Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

Who was Late Emir of Kuwait?


Tue 29 Sep 2020 | 04:49 PM
Yassmine Elsayed

Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah, late Emir of Kuwait who died today at 91 years, was born June 16, 1929, and became in 2006 the 15th Emir of the country.

He was educated at Mubarakiya School, and was the first Minister of Information. Sheikh Sabah became Kuwait’s foreign minister in 1963 after holding a number of other governmental posts. He  remained in that position for four decades, making him one of the world’s longest-serving foreign ministers. During that time, he was credited with directing the state’s foreign policy and dealing with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

AP reported that in 2003, his half brother and Kuwait’s then-emir, Sheikh Jaber Al Ahmad Al Sabah, named Sheikh Sabah as the country’s prime minister. The move was widely seen as a step toward reform as it marked the first time that the roles of prime minister and crown prince — the next in line to the throne — were split.

It also formalized Sheikh Sabah’s role in running the daily affairs of the country — a responsibility he had increasingly assumed while the former prime minister, Sheikh Saad, struggled with health problems.

He assumed the position of Emir of Kuwait on January 29, 2006. Parliament ended up voting 64-0 to have Sheikh Sabah become emir, following a similar Cabinet decision. He was the third Emir to take the constitutional oath before the National Assembly In the history of Kuwait.

Domestically, Sheikh Sabah faced the challenge of falling oil prices in recent years. He dissolved parliament several times as lawmakers kept questioning appointed government ministers, some of them members of his extended family.

Internationally, Sheikh Sabah embraced Iraq after the U.S.-led 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. He twice visited the country and helped Iraq and Kuwait reach a $500 million deal in 2012 to settle a long-running legal dispute between their state airlines over allegations of large-scale theft by Saddam.

 

[caption id="attachment_153594" align="aligncenter" width="414"] Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah, late Emir of Kuwait[/caption]

The emir also hosted a summit in 2018 that saw $30 billion pledged to help rebuild Iraq after the war against the ISIS group. That’s even as Iraq still owes Kuwait reparations from Saddam’s 1990 invasion.

Sheikh Sabah also played a role in raising aid funds for Syrians suffering as a result of that country’s civil war, hosting international donor conferences in 2013 and 2014, and pledging hundreds of millions of dollars of Kuwaiti wealth.

One of his greatest challenges as a diplomat, however, came with the boycott of Qatar by four Arab nations that began in 2017. Sheikh Sabah positioned himself as a mediator for the political dispute, which he warned in a White House appearance in 2017 could have led to an armed conflict.

“Thank God, now, what is important is that we have stopped any military action,” Sheikh Sabah said.

Those mediation efforts have yet to resolve the crisis, but he did manage to get Qatar’s prime minister to shake hands on live television with Saudi King Salman at a 2019 meeting in Mecca.

“We believe that wisdom will prevail,” Sheikh Sabah once said.

On September 9, 2014, the United Nations honored him with the title of "Leader of Humanitarian Action", and Kuwait was called a "Center for Humanitarian Action", in appreciation of the international organization for the efforts made by the Emir and Kuwait has made in the service of humanity. He was called "the sheikh of Arab diplomats and the world" and "the dean of Arab and Kuwaiti diplomacy."

Observers believe that during his reign, he pursued a reform policy, as democratic life took hold, media freedoms increased, newspapers and media platforms spread, and areas of criticism expanded in Kuwait.

During his reign, Kuwait witnessed a development renaissance in various fields, in implementation of his aspirations to transform Kuwait into a global financial and commercial center.

A longtime widower, Sheikh Sabah lived for years in a palace known as Dar Salwa, which was named after his daughter Salwa, who died of cancer in 2002. He is survived by two sons.