Kuwait

KUWAIT

Arab country situated at the northern end of the Persian/Arabian Gulf.

The state of Kuwait (dawlat al-Kuwayt) is located at the northern tip of the Persian Gulf. Its name in Arabic means "small fort," perhaps referring to an outpost left by sixteenth-century Portuguese sailors. Kuwait borders Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Land and People

Kuwait's 7,800 square miles of territory are mostly flat except for a ridge in the north overlooking the Bay of Kuwait and a hill about 300 meters high in the southwest. The bay is Kuwait's most distinctive geographic feature, providing a sheltered harbor that many regard as the best port in the Persian Gulf. Kuwait has little available freshwater but, with 96.5 billion barrels of proven petroleum reserves, it produces most of its freshwater supplies from sea-water in conjunction with electricity generation.

Summers are hot, with temperatures regularly topping 45 °C (113 °F) and sometimes exceeding 50 °C (122 °F). During other times of year, temperatures are moderate, especially at night, and, occasionally in winter may dip below freezing. Annual rainfall is about three inches per year, but varies locally from mere traces to downpours averaging several inches at a time. There is frequent wind and dust
storms are common, especially during the spring and summer.

Before Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Kuwaiti citizens made up about 28 percent of the population of 2.1 million. Palestinians, peaking at about 400,000 persons, constituted the largest immigrant community, many having come to Kuwait after the 1948 and 1967 Arab–Israel wars. Kuwait also hosted an estimated quarter-million stateless Arabs, the bidun ("without"—for without citizenship). Bidun worked primarily as police and military personnel and were treated almost as citizens. When oil prices collapsed in 1986, the government tried to curb guest-worker immigration and encouraged bidun to emigrate. Following liberation in February 1991, most Palestinians were deported in retaliation for Yasir Arafat's support of Saddam Hussein's invasion, while bidun continued to suffer discrimination. Guest workers came increasingly from Egypt and South Asia. By 2003 the population had returned to 2.1 million but the proportion of citizens was approximately 40 percent. Nearly all native
Kuwaitis are Muslim; approximately 15 to 20 percent are Shiʿite and the rest Sunni. Most guest workers also are Muslim.

Few nomads remain in Kuwait. Most of the population is urban, concentrated in Kuwait City and its closely adjoining suburbs. Suburbs also are burgeoning in what formerly were called "outlying areas" farther from the city center. Building is booming south of the city, inland as well as along the coast; in Ahmadi, home of the Kuwait Oil Company; and in the rapidly urbanizing zone between Kuwait City and Jahra.

History

During the third millennium b.c.e., what is now Kuwait was part of a highly developed culture based on maritime commerce and linked to ancient Sumer. Kuwait's modern history began in the early eighteenth century when several clans of the al-Utub tribal grouping (part of the Aniza tribal confederation to which the Al Saʿud belong), left drought-and famine-stricken central Arabia and settled on the northern Gulf coast. The Al Sabah were formally established as rulers in 1756. They directed Kuwait's affairs in consultation with members of other paramount clans who, like them, had become merchants.

Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Al Sabah proved adept at the maneuvering necessary for a small state to survive next to powerful Saudi and Rashidi neighbors. They were especially successful in capitalizing on the rivalry between the imperialist Ottomans and British. In 1899 Mubarak Al Sabah (Mubarak the Great) reached the first in a series of secret agreements with the British relinquishing authority over Kuwait's foreign relations and potential oil reserves to Britain in exchange for protective services and secret subventions. The Kuwaiti-British bond remained in effect until 1961. It ensured that the succession to the rulership would remain with Mubarak's direct descendants. The British helped to set up and run the state's administration but neglected to demarcate Kuwait's borders when states in its region were created by the victors of World War I. A general agreement on Kuwait's boundaries was reached by British, Saudi, and Iraqi representatives at the Uqayr Conference (1922), shrinking Kuwait's territory. But the ambiguity of Kuwait's borders invited attempts by both the Saudis and Iraqis to shrink Kuwait further and, with the 1990 Iraqi invasion, to extinguish its independent existence altogether.

