Blacklisting Terrorism Supporters in Kuwait

By Michael Jacobson

My colleague David Pollock and I wrote a piece on the UN's recent designations of three Kuwaiti nationals.

Here's an excerpt:

On January 16, the UN Security Council's "Al-Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee" designated three Kuwaiti nationals for providing support to al-Qaeda. Although the UN measure is a welcome step forward, it is unlikely to have much impact without aggressive implementation by Kuwait. Given the Kuwaiti government's mixed record in cracking down on terrorism financing, there is reason to be skeptical that it will take strong action. At the same time, the UN blacklisting already appears to have affected Kuwaiti counterterrorism efforts in a way that previous requests from the United States alone could not accomplish.

Designations of Kuwaitis

The three Kuwaitis -- Hamid al-Ali, Jaber al-Jalamah, and Mubarak al-Bathali -- were added to the UN's so-called "1267 list" of nearly 500 individuals and entities tied to al-Qaeda and the Taliban. All UN member states are required to freeze the financial assets and restrict the travel and arms trade of designated entities.

According to the U.S. Treasury Department -- which designated the three more than a year ago -- al-Ali recruited individuals in Kuwait to fight for al-Qaeda in Iraq. His fatwas supported suicide bombings and condoned the September 11 attacks, arguing that it was permissible to crash an airplane into "an important site that causes the enemy great casualties."

Al-Jalamah also provided financial and logistical support to al-Qaeda in Iraq. According to Treasury, he recruited "a significant number of men" to fight for the organization, including potential suicide bombers, and had direct contact with Osama bin Laden. For his part, al-Bathali helped raise funds for a range of terrorist organizations -- including al-Qaeda, Ansar al-Islam in Iraq, and Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan -- by speaking at mosques in Kuwait. Both al-Bathali and al-Jalamah were also accused of meeting with an individual involved in a 2003 attack on two U.S. contractors in Kuwait and discussing the possibility of financing his "militant training operations."

Nevertheless, al-Ali is by far the most prominent of the three designees. He ran afoul of the Kuwaiti government in 2005, when he was prosecuted and convicted for a sermon maligning the emir. Although he was stripped of any official or institutional position, his message maintained its pitch. In 2006, at the start of the Israel-Hizballah war in Lebanon, he issued a well-publicized fatwa denouncing Hizballah as a Shiite rafidah (rejecting true Islam) movement and calling on Palestinians to practice jihad against Israel. This doubly inflammatory message threatened to affect the Kuwaiti government's laudable record of sectarian consensus with the country's roughly 30 percent Shiite minority. In May 2007, Kuwait's Interior Ministry prohibited any "seminar about tribal or sectarian conflicts," lumping such events in with other banned practices such as "advertising sorcery, magic, or massage services." Still Sheikh al-Ali's voice continued to be heard.

The UN listing already seems to have the designees concerned, however. Al-Bathali told a Kuwaiti daily that he would bring a suit against a bank for freezing his account -- the first public indication that Kuwait was beginning to take the required legal steps. And al-Ali told another paper that he would resist any restrictions resulting from the UN designation "by all possible means."

To read the rest of the piece, click here

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