UK

Why now? Trump, Biden and the real reason for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe's release


Anushka Asthana
Deputy Political Editor

The UK has long known that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s detention was wrapped together with a decades-old debt.

I remember speaking to her husband, Richard, in 2021, about his decision to first use the word “hostage”.

“Yes. She always has been a hostage. It took us a bit of time to realise it. It took us a bit of time to say it. It felt a very heavy word, and a brave word,” he told me on the Guardian’s Today in Focus Podcast.

“It took me a while to realise I would have to use the word first.”

By then it had dawned on Ratcliffe that his wife wasn’t a mistaken prisoner, but a pawn in a geopolitical struggle dating back to the 1970s, when Iran paid the UK £400 million for tanks that were then never delivered.

Richard Ratcliffe's tireless fight to bring wife Nazanin back to Britain

British wildlife conservationist released from Iran jail after Nazanin freed

Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s detention almost half a century later – like that of Anousheh Ashouri – was effectively state-sponsored hostage taking, but also, the debt was a genuine one. And one that it is now clear, we were always willing to pay.

So, given that we have found a way to bypass American sanctions and hand over the money, why didn’t we do it much earlier?

Some speak of oil, others about a change of administration in Iran.

But the experts I speak to point in another direction. Not east to Iran, but west to America and the even more significant change in leadership there.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anousheh Ashoori have been reunited with their families after years of detention in Iran.

“The Trump administration insisted on maximum pressure on Iran – the Biden administration has turned that to maximum diplomacy,” said Dr Tobias Borck, research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, who specialises in Middle East security.

After all, Biden was the vice-president in the Obama administration that first took the US, along with the UK and others, into the nuclear deal with Iran (or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). Under the accord, Iran would limit its sensitive nuclear activities in return for the lifting of crippling economic sanctions.

Trump pulled America out of that deal and reimposed sanctions, and other signatories – including the UK, France, and Germany – were unable to find a way to maintain a deal without America. Since his inauguration, Biden has wanted to put it back in place.

'The Biden administration sees engagement with Iran as largely positive and desirable'

Credit: Jabin Botsford/Pool/AP

So, what has this got to do with Nazanin? Well, the shift in administration in the US reopened negotiations, and in doing so, thawed relations between Iran and the West. Diplomacy around hostages wasn’t directly linked to that, but it was another increasingly positive discussion that was taking place alongside it.

Now, progress on the nuclear deal stalled because one key signatory is Russia – and its decision to invade Ukraine significantly complicated the situation. Borck said there are now fears in the US that completing the nuclear deal will give Russia a backdoor, via Iran, to avoid its sanctions. That leaves the US in a difficult position with Iran, but it doesn’t, and didn’t, stop the UK pushing ahead with its progress over hostages.

And the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, could complete the jigsaw, in part, because of the muted reaction she knew it would get from a United States under a different leader.

“It is very clear that under a Trump administration, making a deal like this would have been significantly harder for the UK – simply because – you can imagine Trump’s response to us giving this money to Iran.

"While the Biden administration sees engagement with Iran as largely positive and desirable,” added Borck.

That is not to say that other factors are not important. Truss pointed to the change in administration in Iran in 2021, from the more reformist figure of Hassan Rouhani, to the more conservative Ebrahim Raisi. Why would that help?

Some say that he was more able to complete a deal like this because there was no pressure to prove his conservative credentials.

Then there is the question of Truss herself. I’m told by civil servants that she has a laser-like determination to get things done. They say that can make her challenging to work for – but it can also mean results.

Civil servants say Foreign Secretary Liz Truss 'has a laser-like determination to get things done'

But what about oil? Some have pointed out that Iran could be an option in selling far more oil in the face of so much of the world trying to pivot away from Russia. It is true that this could happen, but ultimately that relies not on the UK, but on the US, and its return to the nuclear deal. Only that would limit the sanctions that currently prevent Iran from taking action here.

Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the return of Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Ashouri was "wonderful" but did not ease concerns over Iran's actions.

“[Iran] continues to unjustly detain other British and foreign nationals, support extremist groups across the region, its hard-line government pays little regard for the human rights of Iranians, and it retains an active nuclear and ballistic missile programme," he said.

He warned against "short-termist shifts to other authoritarian states" and said the UK needs to move away from fossil fuels and "onto clean, cheap, homegrown renewables instead".

For Zaghari-Ratcliffe and others, this huge geopolitical wrangle has meant years of their lives lost to a tragedy that everyone hopes they can slowly rebuild from.

Iran charges aid worker Zaghari-Ratcliffe with ‘propaganda against the system’
Issued on: 14/03/2021 - 

Gabriella Ratcliffe, daughter of British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, protests outside the Iranian Embassy in London on March 8, 2021. © Andrew Boyers, REUTERS

Text by: FRANCE 24

British-Iranian dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe appeared in a Tehran court Sunday to face new charges of "propaganda against the system", a week after she finished serving a five-year sentence, her lawyer said.

The hearing has dashed hopes of family and supporters for a swift release of the 42-year-old, in a case that has heightened diplomatic tensions between London and Tehran.

"The hearing took place in a very calm and good atmosphere, in the presence of my client," her lawyer Hojjat Kermani told AFP, adding that the judgement would be handed down at a later and unspecified date.

According to Kermani, she is now being prosecuted for "propaganda against the system for having participated in a rally in front of the Iranian embassy in London" in 2009.

"Given the evidence presented by the defence and the legal process, and the fact that my client has also served her previous sentence, I hope that she will be acquitted," the lawyer added.

In London, Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s Member of Parliament Tulip Siddiq said that "no verdict was given", but added that "it should be delivered within a week".

UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said Sunday that the new charges against Zaghari-Ratcliffe are “unacceptable”.

“It is unacceptable that Iran has chosen to continue a second wholly arbitrary case against Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe,” Raab wrote on Twitter.

"She must be allowed to return to her family in the UK without delay. We continue to do all we can to support her," he added.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was detained while on holiday in 2016 and convicted of plotting to overthrow the regime in Tehran – accusations she strenuously denied.

The mother-of-one was working at the time as a project manager for Thomson Reuters Foundation, the media organisation's philanthropic wing.

She has been under house arrest for months and had her ankle tag removed, giving her more freedom of movement and allowing her to visit relatives in Tehran.

She completed her sentence on March 7.

Rights group says Zaghari-Ratcliffe experienced ‘torture’ in prison

A day later, her husband, Richard, and their six-year-old daughter, Gabriella, held a vigil outside the Iranian embassy in central London demanding she be allowed home.