Economics

Nineteenth-century Kuwait enjoyed enviable prosperity from maritime trade, pearling, and fishing. Its economy was devastated by World War I, Saudi raids, and the introduction of Japanese cultured pearls in the late 1920s. The Great Depression in the United States also affected Kuwait, but oil was discovered in 1938, promising a new prosperity. Amir Ahmad al-Jabir had granted the concession to develop Kuwait's oil to the Kuwait Oil Company (KOC), a joint venture between British Petroleum (formerly the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company) and the American-owned Gulf Oil Corporation. Kuwait's oil production expanded rapidly following the nationalization of Iranian oil by Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1951. Conflicts with KOC's operators underlay Kuwait's decision to become a founding member of OPEC in 1960. It nationalized foreign oil properties in the 1970s and, in 1980, established a holding company, the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC), for all its hydro-carbon assets, including those located abroad. In the 1990s Kuwaitis began debating the wisdom of inviting foreign oil companies back to produce oil in Kuwait on a contract basis and, by the turn of the century, debate over oil privatization had become a staple of parliamentary politics.

The government invested Kuwait's oil income directly, by expanding domestic and foreign oil holdings through KPC and its various subsidiaries; indirectly, it made large purchases of foreign blue-chip securities. Most of the latter are held by the Reserve Fund for Future Generations (RFFG), established in 1976 to ensure Kuwait's post-hydrocarbon prosperity. By law, the RFFG receives 10 percent of annual government revenue; it is the only reserve of its kind anywhere in the Gulf. By the early 1980s, Kuwait's portfolio income exceeded its income from oil and gas.

This changed following the 1990 Iraqi invasion. RFFG funds were tapped to provide approximately $26 billion toward liberation efforts. Billions more were spent during the war to support Kuwaitis in and outside the country and, after the war, to extinguish 732 oil well fires, to repair or replace industrial and civilian infrastructure, and to indemnify Kuwaitis through direct payments and large salary increases. Even before the invasion, financial mis-appropriations through insider trading, sweetheart contracts, and alleged embezzlement had eaten into Kuwait's financial reserves. This continued following liberation despite parliamentary oversight and a strengthened audit bureau. Whereas before the invasion Kuwait held approximately $100 billion in the RFFG and in the state's General Reserve Fund, its postliberation assets were estimated at only $30 to $35 billion. Owing to these financial reversals, Kuwait today is more dependent on oil revenues than it was twenty years ago.

Other investments had equally ambiguous results. Kuwait has made extensive indirect investments in human capital, offering citizens generous social services, medical benefits, and free education from kindergarten through postgraduate school. Literacy rates grew rapidly, and life expectancy in 2003 reached seventy-seven years. Full employment was a government goal but, like social services, became harder to provide after liberation because of straitened capital availability and soft oil markets. Kuwaiti economic policy also is affected by changing attitudes toward personal responsibility, including policies affecting the private sector, curtailing subsidies, and imposing user fees.

Kuwait's foreign aid history has undergone a similar transition over the past four-plus decades since the 1960s. Oil-rich Kuwait invested in projects in other Muslim countries, but few were profitable. It also pioneered direct assistance through foreign-aid programs. It hosts university students from abroad and was the first developing country to establish its own international aid organization, the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development. Yet
as with direct investment projects, Kuwait (along with its OPEC peers) found itself criticized by aid recipients for demanding that they adhere to international standards of compliance with loan and grant requirements. Even before Kuwait incurred large economic liabilities from the Iraqi invasion and occupation, Kuwaitis had begun to reconsider their foreign aid policies.

