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War, diplomacy and Al Sabah dynasty in Kuwait

THE Al Sabah dynasty has ruled Kuwait, the Arab world’s only constitutional hereditary monarchy, since 1756, when Nejdi tribes escaped famine in the Central Arabian desert and migrated to coastal settlements on the mouth of the Gulf.

Unlike elsewhere in the Middle East, the ruling clan did not seize power by force but were entrusted as the guardians of the state with the consent of the Uthbi (wanderers), the Nejdi Arab families who were the original settlers in Kuwait. The Amirs of Kuwait were the primus inter pares, first amongst equals, in a city-state of merchants devoted to the ancient trade routes of the Gulf. By the late 1890’s, Kuwait had attracted the attention of rival great powers, a recurrent theme in its history whose tragic endgame would be Saddam’s brutal invasion almost a century later.

The Turkish governor of Baghdad wished to incorporate Kuwait in the Ottoman Empire, compelling Mubarak Al Kabir, the Amir at the time, to seek British military assistance. His appeal for help suited Victorian Britain’s imperial interests in the Gulf. Lord Curzon, the fin de siecle Viceroy of India, waged the Great Game against Tsarist Russia with relish in his "forward policy" and Kuwait became a British protectorate in the Gulf.

The merchant elite benefited from the economic bonanza triggered by World War I and II, even though the Great Depression and Japanese cultured pearls hit the pearl fleets and spice traders of Kuwait hard. Kuwait was also the hub for the provision of boats and supplies to the Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq, crafted by Britain after the Arab revolt. The sons and grandsons of Mubarak Al Kabir proved able rulers of Kuwait, particularly Shaikhs Salem and Jaber, whose male descendents would alternate succession to the throne.

Kuwait was the quintessential super rich oil emirate, transformed overnight from an obscure and impoverished pearling port into a province of black gold, rich beyond the wildest dreams of any Croesus or Midas. Oil enabled Amir Abdullah Salem Al Sabah to create the foundation of the first Arab womb to tomb petrocurrency welfare state in the 1950’s, a haven for Palestinian teachers, engineers and bureaucrats, the generation of the Naqba expelled by Israel during the 1948 war. Shaikh Sabah Al Salem, who succeeded his brother Abdullah in 1964 as Amir, used Kuwait’s petrodollar bonanza to bankroll the Palestinian cause. Kuwait embraced Yasser Arafat’s Fatah, when it was revolutionary fedayeen dedicated to the destruction of Zionism and the creation of a Palestinian state, after the June 1967 Six Day War. Alone among the Gulf hereditary monarchies, Kuwait’s foreign policy was non-aligned and the Al Sabah hosted an embassy from the USSR, complete with a KGB contingent.

Jabar Al Ahmed Al Sabah became the thirteenth Amir of Kuwait in 1977, just as the Shah of Iran was toppled from the peacock throne by Ayatullah Khomeini’s Islamic revolution. Kuwait abandoned its balancing act foreign policy and aligned with Saddam Hussein, even though the Hashemite King Ghazi, Brigadier Qasim and the Baath Party had all threatened to annex the emirate of the Al Sabah into Iraq in the past. Kuwait’s financial aid and clandestine arms transshipments to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq during the first Gulf war incensed Iran, whose intelligence agents attempted to assassinate Shaikh Jaber as his royal motorcade sped beyond his seafront Dasman Palace. The US Embassy was also bombed by terrorists from the Iran backed Dawa Party, which also fomented subversion among the Kuwait Shia. As the tanker war in the Gulf escalated in 1988, Kuwait requested President Reagan to reflag its tankers and protect its refineries from Iranian missile attack. In essence, the United States was now a belligerent in the Iran-Iraq war.

August 2, 1990 was the day Kuwait’s history changed forever. Shaikh Jaber rejected Saddam’s claims on Warba and Bubiyan Islands, and his demands for untold billions of dollars in fresh aid. In response, two elite combat divisions of the Iraqi Republican Guard, the Hammurabi and Medina Munawwara, overran the emirate. The Gulf war devastated Kuwaiti public finances, already reeling from the shock of the Souk Al Manakh stock market crash a decade earlier and the collapse in crude oil prices.

Shaikh Jaber’s death in January 2006 triggered a messy succession. The Crown Prince, Shaikh Saad, abdicated and was deposed by parliament. The new Amir, Shaikh Sabah, Foreign Minister since 1963, was a brother of the deceased Shaikh Jaber. His full brother and nephew, both from the Jaber branch of the royal clan, were appointed Crown Prince and Prime Minister. A dispute over gerrymandering electoral districts between the tribal/Islamists and the hadhir (urban) forced Shaikh Sabah to dissolve the National Assembly for the fourth time in Kuwaiti history, but not after another acrimonious campaign on women enfranchisement.

The Sabah family includes some of the ablest diplomats, technocrats and financiers in the Gulf. The new Prime Minister is a Swiss educated diplomat, a former Ambassador to Iran and the United Nations. The governor of the central bank and the Minister of Petroleum are both Al Sabah shaikhs. The senior prince of the Salem branch is Foreign Minster Dr Mohammed Al Sabaha, a potential future Amir after Crown Prince Nawwaf. Yet the populist tradition in Kuwaiti politics, combined with tribal vote banks and Islamist hardliners, suggests that periodic parliamentary confrontations are inevitable. Meanwhile, high oil prices may well tempt the Al Sabah to substitute petrodollar largesse for political reform. Moreover, the Washington connection devalues Kuwait’s Arab nationalist heritage with its image of an Uncle Sam protectorate as long as US troops occupy Iraq.

It is a tribute to successive Al Sabah Amirs that Kuwait was not swallowed up by the Ottomans, the Hashemites, the British, the Saudis and Baathist Iraq. Its fabulous wealth proved useless when Saddam Hussein invaded in August 1990. Post-war Kuwait can no longer afford the luxury of non-alignment and the United States is now the emirate’s superpower protector. Kuwait’s very existence is a testament to the Darwinian geopolitical souk of the modern Arab world.