THE POLITICS OF REFORM137twenty- six- year- old stateless Kuwaiti, sat in the driver’s seat. Both men
had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, or ISIS, which was then in the
midst of a gory Ramadan offensive. On the same day, Islamist attackers
also struck a factory in France, a beach resort in Tunisia, a Kurdish village
in Syria, and a peacekeeping base in Somalia. The pair had been ordered
to commit an attack that would “shake Kuwait up.” Al- Gabaa and Saud
targeted the mosque, knowing that ISIS reserved a particular disdain for
adherents of Shiism, the second- largest of Islam’s two main branches.
More than two thousand worshippers had streamed into the down-
town mosque for Friday prayers, mainly men in white kandoura robes.
The sanctuary was packed beyond capacity. At some point toward the
end of the sermon, when the attackers determined that the crowd had
reached its peak, al- Gabaa stepped out of the car and bid his companion
goodbye. The young Saudi threaded his way into the rear of the mosque,
still gripping the detonator in his fist. As his co- conspirator drove toward
the Saudi border, al- Gabaa made his way among the last two rows of
kneeling worshippers. He at last unclasped his fist. An enormous blast
erupted, obliterating al- Gabaa’s body and ripping open the ceiling and
the rear wall of the mosque. The explosion killed twenty- six worshippers,
mainly Kuwaitis but also Iranians, Indians, and others. Among the 227
injured was the Kuwaiti parliamentarian Khalil al- Salih. He had noticed
al- Gabaa walk into the mosque with his left arm curiously crossed over
his torso. “I saw him with my own eyes,” al- Salih said.^1
For Kuwait, the bombing was an alarming step in the wrong direc-
tion. The tiny sheikhdom was a haven of prosperity. Kuwait was so safe
it was considered boring, particularly among expatriates irritated by its
ban on alcohol. Even so, Kuwaitis understood the fragility of stability
better than most, given the vagaries of survival next to Iraq, a neighbor
prone to periodic threats of invasion (and actually carr ying one of them
out, in 1990). Other than a few minor bombings in the 1980s and small-
scale shooting attempts— one on US troops— Kuwait had no experience
with terrorism and certainly not with a mass- casualty attack like the
bombing of the Imam Jafar al- Sadiq Mosque.^2
Kuwait’s emir, Sheikh Sabah, visited the mosque immediately after
the blast, stressing unity in the face of a widening sectarian rift. The