revolution believing it would bring greater gender equality. She and her boyfriend, the blogger Kareem Amer, posted a video after the revolution challenging public space by being intimate openly in a park. A person’s need from the revolution might not be focused on an individual need, but this should not criminalize the importance of interventions made by those who care for their personal freedoms. Both discussions should enrich a post-revolution project.
Alia’s choice would not be my own. Alia can be used by western media and liberal feminism for political propaganda. FEMEN’s attacks on Islam are outrageous as they target a religion of minorities in Europe, which faces hate speech every day. Yet, Alia is making an intervention for women’s rights in Egypt and for personal freedoms to be considered part of the discussion, regardless of form and content. Whether her intervention will create space for women or not, her acts do not need not be suppressed and labeled as the acts of a traitor, “the native informant,” or the ‘feminist whore.”
Kuwaiti Twitter User Jailed for Two Years for Insulting Emir
Seven months after the sentencing a Twitter user to five years in jail for defaming the Emir of Kuwait, another Twitter user Ayyad Al-Harbi was sentenced this Monday to two years in jail for the same charge. Al-Harbi wrote several tweets critical of the Emir and the oppression practiced against protesters. According to the court order (published by Sabr online), the tweets Ayyad was prosecuted for contain the following lines:
- Damn any ruler who jails his people. Damn any ruler that has more opposition than supporters.
- Your highness, the best unity between Kuwaitis happened in Erada square and you targeted it.
- What is left? no revolution, no development, no freedom, no dignity, no parliament, no voting, no protests, no objection, for God's sake, what are you doing to us?
- So I should either insult and accuse people of things with no proof and say it is freedom or I should say my account is hacked and get released?
- If you are not Kuwaiti, then you are from the Gulf. You will face the oppression and tyranny and arrests with a bit of oil.
- The tyrant and oppressor should not be apologized to, he should fall down and be on trial and jailed and killed.
- Curse the state that does not stop its dogs from eating the dignity of its people just because they are opposing.
* Continue reading this post in Global Voices
With Kuwait Twitter Arrests, the Emir’s Gloves Come Off
The story of Twitter user Iyad al-Harbi who was sentenced to two years in jail for “defaming the emir of Kuwait” has been reported by numerous media outlets. Al-Harbi wrote several controversial tweets, but unlike other arrested Twitter users in Kuwait, he did not claim that his account had been hacked to avoid the consequences. Al-Harbi’s name has become known over the past year for being openly critical of the political situation. According to the court decision (published by Sabr online), al-Harbi thought his tweets were not offensive and believed that he had expressed his own opinion respectfully without violating any laws. The court, as expected, is not going to drop the charges considering the language he used to address the emir. Al-Harbi was preaching to the head of state and warning him that he is turning into another dictator.
This sentence is not the first of its kind. Last June, a Twitter user called Nasser al-Ansary received five years in jail for the same charge, but the case was scarcely reported on. Back then, the opposition was still trying to play a game with the authorities and apparently decided to let al-Ansary fight the charges on his own. Kuwaiti newspapers relegated any brief mention of the news to their last pages.
This time, though, al-Harbi has received the needed attention, because of his online and political visibility. Unlike al-Ansary, al-Harbi is a young man from the opposition who was lucky that his case came at a time when diplomacy and negotiations are no longer considered an option in the political arena. The visible tensions and the public clash between political powers in Kuwait have drawn the necessary attention to such a case. More importantly, it has generated a focus on the status of free speech in Kuwait – a right that has long been violated. Those violations have been veiled simply because human rights bodies are pushed to report on the more problematic and oppressive regimes in the region.
If we closely scrutinize annual reports on Kuwait and local media coverage, we can record many cases of violations of free speech. Just like any ambiguous monarchy (although Kuwait is technically not a monarchy), the country was pushed by its western advisors to claim itself a middle democracy, by drawing comparisons with neighboring dictatorships in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Saddam’s Iraq. With these jail sentences given to young men for writing tweets, the card of democracy no longer seems appealing for the Kuwaiti decision-makers; it is too old and useless!
Being a US ally with a constitution and a parliament, Kuwait was forced to grant more freedoms and reforms during the '60s and '70s after independence. With the power shifts worldwide, political Islam was used to halt such progress and replaced with a continuous social clash between different political powers based on class. Witnessing the way Bahrain has evaded any punishment and has received military guarantees for its continuing oppression, Kuwait is now more encouraged to openly knock down its opposition. Such jail sentences were not expected from a regime that once showed flexibility by changing its prime minister after three years of growing protests.
