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Since 2005, voting rights have been extended to women in Kuwait, although as yet the electorate at 356,000 is less than one-third of native-born residents in the wealthy city-state.
If the takeover of power by Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran three decades ago was the external shock that tilted the Saudi state toward appeasement of domestic religious conservatives, the events of Sept. 11, 2001, seem to have led to a similar rethinking of policy in Kuwait. Since that time, rather than remain on the fringe, religious conservatives have been brought into the inner circle of power. Ironically this occurred as much through the ballot box as by conciliatory measures taken by the al- Sabahs.
If Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories are examples of the propensity of voters in that region to vote for fringe religious groups, the same dynamic seems to have been at work in Kuwait. Last week, hard-line Islamists won a comfortable majority of 29 in the 50-member elected Parliament, including five Shiites. None of the 27 women who contested the election was successful.
If in the past "Sabahism" -- a moderate Islam that gives equal rights to women and minorities, and avoids the discriminatory prescriptions of the Wahabbi faith -- was the primary color in the mosaic of Kuwaiti society, today that is being displaced by Wahabbism. This news is not unwelcome to many in Kuwait's giant neighbor, Saudi Arabia,where the Wahabbi faith remains almost as entrenched as it was in the halcyon days before 9/11.
Saudi conservatives have long been unhappy at such Kuwaiti innovations as permitting women to drive cars, take up jobs independent of males and even vote, or allowing Christian churches and even makeshift Hindu and Sikh places of prayer to function. Their electoral victory means that religious conservatives may seek to bring Kuwait closer to the Saudi model, where a single faith monopolizes all rights and privileges, with even Shiites being excluded.
Already, especially during the past four years, there has been a perceptible change in the chemistry of the state, with far greater adherence to conservative modes than formerly. Liberals in Kuwait are slowly and silently becoming as endangered a species as they are across the border, even as religious conservatives target the al-Sabahs for protecting them. More and more top jobs are beginning to be filled by conservatives, including several from countries such as Egypt.
The drift toward conservatism in the Middle East is less the consequence of an increase in religious fervor than it is a reaction to perceived Arab helplessness in the face of the occupation of Iraq. Each day, the many visuals of civilian casualties in the ongoing war help to create a distance between the people and their rulers, who are identified with the United States and the European Union, the two blocs that provide the soldiers now occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, and who are quartered across the region.
The identification of many liberals as "pro-Western" has resulted in a boost in support for religious conservatives, who are united in their opposition to the continued presence of NATO troops in the region. The rise in Islamist sentiment, as well as the assertion of the Shiites in the tailwind provided by Iran's strident stance against the United States, may be seen as one of the unintended consequences of the war in Iraq.
Although U.S. General David Petraeus claims otherwise, the reality is that the conflict in Iraq is as unwinnable as Vietnam -- unless Petraeus were to follow Hillary Clinton's prescription for Iran and obliterate Iraq. By backing the Sunnis against the Shiites, Petraeus is going the way of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who ignited the Shiites against Israel in the 1980s,by backing Maronite militias against them in Lebanon. That single action of Sharon's degraded Israeli security substantially, just as current U.S. military policies in Iraq are doing to the United States.
The royal families of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have substantial goodwill among their peoples, and this needs to be used in a way that supports moderates against conservatives if the Middle East is to once again emerge as a zone of learning and tolerance. Each day that the carnage in Iraq continues, the strength of the moderates ebbs away in proportion to the rise in influence of religious conservatives, who are by default seen as the only force in coherent opposition to NATO's military experiments in the region.
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(Professor M.D. Nalapat is vice-chair of the Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair, and professor of geopolitics at Manipal University. ©Copyright M.D. Nalapat.)
