After the Sheikhs: The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies (25 page)

For years various rescue packages have been dispensed to the northern emirates, but these are understood to have either been too little, or have quickly been swallowed up by corrupt officials in the emirate-level governments. In 2008 a $4.3 billion grant was allocated by the federal government to oversee physical infrastructure projects in the northern emirates. But despite the size of the sum, the announcement of the package was greeted with scepticism by some of the recipient municipalities, with one anonymous spokesperson stating ‘We often hear about these projects from Abu Dhabi, but we haven’t seen them come into action’.
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In 2011, shortly after the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, it was announced that the northern emirates would receive an additional $1.6 billion in aid. The federal government also claims that it has a twenty year plan in place that will address some of the ‘gaps and other issues
such as healthcare, education, housing, roads, and water’.
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It also promised to build more than 100 kilometres of new rural roads,
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and doubled the funding for a small business development programme that aims to increase job creation in the region.
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These planned improvements have prompted some analysts to argue that ‘…the federal government is capable of increasing spending in these smaller emirates to stave off any social unrest’.
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It seems likely, however, that the UAE’s wealth gap will keep on growing. A report from summer 2011 remarked of Ra’s al-Khaimah that ‘[although] less than 300km from the UAE’s capital territory of Abu Dhabi, its neighbourhoods of low cement buildings and dusty cars feel as if they are in a different country’.
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Similarly, UAE nationals interviewed by reporters complained that ‘…the wealth disparity between the northern emirates and Dubai and Abu Dhabi remains the most challenging issue for the stability of the country as a whole’. They also agreed that developing utilities, health care and education were the most pressing needs and added that they rarely travelled to emirates outside Dubai and Abu Dhabi because they lacked adequate services.
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Usually considered immune from economic deprivation or other such problems due to the country’s very high wealth per capita, even some Qatari nationals have recently begun to bemoan their circumstances. In 2007, a prominent Qatari cleric
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began to highlight their cause, claiming that there is ‘poverty in cash-rich Qatar and [there need to be] programmes to alleviate it by providing long-term interest-free housing loans and opportunities for self-employment to low-income citizens’.
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In early 2011 a state-backed newspaper threw more light on the issue when it was reported that some Qatari nationals had been posting on internet fora about the need for greater assistance for ‘low income families who are living off a meagre dole’, the problem of ‘salaries being high, but resources getting exhausted by the middle of the month since rents and food prices were skyrocketing’, and the increasing need to cross the border to the nearby Saudi city of Hassa to ‘buy household provisions every month… in order to make ends meet’.
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And later in 2011, although a rather narrow example, the same newspaper claimed that a number of Qatari families were upset over the Qatar Tourism Authority’s cancellation of the annual Doha Summer Festival. Explaining that these families were hard-pressed due to ‘piling bank loans which make it more difficult for them to afford holidaying abroad’ and had been ‘looking forward
to the summer festival… due to [their] financial problems’,
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the report again seemed to challenge the stereotype that all Qatari nationals enjoy substantial state-provided benefits. More recently, an extensive report by a Qatar-based consultancy firm argued that it was a ‘myth that all Qataris were rich… this is not the case’, and claimed that nearly three-quarters of Qatari national families were actually in debt, often to the tune of $65,000 or more.
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Discrimination, statelessness, and sectarianism

A similarly under-reported problem affecting the indigenous or de facto indigenous populations of many Gulf monarchies has been the ongoing discrimination—in some cases state-sanctioned—against various minorities. In particular, there has been a continuing failure to address the issue of statelessness, with large numbers—perhaps now hundreds of thousands—of
bidoon jinsiyya
or people ‘without nationality’, whose families have lived in the region for many generations, but who have, for a variety of reasons, failed to secure sufficient documentation to acquire full citizenship. There is also a worrying trend in some of the Gulf monarchies of bias and intolerance—including sectarian violence—from predominantly Sunni political and business elites against indigenous Shia populations. This has undoubtedly been exacerbated in recent years and, as later sections of this book will demonstrate, has now become a key flashpoint for opposition in the region in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring. Both these phenomena are undermining the ruling families’ legitimacy, especially as divisions within national populations have not been bridged, resentment has been allowed to build, and—more subtly—increasing stratification within supposedly equitable societies has either gone unchecked or even been encouraged.

