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?