Secretary-General António Guterres attends the Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe.

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 2 2026 (IPS)

The United States and Israel launched a joint military strike on Iran on February 28. Iran followed with military strikes on Israeli bases and on Arab Gulf states, including Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. The realized threat of a new war has caused alarm for the security situation in the Middle East and its impact on civilian populations.

While the latest outbreak of fighting unfolded in the Middle East, the UN Security Council in New York convened an emergency meeting to deliberate over the military attacks in Iran. The session was convened at the request of Iran and members of the Security Council.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres briefed the Council on the situation up to that point and condemned the escalating hostilities. “We are witnessing a grave threat to international peace and security. Military action carries the risk of igniting a chain of events that no one can control in the most volatile region of the world,” he warned.

Under Article 2 of the UN Charter, all member states shall “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state,” Guterres reminded the Council. He reiterated that there would be no “viable alternative to the peaceful settlement of international disputes” and that “lasting peace” could only be accomplished through diplomatic negotiations.

Guterres also noted that the U.S.-Israeli strikes took place following the latest round of indirect negotiations between the U.S. and Iran mediated by Oman, which were expected to lead into further political talks. “I deeply regret that this opportunity of diplomacy has been squandered.”

According to Iran, the U.S.-Israeli strikes constituted a clear violation of the UN Charter and a threat to international peace and security. Sayed Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s Foreign Minister, said in a letter addressed to Guterres that in response to the aggression, Iran was invoking its right to self-defense under Article 51 of the Charter. This outlines that the Charter shall not “impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense,” and that any actions taken by member states to exercise their right to self-defense must be “immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and the responsibility” of the Council to take actions as it “deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.”

“The United States and the Israeli regime shall bear full and direct responsibility for all ensuing consequences, including any escalation arising from their unlawful actions,” Aragchi said. Noting the “grave and far-reaching consequences” of a regional conflict, Aragchi wrote of the collective responsibility of the UN and the Security Council to take immediate action and to “discharge their duties without delay.”

Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani of Iran reiterated the point before the Security Council, remarking on the threat to the country’s sovereignty and that actions taken by the U.S. and Israel were in violation of the UN Charter. There is also the added context that the first round of U.S.-Israeli strikes killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Some members of the Council spoke against Iran’s military actions on Saturday and against the regime under Khanmenei as it related to its nuclear program and its “appalling violence and repression against its own people.” The U.K., France and Germany jointly condemned the regime and its attacks on countries in the region.

Acting Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom James Kariuki remarked that the present was a “fragile moment for the Middle East.” As the president of the Security Council for the month of February, Kariuki noted that Iran “repeatedly ignored calls” for a solution to its nuclear program and the seeming lack of cooperation with the IAEA. He stated that Iran “must refrain from further strikes, and its appalling behavior, to allow a path back to diplomacy. ”

“My country, which is a champion of peace and coexistence, never expected to be targeted by wanton aggressions without any justification,” said Bahrain Ambassador Jamal Al Rowaiei. Bahrain was one of the Gulf states targeted by Iranian military forces and currently sits on the Security Council as an elected member. Al Rowaiei condemned Iran for its attacks on residential areas and vital facilities—including a U.S. Navy base—and called for all in “containing this crisis” to protect the stability of the region.

Other member states remarked on the threats to international peace and security. In condemning the military attacks on Iran and the Arab Gulf states, Pakistan Ambassador Asim Ahmad regretted that “diplomacy has once again been derailed,” referring to the negotiations between the U.S. and Iran. “These military actions undermine dialogue and further erode trust that was already in short supply,” said Ahmad.

Echoing Guterres’ sentiments, other UN entities and leaders reiterated calls to continue negotiations and to respect international law. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), said that he was “deeply troubled” by the situation in the Middle East and expressed that world leaders should choose the “challenging path of dialogue” over the “senseless route of destruction.”

“My heart goes out to the civilians trapped in the crossfire. Regardless of borders, everyone deserves to live without the threat of violence around them,” he said.

Across Iran, civilian infrastructures have been destroyed, leading to scores of casualties. Of note, schools have been bombed by Israeli airstrikes, including a girls’ elementary school in Minab in Hormozgan province in southern Iran. As of March 1, the death toll from this strike has risen to 165, according to state sources.

UNICEF issued a statement shortly after the school bombings, warning that the “weekend’s military escalation in the Middle East marks a dangerous moment for millions of children in the region.” They called for an immediate end to the hostilities and for all parties to uphold their obligations to international humanitarian and human rights law, including the protection of children. “Targeting civilians and civilian objects, including schools, is a violation of international law.”

“Bombs and missiles are not the way to resolve differences but only result in death, destruction and human misery,” said Volker Türk, the UN Human Rights Chief. He added that all parties must de-escalate and return to the negotiating table and warned that failing to do so would only lead to further “senseless civilian deaths” and “destruction on a potentially unimaginable scale.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said that they were “closely monitoring” developments, urging restraint to “avoid any nuclear safety risks.”

The U.S. will take over as president of the Security Council in March. It will be a matter of waiting to see the role that this institution will play in protecting the principles of international law and preventing further loss of civilian lives.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Governments, particularly those in Arab and Asian regions need to leverage youth population for sustainable development instead of making them an element of social instability. Credit: Victoria Hazou/IPS.

By Aniqa Haider
MANAMA, Oct 5 2018 (IPS)

As the youth population has increased to unprecedented levels in Arab and Asian regions, governments need to do more to invest in them.

“We are proposing concrete ideas on the effective use of the natural environment in the Arab region to contribute food security and youth employment,” said Asian Population and Development Association (APDA) board of directors’ head and Japan Parliamentarians Federation for Population (JPFP) vice chair Teruhiko Mashiko.

According to Youth Policy, a global think thank focusing on youth, more than 28 percent of the population – some 108 million people – in the Middle East are youth, between the ages of 15 and 29.

“This is the largest number of young people to transition to adulthood in the region’s history,” the organisation states. In Asia the number is almost 10 times greater with over one billion youth.

Mashiko was speaking during a key regional parliamentary forum called “Asian and Arab Parliamentarians Meeting on Population and Development – Investing in Youth: Towards Regional Development and Achievement of the SDGs” held in Manama, Bahrian this week.

Growing population, food security, unemployment and investing in youth for sustainable future were the main topics discussed during the meeting.

It was hosted by Bahrain under the patronage of Shura Council chair Ali Saleh Ali, and organised by the APDA and the Forum of Arab Parliamentarians on Population and Development (FAPPD) and brought together Asian and Arab parliamentarians along with experts and government officials.

Mashiko said governments needed to leverage youth population for sustainable development instead of making them an element of social instability.

“While these ideas may not seem to be directly linked to the issues of population, expanded youth employment and education programmes in the workplace can promote their acceptance of population programmes, [and have] various other implications for bringing about improvements in the existing situation.”

He further said that many regional parliamentarians forums on population and development are unable to sufficiently fulfil their roles. He said 40 years after activities on population and development started, it was becoming difficult to share the underlying principles of these activities.

“We are communicating with the people and governments about the concept of development from an international viewpoint,” he said.

Jordan member of parliament (MP) Marwan Al-Hmoud told IPS that he has a strong belief and faith in the importance of the role played by the youth.

“We need to focus on educating youth and emphasise on reinforcing values necessary to combat attacks against the Arab region,” he explained.

The annual Arab Youth Survey shows that defeating terrorism, well-paying jobs and education reform were among the top properties of Arab youth. “Overall defeating terrorism is cited as
a top priority more frequently than any other issue, with a third (34 percent) of young Arabs selecting it as a top priority to steer the region in the right direction.”

Al-Hmoud added: “Our youth are taking a step back from the Arab reality and [are] influenced by globalisation and foreign cultures, resulting in a lot of our youth to [having] no identity.”

Indian MP Nadimul Haque told IPS that the youth are the energy of the nation.

“Finding solutions in the field of population and development which impacts all areas concerned with humans is important,” he added.

“It needs to be uniform and sustained otherwise the whole idea of SDGs will fall flat,” he said. He was referring to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a collection of global goals to end poverty, mitigate climate change and protect the planet and to ensure equity and peace, among others.

According to the U.N. the world’s population as currently 7.6 billion as of 2017 and is expected to reach 8.6 billion in 2030, 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100 with “the upward trend in population size expected to continue, even assuming that fertility levels will continue to decline.”

Haque said this might lead to a multitude of problems, such as lack of access to resources, knowledge and health services.

“It can lead to resource depletion, inequality, unsustainable cities and communities, irresponsible consumption and production, climate change, conflicts, [and can] gradually lead to an erosion of the quality of life on land.”

Haque highlighted success stories from his home city of Kolkata.

“We have successfully installed rooftop solar power in individual dwellings/buildings,” he explained. “For waste management, we have set up compactor units and we are proud that India is self-reliant in producing its own food grains.”

A list of recommendations to achieve the SDGs was issued, which identified combating health issues, especially communicable diseases and expanding primary health care as an important step.

Recommendations included, among others:

• universal access to reproduce health services;
• further improvement in primary education;
• comprehensive sex education;
• eradicating gender-based violence;
• and increasing employment opportunities for youth.

Bahraini MP Juma Al Kaabi said that his country’s legislative authority supported young people and mobilised their energies and strengths.

Al Kaabi further added that the government has made many sporting, cultural, humanitarian and scientific initiatives aimed at raising and developing Bahraini youth who are self-aware and capable of belonging to their homeland and participating in real and effective development and growth.

Al Kaabi said the Tamkeen Foundation has been established by His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa to support young jobseekers through a variety of training programmes that would equip them in being skilled for the job market and to also help financial guidance and support.

“The King Hamad Award was launched to empower the world’s youth, which is the first of its kind at the global level to create the conditions for young people to participate in the development of creative and professional ideas that have reached the United Nations goals for sustainable development,” he told the IPS

While MP Amira Aser from Sudan told IPS: “Agriculture was one of the key sources of livelihood in the state and youth involvement would further boost agriculture activities.”

In some regions of Sudan, farming is largely characterised by rain-fed production, low fertiliser use, poor quality seeds, inadequate water management and low soil fertility.

The region has experienced some of the lowest per hectare crop yields in the world.

Japanese Ambassador to Bahrain, Hideki Iko, summed it up: “Investing in youth for their education, employment and welfare are important as they are an investment for a better future for all countries.”

By N Chandra Mohan
NEW DELHI, Dec 3 2015 (IPS)

The crash in oil prices is not the only challenge confronting the Gulf States in West Asia. Economic disorder and lack of opportunity are contributing to instability in the region, stated Bahrain’s minister for industry, commerce and tourism, Zayed Al Zayani, while kicking off the recent IISS Bahrain Bay Forum. He emphasized the need for “unprecedented” economic reform across the Gulf in the wake of the lower oil revenues. These policies include the generation of millions of jobs for the youth in these economies that continue to depend heavily on expatriate labour from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Philippines.

N Chandra Mohan

The Gulf States face the prospect of a demographic dividend of a youth bulge in the population rapidly turning into a curse, thanks to high and rising rates of unemployment for those between 15 to 24 years of age. The highest rates are in Saudi Arabia (28.7 per cent), Bahrain (27.9 per cent), Oman (20.5 per cent) and Kuwait (19.6 per cent). India, too, has double digit rates of joblessness among the young like many of these economies. There was a suggestion at the Bahrain Bay Forum that such high rates of youth unemployment are a proximate factor behind the surge in militant terrorism, exemplified by the rise of the Daesh or ISIS.

The prospect of lower oil revenues certainly will constrain the Gulf States to diversify their economies away from dependence on this commodity. Countries like Bahrain seek to focus on education and training, communications and infrastructure and promoting a start-up ecosystem for fostering entrepreneurship. The level of ambition is also high as they intend to generate high skill jobs and build a knowledge- based economy. The technology sector in the Gulf States is likely expected to grow by 10 per cent per annum over the next five years while the spending on technology in the Middle East as a whole is expected to touch $200 billion.

However, the transition to this brave new world requires bridging the skills gap. The labour market in this region depends heavily on low skilled and low wage earning migrant labour. More than 80 per cent of the workforce in private sector employment in Bahrain is comprised of expatriates. It goes up to 96 per cent and 98 per cent in Kuwait and Qatar respectively. In sharp contrast, the nationals are disproportionately represented in the bloated public sector. So, one form of dualism in the labour market is that the private sector is dominated wholly by expatriates while the public sector is largely for the locals in the Gulf.

Another source of dualism is that women are not adequately represented in the labour market due to pervasive gender discrimination in these conservative economies. Although women’s enrolment in higher educational institutions is rapidly rising of late — a case in point are courses in financial services in Bahrain which attract a lot of women — female labour force participation rates are well below 30 per cent as against the global average of 50 per cent. Jobless among young females is as high as 55 per cent in Saudi Arabia which is three-times higher than that of young males, according to the World Bank’s World Development Indicators.

Gulf’s labour market thus is “locked in a low skills, low wages and low productivity equilibrium” argued Frank Hagemann, deputy regional director of ILO, at one of the sessions at the Bay Forum. This dualism is reflected in a substantial wage gap between the private and public sector. At the lower end, the living and working conditions of migrants is sub-standard and highly exploitative in nature. Dependency-driven employee-employers relations are rife. The big challenge for the Gulf States is to kick-start the transition from this state of affairs to one driven by higher skills, higher wages and productivity.

What is the impact of abundant supplies of low skilled, low productivity expatriate population queried Ausamah Al Absi, chief executive, Labour Market Regulatory Authority in Bahrain? If an entrepreneur were to make an investment in a state-of-the-art printing press in Germany, he has to employ high technology and productivity tools as the cost of manpower is high. But in Bahrain, he can go for lower technology supported by a low skilled workforce. Pursuing a capital-intensive option in a low wage economy is not on. For such demand-side reasons, this entrepreneur will naturally be rendered uncompetitive in this economy, felt Al Absi.

Low oil prices complicate the efforts of the Gulf States to address these distortions without throwing out the baby with the bathwater. If revenues continue to decline, a worry is that it reduces the fiscal space to pay nationals in the public sector. At the same time, there is a compulsion to reduce subsidies on water, electricity and school fees that will disproportionately hit the expatriate workforce. The Gulf economies thus will make it more and more difficult for the expatriates to work in these economies over the near-term Controls on migration appear inevitable, regardless of the heavy dependence on such labour at present.

The transition to a higher skills, wages and productivity equilibrium is far from easy. It entails changes over a generation. For instance, in Saudi Arabia, 40 per cent of the graduates come from humanities or Islamic studies while only 4 per cent are engineers. Stepping up the numbers of engineers takes more time. Yet there is a temptation to look for quick fixes like inviting tech giants in the US to set up cloud computing courses in the Gulf States! At the Bay Forum, Bahrain announced a $100 million venture capital based fund to that will work as the first cloud technology accelerator in the region. Can such moves kick-start hi-tech start-ups? Intermediate steps are perhaps more necessary like vocational and on-the-job training. Only 17 per cent of firms in the Gulf States provide on-the-job training as against the global average of 35 per cent. The best bet for these countries is greater gender empowerment in the labour market than expat-bashing policies to reduce sources of instability.

(End)

Excerpt:

President Barack Obama speaks at Cairo University in Cairo, Egypt, Thursday, Jun. 4, 2009. In his speech, President Obama called for a 'new beginning between the United States and Muslims', declaring that 'this cycle of suspicion and discord must end'. Credit: White House photo

By Emile Nakhleh
WASHINGTON, Jan 6 2015 (IPS)

This year, Arab political Islam will be greatly influenced by U.S. regional policy, as it has been since the Obama administration came into office six years ago. Indeed, as the U.S. standing in the region rose with Obama’s presidency beginning in January 2009, so did the fortunes of Arab political Islam.

But when Arab autocrats perceived U.S. regional policy to have floundered and Washington’s leverage to have diminished, they proceeded to repress domestic Islamic political parties with impunity, American protestations notwithstanding.Coddling autocrats is a short-term strategy that will not succeed in the long run. The longer the cozy relationship lasts, the more Muslims will revert to the earlier belief that America’s war on terrorism is a war on Islam.

This policy linkage, expected to prevail in the coming year, will not bode well for political Islam. Like last year, the U.S. will in 2015 pay more attention to securing Arab autocrats’ support in the fight against Islamic State forces than to the mistreatment of mainstream Islamic political parties and movements, which will have severe consequences in the long run.

Since the middle of 2013, the Obama administration’s focus on the tactical need to woo dictators in the fight against terrorist groups has trumped its commitment to the engagement objective. America’s growing support for Arab dictators meant that Arab political Islam would be sacrificed.

For example, Washington seems oblivious to the thousands of mainstream Islamists and other opposition activists languishing in Egyptian jails.

What is political Islam?

Several assumptions underpin this judgment. First, “political Islam” applies to mainstream Islamic political parties and movements, which have rejected violence and made a strategic shift toward participatory and coalition politics through free elections.

Arab political Islam generally includes the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan, Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, al-Nahda in Tunisia, and al-Wefaq in Bahrain.

The term “political Islam” does not include radical and terrorist groups such as the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL or IS), al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, Iraq, and Syria, or armed opposition groups in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Libya. Nor does it apply to terrorist groups in Africa such as Boko Haram, al-Shabab, and others.

Unfortunately, in the past three years, many policy makers in the West, and curiously in several Arab countries, have equated mainstream political Islam with radical and terrorist groups. This erroneous and self-serving linkage has provided Washington with a fig leaf to justify its cozy relations with Arab autocrats and tolerance of their bloody repression of their citizens.

Repression breeds radicalism

It has also given these autocrats an excuse to suppress their Islamic parties and exclude them from the political process. In a press interview late last month, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi forcefully denounced the Muslim Brotherhood and pledged the movement would not enter the Egyptian parliament.

Egypt’s recent terrorism laws, which Sisi and other Arab autocrats have approved, provide them with a pseudo-legal cover to silence the opposition, including mainstream political Islam.

They have used the expansive and vague definitions of terrorism included in these decrees to incarcerate any person or group that is “harmful to national unity.” Any criticism of the regime or the ruler is now viewed as a “terrorist” act, punishable by lengthy imprisonment.

The Dec. 28 arrest of the Bahraini Sheikh Ali Salman, Secretary General of al-Wefaq, is yet another example of draconian measures against peaceful mainstream opposition leaders and parties in the region. Regime repression of these groups is expected to prevail in 2015.

Second, whereas terrorist organisations are a threat to the region and to Western countries, including mainstream political Islam in the governance of their countries in the long run is good for domestic stability and regional security. It also serves the interests of Western powers in the region.

Recent history tells U.S. that exclusion and repression often lead to radicalisation.  Some youth in these parties have given up on participatory politics in favour of confrontational politics and violence. This phenomenon is expected to increase in 2015, as suppression of political Islam becomes more pervasive and institutionalised.

Third, the serious mistakes the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Nahda made in their first time ever as governing parties should not be surprising since they lacked the experience of governance. Such poor performance, however, is not unique to them.  Nor should it be used as an excuse to depose them illegally and to void the democratic process, as the Sisi-led military coup did in Egypt in 2013.

Although Islamic political parties tend to win the first election after the toppling of dictators, the litmus test of their popular support lies in succeeding elections. The recent post-Arab Spring election in Tunisia is a case in point.

When Arab citizens are provided with the opportunity to participate in fair and free elections, they are capable of electing the party that best serves their interests, regardless of whether the party is Islamic or secular.

Had Field Marshall Sisi in 2013 allowed the Muslim Brotherhood and President Mohammed Morsi to stay in power until the following election, they would have been voted out, according to public opinion polls at the time.

But Sisi and his military junta were not truly committed to a genuine democratic transition in Egypt. Now, according to Human Rights Watch reports, the current state of human rights in Egypt is much worse than it was under former President Hosni Mubarak.

The U.S. and Political Islam

Upon taking office, President Obama understood that disagreements between the United States and the Muslim world, especially political Islam, were driven by specific policies, not values of good governance. A key factor driving these disagreements was the widely held Muslim perception that America’s war on terror was a war on Islam.

The Obama administration also realised that while a very small percentage of Muslims engaged in violence and terrorism, the United States must find ways to engage the other 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide. That drove President Obama early on in his administration to grant media interviews to Arab broadcasters and give his historic Cairo speech in June 2009.

However, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dragged on, and as drone strikes caused more civilian casualties in Yemen, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, many Muslims became more sceptical of Washington’s commitment to sincere engagement with the Muslim world.

The Arab uprisings beginning in 2011 known as the Arab Spring and the toppling of dictators prompted the United States to support calls for freedom, political reform, dignity, and democracy.

Washington announced it would work with Islamic political parties, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Nahda, as long as these parties were committed to peaceful change and to the principles of pluralism, elections, and democracy.

That unprecedented opening boosted the fortunes of Arab political Islam and inclusive politics in the Arab world. American rapprochement with political Islam, however, did not last beyond two years.

The way forward

Much as one might disagree with Islamic political ideology, it’s the height of folly to think that long-term domestic stability and economic security in Egypt, Bahrain, Palestine, or Lebanon could be achieved without including the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Wefaq, Hamas, and Hezbollah in governance.

Coddling autocrats is a short-term strategy that will not succeed in the long run. The longer the cozy relationship lasts, the more Muslims will revert to the earlier belief that America’s war on terrorism is a war on Islam.

The Arab countries that witnessed the fall of dictators, especially Egypt, will with Washington’s acquiescence revert back to repression and autocracy, as if the Arab Spring never happened.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS-Inter Press Service.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

At Tahrir Square. Credit: Mohammed Omer/IPS

By Amanda Ufheil-Somers
WASHINGTON, Jan 5 2015 (IPS)

For a moment, four years ago, it seemed that dictators in the Middle East would soon be a thing of the past.

Back then, it looked like the United States would have to make good on its declared support for democracy, as millions of Tunisians, Egyptians, Bahrainis, Yemenis, and others rose up to reject their repressive leaders. Many of these autocrats enjoyed support from Washington in return for providing “stability.”

Yet even the collapse of multiple governments failed to upend the decades-long U.S. policy of backing friendly dictators. Washington has doubled down on maintaining a steady supply of weapons and funding to governments willing to support U.S. strategic interests, regardless of how they treat their citizens.

Four years after Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, for example, the country once again has a president with a military pedigree and an even lower tolerance for political opposition than his predecessor.With a new year upon us, it’s our turn to face down fear and insist that another path is possible.

Mass arrests and hasty convictions of political activists — over 1,000 of whom have been sentenced to death — have reawakened the fear that Egyptians thought had vanished for good after Mubarak was ousted and democratic elections were held.

When the Egyptian military — led by now-president Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi — deposed the democratically elected president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, the Obama administration wavered about whether it would suspend military aid to Egypt, which U.S. law requires in the case of a coup. Yet despite some partial and temporary suspensions, the U.S. government continued to send military hardware.

Now that Sisi heads a nominally civilian government — installed in a sham election by a small minority of voters — all restrictions on U.S. aid have been lifted, including for military helicopters that are used to intimidate and attack protesters. As Secretary of State John Kerry promised a month after Sisi’s election, “The Apaches will come, and they will come very, very soon.”

In the tiny kingdom of Bahrain, meanwhile, the demonstrations for constitutional reform that began in February 2011 continue, despite the government’s attempts to silence the opposition with everything at its disposal — from bird shot to life imprisonment.

Throughout it all, Washington has treated Bahrain like a respectable ally.

Back in 2011, for instance, just days after Bahraini security forces fired live ammunition at protesters in Manama — an attack that killed four and wounded many others — President Barack Obama praised King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa’s “commitment to reform.” Neither did the White House object when it was notified in advance that 1,200 troops from Saudi Arabia would enter Bahrain to clear the protests in March 2011.

Since then, there’s been a steady drip of troubling news. A State Department report from 2013 acknowledged that Bahrain revokes the citizenship of prominent activists, arrests people on vague charges, tortures prisoners, and engages in “arbitrary deprivation of life.” (That’s bureaucratese for killing people.)

And what have the consequences been?

Back in 2012, international pressure forced the United States to ban the sale of American-made tear gas to Bahraini security forces. And last August, some U.S. military aid was cut off after the regime expelled an American diplomat for meeting with members of an opposition party.

But that’s it.

Delaying shipments of tanks, jets, and tear gas amounts to little more than a slap on the wrist when the Fifth Fleet of the U.S. Navy remains headquartered outside Bahrain’s capital. And Bahrain’s participation in air raids against the Islamic State has only strengthened the bond between the regime and the White House.

Indeed, the crisis in Iraq and Syria has breathed new life into the military-first approach that has long dominated Washington’s thinking about the Middle East. Any government willing to join this new front in the “War on Terror” is primed to benefit both from American largesse and a free pass on repression.

People power in the Middle East must be matched by popular demand here in the United States to shake the foundations of our foreign policy. With a new year upon us, it’s our turn to face down fear and insist that another path is possible.

This story originally appeared on Otherwords.org. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS-Inter Press Service.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

By Emile Nakhleh
WASHINGTON, Sep 26 2014 (IPS)

President Obama’s speech at the United Nations on Sep. 23 offered a rhetorically eloquent roadmap on how to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). 

He called on Muslim youth to reject the extremist ideology of ISIL (as ISIS is also known) and al-Qa’ida and work towards a more promising future.  President Obama repeated the mantra, which we heard from President George Bush before him, that “the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam.”

There is no argument but that the Islamic State must be defeated.  But is the counter-terrorism roadmap, which President Obama set out in his U.N. speech, sufficient to defeat the extremist ideology of ISIS, Boko Haram, or al-Qa’ida?  Despite U.S. and Western efforts to degrade, decapitate, dismember and defeat these deadly and blood-thirsty groups for almost two decades, radical groups continue to sprout in Sunni Muslim societies."As the United States looks beyond today’s air campaign over Syria and Iraq, U.S. policymakers should realise that ISIS is more than a bunch of jihadists roaming the desert and terrorising innocent civilians. It is an ideology, a vision, a sophisticated social media operation and an army with functioning command and control"

The President also urged the Arab Muslim world to reject sectarian proxy wars, promote human rights and empower their people, including women, to help move their societies forward. He again stated that the situation in Gaza and the West Bank is unsustainable and urged the international community to strive for the implementation of the two-state solution.

The President did not address Muslim youth in Western societies who could be susceptible to recruitment by ISIS, al-Qa’ida, or other terrorist organisations.

Arab publics will likely see glaring contradictions and inconsistencies in the President’s speech between his captivating rhetoric and actual policies. They most likely would view much of what he said, especially his global counter-terrorism strategy against the Islamic State, as another version of America’s war on Islam.  Arabs will also see much hypocrisy in the President’s speech on the issue of human rights and civil society.

Although fighting a perceived common enemy, it is a sad spectacle to see the United States, a champion of human rights, liberty and justice, cosy up to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain, serial violators of human rights and infamous practitioners of repression. It is even more hypocritical when Arab citizens realise that some of these so-called partners have often spread an ideology not much different from what ISIS preaches.

These three regimes in particular have emasculated their civil society and engaged in illegal imprisonment, sham trials and groundless convictions.  They have banned political parties, both Islamic and secular, silenced civil society institutions and prohibited peaceful protests.

The President praised the role of free press, yet Al-Jazeera journalists are languishing in Egyptian jails without any justification whatsoever. The regime continues to hold thousands of political prisoners without indictments or trials.

In addressing the youth in Muslim countries, the President told them: “Where a genuine civil society is allowed to flourish, then you can dramatically expand the alternatives to terror.”

What implications should Arab Muslim youth draw from the President’s invocation of the virtues of civil society when they see that genuine civil society is not “allowed to flourish” in their societies? Do Arab Muslim youth see real “alternatives to terror” when their regimes deny them the most basic human rights and freedoms?

The Sisi regime in Egypt has illegally destroyed the Muslim Brotherhood, and Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have used the spectre of ugly sectarianism to destroy the opposition.  They openly and viciously engage in sectarian conflicts even though the President stated that religious sectarianism underpins regional instability.

In his U.N. speech, Field Marshall Sisi hoped the United States would tolerate his atrocious human rights record in the name of fighting ISIS.

Human Rights Watch and other distinguished experts sent a letter to President Obama asking him to raise the egregious human rights violations in Egypt when he met with Sisi in New York.  He should not give Sisi and other Arab autocrats a pass when it comes to their repression and human rights violations just because they joined the U.S.-engineered “coalition of the willing” against ISIS.

Regardless of how the air campaign against the Islamic State goes, U.S. policymakers will have to begin a serious review of a different Middle East than the one President Barak Obama inherited when he took office.  Many of the articles that have been written about ISIS have warned about the outcome of this war once the dust settles.

Critics correctly wondered whether opinion writers and experts could go beyond “warning” and suggest a course of policy that could be debated and possibly implemented. If the United States “breaks” the Arab world by forming an anti-ISIS ephemeral coalition of Sunni Arab autocrats, Washington will have to “own” what it had broken.

A road map is imperative if a serious conversation is to commence about the future of the Arab Middle East – but not one deeply steeped in counter-terrorism.  The Sunni coalition is a picture-perfect graphic for the evening news, especially in the West, but how should the United States deal with individual Sunni states in the coalition after the bombings stop and ISIS melts into the population?

As the United States looks beyond today’s air campaign over Syria and Iraq, U.S. policymakers should realise that ISIS is more than a bunch of jihadists roaming the desert and terrorising innocent civilians.  It is an ideology, a vision, a sophisticated social media operation and an army with functioning command and control.

Above all, ISIS represents a view of Islam that is not dissimilar to other strict Sunni interpretations of the Muslim faith that could be found across many Muslim countries, from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan. In fact, this narrow-minded, intolerant view of Islam is at the heart of the Wahhabi-Salafi Hanbali doctrine, which Saudi teachers and preachers have spread across the Muslim world for decades.

Nor is this phenomenon unique in the ideological history of Sunni millenarian thinking.  From Ibn Taymiyya in the 13th century to Bin Ladin and Zawahiri in the past two decades, different Sunni groups have emerged on the Islamic landscape preaching ISIS-like ideological variations on the theme of resurrecting the “Caliphate” and re-establishing “Dar al-Islam.”

Although the historical lines separating Muslim regions (“Dar al-Islam” or “Abode of Peace”) from non-Muslim regions (“Dar al-Harb” or “Abode of War”) have almost disappeared in recent decades, ISIS, much like al-Qa’ida, is calling for re-erecting those lines.  Many Salafis in Saudi Arabia are in tune with such thinking.

This is a regressive, backward view, which cannot possibly exist today.  Millions of Muslims have emigrated to non-Muslim societies and integrated into those societies.

If President Obama plans to dedicate the remainder of his term in office to fighting and defeating the Islamic State, he cannot do it by military means alone.  He should:

1.  Tell Al Saud to stop preaching its intolerant doctrine of Islam in Saudi Arabia and revise its textbooks to reflect a new thinking. Saudi and other Muslim scholars should instruct their youth that “jihad” applies to the soul, not to the battlefield.

2.  Tell Sisi to stop his massive human rights violations in Egypt and allow his youth – men and women – the freedom to pursue their economic and political future without state control.  Sisi should also empty his jails of the thousands of political prisoners and invite the Muslim Brotherhood to participate in the political process.

3.  Tell Al Khalifa to end its sectarian war in Bahrain against the Shia majority and invite opposition parties – secular and Islamic – including al-Wifaq, to participate in the upcoming elections freely and without harassment.  Opposition parties should also participate in redrawing the electoral districts before the Nov. 22 elections, which King Hamad has just announced.  International observers should be invited to monitor those elections.

4.  Tell the Benjamin Netanyahu government in Israel that the situation in Gaza and the Occupied Territories is untenable.  Prime Minister Netanyahu should stop building new settlements and work with the Palestinian National Government for a settlement of the conflict. If President Obama concludes, like many scholars in the region, that the two-state solution is no longer workable, he should communicate his view to Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas and strongly encourage them to explore other modalities for the two peoples to live together between the River and the Sea.

If President Obama does not pursue these tangible policies and use his political capital in this endeavour, his U.N. speech will soon be forgotten.  Decapitating and degrading ISIS is possible, but unless Arab regimes move away from autocracy and invest in their peoples’ future, other terrorist groups will emerge.

Over the years, President Obama has delivered memorable speeches on Muslim world engagement, but unless he pushes for new policies in the region, the Arab Middle East will likely implode. Washington would be left holding the bag.  This is not the legacy the President would want to leave behind.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS-Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Monday’s expulsion order by Bahrain against a visiting senior U.S. official has set back tentative hopes for internal reforms that could reconcile the kingdom’s Sunni-led government with its majority Shia community and drawn a sharp protest from Washington.

The surprise declaration that Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Tom Malinowski was persona non grata (PNG) was greeted with calls by rights groups here and in Bahrain for a strong reaction on Washington’s part.Preoccupied by more pressing crises elsewhere in the region, notably Syria, Egypt, Libya, and now Iraq, the administration has appeared to give Bahrain a lower priority.

For its part, the State Department said it was “deeply concerned” about the expulsion order and denounced the action as “not consistent with the strong partnership between the United States and Bahrain.”

Moreover, the fact that the expulsion order came just two weeks after the widely welcomed acquittal on terrorism charges of a top leader, Khalil al-Marzouq, of the Shi’ite-led al-Wefaq opposition party has created consternation among officials and other observers regarding the kingdom’s intentions.

“This is really an alarm that the U.S. should’ve been hearing for some time now — that it needs to reassess its relationship with the Bahrain government,” said Brian Dooley, a Gulf expert at Human Rights First (HRF).

“It’s an unreliable government with an increasingly erratic ruling family that, on the one hand, is quite happy with U.S. military support, but, on the other, also vilifies U.S. diplomats,” he told IPS in a telephone interview.

Malinowski, an outspoken critic of Bahrain as the Washington director of Human Rights Watch until his nomination as assistant secretary last year, was accused of having “intervened flagrantly in Bahrain’s internal affairs and held meetings with a particular party to the detriment of other interlocutors, thus discriminating between one people, contravening diplomatic norms, and flouting normal interstate relations.”

The charge was apparently related to his attendance without the presence of a Foreign Ministry official at a Sunday night Ramadan gathering hosted by al-Wefaq, according to Simon Henderson, a Gulf expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

While the declaration said Malinowski should leave the country “immediately”, State Department spokesperson Jan Psaki told reporters Monday afternoon that he “remains on the ground” in Bahrain and that U.S. officials were in “close touch” with their counterparts in Manama.

Some seven hours later, she issued a stronger written statement noting that Malinowski’s visit to the kingdom “had been coordinated far in advance and warmly welcomed and encouraged by the government of Bahrain, which is well-aware that U.S. government officials routinely meet with all officially-recognized political societies.”

As noted by Henderson, “Being PNG’ed is rare and typically seems to occur when an intelligence officer operating under diplomatic cover is discovered by the host government. For it to happen between allies – and to be publicly revealed – is quite unusual.”

Rarer still is the PNG’ing of a senior official who is not stationed in the host country, according to administration sources who noted that Malinowski’s immediate predecessor as assistant secretary, former HRF director Michael Posner, had visited Bahrain half a dozen times without incident despite well-publicised meetings with opposition and civil-society leaders.

Home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, Bahrain occupies a strategic position in the Gulf that the Pentagon. Tied to Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province by a causeway, it faces Iran across the Gulf.

Like the other Gulf monarchies, Bahrain’s royal family, the al-Khalifas, are Sunni. But, unlike other members of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC), they rule over a majority Shia population which has long pressed for democratic reform.

During the so-called “Arab Spring” of early 2011, popular pressure for reform featured major demonstrations by opposition and civil-society groups, both Shia and Sunni.

These protests, however, were met with a crackdown by the regime – reinforced by troops and police from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — in which several dozen people were killed, several thousand more arrested, hundreds tortured by security forces and in many cases forced to sign confessions, among other abuses, according to an exhaustive report released in November, 2011, by an independent international commission headed by an Egyptian-American jurist, Cherif Bassiouni.

While King Hamad pledged to implement reforms recommended by the commission, virtually no progress has been made to date, according to independent human-rights groups who have noted that, if anything, sectarian tensions have only become worse, often flaring into violence and street battles between Shia youths and security forces.

While Washington, including President Barack Obama himself, has admonished Manama about its human-rights record, called for full implementation of the Bassiouni recommendations, and encouraged reconciliation, it has taken no concrete actions against the government beyond suspending delivery of those parts of a 53-million-dollar arms deal that could be used against peaceful demonstrators.

Preoccupied by more pressing crises elsewhere in the region, notably Syria, Egypt, Libya, and now Iraq, the administration has appeared to give Bahrain a lower priority, although the charges against Marzouq came a day after Vice President Joseph Biden spoke by phone with King Hamad and assured him of “America’s enduring and overlapping interests in Bahrain’s security, stability, and reform.”

Malinowski’s visit was a follow-up to Posner’s periodic visits to demonstrate Washington’s continuing concerns.

“The Bahraini government’s decision to expel Mr. Malinowski for meeting with Al-Wefaq mainstream Shia opposition party belies the government’s recent public relations claims that it was encouraging the opposition to participate in the upcoming elections,” according to Emile Nakhleh, an expert on Bahrain and a former senior regional analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who was himself threatened with expulsion by the Bahraini government when he was a Fulbright Scholar there in 1972.

“Declaring Mr. Malinowski persona non grata should be viewed as part and parcel of Al Khalifa’s incendiary policy of continued massive human rights violations against the Shia majority and the stoking of sectarianism.”

Henderson also warned that Malinowski’s expulsion could derail plans to hold elections in Bahrain this fall, as well as other confidence-building measures “intended to encourage al-Wefaq’s participation.”

“If so, that could please some factions in Bahrain, including the minority Sunnis who regard their Shiite countrymen with suspicion.” The expulsion, he said, “represents a hugely convenient nadir in bilateral relations, which both countries will need to rebuild quickly before the negative consequences spread.”

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at Lobelog.com.

The Bahraini Arabic language newspaper al-Wasat reported on Wednesday Apr. 9 that a Cairo court began to consider a case brought by an Egyptian lawyer against Qatar accusing it of being soft on terrorism.

The “terrorism” charge is of course a euphemism for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, which Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have designated a “terrorist” organisation and are vowed to dismantle.It’s becoming very clear that dictatorial policies are producing more instability, less security, and greater appeal to terrorism.

The two new partners and the UAE also loathe Qatar for hosting and funding Al-Jazeera satellite TV. The continued incarceration of the Al-Jazeera journalists and dozens of other journalists on trumped up charges is no coincidence.

The court case is symptomatic of the current Saudi-Egyptian relationship in their counter-revolution against the 2011 pro-democracy upheavals that toppled Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and his fellow autocrats in Tunisia, Yemen, and Libya.

The pro-autocracy partnership between the Egyptian military junta and the Saudi ruling family goes beyond their opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood and the perceived threat of terrorism. It emanates from the autocrats’ visceral opposition to democracy and human rights, including minority and women’s rights.

What should be most critical to them as they contemplate the future of their coalition of counter-revolutionaries, however, is the growing Western conviction that dictators can no longer provide stability.

The Egyptian Field Marshall and the Saudi potentate also abhor the key demands of the Arab uprisings and reject their peoples’ calls for freedom, dignity, justice, and genuine economic and political reform.

They are equally terrified of the coming end of the authoritarian paradigm, which could bring about their demise or at least force them to share power with their people. The Saudis and their Gulf Arab allies, especially Bahrain and the UAE, are willing to trample on their people’s rights in order to safeguard family tribal rule.

The Saudi-Egyptian partnership is also directed at the Obama administration primarily because of Washington’s diplomatic engagement with Iran.

According to media and Human Rights Watch reports, at least 15,000 secular and Islamist activists are currently being held in Egyptian prisons, without having been charged or convicted. This number includes hundreds of MB leaders and activists and thousands of its supporters.

Many of them, including teenagers, have also been tortured and abused physically and psychologically. These mass arrests and summary trials and convictions of Islamists and liberals alike belie the Saudi-Egyptian claim that theirs is a campaign against terrorism.

A brief history of Egyptian-Saudi relations

Egyptian-Saudi relations in the past 60 years have been erratic, depending on leadership, ideology, and regional and world events. During the Nasser era in the 1950s and ‘60s, relations were very tense because of Saudi fears of Nasser’s Arab nationalist ideology.

The Saudis saw Nasser a nationalist firebrand arousing Arab masses against colonialism and Arab monarchies. He supported national liberation movements and wars of independence against the French in North Africa and the British in the Arab littoral of the Persian Gulf.

