Archive: https://archive.is/20250309051416/https://www.ft.com/content/03f51141-ddde-439e-ba57-e82f5ffb2696

When Faisal checked in at Kuwait’s international airport late last year, he was a jet-setting young businessman with one of the Arab world’s strongest passports. But he never got on the plane, and when he left the airport, he was no longer Kuwaiti.

Faisal said he was temporarily detained before boarding and had his passport taken, becoming one of about 42,000 Kuwaitis to be stripped of their citizenship in just over six months.

The move to make thousands of citizens stateless is the latest in a series of backsliding moves that has jeopardised Kuwait’s claim to be the only state with a semblance of democracy in the Gulf, a region of autocracies. Authorities say it is aimed at people who got their passports fraudulently, but opponents have called it a campaign to scapegoat naturalised citizens.