As the stories of al-Harbi and others are circulated in the media, a discussion on constitutional changes is taking place. The parliament elected last month is mostly dominated by those who do not intend to clash with the government and, more importantly, with the ruling family. Yet, even those parliament members are not in favor of any constitutional changes. MP Ali al-Rashed (a former opposition liberal turned loyalist) stated that the country is living through a tense period and is thus intolerant of such changes. One of the proposed changes may place more restrictions on criticism of the emir and the state. The late elections brought a puppet parliament, and through parliament, a puppet constitution can be created. Kuwaitis will no longer brag to Khalijis about their ‘progressive’ constitution (which is really a limited and an outdated one.)
So is the Arab Spring bringing more freedoms and reforms to the Gulf? Not at this point. There was much hope that a revolution in Bahrain and political reform in Kuwait could change the face of the region. Thanks to Saudi Arabia, such changes will not be passed on and the situation in Syria is enough to keep the attention away from other victims. It is surely important to look closer at the way Gulf rulers use Syria to distract from and repel any criticism of the oppression they are practicing. The only gain, so far, is that people have been more mobilized and politicized, especially the young generation. But if being political will only mean being massacred or jailed, silence can again become an option.
Or, at least, this is how they want the story to end.
* Published in AlAkhbar
It is Time for Gulf Colonialism
During a period when European colonialism was met with armed resistance, Algerian-born French writer Albert Camus’ suggestion that an Arab colonialism replace the French one was controversial. From a different angle, the idea of replacing one system with another is now legitimate after the Arab Spring. The differences in the comparison are considerable, but the point is the same: revolting nations are not interested in exchanging their dictators for Gulf-funded governments the way colonialism was replaced with authoritarian states.
In a past post, I spoke of the new Qatar being a mysterious country funding political Islam in the region after the Arab Spring. Several readers were bothered by the questions asked, but did not note that the whole idea of the post was to raise questions about a closed country turning revolutions into political and economic investments, its tools being a media network, an ambiguous foreign policy, and huge projects that seem too massive and unnecessary.
Qatar’s role has been underestimated, but now, its dominance is a reality that can no longer be ignored.
For decades, the Wahabi project in Saudi Arabia has been the subject of academic focus. The role of the kingdom is evident in funding Islamist movements and supporting regimes that do not clash with their interests. The Palestinian Authority, the Bahraini regime, and Yemen’s former president Saleh are a few of the many benefactors of the Saudi project.
The birth of Qatar as a regional power does has produced a power struggle with Saudi Arabia, with Qatar seen as an intimidating force in the manner of Iran.
With sectarianism successfully taking hold in the Gulf after the Bahraini revolution, Iran was portrayed as possessing grand powers. Saudi Arabia was never going to give importance to its opponent, but now that a ‘foreign monster’ is needed to keep the people silent, Iran is depicted as being all-powerful.
On the other hand, Iran is making use of this image to keep the focus away from the voices speaking out against a theocratic dictatorship. Qatar, however, is playing wisely with both opponents.
Around the Arab world, Islamist groups are accused of being supported by one of those three powers: Muslim Brotherhood by Qatar, Salafis by Saudi Arabia, and the Shia by Iran. I see these Islamist movements having a short life. They have no flexibility or experience in running a state. They came with the mentality of the opposition that was silenced by dictators, but in few months played all their cards. By speaking of their past struggles, Islamists are no longer able to manipulate the people simply because people are more in need of an immediate change in their life conditions.
Ruling a country like Egypt or Tunisia is not easy and it is surely not easier after the revolutions and the sudden political and economic shifts of the past two years. With Egypt decentralized, Qatar has more space to play, especially alongside Brotherhood regimes. Yet this power can fail too.
Gulf money is attempting to manipulate the region and control the region’s revolutions before they hit home. Gulf money is playing the game of political Islam. Is this the right investment? The ongoing examples tell us it is not. Qatar and Saudi Arabia are in the game of neo-colonialism, but they do not see how quickly the shifts are happening; they do not realize that they are betting on one horse instead of investing in long-term relations with the revolting countries. The Pan-Arabist project was gone soon after European colonialism, and Gulf colonialism will fail soon with those puppet governments climbing to the chairs of power.
* Published in AlAkhbar
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