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?

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.

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.