The Saudi monarchy viewed Nasser’s call for Arab unity “from the roaring ocean to the rebellious Gulf” as a threat to their survival and declared a war on “secular” Arab nationalism and “atheist” Communism.

They perceived Nasser’s war in Yemen against the tribal monarchy as an existential threat at their door and began to fund and arm the royalists in Yemen against the Egyptian military campaign.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia were the two opposite poles of the “Arab cold war” during the 1950s and ‘60s. Nasser represented emerging Arab republicanism while Saudi Arabia epitomised traditional monarchies. Nasser turned to the Soviet Union; Saudi Arabia turned to the United States.

In the late 1960s, Saudi Arabia declared the proselytisation of its brand of Islam as a cardinal principle of its foreign policy for the purpose of fighting Arab nationalism and Communism.

It’s ironic that Saudi Arabia is currently supporting and funding the military junta in Egypt at a time when the military-turned-civilian presidential shoe-in Sisi is resurrecting the Nasserist brand of politics.

In the next three to five years, the most intriguing analytic question will be whether this partnership would endure and how long the post-2011 generation of Arabs would tolerate a coalition of secular autocracy and a religious theocracy.

Saudi Arabia supported Egyptian President Sadat’s war against Israel in 1973 but broke with him later in that decade after he visited Jerusalem and signed a peace treaty with Israel.

By the early 1980s, however, the two countries re-established close relations because of their common interest in supporting Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war and in pushing for the Saudi-articulated Arab Peace Initiative.

The Saudi King viewed President Hosni Mubarak warmly and was dismayed by his fall. He was particularly incensed by Washington’s seeming precipitous abandonment of Mubarak in January 2011.

The Saudi monarchy applauded General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s removal of President Muhammad Morsi and pumped billions of dollars into the Egyptian treasury. They also indicated they would make up any deficit in case U.S. aid to Egypt is halted.

The Saudis have endorsed Sisi’s decision to run for president of Egypt and adopted similar harsh policies against the Muslim Brotherhood and all political dissent. Several factors seem to push Saudi Arabia closer to Egypt.

The Saudis are concerned about their growing loss of influence and prestige in the region, especially their failure in thwarting the interim nuclear agreement between the P5+1 and Iran. Their policy in Syria is in shambles.

Initially, they encouraged jihadists to go to Syria to fight the Assad regime, but now they cannot control the pro-Al-Qaeda radical Salafi jihadists fighting the Damascus tyrant.

The Saudis also failed in transforming the Gulf Cooperation Council into a more unified structure. Other than Bahrain, almost every other state has balked at the Saudi suggestion, viewing it a power grab.

In an absurd form of retaliation against Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain recalled their ambassadors from that country. The Saudis are engaged in tribal vendettas against their fellow tribal ruling families, which is out of place in a 21^st century globalised and well-connected world.

The oil wealth and the regime’s inspired religious fatwas by establishment clerics have a diminishing impact on the younger generation connected to the global new social media.

Despite the heavy-handed crackdown, protests, demonstrations, and confrontations with the security forces are a daily occurrence in Egypt. It’s becoming very clear that dictatorial policies are producing more instability, less security, and greater appeal to terrorism.

It won’t be long before Western governments conclude that autocracy is bad for their moral sensibilities, destructive for business, and threatening for their presence in the region. The Saudi-Egyptian coalition of autocrats will soon be in the crosshairs.

In order to endure, such a coalition must be based on respect for their peoples, a genuine commitment to human rights, and a serious effort to address the “deficits” of liberty, education, and women’s rights that have afflicted Arab society for decades.

Emile Nakhleh, a former Senior Intelligence Service Officer, is a Research Professor at the University of New Mexico, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and author of “A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World.”

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain all recalled their ambassadors from Qatar on Wednesday, citing Qatar’s alleged support for organisations and individuals that threaten “the security and stability of the Gulf states” and for “hostile media.”

This came right on the heels of a U.A.E. court sentencing Qatari doctor Mahmoud al-Jaidah to seven years in prison on Monday, for the crime of aiding a banned opposition group called al-Islah, which the U.A.E. government alleges has operational ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

This was a coordinated move, led by the Saudis, to punish Qatar for supporting Muslim Brotherhood interests around the Middle East (and also for assuming a more prominent role in pan-Arab politics in general), but beyond that it reflects the Saudis’ deep and ongoing concern about an Iranian resurgence in the Gulf.

The North Dome-South Pars Field, straddling Qatari and Iranian waters. Source: Wikipedia

From the Saudi perspective the Qataris have been punching above their proper weight, and making nice with the wrong people.

Qatar’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood are clearly the public justification for this row; it is no mystery why Saudi Arabia followed up Wednesday’s diplomatic swipe at Qatar with a decision on Friday to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation.

The Saudis, while they share certain conservative Islamic principles with the Brotherhood, are more than a bit put off by the group’s opposition to dynastic rule. Despite that feature of Brotherhood’s ideology, though, the very dynastic Qatari monarchy has been a strong supporter of Brotherhood-allied movements throughout the Middle East and North Africa, in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt (especially), and Syria.

Their rationale for doing so has been two-fold: one, they feel that supporting the Brotherhood abroad should insulate them from the Brotherhood at home, and two, Qatar has been predicting that the Brotherhood would be the main beneficiary of the Arab Spring.

Had they been right in their prediction, Qatar’s regional influence would have been significantly increased as a result, but by the looks of things, they were wrong. The Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party is now outlawed in Egypt, its Ennahda Party in Tunisia has voluntarily agreed to give up power, and it has lost most of its influence within the Syrian opposition.

Last November’s reorganisation of Syrian opposition groups from the Qatar-financed Syrian Islamic Liberation Front to the Saudi-backed Islamic Front can be seen as evidence of the Brotherhood’s, and thus Qatar’s, loss of stature.

A related complaint that these countries have with Qatar is with the country’s Al Jazeera television news network (the “hostile media”).

Al Jazeera has continued to provide media access to Muslim Brotherhood figures in Egypt even as that organization was outlawed by the interim Egyptian government, to the extent that several Al Jazeera journalists are currently on trial in Egypt for aiding the Brotherhood.

These countries are also angry about the fact that Al Jazeera continues to give airtime to Brotherhood-affiliated cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Qaradawi is actually wanted for extradition to Egypt over his comments about the coup that removed the Brotherhood from power there, and he recently lambasted, on Al Jazeera’s airwaves, the U.A.E., for “fighting everything Islamic.”

The reported pressure being placed on Saudi and Emirati journalists working in Qatar to quit their jobs and return home undoubtedly has something to do with the overall irritation with Qatari media.

However, there is another factor at play here: Qatar’s close – too close for Saudi comfort – ties with Iran (the real “organisation” that threatens Gulf – i.e., Saudi – security), which has to do largely with natural gas. Qatar shares its windfall natural gas reserves with Iran, in what’s known as the North Dome/South Pars Field in the Persian Gulf.

The International Energy Agency estimates that it is the largest natural gas field on the planet. Qatar has been extracting gas from its side of the field considerably faster than Iran has been, for a couple of reasons.

For one thing, the North Dome side of the field (the part in Qatari waters) was discovered in the early 1970s, whereas the South Pars side was only discovered about 20 years later, so Qatar had a lot of time to get a head start on developing the field.

For another thing, the North Dome field is pretty much the only game left in Qatar, whose Dukhan oil field is clearly on the decline. Qatar has a huge incentive, then, to develop as much of the North Dome as they can as fast as they can in order to fund their numerous development projects.

There is a potential conflict here, though. Natural gas, like any other gas, tends to flow toward areas of low pressure. So when one end of a gas field is being drained of its gas faster than the other end, some of the gas in the less exploited end may flow to the more exploited end.

This is fine when an entire field is controlled by one country, but in this case, one can easily envision a scenario in which, several years from now, the Iranian government is accusing Qatar of siphoning off its gas.

What this means is that Qatar has a strong incentive to maintain friendly relations with Iran, and on this they have considerable disagreement with their Saudi neighbors.

To Saudi Arabia, Iran is a potential regional rival and must be countered at every turn; their opposition to easing international sanctions against Iran, for example, is not so much about the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon as it is about fear of Iran escaping from the economic cage in which those sanctions have trapped it.

The proxy war taking place between Saudi and Iranian interests in Syria is the most obvious example of the rivalry between the two nations, and the Saudi move against Qatar can be seen as another front in that proxy war.

Qatar, although it has backed the Syrian opposition, sees things differently where Iran is concerned; in January, Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid bin Mohammad Al-Attiyah publicly called for an “inclusive” approach to Iran, which he argued “has a crucial role” in ending the crisis in Syria.

There is enough historic tension between the Qataris and the Saudis for this kind of disagreement over foreign affairs to provide the basis for a wider fracturing of relations.

For its part, Bahrain has every reason to go along with a Saudi diplomatic move against a suspected regional ally of Iran; after all, it was Saudi intervention that saved Bahrain’s ruling al-Khalifa family from a Shiʿa-led rebellion in 2011, a rebellion that Bahrain accuses Iran of fomenting.

Look, though, at the two GCC members that did not pull their ambassadors from Qatar: Kuwait, where the Brotherhood’s Hadas Party is out of favour, but whose relations with Iran are “excellent”; and Oman, where Sultan Qaboos has been critical of the Brotherhood, but who is close enough to Iran to have served as a go-between for back-channel U.S.-Iran negotiations.

If the issue were really Qatar’s support for the Brotherhood, and not its relationship with Iran, both of these countries may well have joined the others in recalling their ambassadors.

The one country for which this explanation does not make sense is the U.A.E., whose relations with Iran are improving after the two countries recently reached an accord over the disposition of three disputed Gulf islands. In this case, it may really be that Qatar’s support for the Brotherhood, and especially the Jaidah case and Qaradawi’s criticisms, motivated their action.

Qatar’s failed bet on the Muslim Brotherhood made this the right time for the Saudis to move against them, but Saudi fears about an Iranian resurgence may well have been the real reason for their action.

Bahrain’s new government takes oath in front of His Majesty King Hamad in November 2010. Credit: Bahrain Ministry of Foreign Affairs/cc by 2.0

By Emile Nakhleh
WASHINGTON, Jan 7 2014 (IPS)

A few days ago, Bahraini officials announced that they had “foiled an attempt to smuggle explosives and arms, some made in Iran and Syria, into the country by boat.” Around the same time, the government also contended it had defused a car bomb and seized weapons in different locations in the country.

The Al Khalifa regime maintains it is fighting terrorism, which it unabashedly equates with pro-reform activists. The regime accuses Iran of plotting and driving acts of “terrorism” on the island. Regardless of Iran’s perceived involvement in the smuggling of weapons, it is important to put this latest episode in context.If regimes are willing to tear their countries apart in order to stay in power, as the Al Khalifa ruling family seems to be doing, domestic terrorism is an assured outcome.

First, although Iran might benefit from continued instability in Bahrain, since Bahrain became independent in 1971, Iran has not engaged in any activity to remove the Sunni Al Khalifa from power. In 1970-71, the Shah of Iran accepted the United Nations’ special plebiscite in Bahrain, which resulted in granting the country independence. Successive Iranian governments under the Ayatollahs since the fall of the Shah have not questioned Bahrain’s independence.

Furthermore, over the years most Bahraini Shia looked for Iraqi and other Arab, not Iranian, grand Ayatollahs as sources of emulation or marja’ taqlid. The Shia al-Wefaq political party, which some elements within Al Khalifa ruling family have accused of being a conduit for Iran, has consistently supported genuine reform through peaceful means.

Al-Wefaq leaders, some of whom have studied and lived in Iran in recent decades, have endorsed the government’s call for dialogue with the opposition and have endorsed the Crown Prince’s initiative for reform and dialogue. Al Khalifa’s response to al-Wefaq’s peaceful position has been to arrest its two most prominent leaders, Sheikh Ali Salman and Khalil al-Marzooq.

Second, regardless of the public relations campaign the Bahraini regime is waging against Iran, it continues its arrests and sham trials and convictions of Bahraini citizens. This includes doctors and health providers, young and old peaceful protesters, and more recently athletes. Their only “sin” is that they are members of the Shia majority in a country ruled by a Sunni minority regime.

In a recent article, James Dorsey of Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies detailed the large number of Shia athletes, players and champions – soccer, handball, tennis, jiu-jitsu, gymnastics, beach volleyball, and car racing – who have been arrested and given lengthy jail sentences. Many of these players, who hail from Diraz and other neighbouring Shia villages, were hastily tried and convicted for expressing pro-reform views.

Third, in a recent interview with the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Qabas, Professor M. Cherif Bassiouni, who headed the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI), expressed his disappointment at the government’s failure to implement some of the key recommendations in the report. As a reminder, King Hamad had created BICI and formally and publicly received and accepted its final report.

No one within the regime has been held accountable for the unlawful acts and crimes detailed in the BICI report. According to Bassiouni, the government’s inaction on the recommendation has raised serious doubts within “civil society institutions and human rights organisations” about the regime’s commitment to genuine reform.

Fourth, the Bahraini regime, like its Saudi counterpart, is stoking a deadly sectarian war in the Gulf and elsewhere in the region. The ruling family is very concerned that should Iran conclude a deal with the international community on its nuclear programme, Al Khalifa would become marginalised as a Gulf player.

The regime is particularly worried that as a small island country with miniscule oil production, Bahrain might become a marginal player in regional and international politics. It behooves the Al Khalifa regime to know that if it fails to work with its people to bring stability to the country, it would lose its standing in Washington and other Western capitals.

As the Bahraini majority loses confidence in the regime, it would not be unthinkable for Saudi Arabia and other regional and international powers, including the United States, to consider Al Khalifa a liability.

The key mission of the Bahrain-based U.S Fifth Fleet is not to protect the repressive Al Khalifa regime. It serves regional stability, strategic waterways, and other global U.S. interests. Its commitment to Al Khalifa or to the Bahrain port is neither central nor irrevocable.

As the Bahraini regime continues its campaign against Iran, it should remember that by refusing to engage the largely peaceful opposition for meaningful reform, it has created an environment for Sunni extremism and anti-Shia radicalism.

The recent history of intolerant religious proselytisation instructs us that such an environment invariably leads to terrorism. This is a domestic phenomenon regardless of whether the intercepted arms came from Iran or not. One also should recognise that growing frustration among dissidents would drive some of the youth to become more radicalised and turn to violence.

If regimes are willing to tear their countries apart in order to stay in power, as the Al Khalifa ruling family seems to be doing, domestic terrorism is an assured outcome. Today, we see this phenomenon in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere. The Islamic State in Syria and the Levant (ISIL) did not emerge in a vacuum. Radical, intolerant, Sunni jihadism, which Bahrain and Saudi Arabia have been pushing in Syria, and before that in Iraq, is the kernel from which terrorism sprouts. Eventually it would come home to roost.

As I wrote previously, the Al Khalifa regime’s survival remains possible only if the ruling family stops playing its repressive apartheid game and engages its people with an eye toward power sharing and genuine reform.

King Hamad still has an opportunity to implement the BICI recommendations comprehensively and transparently. He could assemble a group of distinguished Bahrainis, Sunni and Shia, and task them with writing a new constitution that would include a nationally elected parliament with full legislative powers and checks and balances over the executive branch. This should be done soon because the King and the ruling family are running out of time.

Emile Nakhleh, a former Senior Intelligence Service Officer, is a Research Professor at the University of New Mexico and author of “A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World” and “Bahrain: Political Development in a Modernizing Society.”

The recent collapse of the British Serious Fraud Office court case against Victor Dahdaleh has left the Bahraini prime minister’s reputation for corruption intact.

The case has been widely covered in British media reports, including the Guardian, the Financial Times, and the Independent. Reuters has also reported extensively on the case.Businessmen disagreed on whether to call him "Mr. 10%," "Mr. 30%," or "Mr. 50%."

Without going into the details, suffice it to say the case collapsed before any witnesses were called, sparing Prime Minister Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa the public spectacle of being presented in the trial, at least virtually, as the most vivid face of corruption in Bahrain. He escaped that for now, but this is a Pyrrhic victory.

The SFO mishandling of the case, the Bahraini government’s admission that illicit payments were made to the state-run aluminium company ALBA with the prime minister’s knowledge and approval, the changing testimony of key witnesses, and the refusal of others to testify all contributed to the prosecutor’s inability to proceed against the defendant.

Having his uncle and prime minister saved from public humiliation, in British courts no less, King Hamad cannot possibly pretend that all is well with his prime minister or some of the family ministers who were tainted by the case. The formal admission by one of the prime minister’s deputies presented in a letter to the British court that the multi-million-dollar payments were made with Khalifa’s knowledge and approval will have serious, long-term implications for the ruling family.

According to media reports, this admission corroborated the defendant’s claims that he made the payments in response to the request of ALBA’s board chairman at the time. The chairman, Shaikh Isa Al Khalifa, was the minister of oil and is a close relative of the prime minister.

In fact, according to British media, the court case focused on the Bahraini government culture of “Pay for Play” and on the prime minister’s role in promoting such practices. Simply put, if a foreign businessman intended to do business in Bahrain on a large scale, he would have to pay. The bigger the “Play,” the higher the “Pay,” and the more senior the official involved.

Although the court cleared the defendant of all charges, the Bahraini prime minister has cast a long shadow of corruption on the case. The defendant will walk free, but the prime minister will be saddled by this story for years to come. The Bahraini public do not need to look at leaked diplomatic cables to know about the private life of the prime minister. As his deputy’s letter alluded to, it’s all out there in the public record.

Most observers believe there would have been no way for ALBA’s board chairman to receive such illicit payments from an international businessman without Prime Minister Khalifa knowing about it. Most successful Bahraini businessmen, Sunni and Shia, who hail from the country’s prominent Sunni and Shia families, knew of Khalifa’s practices.

They all agreed that Khalifa drove, practiced, and benefited from the “Pay for Play” insidious culture. They often disagreed on whether to call him “Mr. 10%”, “Mr. 30%” or “Mr. 50%.”

Businessmen told me over the years that several office buildings and hotels were known as “Shaikh Khalifa’s buildings.” His claim to ownership of reclaimed lands, which are dredged at public expense, is another sorry tale of corruption.

At the very least, the case has undermined the legitimacy of Al Khalifa rule, especially at this juncture when the king is touting the family’s “conquest” of the island over 200 years ago.

If the king hopes to retain a modicum of credibility, he should jettison his prime minister and clean up the corrupt culture that has underpinned the ruling family’s business practices at the highest levels. As the king is feverishly trying to endear himself to the British government, in an apparent snub to Washington, his efforts will be severely undermined by Khalifa remaining in the post of prime minister.

Bahraini law does not condone “Pay for Play” practices, but high-level official practices have trumped the law and set up a shadowy system of illicit financial transactions. If the king wishes to encourage international businessmen to invest in his country without violating their countries’ laws on corruption, he should clean up the system in word and in deed.

Under the 1906 British Prevention of Corruption Act, which covered Dahdaleh’s case, if the defendant could prove the payments were made with the knowledge and approval of senior government officials, he could be acquitted of the charges. New anti-corruption laws in Britain and the U.S., however, do not allow potential defendants such a luxury.

It’s somewhat ironic that the prime minister’s downfall could be brought about by corruption rather than repression and abuse of power. Dahdaleh’s case offers a clear lesson to multinational corporations and businessmen and to justice departments in Western and other countries that do not condone corrupt practices. The lesson should also be equally clear to the Bahraini king.

Emile Nakhleh is a former Senior Intelligence Service Officer, a Research Professor at the University of New Mexico, and author of A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World.

A U.S. Air Force B-1B bomber flies by ships participating in an exercise in the Arabian Gulf, August 2013. Riyadh views the U.S. as willing to risk sacrificing key strategic assets – in this case, the Bahrain headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet -- as part of a broader retreat from the region. Credit: U.S. Naval Forces Central Command/U.S. Fifth Fleet/cc by 2.0

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Nov 7 2013 (IPS)

While Monday’s meeting between Secretary of State John Kerry and Saudi King Abdullah may have helped calm the waters, the latest anxieties and anger expressed by Riyadh toward the United States has reignited debate here about the value of the two countries’ long-standing alliance.

In fact, a parting of the ways is already underway, according to Chas Freeman, a highly decorated former Foreign Service officer who served as U.S. ambassador in Riyadh during the first Gulf war.