He tried to deliver an Amnesty International petition signed by 160,000 supporters calling for his wife's release, but was turned away.

Earlier this month, Richard Ratcliffe told the BBC her detention has "the potential to drag on and on".

Media in both the UK and Iran and Richard Ratcliffe have drawn a possible link between Nazanin's detention and a British debt dating back more than 40 years.

The British government has previously admitted it owes Iran up to £300 million (€350 million), but both countries have denied any link with the Zaghari-Ratcliffe case.

She has been temporarily released from Tehran's Evin prison and has been under house arrest since the spring due to the coronavirus outbreak.

For four years, however, at Evin she spent time in solitary confinement in windowless cells, declared hunger strikes and had medical treatment withheld.

While in prison, she suffered from lack of hygiene and even contemplated suicide, according to her husband.

Iranian authorities have consistently denied that Zaghari-Ratcliffe was mistreated.

On Friday, human rights campaign group Redress handed a report to Raab which it said "confirms the severity of the ill-treatment that Nazanin has suffered".

The legal campaigners said that it "considers that Iran's treatment of Nazanin constitutes torture”.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

News Scoop: Nazanin Fateh

It turns out I have a scoop, no one else has covered the all Party MP news conference in Ottawa on Tuesday over the issue of Nazanin Fateh.

2 women unite in desperate cause

NAZANIN FATEHI: The Kurdish woman awaits execution in an Iranian prison for killing the man who tried to rape her NAZANIN AFSHIN-JAM: The Canadian model is leading a growing international campaign to spare the jailed woman's life

Along with Nazanin Af Shin-Jam,was Liberal MP Belinda Stronach who led the pack of MP's but no press release is on the Liberal web site.
Alexa McDonough was there for the NDP, ditto no press release.
Josée Verner was there for the Conservatives and again no press release.

Nor was there any coverage in the MSM so you can only read about it here. the press conference was coverd on CBC Newsworld and has not been archieved.

You see this story was swamped by the news coverage about the so called Terrorist Conspiracy. The life of a girl in Iran is worth less newsprint than the comic book accusations that so called terrorists planned to behead the PM.

I would call that a classical example of sexism in the media.



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Secret schools enable Afghanistan's teen girls to skirt Taliban's education ban

NPR
July 12, 2022
DIAA HADID
FAZELMINALLAH QAZIZAI

A teenage girl wearing a face mask, head scarf and long black robe listens to a math teacher at a tutoring center in Kabul. The center was established by a women's rights activist to circumvent a Taliban ban on girls attending secondary school. The activist said she has informal permission by Taliban authorities to run the center as long as teenage girls abide by a strict dress code.

Diaa Hadid/NPR

KABUL, Afghanistan – Inside a small room in a house on Kabul's outskirts, about ten teenage girls are defying their Taliban rulers who have banned them from attending secondary school. "Let's learn," one student slowly reads to another as they review English lessons from a textbook. "Learn the words: Yellow, blue, red, green."

The girls attend a secret school run by a young woman barely older than her students, 21-year-old Nazanin, whose lavender headscarf matched her nail polish on the day we visited.

"When the Taliban said girls can't go to secondary school anymore, I thought to myself, 'what can I do?'," she tells NPR. "How can I raise the morale of the girls around me?" She and the young students requested they only be referred to by their first names, to avoid being identified by Taliban officials.

It's been nearly a year since the Taliban seized power and stopped some 850,000 Afghan girls from attending secondary school, according to UNICEF figures. The regime had promised to allow girls to return on March 23. But it appears a minority of senior hardliners had a change of heart. Teenage girls arrived to their old classrooms only to be sent home again, many in tears.

The Taliban have been pressured to reverse their decision by the international community, Afghan women, girls — even prominent Afghan clerics known for their loyalty to the Taliban. An Education Ministry spokesman tells NPR they're ready to open those schools whenever their leadership says they can. But hopes are slim. At a nationwide conference of Taliban loyalist clerics and traders that took place from June 30 to July 2, local media reported that girls education was only mentioned by two of the 3,000 male attendees. The communique issued at the gathering's end called on the international community to recognize the Taliban administration but contained only a vague reference to education.

Secret schools and loopholes

A teenage girl revises the words for different colors in an English class held in a small secret school on the outskirts of Kabul. The school was established inside a home in a working class area of Kabul after the Taliban reneged on a promise in late March to allow girls to attend secondary school.

Diaa Hadid/NPR

Many Afghan girls aren't waiting for the Taliban government to change their minds. Nor are their teachers.

In Kabul, the rural province of Parwan and the western city of Herat alike, women are running secret schools like Nazanin's. They're also finding loopholes around the Taliban's ban on girls attending secondary education, by operating girls madrassas — religious schools — or tutoring centers that essentially replicate high school courses.

"The fact that people have found all of these different ways to try to work around the Taliban ban is an indication of how desperately people want education for themselves, for their daughters, for the for the girls in their families," says Heather Barr, who for Human Rights Watch closely tracks violations against women and girls in Afghanistan.

While some governments may let poor girls fall through the cracks of the school system or have educational or general policies that discriminate against girls, only Afghanistan has banned girls' secondary education outright, she says. "The Taliban should be deeply ashamed that they've made Afghanistan the only country in the world that's denying girls access to education based on their gender."

After the Taliban reneged on their promise to let girls return to secondary school in late March, Nazanin decided to open her small school. Those close to her pitched in. She described her thinking at the time: "If we follow the Taliban, we'd just stay home. No. We have to do something."

Her family helped transform a spare room in their house and painted it a warm yellow. Her grandmother donated a rug. Friends handed over books. Nazanin g-teaches grades seven and eight as well as art. Her cousin teaches the older grades. A friend handles the English class. 

A scene from a small secret school on the outskirts of Kabul.

Diaa Hadid/NPR

Word of mouth has filtered across the alleyways in Nazanin's hardscrabble, working-class area. Her class is filled with students like 14-year-old Leila.

Leila pulls out a black pen from her Barbie-themed pencil case, opens her notebook and hunches over the low table she shares with the other girls. She copies English sentences off the whiteboard. "She is pretty," she whispers as she writes. "Our classroom is hot."

The Taliban's ban is just the latest barrier to Leila's education. During the pandemic, Leila missed a year of schooling. Last year, after she returned, tragedy struck: militants targeted teenage girls at her school, Sayed al-Shuhada, as they were streaming out of the gate, detonating a vehicle rigged with explosives that killed more than 80.

Leila was still inside her school when the attack occurred, but she lost many of her friends. And yet she returned three days later, expecting to resume studies. The school hadn't even reopened. Weeks later, her parents pulled her out, fearing another attack. Then, the Taliban swept to power.

