BY REAVEN D’SOUZA
MANAGING EDITOR
It is with profound sorrow and deep despair that The Times Kuwait mourns the sad demise of His Highness Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah, the late Amir of the State of Kuwait.
News of the demise was announced to a shocked nation on the evening of Tuesday, 29 September. In a televised address, Minister of Amiri Diwan Affairs Sheikh Ali Jarrah Al Sabah said: ”With great sadness and sorrow, the Amiri Diwan mourns the passing of His Highness, the late Amir of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah.” He expressed condolences and commiserations to the people of Kuwait, Arab and Islamic regions and the world, while praying for mercy on the soul of the deceased.
The mortal remains of Kuwait’s beloved Amir, who passed away in the United States, was flown back to the country on Wednesday and laid to rest in a simple funeral attended by close relatives. The late Amir, who was 91, had undergone successful surgery in Kuwait on 19 July, before being flown to the US for further medical care and recuperation on 23 July.
Following a 16-hour flight from Kuwait, the US Air Force C-17 Globemaster III plane landed at Rochester, in the US state of Minnesota. Rochester is home to the flagship campus of Mayo Clinic, one of America’s best hospitals, which had treated His Highness the Amir in the past. Two months ago, when the special flying hospital carried Kuwait’s widely admired leader to the US, no one would have thought that it would be the Amir’s final farewell to the nation he loved dearly, and to the people he held foremost in his heart.
Here, we look back with esteem and pride on the life and achievements of the late Amir, which made him not only a deeply loved and respected leader in Kuwait, but also a global humanitarian leader, and an icon of peace and reconciliation around the world.
Born on 16 June 1929 as the fourth son of Sheikh Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, the tenth ruler of Kuwait, the late amir completed his primary education in the 1930s at the Al Mubarakiya School in Kuwait City. His further education was completed under private tutors in Kuwait and abroad. He began his public life in the service of the nation at the age of 25, when he was appointed as a member of the Central Committee of Municipality Council in1954. A year later, he was designated as the Chairman of Social Affairs and Labor Authority, and in 1956 as a member of the Higher Council of Country Affairs. From 1956 to January 1962 he served as the Chairman of Printing and Publishing Authority.
Following Kuwait’s independence in June 1961, he was inducted as Minister of Information in January 1962, in the country’s first cabinet headed by Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salim Al-Sabah. Exactly a year later, on 28 January 1963, he was designated as the country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, a post he would meritiously hold for the next four decades, and which would make him one of the longest serving foreign ministers in the world. During his forty-year tenure at the helm of the foreign ministry, Sheikh Sabah presided over some of the most critical periods in Kuwait’s history and earned a name in diplomatic circles as a doyen of diplomacy.
As the country’s top diplomat for four decades, Sheikh Sabah was instrumental in shaping Kuwait’s foreign policies through an astute knowledge of global political shifts and balances. Nestled between three larger powers — Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia — Kuwait’s foreign policy since independence has had to tread a narrow path. To avoid being buffeted by the pulls and pressures of the three neighbors — often at odds with each other over regional and international issues — Kuwait has pursued a nuanced and balanced foreign policy.
As foreign minister, Sheikh Sabah also managed to weave an aura of neutrality that helped position Kuwait as a reliable and trustworthy intermediary in some of the region’s most intractable conflicts. In February 1978, when it was felt his services were needed more at home, he was designated as the Deputy Prime Minister in addition to his role as Foreign Minister. He would continue to hold these posts and steer the country’s foreign policies through difficult periods in consecutive cabinets headed by the Crown Prince Sheikh Saad Al-Abdullah Al-Salem Al-Sabah.
Perhaps, his greatest challenge as the foreign minister came in 1990, when Iraqi forces under Saddam Hussein led a seven-month long vicious aggression and occupation of Kuwait.
Leveraging the strong relations that he had forged over the years with diplomats and leaders around the world, in particular with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), Sheikh Sabah was able to eventually get the UNSC to issue decision No.678 in November 1990. The UN decision called on Iraq to unconditionally withdraw all its forces from Kuwait by mid-January 1991. Failure by Iraq to comply with UNSC demand led to the formation of a 35-nation coalition that swiftly liberated Kuwait in February 1991.
In 1992, he was appointed as First Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, and in the period leading to 2003 additionally handled the roles of being a member of the Supreme Council of Planning, and Chairman of the Cabinet’s Joint Ministerial Committee on Priorities of Governmental Work. In 2003, when the then Amir, Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah decided to separate the role of crown prince from that of the prime minister, Sheikh Sabha Al-Ahmad was chosen as the country’s fifth prime minister on 13 July 2003.
Heading the cabinet as prime minister, Sheikh Sabha Al-Ahmad initiated several reforms, including among others the passage of a bill giving women the right to vote and run in elections to parliament. The government bill, which was submitted to the National Assembly in May 2004, faced stiff resistance from parliamentarians opposed to granting suffrage to women. However, after nearly a year of continued political deadlock, Sheikh Sabah managed to successfully steer the bill through parliament and win its approval in May 2005. Passing the bill marked a victory for women’s empowerment not only in Kuwait but in the wider Arab region.
Following the demise of former Amir Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah on 15 January, 2006 and the abdication due to health grounds of Amir Sheikh Saad Al-Abdullah nine days later, the National Assembly nominated and approved Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad as the new Amir. He was sworn in on 29 January 2006 as the 15th Amir of the State of Kuwait.
Being a constitutional monarchy, with a constitution and elections to a unicameral parliament set up in 1962, the country has a vibrant democratic political system. While the Amir remains Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the army, the executive rests with an appointed government, the legislative with 50 directly-elected representatives, and a judiciary headed by the Constitutional Court, which is widely considered as one of the most independent in the Arab world.
