Kuwaiti parliament scuffle reveals sectarian cleavages
Kuwait City, Kuwait (TML) – A fistfight between legislators in Kuwait’s parliament during a debate over Guantanamo prisoners drew no blood, but it exposed what had been latent sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in the oil-rich Gulf emirate.
Shiite parliament member Hussein Al-Qallaf sparked the scuffle when he called the two Kuwaiti detainees in the US prison in Cuba “terrorists who belonged to Al-Qa’ida.” A Sunni parliament member, Jamaan Al-Harbash of the Muslim Brotherhood, quickly blasted him, saying the session had been called to discuss Guantanamo prisoners and not Al-Qa’ida. Tempers flared and at least two Shiite and four Sunni lawmakers came to blows before parliament speaker Jasem Al-Khorafi suspended the legislative body till the end of May.
“The scent of sectarian alignment reached the noses of those who attended the meeting,” reported the Kuwaiti daily Al-Watan. Kuwait, where Shiites comprise 30% of the country’s population, boasts a robust parliament, the first elected legislature in the Arab Gulf. Nine of 50 Kuwait’s parliament members are Shiite.
The pro-Shiite daily Al-Dar reported that Al-Qallaf had decided to press charges against the parliament members who attacked him. According to the daily, an aide to one of the assailants cursed Al-Qallaf, offending his “origin and affiliation.”
“What happened in Kuwait reflects dangerous sectarianism, which should worry us,” Salman Sheikh, director of the Brookings Doha Center, a Qatar-based think tank, told The Media Line. He said that social unrest in nearby Bahrain, where Shiites comprise a majority of the population, has had a marked effect on Kuwait. Kuwait sent a naval force to Bahrain following Shiite-led protests.
“Kuwaitis are more sensitive to the situation in Bahrain than other Gulf countries, because of their own [demographic] makeup,” he said.
Saleh Al-Saeidi, a political commentator for the Kuwaiti daily Al-Qabas, said that sectarian tension between Sunni and Shiite Muslims existed all across the Gulf. But in Kuwait, with its free press and active parliament, the debate was out in the open rather than hidden.
“Kuwait is accustomed to this tension, but it has channels through which people can vent their grievances; particularly the media,” Al-Saeidi told The Media Line. “Secrecy is what causes things to deteriorate. Here everything is out in the open.”
Kuwait is ranked first in press freedom among Gulf states, according to a 2010 report by Reporters Without Borders.
Al-Saeidi said the scuffle in the parliament, the first in Kuwait’s history, was a result of pent-up political tension rather than an expression of sectarian animosity.
“Al-Qallaf is an ally of the prime minister, and his attackers are oppositionists who always question the prime minister,” he said.
According to a diplomatic cable published by the Wikileaks website, the Kuwaiti government refused to rehabilitate ex-Guantanamo detainees in its territory. The cable revealed that in February 2009 Kuwaiti Interior Minister Shaykh Jaber Al-Sabah told American diplomats that the detainees were “rotten” and the best thing would be “to get rid of them.”
Relations between Sunnis and Shiites were traditionally good, argued Lindsey Stephenson in an article published in Foreign Policy April 29. Unlike Bahrain, Shiites are well integrated in Kuwait’s business sector and the political arena.
“Fortunately, in Kuwait sectarianism has always been a non-starter,” she wrote. “Simply put, the Shia are fully Kuwaiti, and have long been regarded as such by the government and Kuwaiti Sunnis.”
But things haven’t always gone so smoothly. Last September, Kuwait’s Interior Minister banned all public protests after the government’s decision to strip the citizenship from a controversial Shiite cleric threatened to spark widespread demonstrations.
“Things have gone out of hand in Shiite-Sunni relations,” Shafeeq Ghabra, a political scientist at Kuwait University told The Media Line at the time. “People are getting too emotional and there is a cycle of agitation and counter-agitation.”
Stephenson admitted that Shiite are increasingly asserting their identity through various insignia, such as the wearing of a particular kind of ring. She said that the increasing rhetorical marginalization of Shiites, particularly in media, ran the risk of making Shiite society more insular and reclusive.
Mounting tension between Kuwait and its Shiite Islamic neighbor Iran did not add to peaceful internal accord, either. In March, Kuwait sentenced three men to death on allegations of belonging to an Iranian spy ring, and the Iranian ambassador was banished from the country. Iran, for its part, has criticized the involvement of Gulf forces, including Kuwait’s, in quashing the largely Shiite protests in Bahrain.
But in a sign of rapprochement, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi came to Kuwait on Wednesday and promised the reinstatement of Kuwaiti and Iranian ambassadors in their respective countries.
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