Back to the Future: Kuwait Looks Past Oil – and Democracy

Since he took over from his half-brother in late 2023, Emir Mishal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah of Kuwait arguably has shown little patience for the trappings of democracy.

He finds them annoying.

Last year, the Emir dissolved the 50-member National Assembly a few months after elections were held. Disputes between the Emir’s executive branch of the government and legislators had been hampering the reforms he wanted to implement to decrease the Middle Eastern country’s reliance on oil revenue, explained Al Jazeera.

Now, the chamber’s future is unclear, wrote the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“Has a governing system that seemed to offer so much noise and motion but little movement come to a full stop,” the think tank wondered. “Or will Kuwait instead simply revert back to its old system after a cooling-off period or in response to popular pressure – as happened twice in the past? At this point, it is uncertain whether Kuwait’s style of parliamentary democracy will be restored, reformed, or repudiated.”

Kuwait has always had a reputation for respecting human rights and diversity, the Washington Post editorial board noted, making it easier for the US to maintain its links to the emirate as an ally. Around 13,500 American troops remain in Kuwait – 34 years after the US arrived to liberate the country from invading Iraqi forces. Kuwait is also a big buyer of American weaponry. American officials recently approved the sale of upgraded Patriot missiles to Kuwait for $400 million, Reuters reported.

But Al-Ahmad, 84, has maintained that the National Assembly and other democratic institutions have become corrupt and sclerotic. In the process, he’s also flouted human rights norms.

Recently, for instance, news broke that the Emir had stripped 42,000 Kuwaiti citizens of their nationality since September, rendering them stateless, wrote France 24. Among those targeted were individuals accused of “moral turpitude or dishonesty, or for actions aimed at threatening state security,” including criticism of the Emir or Islamic leaders.

“They made me stateless overnight,” one of the Kuwaitis who lost their passports told the Financial Times. “Now all I think about is leaving and setting up in Dubai. I want to escape here because it’s starting to feel like a dictatorship.”

The anti-democratic, authoritarian drift in Kuwait is unmistakable, said Jean-Paul Ghoneim, a research fellow at the French think tank IRIS. When he dissolved parliament, for example, the Emir also suspended certain articles of the country’s constitution for as long as four years. The revisions he is now planning “will not move in a more liberal direction,” wrote Ghoneim.

Al-Ahmad has liberated regulations, however, causing the country’s stock market to increase 10 percent so far this year, noted Semafor, adding that Kuwait’s sovereign wealth fund is now worth more than $1 trillion. The Emir is hoping to leverage that money to diversify his emirate’s economy beyond oil.

Still, the Emir and his allies have monopolized economic power in Kuwait. Analysts say that unless they allow ordinary Kuwaitis to direct where some of that capital goes, growth will remain anemic.

“The new Emir has put a focus on recovering the economic dynamism of the past,” wrote the Atlantic Council. “Whether he succeeds will depend on his ability to formulate a vision for transformation, including to diversify away from oil, with the cohesive support of the population.”