Kuwait’s Multilateral Approach to Syria

Introduction By Dr. John Duke Anthony

In pursuit of its educational mission, the National Council works to serve as an information clearinghouse. It is in this spirit that it provides the following essay. It does so as a public service. The author, Giorgio Cafiero, is the Founder and CEO of Gulf State Analytics. Mr. Cafiero is a keen observer and analyst of matters pertaining to the Arab region, the Middle East, and the Islamic world.

This particular essay has to do with two countries with which the National Council has long been associated, namely Kuwait and Syria. From the onset of the 1990-1991 Kuwait Crisis, when its vastly larger and more heavily armed northern neighbor smashed to smithereens Kuwait’s national sovereignty, political independence, and territorial integrity, no U.S. non-governmental organization was more closely associated with America’s nationwide Free Kuwait Campaign than the Council.

The National Council’s leadership was on the first civilian aircraft to land in Kuwait upon its liberation. In addition, each month following the restoration of its security, the Council organized and led delegations of American leaders to Kuwait to see for themselves the immense damage inflicted upon the country’s infrastructure, economy, and people.

Syria, an eastern Mediterranean country, is vastly different. It is the home of cultures and civilizations that birthed the internationally more renowned Greco-Roman civilizations. Its Christian, Jewish, and Muslim roots are, arguably, deeper, vaster, and more diverse than any other country. Its links to Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, and Jordan, and the water and agriculturally rich Golan Province that Israel has illegally occupied since 1967, have long rendered it inextricably intertwined with the region’s geopolitics.

To no other Arab country has the National Council organized and escorted more delegations of American Congressional, academic, and student leaders – approximately 400 all totaled – than Syria. Each has returned enamored with the extraordinary richness of the country’s culture, its contributions to world civilizations, and the enormous importance which more than a million Americans of Syrian ancestry attach to their ancestral homeland.

As should be clear from anyone who reads the mainstream media, few countries are at once as important to the United States, the region in which they are situated, and the world beyond, or as little understood, as Kuwait and Syria. As is clear from what Mr. Cafiero has to say about Kuwait’s policies and positions regarding Syria, he does not shy away from addressing some of the more complex and controversial issues of the day as they pertain to both countries.

John Duke Anthony, PhD
Founding President & CEO
National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations

KUWAIT’S MULTILATERAL APPROACH TO SYRIA

By Giorgio Cafiero

Almost 12 years after the Arab Spring erupted in Syria, sensitive questions surrounding the (il)legitimacy of President Bashar al-Assad and his regime divide Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members. The United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, and Oman favor bringing Syria back into the Arab League, and shoring up regional and international support for Damascus. However, as the GCC states most supportive of regime change at earlier stages of the Syrian crisis, Qatar and Saudi Arabia remain opposed to any moves aimed at rehabilitating Assad.

It is worth asking where Kuwait stands on this issue. Like most GCC states, Kuwait’s relationship with Syria quickly deteriorated after Syria’s Arab Spring protests picked up and the Assad regime resorted to lethal violence to crush the uprising. In December 2012, Kuwait closed its embassy in Damascus. During the previous year, Kuwait was the sole GCC state which refused to criminalize terrorist finance, resulting in the Gulf country becoming a hub for Kuwaitis and non-Kuwaitis to send donations to armed groups fighting Assad’s government.

Nonetheless, by 2014 there was a restoration of diplomatic ties at the chargés d’affaires level and Kuwait opened consular services for the 140,000 Syrians living in the Gulf country. In 2019, bilateral relations partially thawed. Still, there has yet to be a full rapprochement between the two Arab governments.

It is important to take stock of the history of Kuwaiti-Syrian relations, which were particularly warm in the 1990-2011 period. Of all GCC states, Kuwait was perhaps closest to Syria throughout the two decades preceding the Arab Spring.

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Gulf Security Architectures: Process and Structure

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Published in partnership with the King Faisal Center on Research and Islamic Studies.

The views and opinions presented here are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of the United States Government, the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, or the King Faisal Center on Research and Islamic Studies.

Summary

With a transition in Washington, discussions in Western capitals will inevitably turn to the issues of how to deal with Iran, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the wars in Yemen and Libya, and so forth. Alongside those issues, almost underpinning some of them in a sense, is the matter of reassessing the security architecture in the Gulf and in the region more broadly. Policy planners in Western capitals will have their own ideas for desired outcomes in the region, but as they weigh their options they should consider how the format and structure of a security architecture can inadvertently shape and limit its effectiveness. The design and process of convening partners in the Middle East for a dialogue about peace and security is just as important as the execution and implementation of the vision that brings them together.

