A Rock and a Hard Place

A quick foreword before the article: this is something I've wanted to write for a while now, though I've had trouble expressing my thoughts. I've been thinking about nationalism a lot recently. It's one of the bedrocks of our identity this day, whether it's a pride in one's nation (as Americans feel) or a quiet disgust of it, as most English feel when they the St George's Cross flapping in the wind. My own experience is a bit confusing, and this is a culmination of my thoughts on my own nationality and the impact of the Arab Awakening on it. I suppose I felt it necessary to explain this because of how grim a worldview I express below, and because I've sacrificed detail for brevity. I intend to come back to this when I've developed my ideas more deeply and coherently.

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What is the point of Bahraini nationalism? In whichever way you cut your belief that Bahrain should belong to its people - whether that includes all residents, all born residents, or only those elite, impoverished Baharna, who are the most ancient amongst today's people, you must ask yourself, why bother?

Bahrain is a minute country. It is an archipelago of 33 islands, of which only four are inhabited. And of them, the largest of these islands - Bahrain itself - is largely only inhabitable in the northern-most stretch of land. Within that stretch live roughly a million people, of whom only half are citizens. Its oil reserves are minuscule comparative to its neighbours, and as a centre of Islamic banking it's not quite where others are yet. Few tourists come to see those hundreds-years-old mosques, or the historic fort that once stood guarding the island, or the burial mounds where a millenia-old people, more ancient than the Baharna, lay resting.

Were Bahrain's people to claim their political independence, it would not stand. Because Bahrain, unfortunately, is little more than a clump of sand off the Arabian coastline. If a democratic revolution were to ever have succeeded, we would no doubt have seen a hugely Shi'i parliament. And while secular and economic political lines should be striven for, it is far more probable that, at least in the early, formative days of this theoretical democracy, politics would be religious.

So in this religiously-charged democracy, the Shi'a would come to rule Bahrain, those people who were oppressed will become oppressors no doubt. You would see the Sunnis disenfrachised, and the foreign workers sent home. Most importantly, Saudi Arabia would stop bankrolling Bahrain's continued 'independent' existence - because the Saudis are Bahrain's current patrons.

And what then?

"Promoting Freedom of Speech and Press"... in Bahrain?

News today is a new Arab TV network is to be launched early next year. The imaginatively named "Al-Arab" is to be a rival of Al-Jazeera. It is to focus on the 'important shifts taking place across the Arab world, with an emphasis on freedom of speech and freedom of press'. It is the brain child of a Saudi prince, Alwaleed Bin Talal. And it is to be based in Bahrain.

The entire idea is laughable at first sight. That a Saudi prince would want to promote the Arab Awakening, when his family has opened its arms to exiled heads of states. That he would base himself in Bahrain, where his country's military repressed the Bahraini movement and helped temporarily crush the free press - there is a reason a Bahraini journalist was singled out for an International Press Freedom award by the Committee to Protect Journalists, an award given to those who have put their lives on the line to stand up to oppression. Such a network cannot exist in his home country, where free speech is non-existent. A Saudi Arabian base for Al-Arab is an impossibility; a Bahraini one is ironic.

It all sounds too ridiculous to believe. Compound this with the fact that the same man has only in the last week bought a $300m stake in Twitter, one of the most important social networks to the revolutions, and you have to wonder what Bin Talal is up to.

Is he really lining himself up as a patron of political and press freedom? Or is he excercising his power as one of the richest men in the world to protect his family from the very same things? Perhaps we'll find out next month, when Al-Arab launches.

Al Jazeera's Blackout on Bahrain

Just an interesting thing I noticed about Al-Jazeera a long time ago. I've pointed it out a few times on online forums, but I think it's worth warranting a small blog post - though it might be a few months late.

When Egypt was constantly in the headlines back in January, Al-Jazeera emerged as the first-stop broadcaster for news on the burgeoning region-wide movement. And while it has been brilliant in its coverage of Egypt and Libya, with Bahrain we see that Al-Jazeera is not without its own agenda, beyond seemingly embracing the 'Arab Spring'.

My interest in Bahrain's events at its peak, I was almost constantly on Al-Jazeera, reading up on everything happening. And its coverage was good to begin with. In the first month of the protest,; it seemed they had the interest of spreading the Bahraini peoples' message at heart.

