Page 180 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

Sorcerers' Apprentices 177

despite their long residence in the shaikhdom, have become Kuwaiti citizens.
Barred from overt participation in local politics, the politically minded among
the Palestinians have had to make their influence felt in indirect or covert ways.
Among the younger generation of educated and semi-educated Kuwaitis
also there are signs of political unrest. Nurtured by the state, educated by the

state, and now as often as not financially dependent upon the state, they are the
prototypal jeunesse doree of the Gulf, with all the confidence and self-esteem
that their privileged station confers. Naturally they feel that their talents and
abilities entitle them to a share - perhaps the preponderant share — in the
government of the shaikhdom, though they are not prepared to go so far as to
jeopardize their comfortable financial situation by proclaiming their feelings

too openly. Some of them, after the fashion of their counterparts in the West,
have dabbled in the shallows of revolutionary politics, and for much the same
reasons of satiety and boredom. Most of their ideas are of Baathist provenance
or are derived from the facile certitudes of the ANM or its Marxist offshoots.
Though political parties are forbidden in Kuwait, the ban did not prevent the
coalescence of the radical-chic activists, along with some perhaps more sinister
figures, into a recognizable political constituency. Their views were
expounded in the national assembly by the coterie of ANM deputies and their

allies (some dozen all told) led by Ahmad al-Khatib. The bloc acted as a kind of
‘Mountain’, subjecting the assembly to interminable harangues and histrionics
which served mainly to prevent the passage of necessary legislation, including
measures which might have afforded some relief to the downtrodden groups in
Kuwait whose champions the coterie purported to be.
The bloc’s endless and insolent clowning eventually led the late ruler,

Shaikh Sabah ibn Salim Al Sabah, to dissolve the assembly on 29 August 1976
while it was in recess, and to suspend several articles of the constitution,
including those guaranteeing the freedom of the press and providing for new
elections within two months of dissolution. One reason for the ruler’s action
was the embarrassment caused by the vituperative attacks made in the
assembly and in three radical newspapers upon the land and property specula­
tion of the previous three years, which had hit the immigrant community very

hard. Another and perhaps more influential reason was the Al Sabah’s fear that
the agitation, if not checked, might lead to a Palestinian-backed emeute such as
had generated the civil war then going on in the Lebanon. How real the danger
of such an uprising was and may still be is not easy to assess. Most of the
Palestinians in Kuwait, having nowhere else to go to, are very reluctant to
hazard their homes and their livelihoods by antagonizing the regime, let alone

rebelling against it. Among them, however, are men of less settled and more
reckless disposition, whose political beliefs are of a violent kind and who are, in
many cases, adherents or even active agents of terrorist organizations.
Neither they nor any of the native Kuwaiti malcontents who share their
views can do much to topple the existing order until they have forged a weapon