The new voices of Kuwait eager for change
The National Source LINK HERE
KUWAIT CITY, 9 December 2014. In a complex region such as the Middle East,
it is a startling, simple inquiry for a young person to make.
“Why wait Kuwait?” Nada Faris, a Kuwaiti writer, implores
the audience at a slam poetry competition.
Nada, 28, is hardly well-known in Kuwait. Yet the poem,
which uses Kuwait’s past as a way to examine the present, poses a question
asked by many young people.
Kuwaitis in their 20s and 30s say their aspirations are
impeded by economic and political challenges, despite the potential they see in
the country, and they are eager for changes that will let their generation
flourish.
At the same time, society does not fully recognise their
unique blend of identities, which represent a new type of multiculturalism.
It is an issue common among youths in many Arabian Gulf
states.
Someone who speaks English more fluently than Arabic, for
example, risks being called a “McChicken”.
“We need to talk about events from a new angle,” says Nada,
on the need to stop using “outdated language” when talking about her
generation.
For this group, the struggle is not about money but how to
move Kuwait into a new era.
Ahmed, 30, considers the main issue to be bureaucratic
dysfunction, and what materialises compared with what was promised.
In 2008, he co-founded a property website, which failed
after a seven-month wait for licences and permits.
He partly blames this on “a lack of regulation and the
manner in which the market thrives on a lack of transparency”.
Ahmed’s next idea was to establish a “multi-concept store”
with a co-working space, boutique, gallery, and cafe in one location. It was
the kind of trendy place that might be found in New York or Istanbul, but that
had yet to arrive in Kuwait City.
He hoped to pitch the idea to a state fund for small and
medium-sized businesses but the fund was shut down to make way for a new US$2
billion (Dh7.34bn) SME fund that has yet to materialise.
Now, Ahmed works for his family firm, and also learns code
in order to develop a mobile phone application.
“You have people selling stuff on Instagram out of their
homes,” he says.
“They want to see an alternative. The economy is getting it
done informally because bureaucracy is a problem.”
More thoughtful than angry, he describes how young
acquaintances returned to Kuwait after living overseas filled with aspirations.
There was the country’s wealth, along with its beaches, a demand for luxury
real estate and space to build. There were people with ideas and a desire to develop
the country.
This combination usually leads to innovation and prosperity.
But, Ahmed says, they soon hit roadblocks and become discouraged.
His friend Alia, 27, was an intern at a Silicon Valley
incubator for business start-ups. She came home aiming to become a bridge
between Kuwait and the California technology centre.
“I felt we needed to come back to Kuwait and teach them
about start-ups,” she says.
But how this can succeed is unclear with so little room for
young people in business.
“It’s very frustrating,” Alia says.
Stylish, multilingual, educated internationally, and
obsessed with innovation, these young Kuwaitis are outpacing the social
landscape of their country.
The combination of a talent for business, globalisation, and
the country’s unique heritage has produced a new identity that Nada says makes
the “rigid binary” used to describe Kuwaiti society as obsolete.
She uses the term “Anglowaiti” to describe Kuwaitis that
live in the country and speak mainly in English.
“Traditionalists pretend that Anglowaitis are westernised,
which they are not,” says Nada.
“They are natural outcomes of Kuwait’s infrastructure.”
Society needs a new vocabulary to debate identity, she says “I argue that today’s digitally networked societies require
new phrases, new words, new ways of debating identity that do not depend on the
East, West, Arabic, traditional English, westernised dichotomies of the past,
because they do not address the struggles that humanity will face in the
future.”
With extremists such as ISIL in neighbouring Iraq, the issue
is all the more acute.
It is “not an option not to stand up for what you believe
in”, she says. “It’s not an option to pick one or the other”.
The governments that look to the past have produced
extremists and given the world “horrendous regimes and distorted views of
religion”, Nada says.
Introducing ideas to society after the Arab Spring, which
brought chaos to so many states and with it, a crackdown on dissent, is not
going to be easy.
