The announcement of the hospitalization on July 18 of the emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, plunged the country into uncertainty. The monarch, who was to officially "undergo medical examinations", finally underwent a surgical operation "with success", announced Sunday the official news agency Kuna.

At the same time, some of the powers of the emir, in power since 2006, were "temporarily" transferred to his crown prince and half-brother, Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah.

The emir's fragile health, aged 91 and dean of Arab heads of state, is often at the heart of concerns in the Gulf monarchy, the first to have a parliament elected in 1962, but also among regional and international players, such as the United States.

If the country, despite the popularity of the emir, is frequently paralyzed by recurring political crises, with repeated changes of governments and dissolutions of Parliament, abroad, the sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah has reached to make Kuwait play an essential mediating role.

Having occupied, before ascending the throne, the posts of Minister of Foreign Affairs (from 1963 to 2003), he enjoys a long diplomatic tradition of neutrality and non-alignment which is illustrated precisely in the Gulf, theater of regional tensions with Iran, where Kuwait has diplomatic representation, and friction between Qatar and neighboring petro-monarchies, starting with Saudi Arabia.

Dialogue and appeasement

While the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was on the verge of imploding, in 2017, after the serious crisis that saw Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain sever their relations with Doha, the emir of Kuwait , on the front line in negotiations, plays the appeasement card and announces that it has prevented a military escalation.

If the mediation of the emir failed to free Qatar from the embargo imposed by its neighbors, who accuse it of supporting Islamist movements and getting closer to Iran, Kuwait remains today the main interlocutor of the gas emirate in the region, with the Sultanate of Oman. After the announcement of his hospitalization on Saturday, he also received telephone calls from King Salman of Saudi Arabia and the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim ben Hamad Al-Thani.

But the sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, descendant of the Al-Sabah dynasty which reigns since the middle of the 18th century over the small emirate which enjoys enormous oil revenues, is above all an essential ally of the United States in the region.

Kuwait, liberated by a coalition led by Washington after the Iraqi invasion in 1990, maintains constant cooperation with the American army. The two countries have also been linked by a defense agreement (DCA) since 1991, under which the United States maintains more than 13,000 soldiers in the emirate, a strategic transit point for troops having served in Iraq and in Afghanistan. The Americans also have several bases in the country, including that of Arifjan, located 70 km south of the capital Kuwait City.

A security alliance often criticized by international human rights NGOs who frequently denounce violations of freedom of expression and a policy of repression against all forms of political dissent in Kuwait, despite the pluralism of its parliamentary monarchical system .

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