Now, Leila walks to her secret school from her house nearby.

To avoid suspicion, she tucks her notebooks behind whatever novel she's borrowed from Nazanin's modest book collection. This week, it's a book of Persian poetry. The girls think if they're seen reading, that's okay. But studying — that could get them into trouble.

Even the Taliban isn't 100% opposed to schooling for teen girls

Teenage girls take notes in an English class in a small secret school on the outskirts of Kabul.

Diaa Hadid/NPR

The Taliban, as a group, don't all agree on banning girls' secondary education. One senior Taliban bureaucrat requested anonymity to explain the ban to NPR because of the subject's sensitivity. He says the Taliban's hardcore loyalists demanded the ban in accordance with the conservative tradition that girls should stay home.

There are exceptions: The ban isn't applied in a handful of provinces where community leaders, typically men, voice support for girls' education.

The ban, paradoxically enough, does not apply to colleges either.

That has led to a surreal situation in Afghanistan where teenage girls must stay home, but a young woman lucky enough to have been in college when the Taliban seized power can still legally pursue her degree. A lack of professors to teach the women alongside strict dress codes appears to have kept many college-age women home, however.

The Taliban official says that in places where the ban is in effect, girls and their families can pay to attend privately run tutoring centers, where students typically go to improve their grades.

It's not clear how many Afghan girls are in secret schools or otherwise finding ways to educate themselves, but it almost certain that it is only a fraction of the some 850,000 girls who live in parts of Afghanistan where secondary schools have closed. According to UNICEF figures from 2019, which was the last time a school census was conducted, there were 1.1 million girls in secondary school. Some 250,000 of those girls live in provinces where secondary schools are still operational.

In Kabul, some of the luckiest girls end up in a basement on a quiet Kabul street, where 34-year-old Zainab set up a tutoring center in April to keep girls learning. She conducts online language lessons for Afghans abroad to raise money and is seeking external sponsors as well. "We cover secondary school subjects. We even hired teachers who lost their jobs. It's all free. I don't [want] the girls to miss out on an education."

Zainab says Taliban authorities have informally allowed her to run the center, provided the girls obey strict dress codes. And they do: The teenagers filter in wearing black robes, headscarves and face masks.

The center offers classes for English and Quran memorization. The most popular course prepares girls for the college admissions test. It's unclear, however, if the Taliban will allow new female college entrants.

One top achieving student at Zainab's center, 17-year-old Sahar, says her current situation is not like school.

She's meant to be in grade 11. She goes to three different tutoring centers to round out her education. She leaves home at 6 a.m. each morning and races between classes. She worries her bag, filled with books, might attract hostility. "I get really scared when the Taliban guys see me. I change my routes," she says.

Some days, Sahar says, her morale collapses. "I've always wanted to be a doctor and until the Taliban took over, I was getting top marks. Now I've got no chance. She and her mother cry together sometimes, Sahar says, "because our future is so dark."

It's a deep sadness she says her mother shares. Because when the Taliban were last in power, her mother was a teenager. And she couldn't attend school either.

Additional reporting by Khwaga Ghani from California.

Nazanin

And while I am at it here is a link to Nazanin Af Shin-Jam's site with three cuts from her upcoming album; Nazanin, to be released in July.

Pop World Beat and call to revolution in Iran. Not bad, for a Former Miss. Canada, Miss. World runner up.

And like all of her sites even this one contains info on her cause celebre; Nazanin Fateh




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Nazanin, Af, Shin-Jam's, Fateh, World-Music, Canada, Iran, Pop, Miss-Canada, Miss-World, Bodog-Music

Iran releases British-Iranian prisoner Morad Tahbaz on furlough

Sophie Wingate, PA Political Correspondent

A British-born environmentalist who was jailed for more than four years in Iran has been released on furlough with an electronic tag.

Morad Tahbaz, 66, is at his family’s home in Iranian capital Tehran, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said on Wednesday.

The wildlife conservationist was allowed out on furlough on the day Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and fellow dual national Anoosheh Ashoori were freed and allowed to return to the UK in March, but he was returned to custody after just two days.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori arriving at RAF Brize Norton in March

 (Leon Neal/PA)

His daughter Roxanne Tahbaz confirmed he is on a “temporary furlough in Iran with an ankle bracelet”, saying in a statement she was glad he could be with his wife and get the medical care he urgently requires.

“However, the UK Government’s work is unfinished. My father is a UK-born national and he and my mother should have been on the flight with Nazanin and Anoosheh four months ago,” she wrote.

“They should be free. Home is not in Iran, home is with their children.

“As the Foreign Secretary campaigns on a promise of results and delivery to the nation, I hope she will stand by her promise to my family and to my father and ensure his unconditional release.”


An FCDO spokesperson said: “The Tahbaz family have confirmed Morad has been released from Evin prison on furlough and is at their home in Tehran.

“Morad is a tri-national and we continue to work closely with the United States to urge the Iranian authorities to permanently release him and allow his departure from Iran.”

It is understood that Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has told Mr Tahbaz’s family the UK could not secure his full departure from Iran because he is also a US citizen, and Iranian authorities are also having discussions with US counterparts.

Ms Tahbaz, who has been campaigning for her father’s release for months, in June accused ministers of failing to keep a dialogue open with her about measures being taken to secure his release.

Roxanne Tahbaz, Richard Ratcliffe and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe after her release from detention in Iran in March (Victoria Jones/PA)

“Our father has been unjustly jailed in Iran for nearly four and a half years, but Liz Truss and the Government still haven’t informed us over what they’re doing to secure his release,” she said at the time.

“There doesn’t seem to be any sense of urgency – nothing to suggest the Foreign Secretary and her office feel they need to get my father out of prison immediately”.

In March, the UK said it had secured Mr Tahbaz’s furlough, along with the release and return of Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Mr Ashoori.

This came after the UK Government finally agreed to settle a £400 million debt to Iran dating back to the rule of the Shah in the 1970s.

But two days later Mr Tahbaz was forced to return to Evin prison.

Evin prison in the north-western suburbs of Tehran (Alamy/PA)

Eilidh Macpherson, Amnesty International UK’s individuals at risk campaign manager, said: “This is very encouraging news but we’ve been here before and we now need to see the UK pressing hard for Morad’s full, unconditional release and permission for him to leave Iran along with his wife Vida.

“Back in March when Morad was given a temporary release for just 48 hours, it was clear the Iranian authorities were once again playing cruel games with a British national for diplomatic gain.