“The Saudis were not convinced by Kerry,” Freeman, who retains high-level ties in Riyadh, told IPS. “Of course, both sides have their own good reasons for wishing to downplay that [fact] because the prestige of each in the region depends in part on the appearance of a cooperative relationship with the other.

“But in the past, we’ve been able to rely on them at a minimum not to oppose U.S. policy, and most often to support it. Now we no longer have that assurance, and in some cases, they’re moving to oppose it,” he said.

Built during World War II as a strategic bargain that would ensure the plentiful flow of Saudi oil to the U.S. and its allies in exchange for Washington’s military protection, the relationship has come increasingly under question both here and in Riyadh.

Here it was crystallised most dramatically by an op-ed by Fareed Zakaria, a prominent fixture of the foreign-policy establishment, published by Time magazine entitled “The Saudis Are Mad? Tough!”

“If there were a prize for Most Irresponsible Foreign Policy it would surely be awarded to Saudi Arabia,” noted Zakaria, a former editor of the influential Foreign Affairs journal who hosts a weekly foreign policy programme on CNN.

“It is the nation most responsible for the rise of Islamic radicalism and militancy around the world,” he noted, concluding that “Yes, Saudi Arabia is angry with the U.S. But are we sure that’s a sign Washington is doing something wrong?”

Zakaria’s assault, while the most spectacular, has not been the only one. Several influential commentators have suggested in the New York Times and elsewhere in recent weeks that the Riyadh-backed counter-revolution against the Arab Spring — which achieved its greatest advance with the military coup last summer Egypt’s first democratically elected president – will ultimately prove counter-productive and destabilising to the region and possibly even to the kingdom itself, most of whose top leadership is very old or in poor health.

For some of the same reasons, they have also criticised the strongly sectarian, Sunni-vs-Shia narrative that Riyadh, or at least its Wahhabi religious establishment, has propagated in its regional rivalry with Iran, particularly at a time when the West and Washington – and, most recently, Sunni-led Turkey — are seeking détente with Tehran, a prospect of considerable concern to the kingdom.

Serious strains between the two countries are not new. Riyadh participated in the 1973 Arab oil embargo to punish Washington for backing Israel during that October War. More recently, the 9/11 attacks, the perpetrators of which were almost all Saudi, spurred a major round of Riyadh-bashing, notably by pro-Israel neo-conservative forces that were then riding high in the George W. Bush administration.

The kingdom has harboured its own grievances, beginning with Washington’s refusal to seriously pressure Israel to accept a series of Saudi-initiated peace plans, most recently the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative.

And, in its competition with Iran, the effective handover by the George W. Bush administration of control of the Iraqi government to the Shiite majority after the 2003 U.S. invasion constituted for Riyadh perhaps its biggest strategic setback of the past several decades – and one to which the kingdom is still not reconciled, as evidenced by its refusal, despite Washington’s repeated entreaties, to send an ambassador to Baghdad.

Under Obama, however, ties have become even more strained, as Saudi doubts about Washington’s commitment to protect Riyadh’s interests have grown steadily.

Not only did Obama fail to follow through on demands that Israel cease settlement activity during his early showdown with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but his insistence, after some initial hesitation, that long-ruling Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resign shook Riyadh’s faith that Washington would stand by its long-loyal, if autocratic, regional clients.

Washington’s disapproval — however mildly stated — of the tough, Saudi-backed crackdown by Bahrain’s royal family against its majority Shia population in early 2011 compounded Riyadh’s impression that Washington not only failed to understand the vital interests of the kingdom itself, what with its own restive Shia community concentrated in its Eastern Province just across the causeway.

It also appeared to Riyadh that Obama was willing to risk sacrificing key strategic assets – in this case, the Bahrain headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet — as part of a broader retreat from the region. That perception only increased last summer as Obama reacted with similar ambivalence – some cuts in military and security assistance — to the coup in Egypt which was strongly supported by the kingdom.

The brutal civil war in Syria and Obama’s clear reluctance to intervene on behalf of the Sunni-led opposition — most dramatically expressed by his failure to attack key military targets after concluding that the Iranian-backed Assad regime had indeed crossed his “red line” by killing hundreds of people with chemical weapons – clearly compounded these concerns.

Heralded already by Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal’s decision not to address this year’s U.N. General Assembly, Riyadh’s unhappiness hit the headlines with last month’s announcement that it would not take its seat on the U.N. Security Council that it had spent two years of intensive lobbying trying to obtain.

Three days later, the kingdom’s intelligence chief and former ambassador in Washington, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan al-Saud was reported by Reuters and the Wall Street Journal as telling European diplomats that Riyadh was considering a “major shift” in ties with Washington, particularly regarding its efforts to bolster the armed Syrian opposition. The decision to forgo the Security Council seat, he was reported as saying, “was a message for the U.S., not the U.N.”

This, in turn, was followed by a series of appearances and interviews here by Prince Turki al-Faisal al-Saud, also a former ambassador here, in which he repeatedly complained about Washington’s failure to bomb Syria after the chemical attack and provide substantially more military aid to the Syrian rebels, and expressed alarm over Tehran’s nuclear programme.

In this unprecedented diplomatic campaign, Riyadh clearly has powerful supporters here, including the Pentagon, which has steadfastly resisted suggestions from human rights groups and others to move the Fifth Fleet out of Bahrain and to cut all security assistance to Egypt as is required by law after a military coup against an elected government.

With a long history of partnership with the kingdom, the oil industry also remains a not-insignificant supporter of maintaining the closest possible ties with Riyadh, as do major arms contractors who depend heavily on sales to Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies.

Finally, the Israel lobby appears to be discreetly rallying behind Riyadh due primarily to its status as Iran’s main regional rival, even as Saudi denunciations have also been praised by neo-conservatives.

While all of these forces are calling on the administration to take Saudi complaints seriously lest there be a “major shift”, as Bandar described it, the general reaction here, as Henderson put it, has been “an almost audible yawn,” although Kerry’s trip clearly signals a recognition of a need for greater consultation at the least.

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at Lobelog.com.

Bahraini opposition groups announced on Tuesday their opposition to participating in the dialogue that is supposed to start tomorrow. According to the Bahrain Mirror, the five opposition groups that signed the joint statement included al-Wifaq, Wa’d, al-Minbar, al-Tajammu’, and al-Ikha’.

The statement maintained that during the eight months of the so-called national dialogue, the government exploited the process as a public relations tool and did not show seriousness of purpose, a clear agenda for reconciliation, or a date certain for closure. The government ignored the six points which the opposition presented at the beginning of the second round of the dialogue in late August.The Al Khalifa family, like other Gulf Arab families, believes it is entitled to rule the country as it sees fit because it owns it.

These points called for halting anti-opposition incitement, which the regime feverishly pushed through its media; promoting genuine national reconciliation; releasing political prisoners; and ending violations of peoples’ homes, such as breaking down doors; vigilante justice; and unlawful arrests.

Since the hiatus in the dialogue in the past few weeks, regime arrests and repression continued unabated, violations of human rights proceeded at a faster pace, arrests of protesters, including minors, increased, fired workers have not been allowed to return, and the regime’s actions against the Shia majority became much uglier.

The adoption of the 22 amendments by the pro-government legislature has given the prime minister and the king added “legalistic” leverage to proceed with their policy of sectarianism and discrimination. Sham trials and unreasonable lengthy jail sentences have been meted out to hundreds of protesters.

The international community, including most Western countries, have condemned these practices and called on the Al-Khalifa regime to cease and desist from these policies and begin a process of serious national reconciliation.

Some mainstream opposition activists in the past week came under heavy pressure from their “friends” to participate in the dialogue. Tuesday’s statement shows the opposition did not succumb to the pressure from pro-regime elements to participate in the dialogue. They accuse the government, instead, of focusing on the “process” of the dialogue, not its substance.

The regime continues to deprive some Bahrainis of their citizenship and push others to leave the country, while at the same time giving Bahraini citizenship to Sunni foreign nationals in order to decrease the size of the Shia majority. Some within the opposition have supported participating in the dialogue, arguing it would be better to engage the regime despite its insincerity and continued repression.

Other opposition activists fear that their non-participation would engender more regime violence, cause more deaths and injuries, and increase arrests and sham trials. Many mainstream activists within the opposition have shunned the dialogue because they doubted it would yield tangible results.

The regime has spent much time on the process of “a dialogue about the dialogue” and not on putting the country on a stable peaceful path. It relies on this charade to avoid making serious concessions to the Bahraini people.

The ruling family’s refusal to respond to the people’s demands for power sharing and genuine political and economic reform will continue regardless of whether the dialogue resumes Oct. 30 or not. Al Khalifa’s actions against their people belie their public statements in defence of national reconciliation.

Al Khalifa seem to be playing a dangerous chicken and egg game, which in the long run will deepen sectarianism and violence and will make national reconciliation much more difficult. International human rights organisations, the European Union, and the United Nations have all seen through this game and have condemned these tactics and policies.

The Al Khalifa family, like other Gulf Arab families, believes it is entitled to rule the country as it sees fit because it owns it. The regime hopes that perceived diminishing U.S. influence in the Arab region, especially the rift between Washington and Riyadh, will push the Bahraini crisis to the backburner of regional policy. The regime continues to buy nasty and deadly weapons to fight public demonstrations.

Having failed to silence their people’s calls for justice, equality, and freedom for two and a half years, the king and his prime minister would be foolish to think they could succeed in the coming months and years.

Instead of bogus dialogue, the king should exercise real leadership by having his son and crown prince lead a true national reconciliation dialogue in which all segments of society will participate. The decision of the five opposition groups against participation in the dialogue was correct and legitimate.

The author is former Director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program at CIA, a Research Professor at the University of New Mexico, and author of “A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World and Bahrain: Political Development in a Modernizing Society”.

The lengthy prison sentences handed down to 50 Shia activists last week and the refusal of Bahraini courts to hear their allegations of torture once again confirm the regime’s continued repression of the opposition.

Amnesty International in a statement this week decried the unfair trials and sentencing of these activists and the inability of the defence lawyers to present witnesses or to challenge the authorities’ politically motivated charges. Court decisions seem to be pre-ordained regardless of the facts."The King's hands-off approach shows he is ruling over a fractious country that is heading toward the abyss."

Many of those convicted were allegedly tortured in prison before trial as “terrorists”, an accusation which the Al Khalifa regime hurls at any Bahraini who criticises regime brutality.

In a recent interview with Al Monitor, the Bahraini foreign minister defended his government’s “serious” commitment to the so-called national reconciliation dialogue and accused the opposition of undermining it.  He said the dialogue is “there to stay,” but just this week the government suspended the dialogue until Oct. 30.

From the very beginning, the government-organised dialogue has been a public relations stunt to buy time and perhaps mollify critical Western governments. It failed because it mostly focused on process, not substance.

Unfortunately for Bahrainis, the deafening silence in Washington and London about human rights abuses has signaled to the Bahraini regime that other regional trouble spots, especially Syria, Iran, and Egypt, at least for the moment trump Bahrain.

The regime continues to encourage the radical Sunni Salafi elements within the ruling family to pursue an unwavering apartheid policy against the majority and remains impervious to international criticism.

Apart from the convictions, the government crackdown has included banning non-governmental organisations from contacting foreign funding sources or diplomats without government approval, arresting Khalil Marzuq, a leading member of al-Wifaq party, depriving a number of Bahrainis of citizenship, and pursuing an anti-Shia sectarian agenda.  These actions have incurred international condemnation and have prompted the opposition in mid-September to pull out of the dialogue.

Restrictions on NGOs finally prompted the U.S. State Department to issue a statement Sep. 19 expressing “concern” about the Bahraini government’s recent restrictions on civil society groups and their ability to freely communicate “with foreign governments and international organizations.”

European governments, spearheaded by Switzerland, privately and publicly have repeatedly condemned human rights abuses in Bahrain.  The recent human rights declaration signed by 47 states is another sign of growing international impatience with the autocratic, intolerant, and exclusive nature of the Bahraini regime.

In recent media interviews, the Bahraini foreign minister criticised U.S. President Barack Obama for lumping Bahrain with Iraq and Syria as regimes that have promoted sectarianism.

“We are different from the other two states, and this is hard to take,” the foreign minister said in an interview with the Saudi-owned Al-Hayat newspaper.

Some media reports have discussed the serious divisions within the ruling family’s two major ideological factions. These include the supposedly pro-reform faction led by the King’s son and Crown Prince Salman; the other is the more conservative and anti-reform faction led by the “Khawalids” within the military senior hierarchy and the Royal Court.

The King views himself as a “constitutional monarch” above the political fray and as an arbiter of family ideological feuds.  This hands-off approach, however, shows he is ruling over a fractious country that is heading toward the abyss.

By replacing his ambassador in Washington, the relatively moderate Bahraini Jewish woman Huda Nunu, with a military officer closely associated with the Khawalids, the King’s “in your face” appointment in effect is telling Washington that his hard-line policies against the opposition would continue.

Whatever game the King is playing is destined to fail in the long run.  He cannot possibly envision a stable and peaceful Bahrain if he continues to allow an extremist Sunni anti-Shia faction within his family to run the country with total disregard of the majority. This is a recipe for violence and chaos. The game is up; the King cannot pretend all is well in his tiny “constitutional monarchy”.

Much like the white extremist faction within the U.S. Republican Party that is bent on disregarding the law of the land and the democratic procedures to effect political change, the extremist Khawalid faction under the auspices of the prime minister is committed to keeping Al Khalifa in power at all costs, even at the risk of tearing the country apart.

If the King is still committed to genuine reform, he should shed his “constitutional monarch” posture and act decisively and courageously.  He could immediately take the following 10 steps:

• Remove the prime minister, appoint the crown prince or another distinguished Bahraini as acting prime minister, and call for free national elections.
• Appoint a respected and representative commission to initiate genuine national reconciliation dialogue involving all segments of society.
• Stop illegal arrests and sham trials.
• Void the 22 amendments to the law that the lower house of the Bahraini parliament passed recently, which, among other things, call for stripping Bahrainis of their citizenship if they criticise Al Khalifa, whether on Twitter or in person.
• Remove all vestiges of employment discrimination against the Shia, especially in defense and the security services.
• Implement the key recommendations of the Bassiouni Commission report.
• Make new appointments in the Royal Court and the top echelons of the military.
• Review the court system and revisit the contractual appointments of expatriate judges.
• Void the recent sentences and arrests of peaceful opposition protesters.
• Announce the above steps in a nationally televised address to the nation.

The ruling family has waged a sophisticated public relations campaign through traditional means and on the new social media and has hired publicists to present a gentle picture of the government’s abysmal human rights record. The campaign has failed.

Western governments, human rights groups, the European Union, and Western media have not really bought into Al Khalifa’s PR blitz. The Washington Post’s recent editorial condemning Marzuq’s arrest is a telling example of how Western media has come to view Bahrain’s repressive regime.

A recent twist in the Bahraini regime’s propaganda has been to argue that the “Bahraini file” is linked to the “Syrian file” and to the “Iranian file.” Therefore, the Bahraini domestic conflict could not be resolved until Syria is taken care of or until a U.S.-Iran rapprochement is achieved. The regime has been trying feverishly but unsuccessfully to sell this argument to regional and international players and to the Bahraini opposition.

No such linkage exists; grievances in Bahrain go back decades.  A resolution of the Syrian crisis, whether by war or diplomacy, or the possible reintegration of Iran in the international community should not prevent the ruling family from implementing genuine reforms and ending the sate of emergency and Sunni apartheid policies against the Shia majority.

Emile Nakhleh is former Director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program at CIA and author of “A Necessary Engagement:  Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World and Bahrain:  Political Development in a Modernizing Society.”

On Aug. 14, the 42^nd anniversary of Bahrain’s independence from Britain, an online group called Tarmarod (“rebellion” in Arabic) officially joined Bahrain’s democracy movement that began in February 2011.

A montage of the Bahraini Uprising created from images available on the Wikimedia Commons.

Tamarod’s name and inspiration came from the Egyptian movement that led to the ouster of former president Mohamed Morsi, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.

In its first statement, issued on Jul. 4, Tamarod said it wants “a homeland that embraces all its citizens, an Arab and independent Bahrain where the people can have greater decision-making power within their country.

“This movement is a ‘rebellion’ against the injustice and illegitimacy of a regime that has exerted its power through the exploitation of the country’s natural resources and draconian legislation that limits human rights and judges its citizens based on their ethnicities,” the statement said.

Countering the rebellion

Ahead of Aug. 14, which Bahrain’s government anticipated as a day of protest, high-level official statements describing Tamarod as a sham version of the Egyptian movement were released.

The Ministry of Interior warned against responding to Tamarod’s calls of protest and civil disobedience, and King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifah issued a decree ordering the National Assembly to convene and, for the first time in Bahrain’s history, toughen anti-terrorism laws.

Bahrain’s broad definition of terrorism can be applied to the act of burning tires, blocking streets, the use of Molotov cocktails and protesting in the capital, Manama, which the government argues can damage the country’s economy.

Bahrain’s National Assembly came up with 22 recommendations on Jul. 28, including the banning of all demonstrations and gatherings in Manama and the withdrawal of citizenship from “perpetrators of terrorist acts” and “instigators”, all of which were issued as law by the king on Aug. 1.

In the run-up to Aug. 14, at least five online activists, bloggers, photographers and other members of citizen media were arrested, according to the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (BCHR).

More than 70 websites and online forums that the government alleges promote terrorism were also blocked.

Tamarod called for peaceful but escalating civil disobedience by closing stores and refraining from shopping or fueling vehicles. The movement also called on people to temporarily halt financial transactions, including the paying of bills, and to switch off all lights at sunset.

Protest spots were also declared in nine different locations, for people to march to on foot – not as groups but individually – without any slogans, banners, flags or other such manifestations, and by avoiding all confrontation with security forces.

Bahrain’s security forces were meanwhile implementing their response plan.

Since Aug. 12, an intensive security presence was felt throughout the capital, villages and other areas. This included checkpoints and the arresting of activists.

Bahrain’s pro-government media also campaigned against Tamarod by calling for the withdrawal of citizenship of oppositional political and religious leaders.

Bahrain’s unique struggle

In comparison to the uprisings that began in other Arab or African countries in 2011, Bahrain’s protest movement was not a direct response to economic disadvantages faced by its people. The protests have been aimed at achieving freedom and self-determination.

Bahrain’s Shiite majority has long said that it is not given the same chances as the Sunni minority, such as jobs assigned by the Sunni royal family to top tier positions in commerce and governance. Shiite Muslims are also not allowed to join the island-nation’s security forces or army.

Bahrain’s authorities claim the opposition movement is aided by Iran and aims to remove the monarchy through terrorism.

The monarchy has responded by cracking down on demonstrators through hundreds of arrests recorded by international rights-monitoring organisations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, as well as systematic torture, the killing of demonstrators and the removal of alleged protestors from their jobs.

Bahrain’s citizen media

Bahrain’s government has gone to lengths to prevent foreign media from visiting the country since April 2011. International media were also largely barred from entering the country close to Aug. 14, all of which has resulted in citizens working to disseminate information.

Bahrainis were mostly impeded from protesting on Aug. 14 or on the days after because of the heavy police presence on the streets. Local and international media were meanwhile focused on the bloody events in Egypt following the killing of hundreds of pro-Muslim Brotherhood protestors that also took place on that day.

Two-and-a-half years after Bahrain’s uprising began, international media attention also remains scarce and the support provided to the monarchy by neighbouring countries such as Saudi Arabia has not contributed to positive change for either side.

Not even the results of a Bahraini independent inquiry, which expose substantial human rights violations, have spurred meaningful reform.

But Bahrainis are still showing their resolve to achieve their rights and live in a country where the rule of law is implemented through democracy and not by a tribe.

This is one reason why the Tamarod movement has established itself in Manama – despite the authorities’ attempts to quell protests there – and promised to continue its peaceful “rebellion”.

Nazeeha Saeed is the Bahrain correspondent for Radio Monte Carlo and France 24. Her coverage of Bahrain’s 2011 uprising led to her detention by Bahraini police. She now works closely with international organisations to defend freedom of the media in Bahrain and for the rights of both Bahraini and non-Bahraini journalists.

