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On 24 April, Kuwait’s prime minister, Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Hamad Al-Sabah, met some of the country’s leading editors, and – following a “candid, frank and expanded meeting” (in the words of state news agency Kuna) – put the brakes on a controversial media law, which in its current state would seriously undermine press freedom. “If you are against the bill, it will be shelved,” he said, suggesting that consultations between journalists and the government could lead to an amended version.

Minister of information and minister of state for youth affairs Sheikh Salman Sabah Al-Salem Al-Sabah met Iranian vice-president Mohammed-Reza Rahimi in Tehran on 8 May, on the sidelines of the Asia Co-operation Dialogue forum. According to state news agency Kuna, the talks dealt with the “brotherly ties bounding the Islamic Republic with the state of Kuwait”. Sheikh Salman also held talks with Iranian minister of culture and guidance Mohammad Hoseini.

The opposition wrote itself out of the Kuwaiti parliament by boycotting December’s elections, and as a result there has been less tension between parliament and government. The assembly has managed to pass a number of bills and motions, approving a much-delayed draft law to privatise Kuwait Airways, and awarding the contract for the Az-Zour North independent water and power project – the first contract since the Partnerships Technical Bureau was established in 2008. But while the opposition has been less vocal in recent months, frustrations remain liable to erupt.

A Kuwait court sentenced prominent opposition politician Musallam Al-Barrak to five years in prison on 15 April for insulting Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, but later granted him bail pending a further hearing in May. The former MP’s sentencing prompted large demonstrations, and fears of further instability. The interior ministry said that, at one protest on 17 April, shots were fired into the air and several officers needed hospital treatment.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has made a groundbreaking visit to Kuwait, the first by a Palestinian leader in more than 20 years. On 15 April, Abbas officially reopened the Palestinian embassy in the Kuwaiti capital, closed in 1990 because of Palestinian support for the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO)’s decision to support Saddam Hussein’s invasion, by voting against a Cairo summit resolution calling for an Iraqi withdrawal, was disastrous for the PLO and the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian expatriates based in Kuwait.

Kuwait’s parliament agreed to grant citizenship to up to 4,000 ‘foreigners’ on 20 March – a move greeted as a step in the right direction for those campaigning for the rights of Bidoon. The bill, signed by 43 MPs, and with two abstentions, originally stipulated the naturalisation of at least 4,000 stateless people, but had its wording changed to the broader “maximum of 4,000 foreigners”, leading some to question whether the Bidoon community would wholly benefit.

Kuwait hanged three men on 1 April, the first time it has carried out the death penalty since 2007. Amnesty International described the move as “a deplorable setback for human rights in the country”. Local media showed pictures of the three men in the gallows, hands strapped behind their backs. They were all convicted of murder.

The GCC has been leading calls for greater support of the Syrian opposition,with Qatar and Saudi Arabia particularly vocal on the need to arm those fighting Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. At a GCC summit in December, Bahrain’s foreign minister Sheikh Khalid Al-Khalifa called for a “radical solution ending the tragedy of the Syrian people”, a line that continued at the Arab League summit hosted by Doha on 26 March.

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have both announced plans which could dramatically reduce their numbers of expatriate workers. In Saudi Arabia, which has an estimated two to three million illegal foreign labourers, a crackdown has already led to mass deportations; more will follow as part of a Gulf-wide drive to get nationals into work. In Kuwait, where public animosity towards foreigners has been rising, the government says it will reduce the number of expatriates by a million over the next ten years.

Kuwait has announced plans to dramatically reduce the number of foreign workers over the next decade. A 19 March statement by minister of social affairs and labour Thikra Al-Rashidi said the government would oversee a reduction of 100,000 foreign labourers per year for ten years – seeing the balance of nationals to foreigners redressed to roughly half and half. “The strategy envisages bringing down the total number of expatriate workers to only one million in 10 years,” Rashidi said.

Another 12 people have joined the list of those on trial in the UAE on charges of sedition, bringing the total number of defendants to 106. All are thought to have links to Jamiat Al-Islah wa Tawjih, an Islamist group related to the Muslim Brotherhood. They face charges including seeking to overthrow the UAE leadership, raising funds to support such efforts, infiltrating government institutions and spreading propaganda.

On 27 February, an Iraqi Airways plane landed in Kuwait City for the first time since August 1990. The trigger for the resumption of flights from Baghdad was Kuwait’s ratification of a settlement of a dispute over Gulf War-era debts, but the return of Iraqi Airways’ green insignia to Kuwaiti tarmac can be seen as symbolic of a wider détente. The relationship between the neighbours has been buoyed by a raft of positive political and economic developments, the former feeding the latter. Telecoms, energy, real estate and retail sectors have all benefited from Kuwaiti investment, and while contentious issues still remain – including skirmishes along the border – there is much to gain for the neighbours and the region from the mending of historical ills.

The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) finds itself at the centre of another Gulf-related crisis. Following the furore triggered by the UAE’s decision to stop LSE academic Kristian Coates Ulrichsen from discussing Bahrain at the American University of Sharjah , the university has now cancelled a major Gulf conference planned for London on 25-26 March. The conference, hosted by the LSE Kuwait Programme, was to look at ‘The Arab Spring and the Gulf: Politics, economics and security’; the trigger for the late cancellation was the withdrawal of sponsorship from the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS).

The relationship between Kuwait and Iraq has been buoyed by a number of political and economic developments across a number of sectors, including: telecoms, energy, real estate, retail, banking, aviation and eduction

To mark the tenth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, and to give wider public access to some of our reporting and analysis, GSN has unlocked the archive of its newsletters published in 2003 (accessible at www.gsn-online.com). The invasion was hardly a surprise; US determination to depose Saddam Hussein had been clear for months, but too little thought went into its repercussions. Few of those behind the invasion saw the potential for the turbulence it unleashed. A reading of pre-2003 GSN shows just how inevitable conflict was. ‘Global terrorism’ was high on the agenda as the George W Bush administration came to power.