GCC Monarchs nervously watch the fall of al Khalifa in Bahrain

Bahrain tensions a trigger for Gulf turmoil
By Jeremy Bowen – 12 December, 2012 – BBC

The contest for power between Shia and Sunni Muslims is manifesting itself across the region

The chant that has been part of the soundtrack of the uprisings in the Middle East since the beginning of 2011 is a rhythmic rendition of the words in Arabic that mean: “The people want the fall of the regime.”

On a dark, drizzly night in Bahrain they echoed back off the scruffy, peeling walls of Muhazza, a village just outside the capital, Manama.

A few hundred Muhazza residents had gathered, defying the ban on public demonstrations that was imposed in October.

They waited for the police to arrive, alternating the chant about the fall of the regime with: “Down with Hamad” – in reference to Bahrain’s King Hamad al-Khalifah.

The protesters were Shia Muslims, the majority sect in Bahrain. The Khalifahs, like most of Bahrain’s establishment, are Sunni.
‘Second-class citizens’

The trouble in Muhazza – and other Shia villages in Bahrain – is more than a little local difficulty.

Bahrain is caught up in the big forces that are reshaping the Middle East. They include the pressure for change and the desires and ambitions of major powers.

Bahrain is much poorer than its rich neighbours in the UAE and Qatar, and there are long-established economic grievances, particularly to do with unemployment and poor housing.

It is also the home port for the US Fifth Fleet, whose jobs include keeping the oil export routes open and reminding Iran of what the Americans could do to them if they so wished.

But the most significant single cause of unrest and outright violence in the new Middle East is religious sectarianism.

Bahrain lies between Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia and the Shias of Iran, and has a long history of sectarian tension, between the Shia majority and the Sunni minority.

The Sunnis control most of the money and power. Some Shia families have done well out of the system, and have senior positions. But most have been treated like second-class citizens.

Shias and Sunnis are the equivalent of the Protestants and Catholics in the Christian world, often happy to intermarry and live peacefully alongside each other. But at times of tension, and sometimes because they have been inflamed by radical preachers, they can turn on each other.
Whiff of tear gas

It did not take long for the police to break up the demonstration in Muhazza.

The children seemed to sense them before they could see them, running for cover a few seconds before the police announced themselves with a stun grenade and a whiff of tear gas.

The adults scattered, running into shops and houses. The police made no attempt to pursue them, though locals said that in the previous few weeks there had been repeated violent raids in the early hours of the morning.
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Bahrain’s justice minister, Khaled al Khalifa

We want to bring back unity in a way that heals the earlier error”

Khaled al-Khalifah Bahraini Justice Minister

Ten minutes later, the police had moved on to another emergency call, and the street filled with defiant residents who began chanting again.

Women produced trays of food. The people of Muhazza started to enjoy themselves.

When protesters in Bahrain tried to emulate the revolution in Egypt by starting mass demonstrations in February 2011, the first slogans called for reform, not for the overthrow of the ruling family.

The security forces responded to what became an uprising with great brutality.

The first protesters also included a fair proportion of Sunnis, who were fed up with the way the country has been run.

But since the crackdown, the confrontation has increasingly been on sectarian lines.

In a moment of unusual openness for a Middle Eastern ruling family, the king commissioned and accepted the findings of an independent report into what happened, which confirmed that the security forces had killed and tortured protesters.

A year after the report, known as the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI), the ruling family is being accused of not doing enough to implement its findings, by its friends in the West as well as human rights groups and its critics inside Bahrain. …more