In Kuwait, ISIS tried to exploit vulnerabilities

Friday 03/07/2015
Open political debate in Kuwait’s parliament

KUWAIT - By sending a Saudi Arabian suicide bomber to Kuwait and recruiting local mem­bers of a stateless under­class to help him attack a Shia mosque, an Islamic State cell struck at the Gulf Arab monarchy’s most potent internal divisions.

Relations have traditionally been good between the 70% of Kuwait’s 1.4 million citizens who are Sunni and the Shia who make up 30% but regional rivalry between Sunni Sau­di Arabia and Shia Iran has opened fissures.

The country, home to the region’s most open Arab society, is also di­vided between descendents of its original townsfolk and those of Bedouin tribes, between Islamists and liberals and between rich and poor.

For decades, Kuwait’s ruling al- Sabah family has played the social, religious and political groupings off against each other, critics say, while sidelining injustices such as the plight of more than 130,000 state­less bidoon, a term meaning “with­out”.

The Islamic State (ISIS) is adept at exploiting vulnerabilities with its violently puritanical message and call to an Islamist utopia, a tactic it could use in other Gulf Arab states where, despite great wealth, bitter inequalities persist. While many Kuwaitis say they hope the govern­ment will respond to this challenge by addressing internal problems and maintaining its open tradition, they fret it will instead follow the authoritarian lead of Saudi Arabia.

“Now there is a lot of fear after this action that the government will take more measures regard­ing more security, more limits of rights,” said Mohammed al-Dallal, a former member of parliament with the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Islamic Constitutional Movement.

The June 26th suicide attack, which killed 27 people and injured more than 200, put Kuwait on the front line of a jihadist problem that has been aggravated in its neigh­bour Iraq by the tussle for regional dominance between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Kuwait is a rare island of com­parative openness in the Gulf, with elected members of parliament who can challenge the ruling fam­ily’s appointed government and a tradition of free debate that allows critics to publicly question both the state and regional heavyweights.

This diversity has carried a po­litical price, as the al-Sabah dy­nasty has often taken advantage of splits to maintain its rule, giving or withholding patronage to prevent any group from growing powerful enough to threaten its primacy.

In recent years, seemingly urged on by Gulf allies, it has grown less tolerant of dissent, jailing citizens for tweets critical of the al-Sabah family and changing electoral laws in ways critics say make it harder for the opposition to win a majority in parliament.

What some fear is that the gov­ernment will become the last mem­ber of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which includes Saudi Ara­bia, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, to approve a security agreement that could limit rights.

Drive up the highway west out of Kuwait City, through dowdy sub­urbs and large open areas of scrub trees intersected by electricity py­lons, and you pass first the bidoon area of Sulaibiya and eventually the tribal district of al-Jahra.

The houses are smaller and shab­bier than in Kuwait’s inner city where the scions of wealthy mer­chants, both Sunni and Shia, and the professional classes live.

Many bidoon are descendants of Bedouin nomads from inside Ku­wait who failed to register with au­thorities when borders were set 50 years ago, while others are recent undocumented migrants from Iraq seeking access to Kuwait’s riches.

At least two of the suspects Ku­wait has detained after the mosque attack are from this disenfran­chised community, as was the Iraq-born father of Mohammed Emwazi, known in the West as ISIS”s “Jihadi John”.

“Islamic State will find some an­gry people because of some social issues. I think number one is the bidoon,” said Dallal, describing the issue as a “time bomb”.

Kuwait’s Bedouin tribes, while much better off than the bidoon, have historically been looked down on by city folk, who often regard them as unsophisticated, while they have often seen cosmopolitan urbanites as irreligious.

It was among these groups that Salafism, the ultra-strict strain of Sunni Islam native to Saudi Arabia, has thrived in Kuwait, with its sym­pathy for tribal traditions, its egali­tarian approach to those within its fold and intolerance of Shiism.

Fuhaid al-Humailan, spokesman for a Bedouin Salafi party, con­demned the June 26th bombing but quickly turned to what he de­scribed as terrorism perpetrated by the West and Shia Iran against Arab Sunnis as representing Kuwait’s main threat.

In the 1980s, the government encouraged Salafists as a counter­weight to the Muslim Brotherhood and the movement has grown ever since, becoming a force that held many seats in the last parliament and has mobilised young people on the street.

Although the Muslim Brother­hood has had fundraising events for rebels in Syria, providing cash that the West believes may have gone to militants, it is Salafists whose ties to jihadist groups most worry Ku­waiti liberals and Shias.

“Salafist extremism existed in Kuwait a long time ago. But the government gave us deaf ears. They didn’t listen until this tragedy hap­pens,” said Ali al-Baghli, a liberal former oil minister at a diwaniya, as Kuwaitis call their nightly salons.

As Shia victims were buried June 27th, Kuwait’s flag hung at half staff by the emir’s seafront palace and condolences were heard in the Sun­ni Grand Mosque.

Shia Muslims at the funeral, the men and women sipping thimbles of tea at the salon held at a liberal political society and Islamists in a Bedouin district outside Kuwait City all commended their ruler, Sheikh Sabah Ahmad al-Sabah, for visiting the bomb site within an hour of the attack.

Yet despite the emotional pledg­es of unity and allegiance, few people said they expected mean­ingful changes in how the al-Sabah family handled the grievances ISIS exploited and still fewer seemed to agree on what changes, if any, should be made.