Definitions and Parameters

One often thinks of a regional security architecture as a forum with a secretariat and working groups, but it is important to recognize that security architectures usually encompass a wide range of activities. These could include strategic dialogues, financial sanctions, joint military exercises, or nuclear inspections. The architecture is not located in a single event or institution, and tensions can arise if diplomatic goals are not in alignment with military posture.[1] It exists as a conceptual framework accompanied by various diplomatic and security arrangements, which a country adopts in order to guide and shape its relationships with regional partners. It is due to the fact that there are so many different elements at play that different U.S. administrations over time have been able to rework and refashion individual activities to suit their overall policy needs even as the desired policy outcome changes. Just as policy planners in Washington, London, Brussels, Moscow, and Beijing hope to use their efforts to build partnerships in the region, so too do these Great Powers hope to guide and shape the relationships of those nations to one another. Building peace and security in the Middle East while extending the influence of a Great Power state around the world is achievable, but there is a tension between the two objectives that must be carefully watched.

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The Energy Transition in the Middle East: The Outlook for 2040

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Published in partnership with the King Faisal Center on Research and Islamic Studies.

Summary

Discussions about post-oil planning in the Middle East were rather common around fifteen years ago, when experts sought to focus attention on the need for economic diversification and consultancies aimed to help clients prepare long-term strategic visions. Governments that had the foresight to recognize the scope of the problem and the political will to commit real resources to it, have already begun the lengthy, arduous process of changing public mind-sets, bureaucratic cultures, and regulatory regimes. Some will succeed, gaining a competitive advantage over regional neighbors in terms of technology, efficiency, and productivity, making them valued partners for the international community in terms of maintaining peace and security in the Middle East. Others will survive, but their growth will be stunted and they will struggle to explain to the international community how they are contributing to global efforts at climate change and why Western countries should continue to lend them political, military, and financial support. Those governments that have not yet begun to address the problem probably do not have the time that will be required to accomplish all the necessary steps before peak demand arrives, their oil exports lose value and/or market share, and they can no longer maintain the patronage networks that are the backbone of regime survival. In a sense, we can already see the outlines of the post-oil future taking shape around us and we can start to assess its impact on industry, governance, and society, even if oil itself will continue to have value for decades to come and energy companies transform to meet the needs of the global economy.

The Future is Now

One thing that we must keep in mind is that for most people who are currently reading this article, these fundamental transformations in the region will occur in our lifetimes. This story begins in Canada, far away from the date palms and camel races of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. Jason Kenney, the provincial premier of Alberta province, ran in 2019 on a conservative platform of deregulation of the oil industry, in support of the profits from oil sands that it generates for Alberta’s residents. He now finds himself shifting tack, as Alberta’s government seeks to develop investment in renewables and forms of energy with lower CO2 footprints, while at the same time proposing a fund that taxes carbon emitters to help pay for carbon capture and storage. Investors and insurance companies have signaled that they are wary of projects that do not meet certain basic environmental criteria, and the Keystone XL pipeline will likely face serious obstacles from the new administration in Washington.[1] The politics are not simple. Oil sands from Alberta comprise the largest single source of U.S. oil imports and support for the oil industry is a mainstay of the Conservative Party’s platform.[2] Even as the Alberta government explores energy diversification, it has also funded the Canadian Energy Centre to rebrand the image of Canada’s oil industries and backed indigenous groups that are willing to support energy projects through legal action.[3] Kenney and the Conservatives in Edmonton are caught between the oil politics of the present and the climate activism of the future.[4] This is what the energy transition looks like – oil producers and politicians having to reposition themselves to account for changing public, corporate, and governmental tastes. It is a story that will play out throughout the Middle East over the next ten to twenty years.

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Appeasing Terrorists Cannot Lead to Peace in Yemen

H.E. Moammar Al-Eryani, Minister of Information for the Republic of Yemen, offers his exclusive analysis on dynamics in Yemen to the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations.

The views and opinions presented here are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations.

With one voice the Yemenis raised their demands, through the hashtag #OneVoice_Houthi_Terrorist_Group, to designate the Iran-backed Houthi militia a terrorist organization and impose international sanctions on its leaders through a campaign that spread on social media and in the public sphere.

