Great
leap backward in the Gulf By
Kaveh L Afrasiabi
A political winter has
descended on the Arab oil states of the Persian
Gulf, with the result a far cry from the optimism
of last year when the democratizing waves of the
"Arab Spring" were seen heading toward Gulf
Cooperation Council (GCC) states as part of a
great new Arab awakening.
This week,
Bahrain banned all public demonstrations while in
Kuwait, once considered a bastion of political
tolerance in the Gulf, the government has
tear-gassed and jailed demonstrators protesting
arbitrary changes in the constitution aimed at
stifling political opposition.
The timing
of these repressive measures suggests a new
determination by the dynastic GCC emirates to
resist meaningful political changes that could
destabilize the status quo. Yet, given
the political dynamic set
in motion by the Arab Spring, it is likely that
instead of having calming tensions, these measure
will increase instability.
Already,
unauthorized protests in Kuwait City and the
Bahraini mass opposition's vow to disregard the
government's repressive edict portend the
worsening of a "stability dilemma' on the Gulf's
horizon.
Of course, this is not the first
time that the governments have taken steps to
bolster their grip on power that simply backfire
due to the unpopular nature of those steps. What
may be unique is the increased likelihood of these
measures backfiring.
In Kuwait, with the
parliamentary elections set for early December,
the government's decision to change the rules that
disallow voters to vote for more than one
candidate, as well as its arrest of some
opposition leaders, indicate a defensive position
that seeks to erode the recent democratic gains.
Elections in February brought a loose coalition of
nationalists, liberalists, tribalists, and
Islamists, to victory, but were followed by months
of bickering between the assembly and the
government that still dreads the thought of
"power-sharing" and has repeatedly used the
slightest excuses to dissolve the parliament.
Musallam al-Barrak, a leader of the
nationalist Popular Action Bloc, won the most
votes in the last round but is now in jail and may
not be freed prior to the December 1 elections.
More political arrests are likely in November and,
in case things get out of hand, the whole election
may be called off or postponed.
For sure,
the confrontational tenor of Kuwait's political
dynamics will intensify in the days and weeks
ahead. But compared to the sharp polarizations
gripping Bahrain, Kuwait is in a moderate
political crisis.
It would do well for the
al-Sabah ruling family to draw the right lessons
from Bahrain's augmented political scene, which
may represent Kuwait's future if the present trend
of stifling democracy continues on the part of a
government that, back in early 1990s after the
liberation of Kuwait, held so much promise for
genuine democratization.
Today, unlike in
the past when the US government pushed the
Kuwaitis to restore constitutional government and
hold free, albeit restricted, elections,
Washington is exerting no such pressures on the
repressive rulers of Kuwait and Bahrain, who enjoy
Saudi Arabia's full backing against their local
pro-democracy activists.
The same holds
for other Western governments, particularly the
Europeans, who have limited themselves to vacuous
statements without any tangible steps that would
reprimand those oil monarchies for stepping on the
rights of their citizens.
Continuing
Western hypocrisy By reversing course on
democracy with international impunity, Kuwait and
Bahrain have set fresh examples of Western
hypocrisy and double standards, in light of the
singular Western focus on Syria's or Iran's human
rights violations while overlooking the similar
abuses by their compliant allies in the Persian
Gulf. [1] Anyone seeking to disprove that
President Barack Obama has followed "imperial
policy as usual" they need look no further than to
point at this hypocrisy.
The simple fact
is that America's Persian Gulf policy has
experienced not even the slightest brushstroke of
changes during the past four years, as it still
seems wedded to hegemonic control via the
increasingly illegitimate oil dynasties.
In Bahrain's case, this was proved by King
Hamad's stubborn refusal to restore the more
liberal 1973 constitution that empowered the
national assembly, not to mention his arrogating
more powers to himself by changing his title from
emir to king.
The "fish stinks from the
head" as the proverb goes, and ultimately all the
past two years' political debate in Bahrain over
the prime minister or cabinet, simply scratched
the surface as to what is really wrong in a tiny
island nation that has witnessed repeated bouts of
repression, bound to be aggravated as a result of
the ban on rallies.
A clue to the
distorted coverage of growing troubles in the GCC
region, last week's The Economist featured an
article on Kuwait under the sub-heading "Kuwaitis
are caught between their emir and his angry
opponents," thus giving the misleading impression
that the mass opposition is a separate category
from the average Kuwaitis.
The more
appropriate heading would be, "Kuwait is caught
between pro-democracy opposition and autocratic
ruling family."
But that would be putting
too much expectation on the mainstream Western
media that often functions as a propaganda wheel
for the government, especially when it comes to
foreign priorities, ie, giving tacit consent to
the brutal repressions in the pro-western GCC
states.
Little surprise, then, that the
headline regarding French President's trip to
Saudi Arabia indicates that Hollande is there to
discuss "Iran and Syria," without any mention of
Kuwait or Bahrain (and Saudi's military
intervention there). This reminds this author of
what he wrote last April, "the EU is clearly at a
critical crossroads - of inaction born by
political expediency and a principled firm
response in line with its values." (see EU
in a bind over Bahrain,Asia Times Online,
April 15, 2011).
Unfortunately, despite
intensifying repression, now extended to Kuwait,
there is no sign of any progress on EU's, or US's
part that would warrant the reconsideration of
such a negative conclusion. Those who have studied
the history of Western interventionism in the
Middle East and are familiar with the gulf between
the rhetoric and action of "cultured" Europeans
and Americans are not of course at all surprised
by this hypocrisy - that is itself an obstacle to
political progress in Persian Gulf, often
sacrificed in the name of "order".
The
fallacy of "order without progress" is commonplace
in Western media's coverage of this important
region, which must be divested from any genuine
debate on the region's future, hampered by the
old, and unsettling, difficulties of change,
variation, and increasing complexity.
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