Thousands rally in Bahrain in March 2011. Credit: Suad Hamada/IPS

By Emile Nakhleh
WASHINGTON, Aug 1 2013 (IPS)

The special session of the Bahraini National Assembly held on Sunday Jul. 28 was a spectacle of venom, a display of vulgarity, and an unabashed nod to increased dictatorship.

Calling the Shia “dogs”, as one parliamentarian said during the session, which King Hamad convened, the Al-Khalifa have thrown away any hope for national reconciliation and dialogue.

The 22 recommendations approved during the session aimed at giving the regime pseudo-legal tools to quash dissent and violate human and civil rights with impunity. All in the name of fighting “terrorism”.

Watching a video of some of the speeches during the session, one is saddened by how low official political discourse has become. Students of Bahrain yearn for the days when parliamentary debaters were civil and when Shia and Sunni parliamentarians engaged in thoughtful, rational, and tolerant debates despite their political or ideological differences.

In the early 1970s when the Constituent Assembly debated the draft constitution, Bahrainis followed the speeches by their elected and appointed representatives with much respect and hope for the future of a modern, tolerant, and civil society.

Such parliamentarians as Rasul al-Jishi, Jasim Murad, Ali Saleh, Abd al-Aziz Shamlan, Ali Sayyar, Isa Qasim, Qasim Fakhro, and others made their countrymen proud with the quality of debate that characterised Bahrain’s first ever elected parliament.

Even such ministers as Muhammad bin Mubarak al-Khalifa, Ali Fakhro, and Yusif Shirawi participated in those parliamentary debates and worked jointly with elected members to chart a more hopeful future for all the people of Bahrain.

As I sat through those parliamentary sessions in 1973 and followed the lengthy discussions on a myriad of constitutional amendments, I envisioned a democratically prosperous Bahrain for years to come. The National Assembly, however, was dissolved two years later, and the constitution was suspended. Al-Khalifa ruled by decree ever since.

The parliamentary special session last Sunday showed a divisive, intolerant, and fractured country that is rapidly descending into chaos. It’s as if civility, rationality, and moderation have become relics from the past.

King Hamad and the Crown Prince welcomed the recommendations, and the powerful prime minister urged his ministers to implement them immediately; in fact, he has threatened to fire any minister who slows their implementation.

According to media reports, the recommendations were prepared before the meeting and were disseminated to the media a few minutes after the session ended. They were not even debated meaningfully or rationally during the session.

The regime’s fear that Bahrainis would have their own “tamarud” (rebellion) civil disobedience movement to confront the regime on Aug. 14, Bahrain’s actual independence day, drove the timing of the session. The Bahraini opposition hopes to emulate the Egyptian “tamarud”, which indirectly led to Morsi’s removal.

Like other autocratic regimes, whether under Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Egypt or Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Al-Khalifa justified the draconian recommendations against all forms of opposition and peaceful dissent in the name of fighting “terrorism” and incitement of “all forms of violence” (Recommendation #3). The regime will likely use these recommendations to ban all peaceful demonstrations and protests.

The regime is prepared, according to Recommendation #2, to revoke the citizenship of Bahraini citizens “who carry out terrorist crimes and those who instigate terrorism”. The regime defines a terrorist as any Bahraini who is suspected of being a dissident or actively advocating genuine reforms. In fact, Recommendation #6 bans “sit-ins, rallies and gatherings in the capital Manama”.

The regime does not seem perturbed by the fact that citizenship revocation violates international legal norms and the Bahraini constitution. In fact, this might be a sinister way for the Sunni al-Khalifa to alter the demographics of the country by depriving the Shia dissidents of citizenship.

Viewing the entire protest movement through the security prism, as the recommendations imply, the regime seems bent on escalating its crackdown against peaceful protest and freedoms of speech and assembly, according to the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights.

Under Recommendation #7, the country could soon be ruled under martial law or “National Safety”, as the regime euphemistically calls it.

The recommendations have put the country on a sectarian collision course, have dealt a major blow to peaceful dissent and civil rights, and have raised serious questions in Washington about Al-Khalifa’s commitment to genuine reform.

In a direct rebuke to U.S. Ambassador Thomas Krajeski, Recommendation #11 requests “that all ambassadors to Bahrain to not interfere in the kingdom’s domestic affairs.”

Some die-hard Sunni parliamentarians, with the support of the Royal Court, have urged the regime to expel Ambassador Krajeski from Bahrain, claiming he has been meeting with pro-democracy Shia dissidents. Others have threatened his personal safety.

Still others, with tacit regime support, are hoping the ambassador would be transferred out of Bahrain, much like what happened to political officer Ludovic Hood in May 2011.

At the time, according to the “Religion and Politics in Bahrain” blog, pro-regime Sunni activists demanded Hood’s removal because they claimed he offered “Krispy Kreme doughnuts to demonstrators who had gathered outside the American Embassy” to protest perceived U.S. support for Al-Khalifa.

Now pro-regime Sunni activists are feverishly campaigning against the U.S. ambassador’s public support for human rights and genuine reform in Bahrain. The recommendation curtailing diplomatic activities in the country is squarely aimed at Ambassador Krajeski.

According to Bahrain Mirror, some have advocated banning him from appearing on state media and in pro-regime newspapers, even if the subject he is discussing is gourmet cooking, one of the ambassador’s hobbies!

The anti-Shia and anti-reform underlying theme of the recommendations is a naked display of tribal family autocracy, which Al-Khalifa are determined to preserve at any cost, including tearing the society apart. Adopting these recommendations reflects the regime’s nervousness about the ever-increasing precarious nature of their rule and the unstoppable demands for justice, dignity, and equality.

According to a recently leaked audio recording, Crown Prince Salman was quoted as saying, “The current situation is unsustainable, and the policy we are pursuing cannot continue. People are getting tired, and conditions could worsen any moment. Bigger dangers are threatening our society, and the future is becoming more precarious.”

Washington and other Western capitals should work diligently to disabuse the king and the prime minister of the notion that “securitisation” is the answer to Bahrain’s domestic ills. Engaging with the public on the future of Bahrain, including the Shia majority and the pro-democracy youth movement, is the only way to bring the country back from the brink.

Washington should make it clear to Al-Khalifa that media attacks and threats against Ambassador Krajeski should stop. Whipping the flames of hatred against the U.S. embassy to preserve the regime’s dictatorial rule is a dangerous game, which Al-Khalifa cannot afford to engage in.

As a first and immediate step, King Hamad should muzzle the hotheads in his Royal Court and in the prime minister’s office. In the meantime, the U.S. should initiate serious discussions on how and when to move the Fifth Fleet out of Bahrain to a neighbouring country or over the horizon.

Emile Nakhleh, a former Senior U.S. Intelligence Service Officer, is a Research Professor at the University of New Mexico and author of “A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World and Bahrain: Political Development in a Modernizing Society”.

Nazeeha Saeed, Credit: Christophe Meireis

By Jasmin Ramsey
WASHINGTON, Jul 10 2013 (IPS)

In May 2011, almost a year and half after a Tunisian street vendor’s self-immolation sparked waves of revolution still rocking the Middle East, Bahraini journalist Nazeeha Saeed was tortured during her 13-hour detention before signing a confession she was not allowed to read.

Saeed, who had been covering Bahrain’s pro-democracy movement for France 24, was blindfolded, slapped, kicked and beaten with a hose in Riffa police station where she had voluntarily gone for questioning.

She was charged with fabricating news reports, working with Iranian and Lebanese channels and being part of a terrorist cell. A photograph of her covering a protest in the capital, Manama, is the only evidence she’s seen.

Following complaints from France24, Bahrain’s Ministry of the Interior launched an investigation that resulted in the acquittal of one female officer two years later.

Saeed was never tried or sentenced. Lingering psychological trauma prevented her from fully returning to work for six months.

Though King Hamad of Bahrain’s ruling Sunni Al-Khalifa family has urged for reform in the Shia-majority island kingdom, freedom of association and online activism are severely restricted, while charges of torture and unfair trials continue to surface.

More than 60 people have died since protests began in February 2011.

On Jul. 9, Bahraini officials said two attacks in a Shia-majority village left one police officer dead and at least three others injured.

“My country was not violent before Feburary 2011,” Saeed told IPS correspondent Jasmin Ramsey. Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: What is press freedom like in Bahrain?

A: Since two years ago, it has not been easy for us journalists to work. The freedom we were used to has been reduced. We have to be careful with each and every word we write and say in our coverage. We can be arrested; we can be interrogated just for using certain words.

Q: What happened two years ago?

A: Two years and four months ago the uprising started in Bahrain. People went into the streets inspired by the Arab Spring, asking for more freedom, democracy and accountability. But there was a huge crackdown and maybe that’s why people in Washington and other cities don’t really know what happened.

Maybe they know that at one point people went out to protest in Pearl Square for a month, but since then they may have heard little to nothing because most of the protestors were either arrested, sacked from their jobs or left the country because they felt they were in danger. Some were killed.

Q: Can you describe what happened to you while in police custody?

A: On May 22, 2011, I got a call to go to the Ministry of Interior for questioning. Sometimes they come to your house, sometimes they call. I am a journalist. I thought it would be good to cooperate. I thought it wouldn’t be more than a couple of hours so I didn’t inform my family, I only told France24 on the way to the station.

A male officer met me and said it’s better I tell him everything because it’s useless to lie. He said they had all the videos, phone calls and pictures that prove I’m guilty.

Q: What did they charge you with?

A: There were three charges. Fabricating reports and news, dealing with Iranian and Lebanese channels that I have never worked with, and they accused me of being part of a terrorist cell – its media element.
I said where did you get this from if I didn’t do these things?

He said I should stop lying.

Then a female officer came into the room and began punching me on my face and pulling me from my hair. “Don’t lie, don’t lie, you are a liar.” “You are a Safawi” — a term used in Bahrain to insult Shia and accuse them of being loyal to Iran.

Then another policewoman came into the room, pulled me from my hair and threw me onto the floor. All of them started to kick me, punch me and step on me. This happened in an office with a desk and computer in it.

They made fun of the way I looked and dressed. One woman put a shoe in my mouth and said it was cleaner than my tongue. She said she was so happy to see me like this. I had that shoe in my mouth for 30 minutes.

They took me to another room with other female detainees. I could only hear their voices. Every time they moved me from room to room they pulled me by my hair, so hard that it was bruised for days afterwards. They told me to face the wall and put my hands up. After 30 minutes they came in again and began beating me from all sides with a hose. They go in and out of the room and since you’re blindfolded, you can only wonder who will be beat next.

Then it got more professional. They shocked me with electronic Tasers. Every time I got shocked, they all burst into laugher. Then they took me out of the room, put me on a chair lying on my stomach and beat me on my back, head, legs and the heels of my feet with a hose. They accused me of working with an Iranian TV station and I kept saying no. They said I lied in my reports about people being killed by the army.

During one of the sessions a female officer tried to force me to drink from a bottle. I was blindfolded and she wouldn’t tell me if it was urine so I pushed it away with my hand. She poured it on my face in anger (it left an allergic reaction). She also pulled me by my hair and forced my head into a toilet.

I was there for 13 hours before being allowed to leave.

Q: What did you sign?

A: I don’t know. I wasn’t allowed to read the document. I was just shown the place where I was supposed to sign.

Q: Bahrain’s government argues the protest movement has been incited by Iran. You interviewed many of the protestors. What is your take?

A: Such a thing never came up Pearl Roundabout. I never saw an Iranian influence. I can’t speak on behalf of all the protestors. Maybe some of them are allied with Iran. I’m not sure. But the protestor’s demands are obvious. Some said they wanted to overthrow the regime, but that’s an example of freedom of speech. The protestors were demanding freedom, democracy, accountability and the end of corruption.

During my arrest they identified me as Shia. All the time they were accusing me of being allied with Iran. They said I supported Velayat-e faqih [a Shiite principle that gives supreme power to a religious figure and was implemented in Iran after its 1979 revolution] but I didn’t even know what that meant at the time. They accused me of many things I didn’t know the meaning of.

Q: What can Washington do to support the movement for democracy and human rights in Bahrain?

A: I need support from any human being in this world. This is my story and I didn’t get justice. All governments, be they American, British or any other, should influence my government to implement fair trials and to stop harassing journalists.

Excerpt:

By continuing its repressive policies and refusing to engage civil society and moderate political groups in meaningful dialogue for genuine reform, the Khalifa family has squandered its legitimate right to rule Bahrain. King Hamad could still salvage his rule, but he would need to act boldly by taking the following steps.

First, remove the prime minister from his position and appoint the crown prince as the country’s first interim prime minister. This step is critical if the king hopes to convince the United States and the European Union of the sincerity of his reform agenda and to heal the rift with his people.

Second, empower the new prime minister to meet with civil society organisations and moderate political groups and societies for the purpose of initiating a process of genuine comprehensive political and social reform that is not driven by sectarianism.

Third, rescind all recent legislation or draft legislation that restricts the lawful activities of non-governmental organisations, and work with international human rights organisations to design legislation that guarantees and protects associational life in the country.

Fourth, set a date certain for parliamentary elections, to which international observers are invited and in which political groups and non-governmental organisations can participate freely and openly. Furthermore, he should empower the newly elected parliament to begin drafting a constitution in which the principles of inclusion and tolerance are enshrined as a matter of law, not a benevolent gift of the king.

Fifth, give a televised speech to the country explaining the steps he intends to take. He should tell his people that respect for human rights applies to all Bahrainis, regardless of religious or sectarian affiliation. The speech should be the first step toward national reconciliation and sectarian peace.

Had Prince Salman carried with him a specific plan for genuine reform on his recent visit to Washington, American policymakers would have been more forthcoming in their support of Al-Khalifa. Washington and European capitals would more enthusiastically support a power shift from Khalifa to Salman if it were accompanied by a larger and more comprehensive reform agenda.

Saudi and other Gulf Arab leaders also would welcome a power transfer in Bahrain. Though unprecedented, the power transfer from father to son that is currently underway in Qatar could be a blueprint for Bahrain. Power shift in that country would of course involve shifting power from the great uncle perennial Prime Minister Khalifa to the reform-minded crown prince.

Saudi and Omani leaders are becoming uneasy about continued instability in Bahrain. As they search for a way out of the Syrian bloody civil war, they would not want to be sidetracked by the precarious situation in Bahrain.

The June 2013 Human Rights Watch report on the Bahraini government’s policy to “interfere, restrict, and control” associational life in the country and the recent cancellation of the visit by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture to Bahrain belie the government’s defence of its so-called reform agenda and its commitment to inclusion and equality.

King Hamad has pursued two flawed policy approaches, which he had hoped would buy him time. Like other Sunni leaders in the region, he has used the violence in Syria and Hizballah’s military support for Assad as proof of the rise of the so-called Shia Crescent over the region. Hamad has frequently pointed to Iran’s central role in directing the perceived Shia resurgence on the Arab side of the Gulf.

Al-Khalifa’s drumbeat has been that Iran and Arab Shia groups are working to undermine Sunni rule. By extension, Shia demands for political reforms, justice and equality in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere are part and parcel of Iran’s grand regional design

Hizballah’s military support of Syria has nothing to do with the Shia-Sunni sectarian divide. It has everything to do with Hizballah’s belief that a breakup of the Iran-Syria-Hizballah axis through the fall of the Assad regime would weaken Hizballah’s standing and power position considerably.

Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s strategic gamble of publicly supporting Assad could still prove disastrous for Hizballah because sooner or later Assad will fall. When this happens, Hizballah’s so-called resistance brand would be discredited.

The other, and albeit more silly, political game that King Hamad has been playing is to create a wedge between the Americans and the British in their dealings with Bahrain.

According to Justin Gengler, a Bahraini watcher and blogger, King Hamad is fostering a deeply personal relationship with the British ambassador in Bahrain and is actively promoting British involvement in Bahrain and the Gulf.

At the same time, the king has tolerated Sunni rabid attacks on the U.S. ambassador in the country. Some Sunni clerics have even demanded that Washington remove him from his post for allegedly cavorting with al-Wifaq party and other Bahraini Shia opposition groups.

On a recent visit to London, King Hamad went so far as to invite Britain to return to “East of Suez” and re-establish its hegemony and, presumably, friendly relations with Gulf tribal rulers. In addition, he granted Bahraini citizenship to over 200 UK citizens for their service to Al-Khalifa rule, according to press reports.

As a small country autocrat playing with major powers, King Hamad has displayed a shallow understanding of the dynamics of regional power configurations that the two traditional partners on both sides of the Atlantic have pursued in the Gulf region for decades.

America’s long-term strategic interests in the Persian Gulf and beyond and Bahrain’s security dependency on the United States are too significant to be affected by the king’s power play.

When last year I argued in a column in the Financial Times in favour of removing the Fifth Fleet from Bahrain, the Bahraini prime minister was very disturbed and demanded that the Times publish a counter column, which his spokesman drafted. The Times published the piece the following day.

If and when Washington decides to move the Fifth Fleet out of Bahrain, such a decision would be driven by strategic and economic considerations that go beyond King Hamad’s personal relationship with the U.S. and UK ambassadors there.

If King Hamad is seriously interested in preserving his rule in a politically reformed Bahrain in which all citizens can enjoy equal opportunity, access to employment, and respect under the law, he should work jointly with the British and the Americans to save Bahrain. Otherwise, policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic will become more and more convinced that Al-Khalifa have lost their legitimacy to rule.

Emile Nakhleh is a former senior intelligence officer and author of “A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World” and “Bahrain: Political Development in a Modernizing Society”.

In 2011 in Bahrain, riot police reportedly tried to disperse protesters with tear gas and rubber bullets. Credit: Al Jazeera English/CC by 2.0

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jun 20 2013 (IPS)

Human rights groups here are calling for the United States and the European Union (EU) to exert more pressure on Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, to seriously engage its opposition and end its repression of its majority Shi’a population.

“Bahrain claims to be on a path of political reform, but it is heading altogether in the wrong direction,” according to Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), which issued an 87-page report Thursday on how the kingdom is cracking down harder on independent civil society organisations (CSOs).

“The new draft law on association – just like the continued imprisonment of opposition activists – shows all too clearly how the ruling family is rolling back genuine reform on so many fronts,” he added."Bahrain claims to be on a path of political reform, but it is heading altogether in the wrong direction."
-- Joe Stork

Brian Dooley, a specialist in the Gulf states for Human Rights First (HRF), said that the Obama administration “is realising, if belatedly, that it’s been had” by Bahrain’s promises of reform. “It needs to figure out what to do instead.”

“There’s been a slow, but unmistakable increase in repression. The current situation can’t go on year after year, because there’s a real danger it will explode into something much worse,” he said.

The new HRW report, as well renewed appeals for Washington to take a tougher stance, comes ten days before EU High Commissioner and several EU commissioners are to meet their Gulf Cooperation Council counterparts in Bahrain.

“They should convey beforehand their expectation that key political prisoners will be released in advance of the summit,” said Stork.

The report also comes two weeks after Obama and other senior U.S. officials met in Washington with visiting Crown Prince and First Deputy Prime Minister Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa.

The crown prince has been Washington’s favourite in the ruling al-Khalifa family due to the perception that he favours at least limited democratic reform that would give the Shi’a community, which makes up about 70 percent of the island-state’s population, some share of power. The al-Khalifas, who have ruled Bahrain for more than two centuries, are Sunni Muslims.

In a bid to increase the crown prince’s leverage back home, the administration announced during his previous visit here 13 months ago that it would deliver some weapons from a previously agreed 53-million-dollar arms package. The package was held up by lawmakers in Congress concerned about human rights abuses committed during Bahraini security forces’ fierce, Saudi-backed crackdown on opposition during the 2011 “Arab Spring”.

The crown prince, however, has failed to deliver. Despite the February launch of a much-heralded national dialogue, repression has actually increased, according to human rights monitors and independent analysts, who noted that no new arms announcements were made during this year’s visit, during which Obama nonetheless reiterated his support for “advancing reform” and the dialogue process.

“The national dialogue has essentially frozen,” noted Toby Jones, a Gulf expert at Rutgers University in New Jersey. “It’s accomplished exactly what the royal family had hoped it would; that is, to basically paralyse the political process in Bahrain.”

“Washington had hoped that the crown prince and Al-Wefaq, the mainstream Shiite opposition party, could reach some negotiated compromise, but the crown prince is not as powerful as the U.S. would [like] him to be,” Jones explained.