“It goes without saying that Morad should never have been jailed in the first place and it remains a matter of grave concern that British nationals continue to be held arbitrarily by the Iranian authorities like this.”

Mr Tahbaz, a prominent conservationist and board member of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, was arrested during a crackdown on environmental activists in January 2018.

He was sentenced to 10 years in prison with his colleagues on vague charges of spying for the US and undermining Iran’s security.

His wife has also been placed under a travel ban by the Iranian authorities.

Arms deal and sanctions trap British-Iranian mother in Tehran’s ‘hostage diplomacy’

Issued on: 10/03/2021 -

Richard Ratcliffe, husband of British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and their daughter Gabriella protest outside the Iranian Embassy in London, March 8, 2021. © Reuters

Text by: FRANCE 24

The fate of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian woman detained in Tehran, is linked to an arms deal dating from the reign of deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and is another example of Iran's policy of “hostage diplomacy”. The UK has agreed to pay Iran its dues, but US sanctions present another challen

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s life changed on April 3, 2016. A British-Iranian dual national, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested with her daughter, Gabriella, then not yet 2 years old, at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport.

An aid worker, Zaghari-Ratcliffe had travelled to Iran to visit her family for Nowruz, the Iranian New Year. She was on her way back to the UK when she was arrested and accused of "plotting to overthrow the Islamic regime" – a charge she vehemently denies. Zaghari-Ratcliffe was then separated from her daughter, whose British passport was confiscated, and sent to prison.

It was the start of a long ordeal for the young mother, marked by harsh stays in solitary confinement in windowless cells, blindfolded interrogations and hunger strikes to demand medical care. In November 2016, Amnesty International raised an alert that Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s severe detention conditions were driving her to contemplate suicide.

After nearly five years in prison, Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 42, who worked as a project manager at the Thomson Reuters Foundation, now faces charges of "spreading propaganda against the regime". The Iranian justice system has summoned her to appear on Sunday, March 14, to answer the new charges against her. Her passport has not been returned and she cannot leave to join her husband and now 6-year-old daughter, who returned to London in 2019 to start school in the UK.

On March 7, Zaghari-Ratcliffe ended her initial sentence and was allowed to remove her electronic bracelet while under house arrest. But she’s far from finished with the Iranian judicial system. According to regional experts, her fate is linked to a larger diplomatic game.

A £400 million bilateral debt

For her husband, Richard Ratcliffe – who has been tirelessly campaigning for her freedom since her arrest – his wife is a "hostage" of a sinister political game involving a debt of £400 million (€464 million) owed by the UK to Iran within the framework of an arms contract signed before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Iranian officials told his wife that her detention would end when London settled the infamous £400 million debt, Ratcliffe has told the British press.

"At that time, the Shah of Iran bought more than a thousand tanks [1,750 Chieftain tanks] from Britain and paid an advance because there was a lot of money in the coffers of the Iranian state," recalled François Nicoullaud, a French diplomat who served as France’s ambassador to Iran between 2001 and 2005. But after the 1979 revolution, the UK refused to honour the order.

In 2017, after years of negotiations and legal battles, Britain said it was ready to settle its bill to Tehran while denying the move had any connection with Zaghari-Ratcliffe's detention.

But that was before Donald Trump withdrew the US from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and reimposed tough sanctions under his administration’s “maximum pressure” strategy.

"The British do not deny that they have a debt. The problem is the US sanctions that prevent Britain from paying the money to Iran," Nicoullaud explained. "Poor Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe finds herself the victim of an inextricable struggle between two states."

All eyes are now on Washington, DC, where the arrival of Joe Biden as president could eventually lead to the lifting of sanctions banning bank transactions with Iran. But more than a month into his presidency, Biden has not yet launched a major initiative to return the US to the 2015 deal, a campaign promise that some fear has been put on a backbench.

Aware of the stakes, her husband has kept up the pressure on his government. “It is, in my view, clearly a game of chess. She’s the pawn,” explained Ratcliffe in an interview with the New York Times last week.

‘Hostage-taking’ as a foreign policy

Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case is not unique. Around a dozen other foreign and dual nationals are currently trapped in the same situation. These include two French nationals, researcher Fariba Adelkhah – who was placed under house arrest in October 2020 after serving 16 months in prison – and a French tourist detained since May 2020. The latter was arrested under murky circumstances in a desert area near the Iran-Turkmenistan border while he was touring the country in a van.

While some call this phenomenon "hostage diplomacy", Nicoullaud prefers the term "hostage-taking". "It's nothing less than that. It is hostage-taking. It's a very bad Iranian habit to use quid pro quo. It started with the beginnings of the Islamic Republic in 1979, when 53 hostages from the US embassy in Tehran were held for nearly a year and a half. Since then it has been repeated, and Iran has seen that this extraordinary means of pressure has worked over the years."

One of the last hostages released, French researcher Roland Marchal, was released in March 2020 after nine months in detention. Marchal was released as part of an exchange with an Iranian engineer detained in France. The Iranian engineer, Jalal Ruhollahnejad, was detained in France and wanted by the US on charges of violating sanctions on the import of sensitive electronic systems to Iran.

This article is a translation of the original in French.

#IWD

Iran releases British-Iranian aid worker Zaghari-Ratcliffe from house arrest

Supporters hold a photo of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe during a vigil for British-Iranian mother imprisoned in Tehran outisde the Iranian Embassy on January 16, 2017 in London, England [Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images]

March 7, 2021 


Iran has released British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe from house arrest at the end of her five-year prison sentence, but she has been summoned to court again on another charge, Reuters reported quoting her lawyer on Sunday.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested at a Tehran airport in April 2016 and later convicted of plotting to overthrow the clerical establishment.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who served out most of her sentence in Tehran's Evin prison, was released last March during the coronavirus pandemic and kept under house arrest, but her movements were restricted and she was barred from leaving the country.

On Sunday the authorities removed her ankle tag.

"She was pardoned by Iran's supreme leader last year, but spent the last year of her term under house arrest with electronic shackles tied to her feet. Now they're cast off," her lawyer Hojjat Kermani told an Iranian website. "She has been freed."

Read: Britain says it's appalled by Iran's new case against Zaghari-Ratcliffe

Iran's judiciary was not immediately available to comment about the release. Her family and the foundation, a charity that operates independently of media firm Thomson Reuters and its news subsidiary Reuters, deny the charge.

Kermani said a hearing for Zaghari-Ratcliffe's second case has been scheduled on March 14.

"In this case, she is accused of propaganda against the Islamic Republic's system for participating in a rally in front of the Iranian Embassy in London in 2009 and giving interview to the BBC Persian TV channel at the same time," Kermani said.

