Machiavellian Bahraini

This afternoon I came across this article on Reuters: 'Bahrain's foreign minister said Monday Saudi and UAE forces called in to help quell street unrest would leave only when "any external threat" he associated with Iran was seen to be gone'.

What absolute bollocks. The so called 'Iranian threat' has been created by the Bahraini government and its Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) allies as a reason to keep the Bahrain crackdown going. What is this vague Iranian threat that can only be wiped out by putting fear in the heart of the population; by creating mass unemployment for a specific sect; by imprisoning and killing protesters and bystanders alike; by treating the Shia as guilty-until-proven-innocent; by destroying the free press; by instilling terror?

It's a sorry state of affairs that what began as a non-sectarian movement has been transformed into a battle between Sunnis and Shia. The Sunnis are untouched by this upheaval, and may even be profiting from it - who will fill up the thousands of positions opening but them? The only common ground between the Shia population and Iran is their faith, and the monarchy is milking that cow for everything it's worth to justify its crackdown.

It sickens me to see how they've painted the Shia as Iranian conspirators and made the two inextricable from each other. The Western powers have mumbled words of condemnation and empty warnings, but nothing more to Bahrain. And how could they, when the enemy is 'Iran'? When supporting Iran is a political bomb, how can they support the Bahraini protesters? Though whether they'd want to help the protesters in the Gulf and put the precious oil at risk is a question I would perhaps rather not hear answered.

They've snared their Shi'ite opposition, that's for sure. They've managed to mute both the protesters voices and the international community. Many Shia are leaving the country, travelling as far away as they possibly can - Kuwait and Qatar for some, the US and UK for others. It's beginning to look like an ethnic cleansing, and I'd hardly be surprised if that was a part of their plans - they've always wanted to turn the indigenous Shia into a minority.