“His rivals have used this kind of public politics as a way to give the appearance of accomplishing something without really accomplishing anything at all.”

The situation actually appears to have deteriorated, said rights advocates here, several of whom, including Dooley and the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on torture, Juan Mendez, were given visas to Bahrain this spring only to have them cancelled at the last minute.

Since February, when HRW researchers visited the country to compile information for its new report, “‘Interfere, Restrict, Control’: Restraints on Freedom of Association in Bahrain”, the group has been denied visas to return.

“New laws and lengthy jail terms for activists have put freedom of association in Bahrain under severe threat,” HRW said Thursday, pointing to a draft bill that would be even more restrictive than current law, which bans CSOs from engaging in politics. “Bahraini authorities have left hardly any space for peaceful political dissent.”

“We’re seeing an uptick in the last month of people being pulled from their houses at night by masked men without warrants, similar to what happened [during the repression of] 2011, though not on the same scale,” Dooley told IPS. He also pointed to more “reports of torture in custody” and “a clampdown on social media”.

“No senior officials have been prosecuted for torture or extra-judicial killing. Judicial harassment of dissidents has continued, as has the excessive use of force by police, plus the problem of increasingly violent protests…with no light at the end of the tunnel,” he continued.

The Obama administration, according to Dooley, is deeply frustrated by the situation and increasingly impatient with the Khalifas to follow through with promises for reform. He noted that recent official U.S. government reports on human rights, religious freedom and labour rights in Bahrain have been noticeably more critical than in the two previous years.

In 2011 and 2012, no one in Washington considered moving the Fifth Fleet out of Bahrain, Dooley said. “But there’s now much more open discussion about it in two ways – that the level of repression may reach such a pitch that’s it’s just too embarrassing to have the fleet there and that the political situation is becoming so unstable and volatile that it’s just too risky for the fleet to remain.”

Jones, however, was more doubtful, particularly given rising regional tensions around Iran’s nuclear programme and strong Saudi pressure to support the monarchy.

“Washington continues to see Bahrain not as a place with complicated politics, but as a strategic asset.…If it had to choose a menu of options, it would choose the Al-Khalifas and a more or less stable Bahrain over a political system in which the opposition has more say,” he told IPS.

“Except for the crown prince, the other major players in the royal family don’t believe American pressure is real, and it’s not as evidenced by the continued sale of military hardware.” Indeed, in its proposed 2014 foreign aid budget, the administration asked for 10 million dollars in military sales credits, the same as in 2012, and 450,000 dollars in security training programmes for the Ministry of the Interior (MOI), which is in charge of the police.

In defending the latter, the State Department said the training would “contribute to counterterrorism and investigative support”.

As explosive devices from opposition protesters grow in sophistication, “the MOI needs training to better counter and prevent terrorist activities,” it said, and all training “will underscore the importance of adherence to international human rights standards while confronting serious threats”.

Ian Henderson’s death announcement Apr. 15 in Bahrain brings to an end the life of a British expatriate who was the architect and supervisor of the harsh internal security policies of the al-Khalifa ruling family since the early days of independence over 40 years ago.

Henderson’s life’s work intertwined intimately with al-Khalifa, especially with the family’s all-powerful perennial Prime Minister Khalifa bin Salman, the ruler’s brother.

The policies of discrimination, exclusion, and intolerance practiced by the Sunni minority ruling family against the Shia majority were designed and executed by Henderson and his subordinates and blessed by the prime minister. They have been grounded in fear, repression, systematic violations of human rights, and in some cases torture.

This is the legacy that Ian Henderson has bequeathed to the people of Bahrain.

Henderson was a British national and a colonial officer who was renowned for using violent tactics to subdue the anti-British Mau Mau movement in Kenya. After independence, the British government in 1968 removed him from Kenya and installed him in Bahrain as a security adviser to Al-Khalifa.

Three years later, when Bahrain acquired its independence from Britain, the Bahraini prime minister retained Henderson as his security adviser and head of Bahrain’s Security and Intelligence Service.

His department employed British, Bahrainis, Omanis, Jordanians, Sudanese, Pakistanis, and others. He was responsible directly to the prime minister and acted in his name. The main mission of Henderson’s BSIS was to penetrate dissident and pro-democracy groups – Sunni and Shia – and defeat them.

The Security Service under Henderson’s supervision and control commonly practiced fear, intimidation, and “enhanced interrogation methods”. Like the prime minister, in the early 1970s Henderson perceived all human rights advocates and proponents of the constitution and an elected parliament as “radicals”, “extremists”, and “terrorists”. Many were arrested without due process or clear charges and often beaten and tortured.

I spent 1972-1973 in Bahrain as a U.S. Senior Fulbright Scholar conducting field research on the making of the new state of Bahrain. Once I called Henderson for an interview on domestic security. He declined and told me he would have to get permission from the prime minister for such an interview because he worked for him directly.

The interview never took place. But when I met him at an official function and introduced myself, he said,” I know who you are. We keep tabs on everyone who lives here.”

On another occasion, I wanted to call him from a minister’s office. The minister, who became agitated and visibly afraid, did not want Henderson to know that I called him using the minister’s telephone number. The minister told me, “Everyone is afraid of Mr. Henderson. He has absolute authority in Bahrain because he acts on behalf of Shaikh Khalifa, and no one dares to cross him.”

Henderson instilled fear in the population, cemented the power of the prime minister, and stifled all voices of dissent. Once in the late 1970s, I visited the home of a distinguished journalist who worked for the local newspaper al-Adwa’. His son, who was just released from detention on a trumped up charge of incitement, was beaten severely by Henderson’s security officers. The marks from the beatings were still visible on his body.

On the flight out of Bahrain, I asked a British security officer sitting next to me about the beatings of the journalist’s son. As he already had a few drinks, the officer freely acknowledged the story and told me, “Yes, we do interrogations but we do not torture; Arab mercenaries do that!” By “mercenaries”, he meant the Arab expats who worked in his department.

The past two years have clearly shown the regime tactics of fear, intimidation, and terror have failed to silence demands for reform, equality, and democracy in Bahrain. Equally, Henderson’s legacy has made Bahrain less secure and the legitimacy of the ruling family and its long-term control of the country more precarious.

Many Bahrainis, who suffered from Henderson’s security extralegal practices, often refer to him as the “Butcher of Bahrain”. It’s interesting to note that the policies of fear helped enhance the prime minister’s control of the economic and political life of the country but did not cement the legitimacy of Al-Khalifa autocracy. Nor did they silence calls for justice and popular participation in decision making.

The colonial mentality of the past two centuries, which was brought by the Al-Khalifa family to bolster their rule, no longer works in the 21st century. Like their Arab counterparts, Bahraini youth and pro-democracy advocates have used the new social media and their sheer determination to face down the regime.

The prime minister and the ruling family should view Ian Henderson’s death more than two years after the start of popular upheaval as a stark symbolism and a strong metaphor of what Bahrain has become. For 40 years force has failed to silence calls for dignity and demands for democracy. If these demands are not met in 2013, Henderson’s legacy that began 40 years ago will remain sullied.

*Emile Nakhleh, a former Senior Intelligence Service Officer, is a Research Professor at the University of New Mexico and author of “Bahrain: A Political Development in a Modernizing Society.”

As the Bahraini and international media continue to dissect the meaning of Crown Prince Salman’s appointment as first deputy prime minister, powerful factions within the ruling Al-Khalifa family must be pondering the future of their rule.

It’s interesting to note that no prominent royals congratulated the crown prince on the appointment other than his siblings and children.U.S. credibility in the Arab Muslim world is being tested by its perceived benign neglect of what’s happening in Bahrain.

A make-believe “constitutional monarchy” grounded in regime repression and apartheid policies against the Shia majority is a sure formula for regime demise. The Arab upheavals in the past two years forced powerful authoritarian regimes out of power. The Al-Khalifa rule is no exception. Their survival could be achieved through a genuine constitutional monarchy.

Despite King Hamad’s claims in the 2002 constitution, Bahrain is neither a constitutional monarchy nor a democracy. Prime Minister Khalifa bin Salman Al-Khalifa, who has held that position since 1971, and other senior royals, including heads of the royal court and the military, have exercised power without accountability.

To save the monarchy, King Hamad must commit himself, in word and deed, to building a genuine democratic constitutional monarchy. This requires sharing power with the people and respecting civil rights and freedoms of speech, assembly, communication and worship regardless of religious affiliation.

Under this system, the appointment of the prime minister, cabinet members, and other senior officials and judges must be subject to confirmation by a popularly elected parliament with full legislative powers.

The era of an omnipotent prime minister wielding economic and political power for four decades must end if the ruling family hopes to maintain a modicum of legitimacy.

The Bahraini upheaval over the past two years has not faded away despite the policies of repression, torture, and sectarianism. Regime brutality has left the ruling family devoid of internal legitimacy, ostracised internationally, and torn apart by family feuds and jockeying for power.

Efforts by the king and his son have been shoved aside by the all-powerful prime minister and his supporters within the family council.

Bahrainis were led to believe during the “reform” years of 2001 and 2002 that they were the source of sovereignty. The 2001 National Action Charter was debated openly and endorsed publicly by the ruler. Three key statements in the charter underpinned the massive popular support it received in the national referendum.

First, “All citizens are equal before the law in terms of rights and duties, without distinction of race, origin, language, religion, or belief.” Second, “Bahrain shall be a constitutional monarchy,” and third, “Bahrain is a democracy where all powers vest with the people.”

Bahrainis were also promised a legislature that would be popularly elected and vested with full legislative powers.

The 2002 constitution included similar promises about democracy and popular sovereignty. Article one of the new constitution, for example, underscores the democratic nature of the regime and recognises the people as “the source of all powers”.

The promised “reforms” turned out to be a charade, and real power remained ensconced in the hands of the family’s conservative old guard. The prime minister, the rising young generation of the so-called Khawalids, and their anti-reform and anti-Shia Saudi benefactors, including the former Saudi interior minister, emerged as the real centre of power in Bahrain.

This powerful faction made sure the king’s promised reforms were not implemented. The only “reform” people saw was the change in the title of the ruler from “amir” to “king”.

Demonstrations erupted frequently throughout the following decade demanding reform. Prime Minister Khalifa and his allies used the security services, consisting entirely of Sunnis, to silence the opposition. Egregious human rights violations were committed against the largely peaceful opposition, which has been emboldened by the Arab Spring.

Where does Bahrain go from here?

Bahrain’s benefactor, Saudi Arabia, and its superpower supporter, the U.S., are becoming more impatient with the regime’s refusal to respond to the people’s reasonable demands for reform. It is not unthinkable for Al-Khalifa obduracy to force Riyadh and Washington to abandon the ruling family. If this happens, it would only be a matter of time before the minority Al-Khalifa regime is swept away.

Some powerful elements within the regime still subscribe to the illusion that Washington’s probable anti-regime stance would be constrained by the presence of the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain. They also believe they could count on Saudi support because of perceived Saudi fears of a potentially emboldened Shia community in Saudi Arabia, which is concentrated in the kingdom’s oil-rich eastern province.

U.S. strategic interests in the Gulf and the wider Middle East region, especially regarding Iran and Syria, however, are not necessarily wedded to a minority regime in Bahrain which the majority views as illegitimate.

The Obama administration’s often-stated commitments to values of human rights and good governance are no longer believable in light of Washington’s support of a brutal regime in Bahrain. U.S. credibility in the Arab Muslim world is being tested by its perceived benign neglect of what’s happening in Bahrain.

Similarly, Saudi Arabia’s strategic regional interests do not necessarily coincide with those of Bahrain. Although the late Saudi interior minister Nayef supported the Bahraini prime minister’s hard-line policies toward the Shia, his son Muhammad, the new interior minister, tends to be more pragmatic and open-minded.

Muhammad bin Nayef’s focus on counter-terrorism in recent years perhaps has convinced him that reaching out to the population through “hearts and minds” policies that focus on “bread and butter” issues is more productive than regime brutality.

He is certainly positioned to use the massive Saudi leverage to support King Hamad’s appointment of his son as principal deputy prime minister to force the prime minister to retire and institute real reform. Continued instability in Bahrain does not serve the interests of Saudi Arabia or the region.

*Emile Nakhleh, a former Senior Intelligence Service Officer, is a Research Professor at the University of New Mexico and author of “A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World and Bahrain: Political Development in a Modernizing Society.”

On the eve of the second anniversary of the uprising in Bahrain, the administration of President Barack Obama is being urged to press the royal family to make genuine compromises with the predominantly Shi’a opposition.

Among other measures, experts here are calling on the Pentagon to prepare plans for relocating the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which has been based in the tiny island archipelago since 1995, as a signal of the seriousness of Washington’s concerns about the direction of events in the kingdom.

“Those who contend that U.S. concerns over human rights and democracy promotion should take a backseat to hardnosed realism and strategic imperatives will soon find themselves overtaken by Bahrain’s steady descent,” according to a new report released by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“After two years of stalemate and worsening tensions, meaningful political reforms in Bahrain have themselves become strategic imperatives for the United States – crucial measures to stave off further destabilization that could one day put American interests and people at risk,” according to “The Precarious Ally: Bahrain’s Impasse and U.S. Policy,” by Gulf expert Frederic Wehrey.Those in prison have a lot of followers, and if they are not engaged, this will fail.

The report – as well as a several discussions at prominent think tanks about the future of U.S. policy toward Bahrain timed to coincide with the anniversary – comes amidst considerable scepticism about the prospects for a new “dialogue” between the opposition and various pro-government groups that got underway Sunday.

Washington has “welcomed” the dialogue and the agreement by Al-Wefaq, the major opposition political party whose parliamentary members resigned their seats to protest the government’s violent repression or popular protests two years ago, to take part in it.

But even leaders of Al-Wefaq, which has reportedly lost ground to more-radical Shi’a groups organised loosely around the February 14 Youth Coalition, have expressed strong scepticism about prospects for much progress, particularly given government’s failure to release political prisoners and the fact that it has limited its own involvement to moderating the dialogue.

While Al-Wefaq is calling for a constitutional monarchy, the Youth Coalition, which has engaged in increasingly violent confrontations with the security forces, has demanded an end to the rule by the Al-Khalifa family.

On Wednesday, Bahraini police reportedly used tear gas and stun grenades to disperse hundreds of protesters in the capital called out by February 14.

“We want the ruling family to be there (at the table),” Khalil al-Marzooq, a senior Al-Wefaq official who served as first deputy speaker of the Bahraini parliament before his resignation two years ago, told a conference held Wednesday at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) here.

“Those in prison have a lot of followers, and if they are not engaged, this will fail,” he stressed, adding that such an outcome will bring “more trouble” on the streets and further polarisation of the country.

“I’m pessimistic (about) this round of dialogue,” said Toby Jones, a Gulf specialist at Rutgers University, bluntly at another discussion on Bahrain at the Carnegie Center Wednesday.

“There’s an absolute lack of trust on the part of the vast majority of Bahrainis toward the government. Absent political will by the government to make critical choices, there will be no change.”

While the Obama administration has continuously urged democratic reforms and dialogue between the Sunni-dominated government and representatives of the Shi’a community, which makes up between 60 and 70 percent of the kingdom’s indigenous population, it has been reluctant to exert serious pressure to achieve those ends.

Its strongest statement dates back to May 2011, when Obama himself complained that the government couldn’t conduct a serious dialogue with the opposition when “parts of the peaceful opposition are in jail”.

Washington’s reluctance to take stronger action is explained both by the presence of the Fifth Fleet, whose resources have been significantly boosted as tensions with Iran have increased over the past two years, and by the strong backing Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter and Washington most important regional ally and arms-purchaser, has provided the hard-liners in the Al-Khalifa family.

Indeed, concerned that King Hamad might have been tempted to compromise with demands by the opposition, which also included prominent Sunnis, Riyadh, along with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), sent some 1,500 troops and police across its causeway to Bahrain in support of the government’s violent crackdown in mid-March 2011.

In addition to charging that Iran was behind the unrest in Bahrain – a charge that has been mostly rejected by U.S. officials – Saudi Arabia has worried that any empowerment of Bahrain’s Shi’a community would encourage its own Shi’a population, which is concentrated in its oil-rich Eastern province, to agitate for change.

Indeed, the conflict has become increasingly polarised along sectarian lines, a development that Wehrey said was being deliberately stoked by the “al-Khawalid” branch of the Al Khalifa family led by two brothers – the royal court minister, Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, and the commander of the Bahrain Defence Forces (BDF), Khalifa bin Ahmed Al Khalifa.

This faction has not only marginalised the U.S. favourite, Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, who is widely seen as a reformist interested in serious dialogue, but it has also promoted anti-U.S. sentiment, according to Wehrey’s study.

The Shi’a opposition has also broken into factions. While Al-Wefaq remains committed – if sceptically – to dialogue, the various tendencies identified with the February 14 Coalition, which consists mainly of militants in their teens and twenties, reject such efforts as futile.

Moreover, anti-U.S. sentiment has also grown within the Shi’a community, according to Wehrey and other experts. Despite Washington’s backing for dialogue, it is seen as supporting the regime, particularly after last January’s announcement that it was proceeding with the delivery of arms – albeit none that could be used for crowd control or domestic repression – that had been put on hold temporarily by Congress.

“The main weakness in U.S. policy is we’ve tried to have it both ways” by pushing for dialogue and reform on the one hand and reassuring the regime of its security commitment, Tom Malinowski, Washington director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), told the NED audience. “As a result, it has put us in the worst possible world.”

Malinowski agreed that Washington should begin considering alternatives to the Fifth Fleet’s base in Bahrain to impress the royal family with the seriousness of its concern. Washington should “be clear that if this round (of dialogue) fails, the U.S. will have to re-evaluate its security relationship.”

Wehrey noted that some opposition leaders were concerned that moving the Fleet out of Bahrain could actually bolster the hardliners in the royal family and result in Saudi Arabia filling the security vacuum.

But, “(g)iven the opacity of the royal family, it is unclear if this will actually be the case – or if using the Fifth Fleet as leverage might actually send the clearest signal yet that America will no longer countenance the regime’s current path.”

In addition to beginning planning to relocate the Fifth Fleet out of Bahrain, Wehrey urged Washington to consider conditioning Manama’s purchase of high-end weapons systems, such as the F-16, over which the U.S. has a monopoly that the BDF cannot buy elsewhere as it did when Washington held up the transfer of armoured personnel carriers.

Targeted financial sanctions, such as freezing the U.S. assets of senior Bahraini officials involved in human-rights abuses, could also help, according to Wehrey.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Despite the start of a government-inspired dialogue with the opposition Sunday, the Bahraini government continues to jail dissidents, arrest demonstrators, and use a rigged judicial system to convict them.

Although the Al-Khalifa regime officially is not a party to the dialogue, Western governments welcomed the justice ministry’s call for dialogue, hoping the process will silence the opposition and relieve the West of the moral responsibility to address human rights abuses in Bahrain. According to initial media reports, the so-called “national dialogue” does not seem promising.

The Al-Khalifa regime not only has banned Shia from working in the national security sector; it has pressured private companies to fire Shia employees and replace them with Sunni workers. Security forces frequently storm into activists’ homes and arrest them without arrest warrants or specific charges. The regime is enforcing a Sunni apartheid system on the Shia majority.

King Hamad and his uncle, the prime minister, have relied on Saudi military and economic support to enforce their anti-Shia policies. According to recent media reports, “Desert Shield” enforcements, presumably Saudi, have entered Bahrain.

The regime also has enlisted Sunni leaders in the region, including the Egyptian Grand Mufti of al-Azhar, to implicitly support the Sunni crackdown on the Shia opposition. The Grand Mufti and other anti-Shia figures have used Iran as a pretext.

A recent report by the Washington-based think tank Project for Middle East Democracy has concluded that the regime has not implemented the six key recommendations of the Bassiouni BICI report. These recommendations – 1719, 1722b, 1722d, 1722h, 1724a, and 1724c – focus on torture, convictions, illegal arrests and lengthy incarcerations, censorship, and regime incitement of hatred, violence, and sectarianism.

Washington’s continued refusal to force the Al-Khalifa to institute real reforms is endangering the personal security of our diplomats, military personnel, and civilians in Bahrain. The killing of Ambassador Stevens in Benghazi in the midst of chaos and terrorism should not be lost on anyone.