He said he hoped that "this case will be closed at this stage, considering the previous investigation".

The detentions of dozens of dual nationals and foreigners have complicated ties between Tehran and several European countries including Germany, France and Britain, all parties to Tehran's 2015 nuclear deal with six powers.

The release come as Iran and the United States are trying to revive the deal, which former U.S. president abandoned in 2018 and reimposed sanctions on Iran. Tehran responded by scaling down its compliance.

British-Iranian aid worker released after five years: lawyer

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was detained in 2016 and later convicted of plotting to topple the government and sentenced to five years in jail. A British lawmaker said she was, however, summoned again to court.

 British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has ended for five-year sentence in Iran, her lawyer Hojjat Kermani said on Sunday.

Her ankle bracelet was removed, but she has been summoned again to court, according to British lawmaker Tulip Siddiq. 

"I have been in touch with Nazanin's family. Some news: 1) Thankfully her ankle tag has been removed. Her first trip will be to see her grandmother. 2) Less positive - she has been summoned once again to court next Sunday," Siddiq, who is the member of parliament for where Zaghari-Ratcliffe used to live, said on Twitter.

It was not immediately clear whether Zaghari-Ratcliffe was allowed to leave Iran. Kermani was quoted as saying that "a hearing for Zaghari's second case has been scheduled at branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran."

Ankle bracelet removed for first time

The aid worker was able to remove her ankle bracelet for the first time since being released from prison on furlough because of the pandemic last year, her lawyer said. She has been under arrest at her parent's home in Tehran since. 

Iran's semi-official news agency ISNA reported on Sunday that Zaghari-Ratcliffe would be summoned to court on March 13 over the new charges, which were not specified. No other Iranian media immediately confirmed the new court date. 

UK calls for immediate release

In response, the UK government called for the immediate release of Zaghari-Ratcliffe, as the looming court date dashes hopes from her family, friends and colleagues of an immediate return home. British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the government in London welcomed the removal of her ankle bracelet. 

However, he said her treatment by Iranian authorities was "intolerable."

"She must be allowed to return to the UK as soon as possible to be reunited with her family," Raab tweeted. 

It remained unclear what would happen in court next week. Her family and supporters fear the worst, due to tattered political relations between Iran and the UK, and other world powers. 

'More sleepless nights ahead'

"We don't know how to interpret being summoned ... Is it that they're just going to finish off all the paperwork and release her and give her passport back? Or Is it that they are going to whack her with that second sentence?'' her husband's sister, Rebecca Ratcliffe, told Sky News. The uncertainty means "there are a few more sleepless nights ahead of us," she said. 

The move comes as tensions escalate over Iran's atomic deal with world powers. Since former US President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018, Iran has been accelerating its breaches of the agreement by enriching more uranium than allowed, along other violations. 

Additionally, Britain and Iran are negotiating a row over a debt of around £400 million (€465 million) ($530 million) owed to Iran by London, for a payment the late Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi made for Chieftain tanks that were never delivered. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested at a Tehran airport in April 2016 as she prepared to return to Britain with her daughter after a family visit.

She was later sentenced to five years in jail after being convicted of plotting to overthrow Iran's clerical establishment. 

Iran debt should have been settled years ago - Zaghari-Ratcliffe

British-Iranian woman jailed by Iran criticises UK government for length of time it took to secure her release from Tehran jail.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has said she should have been released from detention in Iran six years ago but the British government failed her. (AFP Archive)

Aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has accused Britain and Iran of treating her like a political pawn, saying it should not have taken six years for London to secure her release from detention in Tehran.

Appearing at a news conference in parliament in London, the 44-year-old said she would always be haunted by her time in prison but would slowly work to rebuild her life with her daughter, 7, and husband away from the spotlight.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who holds both British and Iranian citizenship, returned to Britain last week from Iran, where she was held for six years after being convicted of plotting to overthrow the clerical establishment.

She returned alongside another dual national, Anoosheh Ashoori, after London resolved what it called a parallel issue - repaying to Tehran a $526 million debt dating back to 1979 for the purchase of military tanks that were never delivered.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe said she had been told shortly after her arrest that the Iranians wanted "something off the Brits", and she could not understand why it had taken six years, and five different foreign secretaries, for it to be resolved.

"I mean, how many foreign secretaries does it take for someone to come home? Five?" she asked. "What's happened now should have happened six years ago."

READ MORE: Making sense of Iran’s ambitions in post-Soviet states



A spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said all foreign ministers had worked hard to secure her release.

"The government, including the prime minister, was committed to securing Nazanin's release as soon as possible. It was always entirely in Iran's gift to release detained dual nationals," he told reporters.

"All the foreign secretaries who have taken on this role have worked hard with officials to secure the release. It has been extremely complicated, it has been very difficult work."

Famous for a week

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested by Revolutionary Guards at Tehran airport on April 3, 2016, while trying to return to Britain with her then 22-month-old daughter Gabriella from an Iranian New Year's trip to see her parents.

Her family and her employer, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, denied the charge against her. The Thomson Reuters Foundation is a charity that operates independently of Thomson Reuters and its news subsidiary Reuters.

"I have been a pawn in the hands of the two governments over the past six years," she said. Zaghari-Ratcliffe thanked her family, friends and journalists for keeping her case in the spotlight, and said she was determined not to hold a grudge for the rest of her life.

She added that she only believed she was going home when she finally stepped on to the plane.

"Gabriella told me on the phone one day when I was in Iran, 'Mummy you do realise that you are very famous, and then it's me, and then it's daddy'," she said, adding that she told her daughter it would be better to have a "normal" life.

"And she said, 'Oh you're not going to be famous forever. Maximum a week'."

Nazanin Boniadi Recalls 'Traumatizing Encounter with the So-Called Morality Police' in Iran at Age 12

Jen Juneau
Thu, November 17, 2022 

Nazanin Boniadi

Jon Kopaloff/Getty

Nazanin Boniadi is recalling a "traumatic" experience she had as an adolescent that is inspiring her to "use [her] voice" in support of women and girls in Iran.

On Wednesday, the Bombshell actress, 42, gave a moving keynote speech at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, during the Academy Women's Luncheon presented by Chanel, about once being approached by the "so-called morality police" in her birth country.

"My parents realized the dangers of raising a daughter in a social, political and legal climate that was growing increasingly oppressive, particularly towards women and girls," she said. "Although they were granted political asylum in London when I was just 3 weeks old, the challenges facing women in Iran became ingrained in my psyche."

