Obituaries
The Times January 16, 2006
Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah
1926 - January 15, 2006
Respected Emir of Kuwait credited with creating his country's infrastructure and gradually introducing democratic habits
SHEIKH JABER AL-AHMAD AL-SABAH, 13th Emir of Kuwait, was a reluctant democrat who was pressed to share power by both his Western allies and fundamentalists at home. Although praised for his efforts in rebuilding Kuwait after the Iraqi invaders were driven out in 1991, he waited another year before reinstating democracy.
Sheikh Jaber strove to cement the ruling family’s ascendancy over the oil-rich nation’s leading merchant families, his former partners in oligarchy. Governed by a shrewd sense of domestic Kuwaiti politics, the sheikh’s 28-year rule was interrupted for just seven months, when, in August 1990, Iraqi forces invaded his country.
On the liberation of Kuwait in February the following year, Sheikh Jaber carried the burden of restoring normality, prosperity and some degree of democracy. In this he succeeded.
Born in 1926 of a dynastic marriage that united rival branches of the al-Sabah, Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad was raised to rule by his father, the Emir Sir Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah. He entered public life in 1949 and soon demonstrated a gift for organisation and control.
Under his father’s successor, the Emir Sir Abdallah al-Salim al-Sabah, Sheikh Jaber added to his responsibility for oilfield security the role of liaison to the oil concessionaire, the Kuwait Oil Company.
In the late 1950s, as producing countries sought to wrest concessions from the oil companies, Sheikh Jaber helped to create new oil concessions to rival Kuwait Oil and founded the nation’s own Kuwait National Petroleum Company.
In an early experiment with “recycling” oil wealth he also set up Kuwait’s first international aid group, the Kuwait Fund for Economic Development.
In 1976 he set up the Fund for Future Generations, a safety net for Kuwaitis when the oil eventually runs out. Ten per cent of Kuwait’s oil revenues go into the fund, which now has an estimated balance of more than $60 billion.
The approach of full independence for Kuwait called for a more structured and controllable government. The Emir, Sir Abdallah al-Salim al-Sabah, turned to Sheikh Jaber for help in controlling informal, unruly and often corrupt government departments. Starting in 1959, he bent departments and their sometimes capricious heads to budgetary constraints and proper accountability. In the process, some of his rivals saw their power bases evaporate.
Many Kuwaitis credit the Emir with creating much of Kuwait’s infrastructure and with establishing standards of public probity. The Emir relied, throughout his public career, on his half-brother, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad as confidant and partner. Raised and educated together, the brothers complemented each other: while Sheikh Jaber turned his attention to finances, oil affairs, security and government organisation, Sabah al-Ahmad specialised in the media and foreign affairs.
The Emir held a central position in the struggle to transform Kuwait’s traditional consultative oligarchy into formal democratic institutions. A key member of the constituent assembly that drafted Kuwait’s 1962 constitution, he and others of the ruling family saw the new National Assembly’s role as that of a consultative “safety valve”.
However, independent-minded deputies in the assembly proved outspoken and followed a more independent agenda, pressing for governmental accountability to the assembly and nationalisation of the oil concession. The ruling family, still consolidating its ascendancy, lost its enthusiasm for representative government — especially among the al-Jaber, Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad’s branch.
In 1966, after the accession of Skeikh Sabah al-Salim, Sheikh Jaber became Crown Prince. As Prime Minister, too, he found himself frequently at odds with the National Assembly. He feared “Lebanonisation”: the tensions expressed in the assembly and, indeed, often generated by it, seemed to hold disintegrative potential of the sort for which Lebanon had become a metaphor.
Seeing the excesses of the Assembly as a threat to national security, Sheikh Jaber suspended it in 1976. Many Kuwaitis were wiling to accept, given the example of dissension in Lebanon, the Crown Prince’s promise of a “reconstituted” parliament. Sheikh Jaber acceded to the throne on New Year’s Day, 1977, but it was not until 1981, nearly four years later, that he fulfilled his promise to restore the National Assembly.