This campaign is not the first and it will not be the last. It reflects the suffering of the Yemeni people in a humanitarian catastrophe that is the worst in this century, triggered by the rebellion and coup of the Houthi militia, during which it exercised unprecedented atrocities against civilians and committed thousands of crimes and violations. Although these violations were monitored and documented by international and human rights reports as well as in reports of the United Nations Group of Eminent Experts, including killing, displacement, abduction, enforced disappearance, torture, child recruitment, indiscriminate planting of mines, the destruction of opponents’ houses and looting of their properties, attacks on civilian objects in neighboring countries, and the targeting of oil tankers and commercial ships, there is suspicious international silence toward what is happening in Yemen.

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Kadhimi at 100 Days: Chances for Success in Baghdad

By Joshua Yaphe and Jaafar Altaie

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Published in partnership with the King Faisal Center on Research and Islamic Studies.

The views and opinions presented here are solely those of the authors and do not reflect the views of the United States Government, the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, or the King Faisal Center on Research and Islamic Studies.

Summary

Prime Minister Mustapha al-Kadhimi faces the same challenges that brought down his predecessor, Adel Abdul Mahdi – street protests, a flagging economy, and entrenched political elites. Most of his predecessors were willing to sacrifice one of these three goals for the sake of the other two, as long as the opposition remained divided and external support was forthcoming. Numerous commentators are ready to write off Kadhimi.[1] And there are good reasons to think his failure is inevitable, with Iraq doomed to a prolonged future of either political chaos or authoritarian rule. In either instance, there is also the near certainty of continued intervention by regional and international powers, contributing to insecurity and instability. The accumulation of almost two decades of grievances since the 2003 invasion, the repeated failures to keep pace with job creation and service provision, and the knock-on effects of the coronavirus pandemic are challenges that will certainly not be overcome in the next ten months. And there will undoubtedly be an extended period of political malaise in Baghdad as factions prove unable to compromise on an alternative to Kadhimi. However, Kadhimi has a real chance to win the elections now set for June 6, 2021, and even come out with a mandate for real reform. It would be wrong to write him off yet.

Popular Anger and Political Stagnation

On November 30, 2019, following weeks of protests in which government forces opened fire on the crowds, Adel Abdul Mahdi resigned as Prime Minister, opening up five months of wrangling over his successor. In that time, former Minister of Communications Mohammed Tawfik al-Allawi tried and failed to form a cabinet, Abdul Mahdi returned to office briefly, and Intelligence Chief Mustapha al-Kadhimi finally assumed the position on May 7. It would be another two months before he could finally appoint some of the most important ministerial portfolios, including Oil, Justice, Foreign Affairs, Agriculture and Trade. This was not a government formation process backed with confidence by a consensus or even a majority of political factions. Rather, it was multiple rounds of entrenched political elites trying to gain the upper hand on one another, only to realize that no single party has a crucial advantage over the others and none of the foreign powers have sufficient influence to sway the rest. Kadhimi was a compromise candidate among compromise candidates.

That is not to say that he is not skilled enough or qualified for the post. In many ways, he is more capable and experienced than many of his predecessors, if only by virtue of his steady management of the intelligence services. Most notably, though, he has proven himself capable of assuaging the concerns of Iran, the United States and Saudi Arabia. He was able to gain Iran’s acceptance of his appointment, even after taking the lead in Iraq’s outreach to Saudi Arabia over the past two years. That’s a remarkable feat of pragmatism. His political weakness does not come from any personal traits but rather from structural constraints that are much bigger than a single person. The system itself in Iraq is broken and cannot be fixed.

Kadhimi was a compromise candidate among compromise candidates.

In turn, Kadhimi has focused on the challenges and put forward an ambitious and coherent plan for reform. Immediately after taking office, Kadhimi announced that he would launch an investigation into the killing of protesters last fall and promised to release demonstrators held in prison since then, which provoked a sharp backlash from the Hadi al-Amiri’s Fatah Alliance and Muqtada al-Sadr’s Sairoun.[2] At the same time, Kadhimi finalized a deal to take four Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, hashid al-sha’abi) units previously under the spiritual guidance of Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and move them under the direct control of the Prime Minister’s Office.[3] The effort was one of increasing state control over the militias, as Kadhimi went on to say: “no group or force has the right to be outside of the framework of the state.”[4] He has promised an end to civil servants receiving multiple salaries for overlapping duties, and in June a spokesman revealed that, “there is a specialized committee that will work to find and detect double salaries in all government organizations.”[5]

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