Al-Khalifa’s refusal to respond to their people’s rightful demands would spell the end of their tribal rule. It will also harm U.S. interests in the Gulf region.

The stalemate has pushed many Bahraini activists to replace their demands for reform with calls for regime change. Once the regime loses the reform game, its demise become inevitable. Egypt, Yemen, Libya, and Tunisia offer a sobering lesson.

The dialogue meeting that was held Feb. 10 and is supposed to occur on successive Sundays and Wednesdays included a majority of pro-government participants and only eight representatives of the opposition groups. Since the government has not agreed to the nine demands of the opposition, some media reports already view the government dialogue initiative as merely a public relations stunt.

The situation in Bahrain is becoming unsustainable. It is time for Obama’s new Secretary of State John Kerry to employ the full range of U.S. diplomacy and power to change it.

What to do?

As the Bahraini opposition marks its second anniversary on Feb. 14, President Obama and Secretary Kerry should take a hard look at Bahrain and decide whether the survival of Al-Khalifa rule is in the best interests of the U S.

If it is, the administration should pursue a proactive policy to save the regime. President Obama and Secretary Kerry should impress on Bahrain’s King Hamad the necessity to implement the following steps:

First, initiate genuine, inclusive dialogue with representatives of all opposition groups. The dialogue should be led by Crown Prince Salman and should focus on substantive reforms and not become mired in process and media sound bites.

Second, the king should relieve Prime Minister Khalifa of his position and replace him temporarily with the crown prince until a permanent prime minister is appointed.

Third, the king should set a date certain for national elections to a parliament with full legislative powers. International monitors should be invited to supervise the elections. Following the parliamentary elections, the king should appoint a new prime minister subject to parliamentary approval.

Fourth, the king and the crown prince as an interim prime minister should implement the six key recommendations in the BICI report, referred to above. The crown prince should also establish a special commission to include government and opposition representative to oversee the implementation of all the recommendations highlighted in the BICI report.

Fifth, the crown prince should review the employment discriminatory policies against the Shia, especially in the armed forces and the security services, and provide equal access opportunities for all qualified Bahraini citizens to apply for jobs in these sectors regardless of religious affiliation.

These urgent steps must be taken to satisfy the legitimate demands of the opposition if the regime is to save itself.

*Emile Nakhleh, a former Senior Intelligence Service Officer, is a Research Professor at the University of New Mexico and author of A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World and Bahrain: Political Development in a Modernizing Society.

Human rights groups reacted with condemnation following a ruling by Bahrain’s highest court Monday rejecting the last appeals and upholding the convictions of nine medics for their role in the 2011 uprising in the capital  Manama.

“Large numbers of Bahrainis have aired their criticisms of the government through peaceful protests. While some protesters have used violence, the overarching climate has been one of nonviolent criticism of the government of Bahrain,” Sanjeev Bery, Amnesty International USA advocacy director for Middle East/North Africa affairs, told IPS.

“Unfortunately, the government of Bahrain has responded with torture, violence, and arrests. It is time for Bahraini government officials to stop attempting to silence political speech through the repression of the state,” he said. The medics were arrested after tending to wounded pro-democracy protesters.

The upheld sentences, announced in mid-June of this year, range from one month to five years in prison. The verdict includes plotting to overthrow the monarchy and gathering illegally, charges that have been strongly denounced by many human rights groups, which said the rulings “violate basic rights such as free assembly” and dismissed them as politically aimed.

“It’s a black day for Bahrain when it imprisons physicians and other medical professionals whose only ‘crime’ was to carry out their ethical duty to care for sick and wounded people,” Richard Sollom, Physicians for Human Rights’ deputy director, said in a statement Tuesday.

“Sadly, these medics have now joined the ranks of other prisoners of conscience unjustly locked up in Bahrain and elsewhere around the world.”

Many human rights organisations view the verdict as a signal to the populace that dissent will not be tolerated. Two of the convicted are missing and believed to be in hiding.

The June verdict is actually a reduction in severity of the sentences originally imposed by a military court in September 2011, in which 20 doctors and nurses were arrested, imprisoned and sentenced to five to 15 years. The arrests followed a government siege of the Salmaniya Medical Complex in Manama, a hospital that was considered an opposition site in the uprising. The medics were among thousands of arrested protesters and are believed to have been targeted solely for their role as medical professionals.

“The organisation believes the real reason why the medics were arrested and tried is because they publicly denounced the excessive force used against protesters during pro-reform demonstrations last year in interviews with international media,” Amnesty International said.

Many of the medics gave reports of abuse, torture, and forced false confession during their imprisonment. The trial of two Bahraini police officers accused of torturing the medics was postponed Monday, as they both failed to appear in court. The next hearing is set for Oct. 18.

“It is important to keep in mind that so far, the government of Bahrain is not known to have investigated any senior government officials for the potential ordering of the many acts of repression that have occurred in Bahrain,” Bery told IPS.

“While lower level police officers should be investigated in cases of torture or other violence, it is not enough to stop there. Full accountability requires that senior government officials also be investigated on the question of whether or not they ordered political repression against critics,” he added.

The retrial and subsequent dropped charges for nine of the 20 medics was a result of the public uproar generated around the world for what was widely viewed as an unfair and politically motivated trial. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also publically criticised the ruling.

The United States’ ties to the Bahraini government have also been under the spotlight. Although Washington postponed he sale of 53 million dollars worth of weaponry to Bahrain upon news of September’s military court hearing, the same deal has been back under review for some months despite appeals from groups like Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch to hold off.

Bahrain is a small island between Iran and Saudi Arabia and hosts a United States naval base for the Fifth Fleet. It is considered a critical strategic ally by the Barack Obama administration, particularly for its simultaneous geographical proximity to one of Washington’s greatest enemies and one of its greatest political allies.

The 2011 Bahraini uprising was quashed with help from Saudi Arabia, a Sunni majority kingdom that is sympathetic to the ruling Sunni minority of Bahrain.

Seventy percent of the Kingdom of Bahrain consists of Shi’ite Muslims, who have been marginalised by the minority Sunni regime. The uprising was inspired by Egyptian and Tunisian rebel victories, yet it was the only Arab uprising that was successfully quashed through governmental tactical force.

The degree of that force is considered excessive by many human rights organisations and by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon himself.

An investigation by Physicians for Human Rights describes Bahrain’s extreme and unprecedented approach to the use of tear gas as a means of crowd control, which it said caused an increase in miscarriages, respiratory complications, and other illnesses among the Shi’ite population. Thousands have been wounded during the uprising, though the exact number is impossible to determine, as citizens fear to take refuge in hospitals after the raids and arrests of doctors and protesters.

The report by Physicians for Human Rights documented several accounts of injured protesters, including that of an asthmatic man named Mohammed.

“Muhammad’s family reported that he was routinely exposed to tear gas and sought medical care in private hospitals, but never told doctors about his severe adverse reactions to the gas for fear of being reported to authorities and sent to prison,” it said.
Investigations by Amnesty International found no use of violence on the part of the nine convicted medics, all of whom were Shi’ites.

“The fact that all these convictions have been upheld while prisoners of conscience remain behind bars highlights the lack of real commitment from the Bahraini government to fully meet the promises made less than two weeks ago before the Human Rights Council in Geneva,” Ann Harrison, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa deputy programme director, said in a statement Monday.

Social stigmas against victims of sexual abuse keep families silent on the issue. Credit: Al Jazeera English/CC-BY-SA-2.0

By Suad Hamada
MANAMA, Sep 25 2012 (IPS)

A thirty-four-year-old Bahraini teacher, whose son was abused five years ago, has hitherto refused to tell anyone the story, afraid that she will be blamed for failing to protect her child who is now eight years old.

“He was sitting with the maid outside the house. She left him alone for a moment to fetch some milk and some teenagers took him to a building under construction in the area,” the teacher told IPS, requesting anonymity.

“When she found him missing, she searched for him and found him being harassed by those boys.”

“I couldn’t report the case as they (the boys) are my neighbours and I don’t want people to blame me or to a shame my son when he grows up,” she said, expressing the sentiment of countless families.

The teacher didn’t take the child to a physician and stopped his counseling when she was advised to take legal action against the perpetrators.

Sexual abuse of children in Bahrain is increasingly sneaking under the radar, as families anxious to avoid ‘disgracing’ themselves in the conservative society keep silent about the issue.

Others keep the matter top secret out of fear of legal action against abusers, who are very often family relations.

Former head of the state-run Children Protection Centre (CPC), Dr. Fakhriya Dairi, told IPS, “As a government organisation we receive calls from neighbours or close relatives who report abuse cases with anonymity.

“In some cases we manage to prove the abuse but other times parents succeed in hiding the truth,” she said.

Activists and lawyers, however, criticise lenient punishments and the lack of special legislation to tackle child abuse.

Legal protections needed

Dr. Sharifa Swar, head of Batelco Care Centre for Family Violence Cases, has noticed an increase in sexual abuse cases with an average of three reported to the centre every week.

The centre registered 408 abuse cases in 2011, including cases of violence against women. To date, Bahrain has not conducted a comprehensive study on child abuse, so very few official statistics exist.

Swar told the press earlier this month that the increase in reported cases does not mean the end of social misconceptions and stigmas. In fact, she is convinced that the reported cases conceal a much larger number of victims, who are simply too afraid to speak up.

“We need tough legislation to protect children as the current (laws) are outdated and could help abusers escape punishment,” she said in a statement published earlier this month.

Under existing legislation, an adult who sexually abuses a child below 12 years of age is punished with up to fifteen years’ imprisonment, or nine years in jail if the victim is older.

But social activist and lawyer Fawziya Janahi pointed out that many abusers escape such punishment. She cited a recent case in which a court sentenced a 25-year-old man to a single year in jail for raping Janahi’s 16-year-old female client, by convincing the court that the girl agreed to have sex with him.

“I’m still battling another case of a 14-year-old girl who got pregnant after she was raped by four men. Only one confessed and he, too, might escape penalty for agreeing to marry her,” Janahi told IPS. “(Faulty) laws and social misconceptions turn the agony of sexual abuse into a lifetime of suffering.”

According to Janahi, Bahrain needs tougher punishments for child abusers, which could be put in place through an amendment of the penal code.

“The domestic violence draft law that is being reviewed by legislators could protect the rights of abused children, as parents who hide cases could be held responsible for neglect and maltreatment,” she said.

Additionally, the Be-Free Centre, dedicated to ensuring a safe living environment for children, has drafted a code of ethics to promote child rights.

This document enables government agencies, non-governmental organisations, the media, telecommunications establishments and many others to consider children’s safety when designing their strategies and services.

Members of civil society are currently holding negotiations with parliamentarians, in an effort to grant the draft code legal power.

The president of Be-Free Centre, Rana Al Sairafi, told IPS that 50 to 60 percent of all types of abuse against children go unreported.

“To reach out to families with abused children who don’t want their cases to be reported by NGOs or government organisations, we have launched a hotline that offers free counseling in anonymity,” Al Sairafi added.

The centre also offers workshops to children of different age groups to train them on self-protection against abuse and exploitation.

Experts believe the issue has far-reaching social effects, which need to be tackled at a systemic level.

Swar said that males who were sexually abused in their childhood and didn’t receive proper therapy often lack concentration and suffer from short tempers.

“Sexually abused children hate to go to school and are emotionally unstable and shy,” she added.

Dairi, who recently started her own counseling centre, now receives fewer cases, which she attributes to financial constraints that prevent poor families from seeking therapy and psychological support.

The private counseling clinics charge an average of 50 dollars per session and the therapy could take more than one year.

This is often unaffordable for the 14,000 families who live below the poverty line, earning a monthly income of less than 370 Bahraini dinars (roughly 1,000 dollars).

Bahrain endorsed a child protection law this August, which forms a general framework for all aspects of child protection.

(END)

This week’s decision by the Bahraini court of appeals to uphold the prison terms against Bahraini opposition activists is a travesty of justice and an indication that Bahraini repression continues unabated.

Bahraini officials, when confronted with angry world reaction to the court’s decision, cynically hid behind the claim they would not interfere in the proceedings of their “independent judiciary”.

Despite the threat to U.S. national interests and the security of U.S. citizens in Bahrain and elsewhere in the Gulf, Washington remains oblivious to the ruling family’s violent crackdown against peaceful protesters in the name of fighting “foreign elements”. Pro-democracy Bahrainis are wondering what we are waiting for.

Because of our muted reaction to what’s happening in Bahrain, the ruling family and their Saudi benefactors have not taken seriously Western support for democratic transitions in the Middle East.

The United States and Britain maintain deep economic and security relations with these states but also enjoy strong leverage, including the U.S. Navy’s Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet, which they must revisit in the face of continued egregious violations of basic human rights by some of these regimes. Bahraini civil rights organisations and activists are expecting the United States to use its leverage to end regime repression.

Despite their pro-Western stance, there is nothing exceptional about the autocratic Gulf Arab regimes. And they should no longer be given a pass on the importance of democratic reform.

Staying in power will require Bahrain’s Al Khalifas and other Gulf tribal family rulers to do more than push a vicious sectarian policy and employ slick public relations firms. Their cynical and deadly game might buy them some time, but, in the end, they will not be able to escape their peoples’ wrath.

In the absence of genuine reforms in the next three years, the Gulf’s autocratic regimes will be swept aside by their peoples. The “people power” that emerged from the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, and now Syria, cannot be kept out of these tribal states. In reality, they all have been touched by peoples’ demands for dignity and justice.

While Iran might be exploiting the protest movement to discredit these regimes, the pro-democracy movement in Bahrain goes back to the 1960s and 1970s – way before the Islamic Republic came on the scene.

Even more troubling for U.S. national security are the continued efforts by Al Khalifa to whip up anti-American attitudes among Bahrain’s more rabidly anti-Shia and xenophobic Sunnis. Bahrain and some of their Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) allies perceive the growing rapprochement between the U.S. and the new Islamic democrats, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Tunisia, as a sign of tacit opposition to Gulf autocrats.

They believe the U.S will throw them under the bus if their peoples rise up against them. They also worry that if the nuclear issue in Iran is resolved, a possible U.S. rapprochement with Tehran would embolden their Shia communities in their struggle for equality and justice.

For 40 years, Prime Minister Khalifa has been the key opponent to reform in Bahrain. In recent ears, however, a new generation within the ruling family, known as the “Khawalids,” has taken up the anti-Shia, anti-reform, and anti-American cry.

They have used pro-government newspapers, blogs, and social media to vilify the Shia, the United States, and the pro-democracy movement. With tacit government encouragement, they frequently describe elements of the opposition as “diseased cells” that must be removed from society.

In the process, they have encouraged extremist Salafi and other Sunni groups to spread their message of divisiveness, sectarianism, and hate.

What Bahrain and the other Gulf sheikhdoms fail to realise is that when they encourage extremist groups to fight the “enemies” of the regime, a time will come when radical Salafi “jihadists” will turn against the regime. The Saudi experience in Afghanistan and Iraq should offer them a sobering lesson. This dangerous game does not bode well for their survival.

As domestic challenges also grow in Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom’s interest in Bahraini domestic policy will diminish. Recent estimates indicate Saudi oil exports over the next decade and a half will shrink significantly because of growing domestic needs for energy to generate power and desalinate seawater.

When this happens, Al Khalifa will have to face their people on their own.

* Emile Nakhleh is the former director of the CIA’s Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program and author of “A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World”.

Human rights activists are calling on the administration of President Barack Obama to radically revise its policy toward Bahrain in light of the decision by an appeals court in the kingdom this week to confirm harsh prison sentences against 13 opposition activists.

The court’s decision, which also confirmed the conviction of the 13 men by military courts in the aftermath of mainly peaceful anti-government protests during the so-called “Arab Spring” last year, followed the sentencing three weeks ago by yet another court of Nabeel Rajab, the director Bahrain’s most important human rights watchdog, to a three-year prison term for helping organise opposition rallies.

“I’m hoping the administration is doing a radical rethink of its policy on Bahrain,” said Brian Dooley, a Gulf specialist at Human Rights First. “It’s pretty clear that its original plan – to support the so-called reformers in the government – just hasn’t worked. The behind-closed-doors, softly-softly approach clearly hasn’t delivered.”

The appeals court decision was roundly denounced by international human rights groups.

“Today’s court decision is yet another blow to justice and shows once more that the Bahraini authorities are not on the path of reform but seem rather driven by vindictiveness,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, deputy director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme, who also noted that many of the defendants have testified that they were tortured during their initial detentions.

“Instead of upholding the sentences, …the Bahraini authorities must quash the convictions for the 13 men who are imprisoned solely for peacefully exercising their human rights and release them immediately and unconditionally,” she added.

The ongoing repression in Bahrain – of which the appeals court decision and Rajab’s sentencing are only the latest examples – has posed a major challenge to the credibility of the Obama administration’s claims to support human rights and democratic reform throughout the Arab world.

While it has continuously urged dialogue between the government, which is dominated by the long-ruling Al-Khalifa family, who are Sunni Muslims, and representatives of the Shi’a community, which makes up between 60 and 70 percent of the kingdom’s population, since anti-regime protests broke out in early 2011, it has been reluctant to exert serious pressure to achieve that end.

Its reluctance is explained both by the fact that the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, whose assets have been significantly boosted as tensions with Iran have increased over the past 18 months, is based in Bahrain and by the strong backing – even encouragement — Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter and Washington’s most important U.S. ally and arms-purchaser in the Gulf, has provided the Al-Khalifa family.

Concerned that Manama might have been tempted to compromise with the demands of the opposition, which initially included prominent Sunnis as well, for democratic reform, Riyadh, along with its neighbour, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), sent some 1,500 troops and police across its causeway to Bahrain in support of the government’s crackdown in mid-March 2011.

In addition to charging that Iran was behind the unrest in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia has also been worried that any empowerment of Bahrain’s Shi’a community would encourage its own Shi’a population, which is concentrated in its oil-rich Eastern province, to agitate for change.

Since the Saudi intervention, Washington has mainly confined its public statements to encouraging the Bahraini government to engage with the opposition, including the 13 men whose sentences were just confirmed this week. Earlier this year, it went forward with an arms sale to Manama that was strongly criticised by rights groups.

In the strongest statement to date, Obama himself noted in a May 19, 2011 speech that “Mass arrests and brute force are at odds with the universal rights of Bahrain’s citizens and will not make legitimate calls for reform to go away.” Calling dialogue “the only way forward,” the president noted in a specific reference to the case of the 13 that “you can’t have a real dialogue when parts of the peaceful opposition are in jail.”

The 13, who include the kingdom’s most prominent human rights activist, Abuldhadi Al-Khawaja – who drew international headlines earlier this year when he went on a 110-day hunger strike to protest his detention — and opposition leader Ebrahim Sharif, were nonetheless sentenced by a military court to between two years and life in prison for allegedly “setting up terror groups to topple the royal regime and change the constitution.”

The State Department said Tuesday that it was “deeply troubled” by the appeals court decision.” Suggesting that the trials on which the verdicts were based were failed to comply with due process, it also called on Manama to “investigate all reports of torture, including those made by the defendants.”

“We continue to call on all parties, including the government, to contribute constructively to reconciliation, meaningful dialogue and reform that bring about change that is responsive to the aspirations of all Bahrainis,” it added in a prepared statement.

But the statement disappointed rights activists here almost as much as the decision itself, particularly coming as it did so soon after Rajab’s conviction and sentencing.

Rajab, who was already serving a three-month sentence for comments he made on social media, is the president of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (BCHR), which was co-founded by al-Khawaja, who was sentenced to life imprisonment. Al-Khawaja’s daughter, Zainab, has been detained since Aug 2 on charges of “damaging property belonging to the Ministry of Interior” during a peaceful protest against her father’s detention.

“State’s reaction falls short of where it needs to be,” said Cole Bockenfeld, advocacy director at the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED). “The administration needs to call for their release.”

In addition to urging dialogue, the administration has called for Bahrain to implement far-reaching recommendations made last November by an international commission headed by an Egyptian-American war-crimes expert, Cherif Bassiouni. Among other steps, it called for major reform in the security forces to prevent torture and other abuses and a thorough review of all decisions by the military courts.

While the government has made some progress in implementation, according to Dooley, “it’s nothing like enough, and in the meantime, things have gotten worse,” particularly with the latest sentences and increasing harassment of rights activists.