With regard to statelessness, Kuwait is by far the worst offender—at least in proportion to its total population—with some 106,000 bidoon now living in the emirate.
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The majority are classed by the government as ‘illegal residents’ and the issue is dealt with by the Ministry for Interior, indicating its treatment as a matter of security,
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but in practice the bidoon are best viewed as second class citizens who are unable to access the benefits of the state. Many of Kuwait’s bidoon claim they are indigenous, but missed out on full citizenship because their parents did not complete the necessary registration papers with the government after the
country’s independence in 1961. This was mostly due to illiteracy, or a lack of understanding of how significant citizenship papers were going to become. For most of the 1960s and 1970s the bidoon had access to the welfare state and its benefits in the same way as regular citizens, although they were not eligible to vote in Kuwait’s parliamentary elections.
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Causing much resentment during this period, however, a Saudi tribe
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was granted full Kuwaiti citizenship—an attempt by a prominent member of the ruling family (and the present day chief of the National Guard) to boost his support base.
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Following a period of instability in the 1980s—which led to increased xenophobia and a government-perpetuated belief that the bidoon were originally from neighbouring countries such as Iraq and had deliberately destroyed their documents in the hope of becoming Kuwaiti—their situation worsened considerably.
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In particular they have faced great difficulties in acquiring official documentation such as birth and marriage certificates, driving licences, and passports. As a result many have never been able to access free government schooling,
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have failed to secure government housing, and are thus obliged to pay rent on property in much the same way as expatriates. Moreover, most also fail to secure public sector employment and thus have much lower salaries, on average, than the poorest ‘full’ Kuwaiti citizens. According to a recent BBC report many of the bidoon only earn a few hundred dollars per month.
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A number do, however, seem to acquire employment in the police or the security services, likely because unswerving loyalty in these jobs is highly valued by the state and has been set up as one possible route to naturalisation.