"And after traveling across Iran when I was 12 and a traumatizing encounter with the so-called morality police tasked with enforcing the country's Islamic dress code and behavior, I knew I had to use my voice to promote theirs," added Boniadi, who was born in Tehran but raised in the U.K.

Boniadi's speech came two months after the death of Iranian woman Mahsa Amini. According to the U.S. Treasury Department, Amini, 22, was transferred to a hospital in a coma the same day she was detained for allegedly wearing her hijab too loosely, "and died two days later from internal injuries."

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Women hold signs and chant slogans during a protest over the death of Iranian Mahsa Amini outside the Iranian Consulate on September 29, 2022 in Istanbul, Turkey. Mahsa Amini fell into a coma and died after being arrested in Tehran by the morality police, for allegedly violating the countries hijab rules. Amini's death has sparked weeks of violent protests across Iran.More

Chris McGrath/Getty Protest over the death of Mahsa Amini in Istanbul, Turkey

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The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power star went on to say in her speech that "Mahsa Amini's murder has forced us to reckon with our complacency in protecting the rights of women globally."

"Perhaps it's the understanding of the fragility of our freedoms that has galvanized the world around Mahsa and plight to women in Iran," Boniadi continued. "Not since the anti-Apartheid movement of South Africa have we seen the level of global attention to the fight to end any kind of segregation anywhere. But how do we, the creative community, turn our outrage into meaningful action and prevent the Iran authorities from crushing yet another uprising?"

Boniadi shouted out fellow celebrities whom she says have "successfully used their platforms to amplify and elevate the movement," like Alfre Woodard, Danny Glover and Blair Underwood.

"That's exactly what we need to do for Iran right now," she said. "We need the world to send a strong message to the Iranian authorities. Their crimes will not remain uninvestigated or unpunished. We have to demand that our representatives stand unequivocally with the Iranian people and hold the Islamic Republic regime to account for their crimes under international law."

Near the end of her speech, Boniadi implored listeners to protest, network and "continue to amplify the voices of the Iranian people on social media by following and sharing information from credible activists and organizations," asking her "greater artistic community" to "join us in our fight for a free Iran."

Boniadi spoke about her early life in Iran to Katie Couric last month, explaining how her parents "were opposed to the newly formed Islamic Republic regime" following the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

As a result, the family escaped to London when the Hotel Mumbai actress was just 20 days old — as her "father was on an execution list" in Iran.

Boniadi, who is an ambassador for Amnesty International U.K. ambassador and member of the Council on Foreign Relations, also recalled "having the freedom of dress taken away from me" the first time she visited Iran after the move, when she was 12 years old, being "forced to wear a hijab."

"A member of the so-called morality police came up to me and my uncle, and in a very harsh tone demanded that we prove that we were married, because we were simply walking down the street," Boniadi told Couric, 65. "It was such a jarring, harrowing experience. It was seared into my mind. I remember thinking at that moment that if I ever had a platform where I could tell people what the everyday experience of young girls in Iran is, I would share that."

"I've been fighting for 14 years to amplify the voices of the Iranian people against their oppressive regime," she added. "And I will continue until they achieve the freedom they deserve."

UK must treat Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe as Iranian hostage, husband says

Campbell MacDiarmid
Thu, November 26, 2020

the UK must acknowledge that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is an Iranian hostage, says husband Richard Ratcliffe, pictured with his daughter Gabriella, 6 - Clara Molden for The Telegraph

The UK needs to recognise Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s detention in Iran as a state-sponsored hostage taking, her husband said Thursday, the day after Tehran released a jailed British-Australian academic in an apparent prisoner swap.

Melbourne University lecturer Kylie Moore-Gilbert was released from Tehran’s Evin prison on Wednesday after serving over two years of a 10-year sentence for spying. Australia refused to confirm she was freed in a prisoner exchange, saying only that her release followed “diplomatic engagement with the Iranian government”.

Thailand said Thursday it had repatriated three Iranians involved in a failed 2012 bombing targeting Israeli diplomats. While Thai officials declined to call it a swap, Iranian state television showed the garlanded men being hailed as returning heroes in the same segment showing Dr Moore-Gilbert departing Tehran airport.

“It’s very certainly transactional from their point of view,” said Richard Ratcliffe, whose wife has been detained for four-and-a-half years in Iran.

The British-Iranian mother of one from north London was jailed in 2016 on charges of trying to overthrow the government, something her and her employer Thomson Reuters Foundation strongly deny. But the 42-year-old’s release has been tied to repayment of a long-standing £400 million debt that London owes Tehran.

The UK has acknowledged it owes the debt – which arose over non-delivery of 1,500 Chieftain tanks ordered and paid for by the Shah of Iran shortly before his 1979 overthrow – but says repayment must not breach sanctions.

However Mr Ratcliffe said that the UK’s position of not linking repayment of the debt to the release of Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe ignored the reality of her case. “They picked her up for that money and they have made it increasingly clear about what that’s about,” he said.

He called on the UK to acknowledge that Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was a victim of hostage diplomacy and not simply a citizen in need of consular assistance.

“I think it would protect her and protect others in the future to call Iran out for taking hostages,” he said. “Hostage taking and torture is no different than any other kind of abuse, you do not protect people from abuse by euphemising it away. You need a clear accountability so people do not do it with impunity.”

But publicly at least, the UK has been reluctant to speak out forcefully.

“I welcome news that Kylie Moore-Gilbert has been able to return to Australia and her family,” Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said on Wednesday. “I call on the Iranian government to release all the remaining dual British nationals arbitrarily detained and allow them to reunite with their loved ones.”

Currently on temporary home release in Tehran, Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe will complete her sentence in March. But an Iranian court issued a new charge against her in September.

“I would still take seriously the threat of a new prison sentence,” said Mr Ratcliffe. “I would expect if we wait long enough she will be sent back to prison again.”

While the Foreign Office remains tight-lipped about efforts to free Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, her husband said he was skeptical that their current approach is working. “The British government preference seems to be to wait for the other side to be less unreasonable, well we’ve been waiting a long time.”

From Tehran’s perspective, its success in exchanging one prisoner for three jailed citizens may be encouraging.

Michael Stephens, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said: “I think what Kylie's release proves is that all along she was innocent, and that this was a cheap shot policy by Iran to get some of its captives out of jail. Ultimately it confirms that Iran has a policy of taking hostages and using them as leverage, and that it appears to get them what they want.”

But for Mr Ratcliffe, the release of one prisoner means his wife’s release must be “a bit closer”.

“It's a happy day for Kylie, one more family starts to heal again,” he said. “We’d like to be next.”