“Everyone thought there would be some reduction in the sentences, including people in the administration,” he told IPS. “The argument that we should give the government more time to implement the Bassiouni recommendations doesn’t hold much weight anymore.”

The latest decision is likely to further polarise the country, according to Bockenfeld, who noted that it will also make it far more difficult for the opposition Al-Wefaq party to engage the government in dialogue.

“I think this move really sinks those talks before they can start. The verdicts strengthen the hard-liners on both sides,” he said.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

In Bahrain, witnesses say riot police have tried to disperse protesters with tear gas and rubber bullets. Credit: Sara Hassan/Al Jazeera/CC By 2.0

By Zoha Arshad
WASHINGTON, Aug 17 2012 (IPS)

The U.S. State Department released a statement Friday urging the Bahraini government to reconsider a ruling that sentenced the director of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, Nabeel Rajab, to a three-year jail term for organising opposition rallies.

“We are deeply concerned that a Bahraini court sentenced Nabeel Rajab to three years in prison on charges of leading ‘illegal gatherings’. We expect that the verdict and sentence will be reconsidered in the appeals process without delay. We urge the government of Bahrain to consider all available options to resolve this case,” it said.

Mariwan Hama-Saeed of Human Rights Watch welcomed the statement but told IPS that it was “long overdue”.

“The U.S. should have spoken up much earlier, and still should be putting pressure on the Bahraini government to release all peaceful protestors,” he said.

He cited the first line as especially problematic: “The Government of Bahrain has committed to respect freedom of expression and assembly and we look to it to fulfill these commitments.”

“Bahrain has been imprisoning innocent protestors since last year,” noted Hama-Saeed.

Rajab, who had already been serving a three-month sentence for tweeting about the unpopularity of the Bahraini prime minister, was sentenced to three years in a verdict that defence lawyers Jalila Al-Sayed and Mohamed al-Jishi claim was handed out by the judge before they could make it to court. Rajab was taken to prison before he could meet with his lawyers, or his family.

Rajab, who has more than 150,000 followers on Twitter, has been at the heart of protests since February 2011 calling for a more representative government in Bahrain. He spoke vociferously against inequities based on ethnic lines. Bahrain is ruled by the Sunni Al-Khalifa royal family, but has a Shia majority. More than 75 percent of the population is Shia.

Freedom House has rated Bahrain as “Not Free” in its “Freedom in the World 2012”, “Freedom of the Press 2012” and “Freedom on the Net 2011″ reports.

Reporters without Borders also ranked Bahrain 173rd in its freedom of speech index. Since February 2011, bloggers, journalists and human rights activists have been arrested and thrown into jail on trumped up charges of “inciting hatred”, “promoting sectarianism”, “disseminating false news” and “calling for the regime’s overthrow in online forums”.

Last year, a military court sentenced 21 human rights activists to lengthy terms in prison. Amidst this chaos, Rajab is on the front lines.

“All Rajab did was exercise his right to assemble peacefully. The Bahraini courts have produced no evidence that proves that Rajab was inciting violence or hatred. This is a terrible ruling,” said Hama-Saeed.

Human rights group the world over urged the U.S. to speak out against the verdict. Human Rights Watch released a statement on Aug. 16 stating, “The Obama administration should raise Rajab’s case forcefully with the Bahraini government.”

Courtney Radsch, freedom of expression officer at Freedom House, has similar views.

“The inabilities of NGOs to register, the numerous arrests, and prison sentences in no way reflect the U.S. government’s statement which calls Bahrain a country that ‘respects freedom of expression and assembly’,” Radsch told IPS.

Radsch, however, recognises the constraints that the U.S. government has in the context of its ties with Bahrain.

“Strategic” is perhaps the best term to describe U.S.-Bahrain relations. The U.S. has a fleet of more than 20 ships based in Bahraini waters. The Fifth Navy Fleet houses more than 2,300 U.S. personnel, and in 2011 approximately 45 million dollars was requested by the Pentagon for an expansion at Shaykh Isa Air Base.

Bahrain buys U.S. weaponry and aircraft worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and the two countries have robust trade relations.

Still, Radsch believes the U.S. can do a lot more to pressure the Bahraini government to halt its brutal crackdown.

“There has been a paucity of attention from the U.S. media and the U.S. government. It’s strange, the Arab Spring is spoken about but people forget that Bahrain is still ongoing, and is still struggling,” she said.

Hama-Saeed is sceptical that the rather tepid statement will have much political impact.

“We appreciate that the U.S. government has spoken up, but we have to wait and see if anything comes of it. A strong condemnation will certainly help,” he said.

The rising spectre of terrorism in Syria shows that by clinging to power and refusing to implement meaningful reforms, Arab autocrats in Syria, Bahrain, and elsewhere are indirectly contributing to the resurgence of terrorism in their societies.

Arab protests started peacefully, but almost in every country regime repression and torture ultimately pushed popular revolts toward violence.

This cynical calculus allowed Arab autocrats to claim that protests were directed from the outside and resistance was the work of terrorist groups. In Egypt and Tunisia, regimes fell while popular protests were still peaceful.

In Yemen and Libya, regimes refused to leave and instead used bloody repression. While they failed to quell protests, some opposition groups were forced to militarise.

In Bahrain and Syria, regimes have changed the narrative from human rights and reform to sectarianism, using the divide and rule approach. Their self-fulfilling prophecy of terrorism has come to pass because of their conscious policy to discredit the opposition and shore up their legitimacy.

While successful in the short-run, this policy is destined to fail in the long run. Domestic terrorist groups that could emerge from the opposition would not only target regime assets; they will go after U.S. and other Western economic interests and personnel in those countries.

In Bahrain, for instance, Sunni vigilantes and even some government officials are encouraged by elements within the ruling family to direct their anger against Americans for their perceived support of pro-reform dissidents. Some regime conservatives increasingly view the Americans, the Shia majority, and Iran as an unholy alliance undermining the Khalifa rule.

The recently appointed minister of information Samira Rajab is anti- Shia, anti-American, and a fan of Saddam Hussein. She blames foreign media and outside provocateurs for the problems in her country – a similar narrative to that of the Assad regime in Syria.

The traditional faction within the Bahraini ruling family, including the prime minister, is turning to Saudi Arabia for support. The king and his son the crown prince Salman are committed to an independent and more inclusive country. Unfortunately, they have been marginalised by the older members of the family council and their younger xenophobic Sunni supporters.

By inviting Bahrain’s crown prince to Washington last week, the administration was sending a signal to the conservative faction that it still supports the king and his son and their plan to seek meaningful dialogue with the opposition.

The other part of Washington’s message is that the resumption of some arms shipments that were halted after last year’s uprising applied to the coast guard and would not be used against the Bahraini people. It gave Salman something to take back, but indirectly signaled to the old guard that the young prince, not his great uncle, is the preferred interlocutor with Washington.

Of course, to save face the old guard has touted the release of the arms as a sign that they are still in Washington’s graces.

It’s clear that Saudi Arabia is trying to expand its hegemony over the rest of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), beginning with Bahrain. The Prime Minister Khalifa and his supporters within the ruling family no longer seem to care about the sovereignty of Bahrain or its historically liberal tradition. Their main concern is their own survival.

In the 1980s I wrote a book on the GCC and highlighted some of the challenges that would face the organisation down the line. I’m afraid, it’s coming home to roost. If the proposed Saudi-Bahraini federation is concluded, Bahrain would cease to exist as an independent state and would become a province under Saudi suzerainty. The Saudis and their Khalifa quislings would expand their repression of the Shia community and Sunni human rights activists in the name of fighting Shia and Iran. The opposition will likely arm, and domestic terrorist groups would emerge in both countries.

In Syria, human rights protests similarly started peacefully but have been forced to defend themselves with arms confiscated from the military and obtained from the outside. The Assad regime continues to kill and torture civilians. Like Bahrain, Assad is blaming foreign provocateurs and terrorists for the bloodshed. The regime’s acceptance of the Kofi Annan plan is a rouse to placate the international community and buy the regime more time.

The Annan plan is doomed to fail because the regime views the domestic situation as a zero-sum game. It believes its survival can only be assured through continued repression and control. Negotiating with the opposition is a fantasy that Assad cannot afford to indulge in if his Alawite minority rule is to survive.

Since 9/11 Arab autocrats have cooperated closely on counterterrorism with the U.S. and other Western countries. At the same time, they branded domestic dissidents and pro-democracy activists as radicals and urged Western governments not to fret over their harsh tactics against their citizens.

Arab regimes mistakenly thought that autocracy, not democracy, was critical for fighting terrorism and that Western support for human rights in Arab countries would dilute such an effort. Because Arab autocrats were pliant partners, Western governments, unfortunately, became addicted to autocracy, which in turn helped autocrats become more entrenched.

Arab rulers seem to forget that many non-Western democracies, including Muslim Indonesia and Turkey, also have been strong partners with Western governments in fighting terrorism. The fall of the dictators in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, and Libya would not preclude these countries from fighting terrorism.

Arab Islamic autocrats co-operate in the fight against terrorism to preserve their rule; whereas democracies do so to protect their societies and way of life.

Washington and other Western capitals should make it clear to the remaining Arab dictators, in word and in deed that the game is up. They must implement genuine political reform or step aside. The world cannot tolerate a resurgence of terrorism because of their repressive rule and sectarian politics.

* Dr. Emile Nakhleh is the former director of the CIA Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program, a Research Professor at the University of New Mexico and a National Intelligence Council Associate. He is the author of “A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World and Bahrain: Political Development in a Modernizing Society”.

(END)

The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama is sending the wrong signal to the government of Bahrain in proceeding with a partial sale of new arms to Manama, according to human rights activists and some lawmakers here.

Their reaction followed Friday’s announcement by the State Department that it had cleared a number of items for transfer out of a 53- million-dollar arms package that the administration originally announced last September but subsequently held up due to opposition from key members of Congress.

In announcing what it called the “renewal of U.S. security cooperation with Bahrain”, the State Department stressed that none of the weapons approved for transfer could be used in the kingdom’s ongoing efforts to suppress growing unrest on the island, especially among its majority Shi’a community.

Demonstrations have been taking place on an almost nightly basis in Shi’a villages in recent weeks and have increased in violence, with some youths throwing Molotov cocktails at police, and with police firing tear gas and birdshot to disperse the protests, with sometimes fatal results.

“Given the continued deterioration in the human rights situation there, we think it’s a bad call to be releasing arms – any sort of arms – to Bahrain at this time,” Joe Stork, a veteran Middle East specialist at Human Rights Watch (HRW), told IPS.

“We’re very concerned with the signal that this sends both to the Bahraini government and the Bahraini people,” said Stephen McInerney, executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED).

“And we’re very disappointed that this announcement was not accompanied by an announcement of any real progress on reform issues, including the numerous recommendations made by the Bassiouni Commission that have yet to be implemented,” he said.

He was referring to the Bahraini Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) that was chaired by the noted Egyptian-American jurist, Cherif Bassiouni and which last November issued a nearly 500-page report on serious human rights abuses committed by government forces during its Saudi-backed crackdown against the pro-democracy movement last winter and spring.

Among its most important recommendations, it called for the immediate release of hundreds of people imprisoned for exercising their right to free speech or peaceful assembly and for the investigation and prosecution of officials at all levels responsible for serious abuses, including torture and unlawful killings.

While officials who briefed journalists here declined to specify what arms will be transferred or their value, they insisted that they could be used only for Bahrain’s external defence, presumably against Iran.

According to foreignpolicy.com’s well-connected “Cable” blog, they will likely include six harbour patrol boats, communications equipment for Bahrain’s U.S.-designed air-defence system, ground- based radars, air-to-air-missile systems, Seahawk helicopters, air- defence systems, parts for F-16 fighter engines and Cobra helicopters, and night-vision equipment.

“The items that we are releasing are not used for crowd control,” State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said in a statement that noted that Washington remained “mindful of the fact that there a number of serious unresolved human rights issues that the Government of Bahrain needs to address.”

She noted, in particular, that TOW missiles and Humvees that were part of the original package would not be transferred.

The announcement appeared to be timed to the visit last week of Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the ostensible purpose of which was to witness his son’s graduation from American University but who also met with top administration officials, including Vice President Joseph Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Defence Secretary Leon Panetta whose particular concern is the future of the Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which is based in Bahrain.

The U.S.-educated crown prince has long been considered the leader of the reformist faction in the royal family, which, unlike most Bahrainis, is Sunni Muslim.

Washington has tried to bolster his position vis-à-vis the Saudi- backed hardliners, who reportedly are led by the world’s longest- serving prime minister, Khalifa ibn Sulman al Khalifa. King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, who committed himself publicly to implementing the recommendations of the Bassiouni Commission in November, is generally believed to side with the crown prince.

“(The announcement) gave Salman something to take back, but indirectly signalled the old guard that the young prince, not his great uncle, is the preferred interlocutor with Washington,” according to Emile Nakhleh, a former top Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst for the Near East and South Asia, who last month called for Washington to begin pulling the Fifth Fleet out of Bahrain to distance itself from the Gulf’s autocratic Sunni monarchies.

But whether the gesture will have the desired effect in the internal deliberations of the royal family is not clear at all.

“Of course, to save face, the old guard has touted the release of the arms as a sign that they are still in Washington’s graces,” noted Nakhleh, while Stork told IPS that he had “no basis for thinking it would make a positive difference.”

“There’s every reason to think that they (the hardliners) would just keep the crown prince in the drawer and send him to Washington to pick up the goodies,” Stork added.

Indeed, on the eve of the crown prince’s visit here, security forces arrested Nabeel Rajab, the head of the non-governmental Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, on his return from meeting in Lebanon with the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. The detention was based on his “tweets” encouraging individuals to take part in peaceful demonstrations and allegedly “insulting” the Interior Ministry.

His arrest followed that of Zainab Al Khawaja, the daughter of another veteran human rights activist, Abdulhadi Al Khawaja, who has been on a hunger strike for more than three months to protest his conviction – now on appeal – and life sentence for allegedly trying to violently overthrow the monarchy.

“The Bahraini government continues to imprison political opponents…,” noted Rep. Jim McGovern, one of the lawmakers who pressed the administration to suspend its arms sales last fall.

“(P)roviding more arms sends the wrong signal about America’s commitment to human rights,” he said.

Friday’s announcement also came just before Monday’s meeting in Riyadh of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) where Saudi King Abdullah was expected to press his call for a regional to transform the Council from a joint security arrangement to a political confederation – an initiative for which thus far only Bahrain has expressed much enthusiasm.

Riyadh, which is connected to Bahrain by a causeway, deployed more than 1,000 of its police and troops to its neighbour as a reserve force during last year’s crackdown, and hundreds are believed to remain there.

“It’s clear that Saudi Arabia is trying to expand its hegemony over the rest of the GCC, beginning with Bahrain,” according to Nakhleh.

“Prime Minister Khalifa and his supporters within the ruling family no longer seem to care about the sovereignty of Bahrain or its historically liberal tradition. Their main concern is their own survival,” he told IPS in an email exchange.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

(END)

When Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin briefed reporters recently, he offered some biting criticisms of the growing political manipulation of the most powerful body at the United Nations: the 15-member Security Council.

Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin had strong words for the veto-wielding Western powers, although analysts point out Russia is hardly blameless. Credit: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

Implicitly targeting some of the Western nations – specifically the United States, UK and France – he said “words no longer mean what they used to be”.

When Security Council resolution 1973 approved a “no-fly zone” inside Libya last March, it was meant to neutralise the Libyan air force and prevent it from bombing civilian demonstrators.

Accusing the military forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) of exceeding their authority, Churkin said that in the good old days, “no-fly zone meant nobody is flying.”

“In the brave new world, no fly zone means free-wheeling bombing of targets which you choose to bomb in whatever modality and mode you want, including the bombing of TV stations,” he said.

“It is of grave concern to us to see the enormous ability of some of our colleagues to interpret resolutions” to suit their own interests, he added.

“It was not a perfect day for diplomacy, and it was not a perfect day to work in the Security Council,” said Churkin, who currently holds the rotating monthly presidency of the Security Council.

After another divisive meeting of the Council last week, Churkin complained, “I saw every trick in the book thrown at me, short of trying to strangulate the president of the Security Council.”

But the accusations against the three veto-wielding permanent members of the Council – the United States, UK and France, and their allies – can be equally applied to the other two permanent members, Russia and China.

As they try to protect their own political, economic and military interests worldwide, the Big Five have remained deadlocked on several political hotspots, including Yemen, Bahrain and Israel (protected by the three Western powers) and Syria and Iran (protected by Russia and China).

Chris Toensing, editor of the Washington-based Middle East Report, told IPS that Churkin’s criticisms cannot be taken at face value because Russia’s narrow interests have so clearly driven its own behaviour at the Security Council this year.

“I don’t buy Russian outrage over Libya. (Former U.S. Defence Secretary) Robert Gates was crystal clear, long before the vote on Security Council resolution 1973, that a no-fly zone would be preceded by massive bombing,” Toensing said.

The Russian and Chinese decision to abstain on resolution 1973 was a case of sacrificing a regime to which they had minimal ties.

“Where they do have meaningful ties, as in Syria, they dig in. The United States has, of course, used the Security Council in an equally utilitarian fashion,” said Toensing, who is also the executive director of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP).

James A. Paul, executive director of the New York-based Global Policy Forum, told IPS the Security Council is a political body that operates despotically.

It has 15 members, including five permanent members, but in fact it is run almost exclusively by the P-3: the United States, the UK and France, he said.

Those three countries draft the great majority of the resolutions and shape the business of the Council in every way, said Paul, who closely monitors the workings of the Security Council on a daily basis.

Most importantly, he pointed out, the P-3 count on the more-or-less automatic support of at least six of the 10 elected members, meaning that they have a voting bloc that can carry nearly any resolution.

Through pressure and mutual deals, they can often bring all Council members, including China and Russia, into their orbit.

“This P-3 domination is increasingly anomalous, in light of the waning global power of these states, but their hegemony in the Council remains very strong,” he noted.

Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and international studies at the University of San Francisco, told IPS the Security Council has always been manipulated by the prerogatives of the P5 – the United States, UK, France, China and Russia.

The biggest change in recent years, he pointed out, is that P5 members used to allow resolutions critical of allies to be adopted, but simply made sure they were under Chapter VI (peaceful settlement of disputes) rather than Chapter VII (measures to prevent breach of peace and acts of aggression).

“For decades, the U.S. and its allies supported or abstained on resolutions aimed at Indonesia, Morocco or Israel regarding their territorial conquests, for example, but made sure they were never enforced through sanctions or other mechanisms,” Zunes said.

More recently, however, members of the P5 have been more prone to veto such resolutions, prevent them from coming to a vote, or insist on watering them down until they are meaningless, said Zunes, who has written extensively on the politics of the Security Council.

A case in point: In the 1970s, the United States abstained or voted in favour of four resolutions citing the illegality of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories and calling on the Israelis to dismantle them.

This February, however, the United States vetoed a resolution which reiterated their illegality and simply called on Israel to freeze the construction of additional settlements.

“Unfortunately, this trend is likely to escalate as a result of NATO’s decision to go well beyond the mandate granted in the Security Council resolution to enforce a no-fly zone to protect Libyan civilians and instead effectively become the air force of the Libyan rebels,” Zunes said.

This has undoubtedly contributed to the Chinese and Russian willingness to block even such reasonable Security Council initiatives as the recent draft resolutions on Syria, he added.

Paul told IPS that during 2011, there has been an interesting group of elected members on the Council, namely, India, Brazil and South Africa, in particular, bringing a spirit of independence.

“And they have not always been willing to go along with the P-3,” he said, pointing out that they have preferred alternative policies, especially the use of mediation and negotiation, as opposed to the use of force.

“They are sufficiently strong member states to withstand pressure from the P-3, and they have strong, democratically-based political systems, that do not simply replicate Western thinking or follow in the wake of Western interests,” Paul said.

Western critics of the Council these days often argue that it is blocked by spoilers who are preventing urgent humanitarian action in places like Syria.

This is missing the point, since the evidence is very strong that the Western powers do not act on the basis of human rights or humanitarian motives, he said.

The blockages reflect the insistence of the P-3 to have their way in a changing world, coming up against new and emerging power alignments.

“This reminds us that the Security Council is an organ in great need of membership reform, if it is to play a creative role for peace and better reflect the world that is emerging and not the world of 1945,” Paul added.