But despite a rewritten constitution and careful redrawing of constituency boundaries, this new body proved as troublesome as its predecessors, and Sheikh Jaber dissolved it again in 1986. He imposed strict censorship and suspended key constitutional provisions that guaranteed a return to parliamentary representation.
This move was one of the Emir’s most unpopular acts. Demonstrators, including formerly staunch tribal allies, took to the streets late in the 1980s and early 1990s to demand the return of the National Assembly.
Kuwait today has 960,000 citizens and 1.64 million foreigners. Early in Sheikh Jaber’s reign, the rapid influx of foreigners caused demographic tensions, heightened by a faltering economy. Collapse of the local stock market in 1982 and the spill-over of hostilities from the Iran-Iraq war created an atmosphere of grievance.
Yet, despite terrorist attacks on Kuwaitis and their national airline, and an attempt to assassinate him in 1985, Sheikh Jaber managed to hold the fabric of national unity together against what seemed like iresistible centrifugal forces.
An intensely private man, one of whose hobbies was rose gardening, Sheikh Jaber was felt by many Kuwaitis to be more aloof than his Crown Prince and far less affable than his predecessor. He did, however, bring to a turbulent period a necessary decisiveness.
The Emir, an astute player at Kuwaiti politics, cultivated the dynasty’s ties to leading families and tribes through a campaign of marital diplomacy reminiscent of Ibn Saud and other Arab leaders.
Sheikh Jaber’s efforts to maintain the status quo were suddenly and unexpectedly subverted by invasion and occupation. In one of the grand miscalculations of Kuwait’s history, the Government failed to regard Iraq’s demands as a genuine threat, and it suddenly found itself a Government in exile.
The Emir’s former ally, President Saddam Hussein of Iraq — whom he had backed in the conflict with Iran — invaded Kuwait, declaring it Iraq’s 19th province. The Emir fled to Saudi Arabia, narrowly escaping capture, though one of his brothers was killed by troops storming the palace.
Sheikh Jaber achieved, in crisis, a symbolic stature. As the symbol of Kuwait-in-exile, it was to him, as tribal clan leader, that Kuwaitis of all backgrounds and political persuasions rallied in the task of regaining their country.
To further that effort, Sheikh Jaber and Sheikh Saad agreed during an extraordinary convention in Saudi Arabia to reinstate the 1962 constitution.
After the liberation of Kuwait in February 1991, the Emir returned from exile. He oversaw the reconstruction of the country, which involved the rehabilitation of destroyed oilfields.
Fleeing Iraqi soldiers had set fire to 732 wells, and a rescue operation to put them out was completed by November 1991. It cost £1 billion to do so, though it was said that by capping the wells £7 billion was saved. The Emir ceremonially put out the final one, which was set ablaze on purpose so that, in front of a host of ministers and foreign dignataries, he could flick a remote-control switch to seal it again.
After the war, Sheikh Jaber also oversaw the restoration of Parliament — though not democracy. In 1990, for example, of 793,000 citizens only 113,000 were enfranchised — all of them men over 21 who could trace their local roots over several generations.
In May 1999 Sheikh Jaber dissolved the National Assembly, which he thought was too full of liberals who criticised his unelected government. He was, however, in favour of giving women the vote, although conservatives and fundamentalist Muslims formed a parliamentary alliance to vote against this idea in November that year. He could have responded by disbanding parliament yet again but did not. In May last year Parliament finally approved the Emir’s legislation.
In 1995 he visited Britain and, pleased by his reception, donated £1.1 million to various British charities.
Sheikh Jaber will be succeeded by Crown Prince Sheikh Saad al-Abdullah al-Sabah, a distant cousin named as successor in 1978. He is now in his mid-70s and has serious health problems, something which has led to grave succession worries and renewed calls for a more democratic distribution of power.
Alhough estimates of Shekh Jaber’s marriages have suggested as many as 70 wives, the total was much more modest. A devout Muslim, Sheikh Jaber never exceeded the canonical limit of four spouses at any one time.
Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah, ruler of Kuwait since 1977, was born in 1926. He died on January 15, 2006, aged 79.