Kylie Moore-Gilbert: Academic says Iran detention was 'long and traumatic'

 
Thu, November 26, 2020

A British-Australian academic who has been freed from jail in Iran has thanked supporters for getting her through "a long and traumatic ordeal".

Kylie Moore-Gilbert has consistently denied accusations of espionage since her arrest in Iran in September 2018.

She had been serving a 10-year sentence but was released in a swap for three jailed Iranians, Tehran said.
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Dr Moore-Gilbert's family said they were "relieved and ecstatic" that she was free.

The Melbourne University lecturer had been travelling on an Australian passport in 2018 when she was detained at Tehran airport as she tried to leave following a conference.

Concerns for her wellbeing escalated in August when news emerged that she had been transferred to Qarchak, a notorious prison in the desert.

On Thursday, Dr Moore-Gilbert said Australian officials had worked "tirelessly" to secure her freedom. She thanked them and other supporters who had "meant the world to me" while in detention.

Kylie Moore-Gilbert was reported to have been on several hunger strikes while in Evin prison in Tehran

"I have nothing but respect, love and admiration for the great nation of Iran and its warm-hearted, generous and brave people," she said in a statement.

"It is with bittersweet feelings that I depart your country, despite the injustices which I have been subjected to. I came to Iran as a friend and with friendly intentions, and depart Iran with those sentiments not only still intact, but strengthened."

The Cambridge-educated scholar - who was tried in secret - had endured "over 800 days of incredible hardship", her family added.

"We cannot convey the overwhelming happiness that each of us feel at this incredible news," they said in a statement released by the Australian government.

According to Iranian state media, she was exchanged for an Iranian businessman and two Iranian citizens "who had been detained abroad". They have not yet been named.

Video of the apparent exchange was published by state broadcaster IRIB news and the Tasnim website.


نخستین تصویر تبادل جاسوس صهیونیستی با سه تاجر ایرانی pic.twitter.com/Y0lEIFLY5J

— باشگاه خبرنگاران جوان | YJC (@yjc___agency) November 25, 2020

The footage, which had no commentary, showed Dr Moore-Gilbert wearing a grey hijab and being driven away in a mini-van. Three men are seen being met by officials. One is in a wheelchair.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison declined to comment on whether a swap had taken place, but said no-one had been released in Australia.

"The injustice of her detention and her conviction, Australia has always rejected, and I'm just so pleased that Kylie's coming home," he told local network Nine.

In letters smuggled out of Tehran's Evin prison earlier this year, Dr Moore-Gilbert said she had "never been a spy" and feared for her mental health. She said she had rejected an offer from Iran to become a spy.

"I am not a spy. I have never been a spy, and I have no interest to work for a spying organisation in any country," she wrote.

She was later visited by Australia's ambassador to Iran, Lyndall Sachs, who reported that she was "well".

Dr Moore-Gilbert was reported to have spent long periods in solitary confinement and undertaken hunger strikes while in detention.

Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne said the release "was achieved through diplomatic engagement with the Iranian government".

She added Dr Moore-Gilbert would "soon be reunited with her family" but did not specify when she would be returning to Australia.

Melbourne University Vice-Chancellor Duncan Maskell said he was "delighted" at the news, adding: "We have waited a long time for this day."

Iran has detained a number of foreign nationals and Iranian dual citizens in recent years, many of them on spying charges. Human rights groups have accused Tehran of using the cases as leverage to try to gain concessions from other countries.

British-Iranian charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was jailed on spying charges in 2016. She has always maintained her innocence.

Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, welcomed reports of Dr Moore-Gilbert's release.

"Nazanin and I are really happy for Kylie and her family," he told the BBC. "They have been through so much, borne with such dignity. And it is an early Christmas present for us all, that one more of us is out and on their way home, one more family can begin to heal."

Kate Allen, director of Amnesty International UK, said news of Dr Moore-Gilbert's release was "an enormous relief".

"There may now be renewed grounds for hoping that UK-Iranian dual-nationals like Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori will also be released from their unjust jail terms in Iran in the coming days or weeks," she said.

Anoosheh Ashoori, a retired civil engineer from London, was jailed for 10 years in July 2019 after being convicted of spying for Israel's Mossad intelligence agency.

Kuwait City and its Fragments

by Nazanin Shahrokni and Spyros A. Sofos
April 5th, 2022

A market worker walking in front of a wall full of graffiti in Kuwait City. Source: Francisco Anzola

Originally a small fishing and pearl diving settlement, Kuwait City became a key point in the East India Company sea routes to India and the east coast of Africa in the 18th century. The affluence brought about by the discovery of oil in the 20th century set in motion a dramatic transformation of the Persian Gulf emirate and Kuwait City whose population rose from 62,627 in 1950 to a staggering 3,115,000 in 2021. Kuwait’s gas and oil extraction industry and the service economy that emerged, relied on the import of foreign workers whose number increased dramatically over the years from nearly 31 percent of the population in 1957, to 70 percent in 2022. In response to a demographic shift of such magnitude, Kuwait’s ruling family had to reimagine and rebuild Kuwait City. Central in the redevelopment was the vision of a modern administrative and commercial centre whose periphery expanded rapidly towards the desert surrounding it. In this periphery, new residential suburbs housed the inhabitants who were granted citizenship. Yet, the vision of a modern Kuwait City had little space for those indigenous and migrant populations whose presence and labour were crucial to the materialisation of a new Kuwait City.

Differential inclusion and exclusion processes have fragmented Kuwait City’s population and shape how these fragments inhabit, relate to and experience it. This coupling of fragmentation and inequality has created a dysfunctional urban space, lacking usable public spaces or adequate public transport, marred by high levels of motorisation and environmental degradation. The more attention one turns to the city’s fragments, the more extended the capacity for building a polyphonic city that is not only more inclusive but also efficient.

Kuwait City’s Social Ecology

According to the latest estimates, just under 1.3 million of the emirate’s population are Kuwaitis, 1.2 million are citizens of other Arab countries, approximately 1.5 million are Asian expatriates, 70,000 come from Africa and close to 40,000 from Europe, North and South America and Australia. Yet, this diversity is but one facet of a much more complex urban ecology marked by inequality and segregation.

Tensions between sedentary and nomadic populations is apparent in the form of a hierarchical distinction between the hadar – settled Sunni urban elite – and the badu – Bedouin tribes that used to live a nomadic life in the badiya (desert) surrounding the citadel. The procedure for acquiring citizenship after independence meant that the badu were granted a ‘lesser’ citizenship: apart from the differential political rights that separated them from the hadar, unlike the latter who were relocated to the al-manãtiq al-numüdhajiyya (fifteen model ‘inner’ residential suburbs inside the four ring roads), the badu were not offered housing until the early 1980s when they were moved to modest-sized housing in outlying areas (al-manãtiq al-khãrijiyya) effectively lacking access to the city centre, its administrative services and amenities.

