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Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah met Turkish President Abdullah Gul on 2 April, and two days later saw him off at Kuwait International Airport. A host of officials joined the emir at the airport to mark the end of Gul’s three-day official visit, including Crown Prince Nawaf Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah, Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah, foreign minister Sheikh Sabah Al-Khalid Al-Sabah, deputy minister of emiri diwan affairs Sheikh Ali Jarrah Al-Sabah and various other ministers and military officials.

Iran’s deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, visited the region on 1-2 April, stopping in Kuwait and the UAE for talks aimed at demonstrating willingness to make peace with Gulf neighbours. In Kuwait, he delivered an invitation to visit Iran from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah, and said Rouhani was planning to announce an initiative to form a “co-operative regional body”, according to Kuwait’s state news agency Kuna. The co-operation could take many forms, he said, be it an organisation or an agreement.

As Saudi Arabia turns its attention increasingly to citizens fighting in Syria and other conflicts abroad, Kuwaiti newspapers have reported that Jazaa Al-Shemmari, the brother of MP Sultan Al-Shemmari, was killed while fighting for the Al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat Al-Nusra. According to the Kuwait Times, Jazaa Al-Shemmari had left for Syria eight days before being killed in a battle in Yabroud on 21 March. The Syrian government said it recaptured Yabroud, a strategic town close to the border with Lebanon, on 16 March; according to a report in the Financial Times, rebels had been weakened by a powerplay between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, each of whom was backing rival groups.

Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah has had “successful minor surgery” in the United States, and left hospital on 5 March. The emiri diwan said he had received phone calls wishing him a quick recovery from dignitaries including the Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki and Turkish President Abdullah Gul. While in the US, he visited his nephew Sheikh Mubarak Al-Abdullah Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah, who has been having medical treatment there for some time, “to check on his well-being and the medical care he is receiving”.

What a difference a year makes. On 26 March 2013, the annual summit of the League of Arab States took place in Doha, where then emir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani symbolically installed the Syrian opposition in Damascus’ seat (GSN 944/3). The summit, well attended by the Gulf leadership, was seen as a strategic success for Qatar, a sign of its regional leadership and of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC)’s centrality to post-2011 Arab politics. Events in the region since have shattered any illusion of regional cohesion. Syria’s seat will again be empty, the opposition too disorganised to claim it, the war still raging. The overthrow of Egypt’s first freely elected president (GSN 951/1) and attempts to crush the Muslim Brotherhood have split the GCC, with Qatar on one side, and Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain on the other (GSN 965/1).

Kuwait has made several attempts at finding a regional answer to its energy conundrum. One plan, initially agreed in 2000, was to join Saudi Arabia in developing the Dorra natural gas field, which lies in the two countries’ Neutral Zone (GSN 761/1). But after more than a decade, disagreement over how to split the gas resulted in the project being shelved in August. “The entire project is on hold, the budget is on hold, no new drilling is anticipated for the 2013-14 budget for Dorra,” a senior Kuwait energy source told Reuters.

On 4 March, Swiss-registered engineering firm Foster Wheeler announced that it had won the initial design contract for a new onshore liquefied natural gas (LNG) import and regasification terminal for the Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC). The award, which follows feasibility studies for the new terminal, underlines Kuwait’s persistent failure to develop domestic resources, and seems to bury Kuwait’s hopes of securing a regional supply of gas to meet soaring demand.Kuwaiti electricity demand and consumption have tripled since the end of the 1990-91 Gulf War, a problem that is replicated across the Gulf, where generous subsidies have spawned a culture of wasting energy.

Kuwait has been governed by the Al-Sabah family since the 18th century. It gained independence from Britain in 1961; a new constitution written that year confirmed the hereditary monarchy, but gave significant powers to an independent judiciary and an elected assembly. The emir – currently Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah – retains the final say and political parties are banned. But the 50-member assembly has proven more vibrant than expected, and Kuwait has often been held up as a beacon for democratisation in the region. Friction between the elected parliament and the appointed government has been an ongoing problem.

Kuwait’s new Anti-Corruption Authority (ACA) has its work cut out. Finally established in mid-2013 after years of rhetoric, the ACA (sometimes also referred to as the Public Authority for Anti-Corruption, or PAAC) has made some progress. A draft law is expected to be completed in February, and ACA members are being trained overseas. But a lack of dedicated resources – and ongoing political upheaval – make its success far from assured.In the past few years, Kuwait has continued to slide down the rankings of Transparency International’s corruption perception index, which measures how corrupt public sectors are seen to be.

Kuwait’s five-month-old cabinet has already fallen apart, as political tensions prompted a major reshuffle (GSN 953/8). On 23 December – just hours after the constitutional court rejected petitions to nullify July’s parliamentary polls – the entire government submitted its resignation to Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak, following media reports of an imminent reshuffle. On 6 January, Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah issued two emiri decrees, one accepting the resignation of seven of those ministers – including oil minister Mustafa Al-Shamali and finance minister Sheikh Salem Abdulaziz Al-Sabah – and the other making seven new appointments and reshuffling the remaining portfolios.

The UK Home Office has announced it will launch a visa-waiver scheme in 2014 for business travellers and tourists from four Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) states, namely Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the UAE. The announcement, which has been in the pipeline for some time (GSN 952/4), came at the Lord Mayor’s annual dinner on 11 November, and was made by Prime Minister David Cameron, whose Conservative government has shown considerable interest in maintaining and improving relations with the GCC, despite criticism from human rights organisations (see page 6 and View).

The UAE has sentenced Waleed Al-Shehhi to two years in prison and a fine of Dh500,000 ($136,000) for his tweets about the UAE 94 trial (GSN 958/7, 948/6). Al-Shehhi was arrested on 11 May in Ajman, and charged under the new cybercrimes law, which prohibits the use of information technology for activities that could endanger national security or defame the government (GSN 936/4). He was convicted on 18 November. Al-Shehhi, an employee at the Emirates Authority for Standardisation and Metrology, had posted comments on Twitter about the mass trial of Islamists, coverage of which was heavily censored (GSN 950/7, 949/7).

A Kuwait Airways plane landed in Iraq on 20 November for the first time since the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. State news agency Kuna quoted the director of Najaf airport Mortadha Al-Mousawi as saying the Kuwait Airways Corporation (KAC) plane carried 100 passengers into the city, most of them visitors to the holy sites. The airline plans two flights a week into Najaf. An Iraq Airways plane landed in Kuwait for the first time since the Gulf War in February (GSN 943/10).

On 28 October, Kuwait’s Court of Appeals upheld a ten-year prison sentence handed out in June 2012 to blogger Hamad Al-Naqi for comments he made on Twitter that were deemed insulting to the Prophet Mohammed (GSN 926/6, 924/5). Al-Naqi, who was 26 at the time of his initial trial, was also accused of insulting the kings of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, and of provoking sectarian tensions. He has always denied the charges, and told police his Twitter account was hacked.

Kuwait has been governed by the Al-Sabah family since the 18th century. It gained independence from Britain in 1961; a new constitution written that year confirmed the hereditary monarchy, but gave significant powers to an independent judiciary and an elected assembly. The emir – currently Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah – retains final say and political parties are banned. But the 50-member assembly has proven more vibrant than expected, and Kuwait has often been held up as a beacon for democratisation in the region.