Things went sour in Bahrain when on the 14th of March, exactly a month after the then-called 'Pearl Revolution' began, the Saudi army rolled in, dispersing the protesters from their camp and decimating the iconic pearl roundabout. Suddenly, Al Jazeera, which had so readily reported every morsel of news from Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen, stopped reporting on Bahrain. On both Arabic and English channels.

A Six-Point Plan

Inactivity is pretty boring, isn't it? It's time to get myself in gear - something I'm somewhat hesitant to say as that's the topic of my last post. I have an ideal image in my head of posting something noteworthy every single day, but the chances of that happening are slim. So to inspire myself to work, I'm going to make public my list of blogging ideas, and invite any reader to help with the list.

Rebooting

I haven't blogged in a while. I've been following the happenings of the Middle East - the 'Arab Spring' as the media has taken to call it, though I'm not a fan of the name - since Egypt erupted in mid-January. Most of all I've been obsessing over the events of Bahrain, which have only gone from bad to worse in the last two months. The last five months have been mentally draining, and I've needed a break away from it all.

This post is nothing more than me dipping my toe to test the water. The 'dive' as such will come later. So for now, while I revise for the upcoming exams, I'll leave you with this. It's an interview from two days ago, between PBS and my dad, who's been damaged by the government crackdown as so many others have, and more succinctly describes the issues than I can.

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.

Alienation in Bahrain

One of my earliest memories is of playing with the other children just out of our mothers' sights in a London-based community centre. This was a place where many Bahraini exiles and activists would congregate, discussing current affairs and handing out newsletters and pamphlets. It wasn't all about grim politics, but it's the grim politics that comes back to me right now. One type of pamphlet passed around a lot would have pictures of tortured men in them, evidence of the regime's crimes. I saw them over the years, though not very often. These sorts of things weren't for a child's eyes after all, but the few glimpses of bodies black and blue and bloody have remained with me.

I haven't dwelt on those memories in years, but they came back to me today while reading Human Rights Watch, watching CNN's reports and visiting the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (which is blocked by Bahraini ISPs). Some of the images, of people tortured and people injured by security forces, are shocking to say the least. My own first impression was that this looked like something straight from the 90s.

What's going on in Bahrain and why? A follow up

The 14th of April will be the two month anniversary of what was briefly called the 'Pearl Revolution' in Bahrain. I wrote my first post on Bahrain back in February and got quite a response. In that post I mused that the Bahraini government would be likely to succumb to the peoples' demands, so as not to lose the big tourism revenue the F1 race would bring. And I'm sure they intended to keep their reputation as one of the most progressive Arab nations. My musings were wrong, to say the least. I think we've reached a point where we can look back at what's happened and analyse, though, and I want to look at some of the recent developments.

I think it's important to add as a disclaimer that I'm in no way unbiased, and there's no point hiding it. Take what I say with a pinch of salt.

Bahraini Monarch Afraid of Boogeyman

I was just peering through Al-Jazeera and came across this gem of an article: Bahrain king speaks of 'foiled foreign plot'.

So first, the government pulled down the monument at the Pearl Roundabout. That was a couple days ago and wasn't reported as widely as it should have been. Now, they have forced the protestors to retreat using armed force, and blame Iran for all this trouble. The desperate attempts to pin the blame on anything but their own misdeeds are so shallow and see through that it boggles me to think there are people about who agree with their actions.

What's going on in Bahrain and why?

Just over a week ago when Mubarak resigned, I mused briefly on whether or not the revolution would spread to Bahrain, here. Of all the things that could've happened, I didn't expect Bahrain to be the very next country to grip the world after Egypt, but in the last week it's been almost all anyone's talked about. Now the spotlight has begun moving away from us and onto Libya - and good thing too, they need the world's support more than Bahrain does. The acts of the Bahraini government are incredibly mild compared to Ghaddafi's.

I've been asked by a fair few people in the last week about the protests going on, and now that the outcome of the revolution draws increasingly closer and clearer, I felt it'd be appropriate to shed some light about the entire situation.

This article ended up quite a bit longer than I originally thought it would be. If you read this to the end and are neither my lecturer or my parent, you deserve a biscuit.