Another significant divide is the one between citizens and the bidun (without [citizenship]). Originating largely in itinerant groups whose lives were divided inside and outside Kuwait’s historical borders that failed to register or meet the exclusive citizenship criteria, the bidun became effective ‘outsiders’ excluded from the benefits of citizenship, not allowed to own property, denied access to free education, relying on precarious, low status jobs, or in the best case joining the low ranks of the military, police or civil service. Social outcasts, they became spatially externalised, banished to settlements in the outskirts of Kuwait City such as Tayma, Sulaibiyya and Ahmadi. These sha’biyya (popular housing), housing most of Kuwait’s 100,000 bidun, have recently become the locus of protests over their exclusion from rights enjoyed by citizens such as free healthcare and education.

The sharpest divide, though, separates citizens and expatriates – mostly lower paid workers in the oil industry, construction, services and domestic sectors. Out of the 1.77 million legally resident expatriates, over 50 percent, roughly 845,000, are illiterate or have basic education. However, statistics point to an asymmetrical distribution between this large segment of Kuwait’s population taking the most menial and vulnerable jobs and a small, highly educated migrant workforce hailing from developed countries and occupying desirable, high-earning positions in healthcare, business and finance.

Consecutive governments, disregarding Kuwait’s dependence on the contribution of migrant labour, represent them as a demographic threat and vow to reduce their numbers. Unskilled migrant workers’ lives have been subjected to restrictions that limit even their basic freedoms. They have been expendable and replaceable, and vilified in the Kuwaiti media on account of their lack of education, ‘their limited health culture,’ and, ironically, their ‘lack of direct contact with mainstream Kuwaiti society’– which is largely the product of design on the part of the authorities.

The kafala (sponsorship) system requires migrants to have a Kuwaiti sponsor (kafeel). In a highly regulated labour market, kafala empowers employers disproportionately and shields them from responsibility in cases of withholding pay, forced labour or abuse as they have the right to petition the immigration authorities to cancel workers’ legal residency, effectively giving them power over the immigration status of those they sponsor. This vulnerability, combined with their precarious presence in Kuwait, strengthens representations of foreign workers as not only outsiders but also inferior. This inferiority is reflected in and further consolidates spatial segregation policies and practices, which are gendered in character: many male workers live in temporary housing near project sites or in higher density residential areas and in the suburbs of Ḥawallī and Al-Sālimiyyah, in cramped rented housing. They are often targeted by government operations such as the 2019 ‘Be Assured’ campaign aimed to remove unmarried or unaccompanied male migrants – so-called ‘bachelors’ – from urban residential areas that left many homeless. Female domestic workers, on the other hand, live with Kuwaiti families in residential neighbourhoods not always served by bus networks as the preference for private transport among Kuwaitis has influenced public transport planning. Their mobility is thus hampered by the cost of taxis given their low income or depends on their employers as the relative lack of leisure and retail infrastructures in residential areas necessitates longer trips.

Despite a tradition of women’s activism, women are often seen as ‘out of place’ in streets, parks, malls and public transport – and are a target of harassment as grassroots initiatives such as the Lan Asket (I will not be silent) Instagram campaign seem to confirm. Patriarchal notions of ‘honour’ curtail women’s freedom of movement and the gendered character of the public/private divide make large swathes of Kuwait City unsafe for them, resulting in gendered geographies of fear. Furthermore, female migrant workers, especially those employed in domestic settings, often experience physical abuse.

The pacifying effects of the state’s welfare provision and the sense of privilege afforded to the citizens, thus, rests on a second distinction between ‘deserving’ insiders and ‘undeserving’ outsiders – bidun and foreign resident labourers while gender, along other social markers of difference, intersects and leaves its own imprint on experiencing the city.

Urban Citizenship: A Bottom-Up Approach

A productive way of looking at the current divides and dysfunctionalities of life in Kuwait is to focus on the city and life in it, especially as the latter is the locus where inequalities have been inscribed in tangible, material ways. Alongside the multiple dividing lines running through Kuwait City, the rapid urbanisation has resulted in the breakdown of traditional forms of solidarity and organisation based on neighbourhoods (firjãn) and tribal kinship structures. This fragmentation and atomisation of city dwellers empowered the state and allowed it to shape the city according to the modernising vision of the ruling elite.

Yet, those populating the urban space rewrite the scripts of living in it in ways that subvert dominant visions and assert different, often splintered visualisations of the right to the city, and acts of ‘(re)assembling’ and reconnecting the urban, of creating their own spatial stories. They reconfigure and claim the city through spatial practices from below, engaging in place-making processes by making communal gardens in disused plots of lands, setting up alternative and inclusive diwanniyat at the seaside – shared spaces where the slow experience of working, living and playing with others unfolds (Amin and Thrift, 2007, p. 137). Ecologies of Belonging and Exclusion in Kuwait City seeks to draw inspiration from such instances/micro-contexts of rewriting the city from below and building a sense of urban citizenship, of starting to think creatively about how this way of ‘planning through community’, to paraphrase Rose (1996), can result in sustainable public spaces and inclusive urban design.



About the author

Nazanin Shahrokni
Nazanin Shahrokni is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Gender Studies at LSE where she is programme director of the MSc Gender and Gender Research. She is PI of the LSE Kuwait Programme 'Ecologies of Belonging and Exclusion: An Intersectional Analysis of Urban Citizenship in Kuwait City' project. Nazanin is author of the award-winning book, Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran (University of California Press, 2020) and a member of the International Sociological Association Executive Board. Her research focuses on the study of feminist geographies, feminist theories of the state, urban governance, gender segregation and gendered mobility. She tweets at @ShahrokniN

Spyros Sofos
Spyros Sofos is based at the LSE Middle East Centre and is Research Officer at the LSE Kuwait Programme 'Ecologies of Belonging and Exclusion: An Intersectional Analysis of Urban Citizenship in Kuwait City' project. His latest book is Turkish Politics and ‘The People’: Mass Mobilisation and Populism (Edinburgh University Press, 2022) while his research focuses on populism, collective action, polarisation and conflict, and urban politics with particular emphasis on Turkey and the MENA region. He is lead editor of openDemocracy’s #rethinkingpopulism project and leads the Lebanon element of the Swedish Institute 'Co-design for Sustainable, Resilient and Inclusive Urban Spaces' project. He tweets at @spyrosasofos