Government and Politics

Kuwait's dynastic, patriarchal system of government remains firmly in the hands of the Al Sabah, strengthened first by British support and then by Kuwait's oil wealth. Merchant attempts to recover their authority continue to be stymied. Although the 1962 constitution established an elected National Assembly, the parliament's ability to curb the rulers' power was undermined by two multiyear amiri suspensions of civil liberties guarantees. The parliament's power is diluted in several other ways: The amir's cabinet appointments are ex officio members; and an informal tradition gave a monopoly on the prime ministry to the crown prince until 2003. Elections are enthusiastically contested. Native-born Kuwaitis and sons of naturalized Kuwaiti citizens who are twenty-one years of age or older may vote in parliamentary elections but, despite an equal rights provision in the constitution, women are forbidden by law to vote or run for parliamentary office.

The two constitutional suspensions provided opportunities for the amir to manipulate the voter base. Elections held in 1981 after a five-year parliamentary hiatus were run in redrawn districts incorporating thousands of newly naturalized bedouin. Four years into the second suspension, the amir tried to quash the parliament altogether, holding new elections in June 1990 for an extraconstitutional "National Council" lacking the National Assembly's legislative powers. The Iraqi invasion ended this experiment; a new National Assembly was elected in October 1992.

The 1992 election marked a significant political watershed for Kuwait. Antigovernment candidates, about half of them Islamists, won thirty-five of the fifty seats. The ideological balance between Islamist and secularist parliamentarians (there are no legal parties in Kuwait, although a minority of candidates associate themselves with political clubs whose stands on issues they share) brought policy making to a virtual halt through much of the 1992 parliament's four-year term. Its successor, the 1996 parliament, was equally deadlocked on major issues, prompting the amir to dismiss the body in 1999 and call for new elections within sixty days, the first constitutional transition of this kind. The 1999 parliament also reflected a close balance between liberal and Islamist forces, but members of both coalitions were notably more flexible than their predecessors. Cross-coalitions centered mainly on economic issues were occasionally able to mobilize parliamentary majorities.

The most serious domestic political problem faced by Kuwait and other Gulf monarchies is uncertainty over ruler succession. Rulers and heirs apparent are mostly old and ailing, and the size of ruling families, along with evidence of clashing personal ambitions, heightens insecurity about future governance.

Foreign Relations

Kuwait's foreign relations reflect its changing economic circumstances and the resumption of direct intervention by major powers from outside the region. Prior to the Iraqi invasion, Kuwait used "checkbook diplomacy," hoping to buy off enemies and win friends among its neighbors. The 1990–1991 Iraqi invasion and widespread Arab popular support for it illustrated the failure of that strategy. Kuwait's long-standing nonaligned policy was undermined by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Kuwait's current strategic dependence on the United States, which spearheaded the coalition of forces liberating Kuwait in 1991, leaves it vulnerable to direct pressure to conform to U.S. policy wishes. Since then, Kuwait has since faced pressure to increase arms purchases and provide access to more than a third of its territory as a platform for the 2003 U.S. and British invasion of Iraq. Given rising prospects for violent conflict in the Middle East, should the absence of regionally based security arrangements continue, Kuwaiti near-term foreign policy autonomy is, for all practical purposes, foreclosed.

see also al sabah family; al sabah, mubarak; gulf crisis (1990–1991); kuwait fund for arab economic development; kuwait petroleum corporation; mossadegh, mohammad.

Bibliography

Anscombe, Frederick F. The Ottoman Gulf: The Creation of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

Al-Assiri, Abdul Reda. Kuwait's Foreign Policy: City-State in World Politics. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1990.

Crystal, Jill. Kuwait: The Transformation of an Oil State. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1992.

Herb, Michael. All in the Family: Absolutism, Revolution, and Democracy in the Middle Eastern Monarchies. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999.

Tétreault, Mary Ann. Stories of Democracy: Politics and Society in Contemporary Kuwait. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.

malcolm c. peck
updated by mary ann tÉtreault