In 2011, the plight of the Kuwaiti bidoon seemed little better, with a Human Rights Watch report arguing that ‘For 50 years, Kuwait has dawdled in reviewing bidoon citizenship claims, while creating a straightjacket of regulations that leave them in poverty and extreme uncertainty’. Moreover, it claimed that ‘Kuwait has every resource it needs to solve this problem, but chooses to stall instead’.
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Similarly, prominent journalists in the region have recently concluded that the bidoon have ‘… been dehumanised and rendered invisible by government policies coupled with pervasive social stigmatisation’.
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Notably, the government’s new Central System for Resolving Illegal Residents’ Status—known colloquially as the ‘Bidoon Committee’ seems to have made little progress. While it has recently issued ration cards to bidoon, allowing them to receive subsidised foodstuffs via government-run cooperatives, the committee
more importantly continues to reject applications for birth, marriage, and death certificates, and thus continues to prevent the bidoon from establishing any form of legal relationships in Kuwait. Moreover, according to Human Rights Watch it still regularly claims to have evidence of the bidoon’s ‘true nationalities’, although bidoon applicants have not been allowed to see this.
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In late 2010 officials even publicly claimed that at least 42,000 bidoon in Kuwait were really Iraqi citizens and suggested that ‘[Kuwait] has possession of documents that prove their affiliation to other Arab countries, so diplomatic measures need to be taken’.
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In February and March 2011 over one thousand bidoon reportedly took to the streets to demand better rights. Although there has since been a more broad-based Kuwaiti movement which, as discussed later in this book, opposes the current government and members of the ruling family, the bidoon protests can nonetheless still be viewed as an early Arab Spring protest. A group representing the bidoon—the Kuwaiti Bidoon Gathering—was formed, with its representatives stating that ‘… the most important right that we are asking for, and this is non-negotiable, is the right for a Kuwaiti citizenship’ and arguing that ‘…there are some basic human rights, like the right for healthcare, the right to work, the right to mobilise, the right to have identity papers, the right for education and travel’. Moreover, claiming that ‘…these are the normal and basic rights for any regular human being living anywhere’ the group has stated that its first protests were the result of ‘…the events in the Middle East inspired the young bidoon to go out and ask for their rights—the rights that were taken away from them’.
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Interestingly, at the rallies the protestors were sighted carrying flags with swastika symbols and slogans that complained of the fascist nature of the Bidoon Committee. With the security services responding to the protests with water cannon, teargas, smoke bombs, and concussion grenades, and with dozens reportedly injured and large numbers held in custody, the situation seems likely to deteriorate further.
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Indeed, the Kuwait Bidoon Gathering has hinted that the situation in Kuwait is now a ‘ticking time bomb’ and that ‘the bomb hasn’t burst yet and these are only sparks before the big explosion’.
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Although having received far less attention than in Kuwait, the bidoon issue is becoming increasingly significant in the UAE, where there are believed to be between 10,000 and 100,000 stateless persons, with some even living in the wealthier emirates of Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Much
like in Kuwait, they have been unable to obtain key documentation or access most benefits of the welfare state. In particular they lack the vital ‘family card’ or
khulsat al-qaid
, which is required to prove one’s lineage. At best they have only been able to receive temporary passports—thus excluding them from employment in the public sector. Moreover, they are often publicly discriminated against and—to a great extent—stigmatised by the government. In April 2011, when—as described later—six pro-democracy activists were arrested, the UAE’s state-backed news agency kept referring in all press releases to one of their number as being a ‘person without valid documentation’. This gave the impression that he was somehow of dubious character in addition to not being a bona fide UAE national.

In an extensive report by the UAE-based
Arabian Business
magazine in 2009 a number of UAE bidoon were interviewed—a rare occurrence and a voice not usually heard in the country. One female interviewee claimed that she was just one of thousands living in difficult conditions, explaining that ‘when you are a bidoon you cannot do so many things. You are not expatriate or a local; you are in-between’. Although she admitted that her family were originally from Iran, she explained that they had arrived in the country—then the Trucial States—back in 1953 and had received Sharjah passports. However, after the UAE’s independence in 1971 they were only given temporary passports which were renewed every six months until 1982 when their application was denied. Many other UAE bidoon claim descent from local tribes and can trace their lineage back several generations. Indeed, the report claimed that ‘according to anecdotal evidence, nearly 50 per cent of the [UAE] bidoon’s fathers were born in the Gulf monarchies while around 30 per cent of their grandfathers were born in the region… [but] today they find themselves in no man’s land’. Speaking of this diversity, a spokesperson for Refugees International explained that ‘[a UAE bidoon] could be someone who finds themselves in that situation for a number of reasons; their family may have lived historically in the country, but for some reason was not documented or chose not to be documented at the time; it could be someone who entered the country seeking asylum… there is no one stereotypical situation; it really is a diversified community of individuals’.
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Recent research has also demonstrated that some of the UAE bidoon often move back and forth between being citizens or not, with temporary passports seemingly being dispensed and then revoked at whim.
Described as a ‘liminal population’ that is politically managed depending on the government’s priorities of the day, these more fortunate bidoon are still left unable to plan for any kind of future.
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Nevertheless, regardless of their precise backgrounds or their exact passport status, all of the UAE’s current bidoon firmly claim to be Emirati, with most alluding to the fact that they, their parents, and their grandparents have never known life in another country. One interviewee simply stated ‘…my life is here; all of my close friends are Emiratis. I know more about the UAE than I know about Iran. It would be impossible for me to live anywhere else’.
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