Young people took part in the social activism and street
protests that led to the resignation of prime minister Sheikh Nasser Al
Mohammad Al Sabah in 2011.
Even if the momentum of the protests – with liberals,
Islamists and youth groups on the streets – has faded, Dhari Al Rujaib, 27,
says the demonstrations joined together people from different backgrounds.
Between issues of citizenship, the lack of housing, and
government subsidies facing cuts, there is still enough tension that, Dhari
says, But the protests were not universally praised by government
critics. A Kuwaiti woman in her 20s, who asked not to be identified, says she
is frustrated by the country’s bureaucracy, lack of transparency and lagging
efforts to tackle corruption, yet she did not attend the protests.
“I was concerned as a young woman,” she says. “I didn’t know
who would be there, who would run it. I didn’t want to represent something that
did not represent my wishes for the country.”
For her, Kuwait’s 2012-2013 National Youth Project had been
an opportunity for young people to highlight what actions they believed needed
to be taken to achieve their vision for Kuwait’s future.
The motto of the project was “Kuwait Listens”. A range of
civil society groups and NGOs nominated 55 young people between 18 and 30 to
study different issues, and to devise ways of improving the country.
The group produced a final document of recommendations for
the government. She attended its presentation, and described the recommendations
as not “reinventing the wheel”.But almost no action was taken, despite the
public display of reaching out to young people.
There might have been some discussions about opening school
football fields to the public at night – one of the recommendations – but
little else.
“I did not have high expectations but don’t hold this and
pretend it means anything,” she says.
For all the demand for change there is little agreement on
how it should happen.
Hind, 30, who has her own company, is more interested in focusing
on Kuwait’s potential. She says the country is an amazing market, with a “crazy
demand for mobile data”.
Many young people in Kuwait have two mobile phones, with one
data plan for home and another for work.
The market for Arabic-language products has not yet been
fully explored, and the potential of Islamic finance not fully tapped.
One innovation she wants to see is a data-driven “smart
mosque” that offers community news on high-tech screens.
Alia and Ahmed are also making inroads with a business start-up
incubator and co-working space that they hope will help to develop Kuwaiti
entrepreneurs, although the question of how companies will be funded remains.
Nada is also looking beyond politics. “I wouldn’t be doing
what I’m doing if I didn’t believe in this generation’s capacity to make
change,” she says.
Inspiration for her poem Why Wait Kuwait came after surfing
various social networks on her computer. She found people arguing, protesting,
and being “contradictory”.
The essence of the poem fell onto paper quickly. Over the
next few weeks, she polished it, eventually performing in front of an audience
and winning second place in a slam poetry competition in April.
“So I’m just wondering
Why we’re waiting,
And what we’re all waiting for
Before we realize the stakes are more
Than our egos,
More than mere discomfort,
It’s loss of everything we stand for, live for,
Wake up in the morning for — so
Why wait Kuwait, until
We learn what wars are made of?”
In my many conversations with Kuwaitis, they criticize the UAE for not having an open press and how Kuwait has such a liberal press, yet I continuously see them have to go to the UAE press in order to get their voices heard. Only the youth, with their privileged education overseas, that exposed them to a different workforce and a different way of thinking, can change the dynamics of Kuwait. I do reiterate, that they must make their voices heard not in the UAE, but in Kuwait and demand more transparency in government. I visit UAE ministries that I find very organized and a system in place, that in a domino effect organizes a nation, so it is plausible that a small country like Kuwait, can get their noses out of the air and ask assistance from a developed nation like the UAE in order to streamline their government. The UAE is a nation of tolerance and an organized government that all nationals in the UAE are grateful for the efforts that they put in good governance. It is refreshing that you highlighted the fact that young Kuwaitis are questioning 'the system', because it is 'the system' that needs to be addressed. Lack of leadership should not be a hurdle if the desire to change is stronger than the obstacles.
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