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Kuwait
Riot Police Violently Disperse Bedoon Protest in Kuwait's Freedom Square
![[Police officers arrest Bedoon protesters in Taima, 1 May 2012. Image by Getty Images.]](/content_images/3/sm_arrest-600x369.jpg "[Police officers arrest Bedoon protesters in Taima, 1 May 2012. Image by Getty Images.]")
[The following is a Bedoon Rights report on the violent break-up of a Bedoon protest on 1 May 2012 in Freedom Square and the consequent arrest of fourteen protesters, including one journalist.] After two weeks of waiting, around two hundred Bedoon protesters gathered in the Taima area to protest for their right to citizenship and against the discriminatory policies and false promises of the Central Agency. The protest started in Najashi Street after the afternoon prayer in Al-Shaabi mosque, which was surrounded by riot police. When the protesters left the mosque to march in “Freedom Square”, activist Abdulhakim Al-Fadhli was directly arrested and taken by state ...
Keep Reading »Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States
![[Cover of Arab Studies Journal Vol. XX No. 1 (Spring 2012)]](/content_images/3/sm_asj.jpg "[Cover of Arab Studies Journal Vol. XX No. 1 (Spring 2012)]")
Adam Hanieh, Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. [This review was originally published in the most recent issue of Arab Studies Journal. For more information on the issue, or to subscribe to ASJ, click here.] What if capitalists in a particular country could draw on a reserve army of semi-skilled labor that includes hundreds of millions of noncitizens whom they could import, hire, fire and expel at will, without worrying about laws, regulations, and collective action? What if they could perfect labor market segmentation to a degree whereby only one social class—capital—reproduces itself, but another—labor—never does? What ...
Keep Reading »Arabian Peninsula Media Roundup (April 18)
[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on the Arabian Peninsula and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the Arabian Peninsula Page Editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each week's roundup to ap@jadaliyya.com by Monday night of every week.] "Bahrain: Reforms risk appearing hollow as violations continue," the latest report on Bahrain by Amnesty International, entitled "Flawed Reforms: Bahrain fails to achieve justice for protesters." "As Protests Continue to Flare, Should Formula One Be Returning to Bahrain?" An article on politics ad ...
Keep Reading »Bedoon Rights: An Online Reference on Statelessness in Kuwait
![[Image from beedonrights.org]](/content_images/3/sm_BRimage.png "[Image from beedonrights.org]")
Bedoon Rights is a network founded by stateless Kuwaiti advocate Mona Kareem putting together contributions by a number of stateless volunteers mostly based in Kuwait. The network is the only online reference in English devoted for the case of statelessness in Kuwai. It provides relevant official documents translated, reports made by international organizations, daily reporting, videos, photos, and it offers help to journalists, correspondents, and bloggers interested in spotlighting the stateless struggle in Kuwait by offering information, on-ground guidance, and relevant interviews. There are at least 120,000 people bidun jinsiyya (without nationality) ...
Keep Reading »Undocumented and Afraid
![[Image from unknown archive]](/content_images/3/sm_undoc.jpg "[Image from unknown archive]")
They took them in, shackled their brown hands, threaded out their thick hair, and told them “We will now turn you into soldiers, fighting against hope, warring against life. You have two choices: death or death.” They stared at the hours, then removed their eyes, hanging each upon its nail. Then they waited and waited for the funeral of memory to start. They set the light on fire and recited myths, fairytales, and stories about their fathers, their stupid fathers, who were once heroes and are now nothing but cowards. Why did you leave us in this trap without any poems? Why did you color the sky yellow? Why did you give us stars to hang our hearts on? We did not do ...
Keep Reading »Resistance and Revolution as Lived Daily Experience: An Interview with Leila Khaled (Part 3)
![[Center: Leila Khaled. Image from unknown archive.]](/content_images/3/sm_leilacamp.jpg "[Center: Leila Khaled. Image from unknown archive.]")
[This is Part 3 of a translated transcription of a series of interviews conducted by the author with Leila Khaled during the summer of 2007. Click here to read the Introduction to the interview, here to read Part 1, and here to read Part 2.] The 1960s were particularly formative for many activists and thinkers in the Middle East, Leila Khaled among them. It was the high point of the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM), one of the major political parties of the period. Many of its members would splinter off and develop new organizations, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). This decade also marked important shifts ...
