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Why the Sheikhs Will Fall - By Christopher M. Davidson
| Foreign Policy
▻http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/04/26/why_the_sheikhs_will_fall

On April 22, a Kuwaiti judge announced that opposition figure Musallam al-Barrak would be released on bail, prompting cheers from his supporters packing the court. Barrak’s refusal to hand himself over to the authorities last week to serve a five-year sentence for criticizing the emir symbolized the intensifying resistance to autocracy in the oil-rich state.

In the wake of Barrak’s sentencing, thousands of Kuwaitis took to the streets in solidarity, sporadic clashes broke out with security forces, and dozens of key activists recited his controversial speech. The stage now seems set for a long summer of confrontations between large sections of Kuwait’s emboldened citizenry and an entrenched, traditional monarchy that has abandoned its democratic pretensions and is pressing ahead with police state strategies.

The contrast between now and summer 2012, when the British edition of my book After the Sheikhs went to press, could not be starker. Back then, there was little, if any, mainstream discussion outside the Middle East itself of the prospect of serious political unrest in the Gulf monarchies. Academics and policy wonks, at least in the monarchies’ Western allies, had for the most part set these states apart as somehow exceptional and aloof from the Arab Spring movements sweeping the region.