Kuwait is also considered as being among the freest in the Middle East in terms of civil liberties, political rights and in empowering women in the public sphere. From the early 2000s, the country has had one of the highest Human Development Index rankings in the Arab world, and is consistently ranked among the first in the region in global gender gap reports.
Since 2006, the late Amir has persistently sought to guide Kuwait through political upheavals at home and tide over regional turbulences, by steering a middle ground that sought to reconcile differences and ensure disputes were settled by mediation rather than through military force. In 2011, as the Arab Spring uprising unfolded across the Middle East against prevailing oppression by authoritarian governments, and with promises of ushering in an era of reform, political stability and social justice, it was the lone voice of the late Amir that stood out among regional leaders, as a beacon of sanity, cautioning moderation, reforms, hope and conflict resolution through peaceful discussions and dialogue.
In a region known for its geopolitical fault lines and seemingly endless conflicts, the late Amir stood for building bridges, not burning them. He was a natural mediator with an intuitive understanding of local and regional fealties, who was trusted and respected by all factions in regional conflicts. Holding high the need and importance of Arab unity in a rapidly changing world, and advocating the power of discussions and dialogue, the late Amir worked tirelessly to avoid confrontation and realize reconciliation among rivals.
In mid-2017 when Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt broke off diplomatic and other ties with Qatar over Doha’s outlier regional policies, it seemed like a rerun of the conflict that erupted in 2014 between the same two factions and over the same contentious allegations. Then, as in 2017, it was the late Amir who stepped in to try and mediate an amicable solution, however, while his initiatives in 2014 eventually led to rapprochement between the two sides, the same has not happened this time around. Perhaps, the best tribute to the late Amir that the two sides could pay would be to drop their differences and once again come together to coexist in amity and unity.
During his 14 years as Amir of Kuwait, the country witnessed remarkable achievements in economic, political and social fields. A visionary guide, with the humility to understand and accept that rapid change and radical reformation in the face of traditionalism would be hard to implement in Kuwait, he always called for a calibrated and steady approach to political and social reforms in various domains.
Under his visionary guidance, the country formulated a New Kuwait Vision 2035 strategic plan that calls for implementing energy and infrastructure developments, engaging in economic diversification, and encouraging greater private-sector participation in the economy. The late Amir’s vision was to transform Kuwait into a financial, commercial and cultural hub in the region by 2035. If the authorities are able to achieve this ambitious vision of New Kuwait in a time-bound manner, it would be an outstanding legacy to the memory of the late Amir.
On the humanitarian front, ever since he assumed power, the late amir had sought to position Kuwait as a center of humanitarian work. He raised Kuwait’s standing on the global stage by increasing the volume of supplies and relief aid to countries around the world inflicted by catastrophes and crises, both natural and man-made.
From the time the Syrian imbroglio first erupted and evolved into what has become one of the world’s biggest refugee crises, Kuwait has attempted to mitigate the situation through support for peace initiatives and dialogue between the warring parties. From 2013 to 2017, Kuwait hosted or co-hosted five International Humanitarian Pledging Conferences for Syria, with the first three conferences being held in Kuwait and the other two, co-hosted by Kuwait and the UK in London (2016) and along with the European Union in Brussels (2017). Together, these conferences were able to garner billions of dollars in pledges from donor countries around the world, including over a billion dollars from Kuwait, as its contribution to ease the suffering of Syrian people.
On a similar note, despite the fact that Kuwait was a victim of Iraqi aggression under Saddam Hussein, the country has extended significant relief and aid to Iraq under the directive of the late Amir. During a conference for Iraq’s donors in Washington in July 2016, Kuwait pledged $176 million to the Iraqi people and followed this act by hosting an international donors’ conference in 2017 to help Iraq rebuild areas devastated by the war against the Da’esh, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group.
Kuwait has also over the decades steadfastly lend its support to the Palestinian cause and under the late Amir’s stewardship the country has unwaveringly continued the support, both morally and financially. In addition to providing $300 million in support to the Palestinian Authority in a donor’s conference for Palestinians held in Paris on December 2007, the country allocated a further $200 million in 2009 to the Palestinian Authority in support of the reconstruction program in the Gaza Strip.
In 2011, after a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, the late Amir ordered a donation of five million crude oil barrels to Tokyo worth $500 million. The same year, Kuwait sent relief aid worth $10 million to Somalia in a bid to lessen the impact of drought and famine in the country. Whether it be in Bosnia Herzegovina, Lebanon, Turkey, Yemen or the Philippines, whenever a calamity strikes a nation, planes from Kuwait carrying tons of supplies and relief aid have been among the first to arrive on the scene.
The late Amir was one of those rare and remarkable selfless visionary leaders, untouched by the arrogance of power. His repeated calls for tolerance and moderation, and for transparency and accountability in public life, and for discussions and consensus in resolving regional conflicts, were prompted by farsightedness and the knowledge that peace whether between people or nations was critical to growth and development.
In acknowledgement of his humane leadership and Kuwait’s exemplary responses to global humanitarian crises, the United Nations awarded the late Amir with a certificate of appreciation as a global ‘Humanitarian Leader’, and Kuwait was recognized as a center of humanitarian work. Presenting the award, the then United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that the UN recognition was a recognition of the late Amir’s generous contributions, efforts, and continuous support towards the United Nations humanitarian operations to save lives and alleviate suffering around the world.
More than anything, the late Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah was a leader who commanded honor by deserving it through actions that were driven by a genuine care and compassion for the welfare of his country, his people and for humanity at large.
Farewell dear Amir of Humanity
May the Almighty bestow mercy on his soul.