Keep Reading »The Political Underpinnings of Kuwaiti Sectarian Polemics
![[2008 election poster in Kuwait. Image from author's archive]](/content_images/3/sm_electionsposter.jpg "[2008 election poster in Kuwait. Image from author's archive]")
I am hesitant to write about sectarianism because I once heard that writing about divisions only increases awareness of them and deepens them. But regional commentators—and some international ones—seem to be writing about sects in the Middle East in a purely polemical manner. However, the Kuwaiti case is instructive for understanding that sectarianism isn’t necessarily a fact of life in the Gulf, and that the polemics employed throughout the region at present, while they take on religious overtones, largely stem from political goals. Sunni-Shi’a relations in Bahrain are a result of a unique amalgamation of historical events particular to that island whereby power has ...
Keep Reading »The Bidun of Kuwait: A Look Behind the Laws
![[A photo of Kuwaiti riot police beating a Bidun protester. Image from author's archive]](/content_images/3/sm_bidun(1).jpg "[A photo of Kuwaiti riot police beating a Bidun protester. Image from author's archive]")
In Kuwait, some young Bidun men and women often wonder what more they could offer the country to get accepted as one of its own. Their fathers had lost their lives liberating Kuwait from the Iraqi invasion in the 1990 Gulf War. Their ancestors had settled in Kuwait for three consecutive generations but Bidun today have yet to be afforded any state recognition. Other Bidun question when they will become “pure enough” in the eyes of the Kuwaiti state and society to get recognized as equal humans, if not citizens. There are 120,000 Bidun jinsiyya (without nationality) in Kuwait today suffering from the lack of political, economic and human rights. None of them can ...
Keep Reading »Arabian Peninsula Media Roundup (May 1)
[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on the Arabian Peninsula and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the Arabian Peninsula Page Editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each week's roundup to ap@jadaliyya.com by Monday night of every week.] “FISCALLY SPEAKING: Saudis Wouldn't Gain Much From A Union With Bahrain,” a Kipp report on the disadvantages to Saudi Arabia of union, with other Gulf Arab ...
Keep Reading »Kuwait's Muslim Brotherhood
Islamist political movements have been sweeping the polls in post Arab uprisings that were sparked not by religious fervor and ideology, but by demands for democracy and freedom. Revolutionaries, who succeeded in toppling dictators such as those in Egypt and Tunisia, resent that Islamists who had little to do with their popular secular rebellions are now reaping the fruits of their efforts and being crowned as victors. More importantly, they are alarmed by the prospects of the formation of religious ...
Keep Reading »Kuwait's Legislative Absurdity: Kuwaiti MPs Approve Death Penalty for “Cursing God”
Where to begin? The 1961 Press and Publications Law in Kuwait stipulates that blasphemy is a crime punishable by a prison sentence that ranges from a few months to several years. Following more stringent laws in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the Kuwaiti Parliament just approved provisionally--pending a second vote--the death penalty for those who defame God, or the Prophet and his wives. Apparently, ”[t]he move to stiffen penalties for religious crimes came after authorities ...
Keep Reading »Tribalism in the Arabian Peninsula: It Is a Family Affair
Across the Arabian Peninsula and stretching well into North Africa and Sudan, there is a common bond, perhaps only behind religion and language in importance, that binds Arabic language speakers together. Museums across the Gulf proudly display lineage maps illustrating the family trees of ruling members, linking them through lines and photos from bygone centuries up to the current leader. Major financial institutions in Dubai and Bahrain display in their offices large-scale maps detailing prominent ...
Keep Reading »Sovereign Wealth and Ruler Loot
The mobility of capital, depending on one’s position, is a virtue or a vice. Since the onset of the Arab Spring, a lot of money has been moving in, out, and around the Middle East. In the classic liberal world, the mobility of money is governed by the market. In the real world however, politics has a say. Some of these politics have been about fear as Saudi and Emirati rulers have reportedly opened their checkbooks to assuage pressures on favored rulers and foment trouble for others. These moves did not ...
Keep Reading »Shiaphobia Hits Kuwait
If you ever talk to Kuwaiti Shias over 40 years old about discrimination against the Shia in their country, they might mention how they have been mistreated, on different levels, during the Iran-Iraq War. Then they would quickly tell you how the Shia proved their detractors wrong when they became part and parcel of the Kuwaiti resistance during the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. That the Al Sabah government was deeply betrayed by Saddam Hussein, whom they had supported in his war with Iran only a few ...
Keep Reading »Kosova, Libya, and the Question of Intervention
Kosova and Libya are juxtaposed nowadays in suggesting what humanitarian intervention can do. Hashim Thaci, Kosova’s prime minister and former resistance fighter, celebrates what NATO did to defend Kosovars in 1999 when they bombed Serbia and its forces for 78 days to prevent genocide. Few if any Kosovars would decry that intervention, leading some in the newly independent state to find sympathy for airstrikes in Libya. Perhaps that is why Kosova is again in the news, for many across NATO’s capitals wish ...
Keep Reading »Infomous
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