MANIPAL, India, April 23 (UPI) -- Kuwait
is a tiny sliver of land sandwiched between the three regional giants of Iraq,
Iran and Saudi Arabia. Unlike the three, the country is free from extremism and
is showcasing economic rather than religious or ethnic issues to underline its
identity. Local women go about the shopping malls in denims, although the emir
of Kuwait has not been able to persuade Parliament to give voting rights to
this better half of the Kuwaiti population. But it is to be hoped that the next
elections will witness both women candidates as well as voters.
The ruling family in Kuwait, the
Al-Sabah, are close friends of their Saudi cousins, the Al-Saud. However, the
two dynasties have followed entirely different paths in managing their
respective countries. For one, the Al-Sauds have been much more proliferant,
now numbering an estimated 27,000 -- not counting more distant relatives. They
have also taken seriously the message implicit in the very naming of their
country after themselves, helping themselves to 36 percent of the total wealth
of the kingdom, leaving the rest mostly to the families close to the court.
Many Saudi citizens -- especially in the
Shiite east -- enjoy neither running water nor electricity. In contrast, Prince
Abdel Aziz Al-Saud, the favorite son of King Fahd, has just done his bit for
reducing unemployment in the kingdom by building a new palace in Riyadh at a
reported cost of $670 million. No 30-year-old can be content with just a single
home, so the austere Saudi royal is building another palace in Jeddah, although
this will cost a mere $540 million.
The skies over Europe are filled with
private aircraft ferrying the Al-Sauds from one hotspot to the other, and the
boutique stores in Paris and London would close down but for free-spending
Saudi princes and princesses. Sadly for the Saudi people, such largesse does
not extend to home.
As for that evil notion called democracy,
forget it. Women need written permission of a male relative before traveling
abroad. And any religious manifestation not permitted by the Wahhabi religion
that is followed by the Al-Sauds is stamped out.
Small wonder that the Al-Sauds are hated
in the peninsula, or that Saudi citizens are ambivalent about the likes of
Osama bin Laden, who in their eyes has the merit of seeking to overthrow the
ruling family, of course replacing it with a structure that would make Mullah
Omar seem like a Boy Scout. So long as the United States and the European Union
-- for reasons of commerce and convenience -- continue to back the Al-Sauds,
the West will be demonized within Saudi Arabia.
While the heart of King Fahd, after a
lifetime of virtuous living, is beating only because of medical advances, both
Crown Prince Abdullah and his presumed successor -- Defense Minister Prince
Sultan -- are in almost as parlous a state of health as India's Prime Minister,
Atal Behari Vajpayee.
After them is the Interior Minister,
Prince Naif, who had been a vigorous advocate of jihad till George W. Bush made
the term politically incorrect. Even today, much of the network of
"charities" that funnel cash to jihadi groups worldwide are
patronized by the prince, who has emulated the example set by the Pakistan army
in ensuring that no extremist of consequence gets captured, even by his men.
Should nature take its course in the case of Abdullah and Sultan, there is no
obvious successor, nor is there any cohesion between the 16 branches of the House
of Saud. The possibility is high that there will be an internecine conflict
within the Al-Sauds, one that could act as a trigger for the mobs to move into
the streets of the smaller towns, thus effectively partitioning what is in fact
an unviable state
Interestingly, almost all the labor
crucial to the operation of the oil industry -- as well as essential to the
infrastructure in the main cities of Jeddah, Riyadh and Dhammam -- is carried
out by expatriates.
However, should the central authority in
Riyadh crumble, local soldiers may not be as willing as Pakistanis to crush a
revolt in the governorates, where the system is even more authoritarian than in
the big cities. In particular, neither Iran nor Iraq would look on in silence
were a massacre of the Shiites take place in the Saudi east. The odds are high
that both would quietly work toward establishing a third Shiite-dominated state
there, one that would possess much of Saudi oil reserves.
The economic center of gravity would then
flow from Sunni to Shiite in the Middle East, a consequence of which would be
the weakening of the Wahhabi infrastructure that the Saudi royals have set up
worldwide.
By not remembering the umbilical cord
that binds the Wahhabi establishment to almost all branches of the Al-Sauds,
and by paying zero attention to the ruling family in next-door Kuwait, Western
leaders unwittingly encouraged the climate that bred a bin Laden. Although the
Al-Sauds are busying themselves in cosmetic gestures designed to convince the
U.S. that it is willing to root out the props to the Archipelago of Terror that
the state religion of Wahhabism has spawned, the reality is that they are as
willing to act seriously against the fanatics as their allies, the Pakistan
army, which has Jihad as its official motto.
In contrast, the Al-Sabahs of Kuwait
early on recognized that the consent of the governed is crucial to stability,
putting in place a Legislative Council on June 24,1938 to "advise the
Ruler." On March 14,1939, this got transformed into a Consultative
Council, where the Al-Sabahs had four out of a total of 13 members. Since then,
democracy in Kuwait has proceeded in a zigzag pattern, with the Parliament
today being strong enough to block the decrees of the emir -- such as women's
suffrage, which was issued as far back as 1999 but has yet to be ratified by
the elected legislators -- and force the removal of ministers.
Even the Kuwaiti royals have been unable
to withstand such pressure. In 1985, Sheikh Salman Al-Duaj Al-Sabah was forced
to resign from Parliament under threat of expulsion. This forbearance by the
Al-Sabahs is creating a situation where the constitution and not the ruling
family becomes the final arbiter.
Kuwait is different from even liberal
sheikhdoms such as Dubai, where the system and principles of governance owe
their survival to the ruler rather than to written law. Slowly, a free press
and a justice system are emerging in the sheikhdom, encouraged by the
Al-Sabahs, who appear content to accept the role of constitutional monarchs on
the British model.
As in the case of Saudi Arabia, the
present ruler of Kuwait, Sheikh Jabber Al-Sabah, is ailing. Indications are
that he will be followed not by the present crown prince -- who also is unwell
-- or by the prime minister, the septuagenarian Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah,
but by one of two younger princes, Sheikh Mohammed Al-Sabah (the present
foreign minister) and Sheikh Nasser Al-Sabah, an expert on art and antiquities.
Both are liberal and reportedly in favor
of continuing the push toward a constitutional monarchy. Were one of them to
become the emir and the other the crown prince, then Kuwait could become the
model for the rest of the sheikhdoms in the Middle East.
Sabahism would pose a challenge to
Wahhabism in the Arabian peninsula, competing with it by its own vision of
economic prosperity and peaceful co-existence with all its neighbors, including
Israel.
Unlike the Saudis, who block the granting
of visas to such dangerous elements, the Kuwaitis have no hesitation in
allowing inside those from the Third World foolhardy enough to have insisted on
getting an Israeli visa stamped on the normal passport, rather than in a
separate one valid just for travel to the Jewish homeland. In Kuwait City,
there are churches that function openly, while the authorities permit other
religious groups to set up houses of worship for private prayer, in contrast to
Saudi Arabia, where non-Wahhabis are arrested for openly practicing their faith
If the Bush administration resists those
voices that seek to slow down the transition to democracy in Iraq, and accept
that the people of Iraq have as much right as Americans to control their own
destinies, then the emergence of republican democracy in Iraq and a
constitutional monarchy in Kuwait will act as spurs that will promote political
change in the Middle East. It is no accident that it is Muslim Arabs and not
Muslims from India who are active in al-Qaida. The former have no political
rights whatever in their homelands. Only full democracy will stanch he flow to the
terrorist training camps, a process that recognition of "Sabahism" as
a counter to Wahhabism would accelerate.
-(M. D. Nalapat is professor of
geopolitics at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education in India.)
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