Made in the USA – 48 hours of Chemical Gas attacks and Birdshot in Sanabis

48 hours in Sanabis
Matthew Cassel – 28 September, 2012 – AlJazeera

“We need supplies,” said the doctor, “Who can go get them?” One activist, a computer engineer in his 20s, quickly volunteered and invited me to go with him. It was nearly midnight and the injuries were piling into the makeshift medical clinic in a home in the Sanabis village, a suburb of Manama, the Bahraini capital. Injured protesters couldn’t be brought to hospitals or medical centres where they’d likely be arrested, so they were treated inside the villages. Volunteer medics were out of burn ointment and IV syringes, and needed someone to bring them from another makeshift clinic on the other side of the village.

There was a rare silence outside on the street. The protesters, mostly shabab (youth), had been dispersed only minutes earlier when dozens of police stormed through firing tear gas, rubber bullets and bird shot. The stench of gas still lingered; it never really disappeared fully from Sanabis during the two days of protests there.

We left the house into the streets. Some stone-carrying shabab were starting to return to the main crossings in central Sanabis, standing over broken glass and spent tear gas cartridges – all clearly marked “made in USA” – waiting for the police to return.

We passed through the narrow alleyways, some barely wide enough for a car to pass through. Some parts were well lit with the bright orange glow of the street lights, others pitch black. Some areas were tight giving a sense of protection, while others were more open, leaving us completely exposed for a number of seconds when anything could happen. We could only hope as we approached the next street corner that there wouldn’t be any police waiting around it, while we kept looking backwards to make sure there were none there either. Too fast and we would come upon them with no place to run, too slow and we’d get caught from behind.

In the chance that we did see police, which was more likely than not, we knew it’d already be too late. Their uniforms are unmistakable: blue bodysuits topped with bright white helmets. We had seen their weapons cause countless injuries all day long, and if we were spotted they’d fire at us. Up ahead atop a roof a couple of shabab on lookout waved to let us know the coast is clear. At the next crossing another group motioned for a signal to know if there are any white hats from where we just came.

As we continued to creep along in the shadows an abaya-clad woman peaked through the crack of her front door. “Come in,” she whispered waving her arms for us to get off the street, “do you need anything?” “Thank you, hajjiyyah, we are okay,” the runner whispered back, continuing his mission.

More than seven months after it began with marches of tens of thousands to Manama and sit-ins at the now-destroyed Pearl roundabout, this is what the Bahrain uprising has become.

After a brutal crackdown followed by months of martial law, the uprising is now largely confined to the numerous predominantly Shia villages around the country. It’s an increasingly organised and (still unarmed) guerilla resistance movement against the police force armed with “non-lethal weaponry”. …more