Continuing Crackdown in Bahrain

Continuing Crackdown in Bahrain
Interviewee: Roy Gutman, Middle East Correspondent, McClatchy Newspapers
Interviewer: Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor, CFR.org
June 8, 2011

Roy GutmanPresident Barack Obama met briefly June 7 with Bahrain’s Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa and supported the Sunni royal family’s ending of martial law, calling for a national dialogue to begin in July. However, the crackdown on Bahrain’s majority Shiite population continues. Dozens of doctors and nurses went on trial June 6 on charges of participating in efforts to overthrow the monarchy, and leading Shiite political figures are in prison. It seems that little has changed, says Roy Gutman, Middle East correspondent for McClatchy newspapers, who believes the ending of martial law was largely staged to encourage the staging of the Formula One in Bahrain this fall. While the visit of the crown prince, a reform proponent, was an effort to ease tensions, Gutman says the government seems to be pressing its offensive against protesters.

The United States government has been critical of the arrests of Shiite protesters in Bahrain, and President Obama, in fact, called for Bahrain to release prisoners and facilitate a dialogue. How do you see the situation in Bahrain?

I’m not there, to be honest. The Bahraini authorities wouldn’t let me in. They don’t let reporters in except perhaps one a week from the international media. Everything I say is with the caveat that I’m speaking to you from Baghdad.

From what I hear, Bahrain is a very tense place. The state of emergency was formally lifted on June 1, but so many elements of the state of emergency prior to June 1 are still there. In some ways, things are not getting any better. They might in fact be getting worse. In the last twenty-four hours, Bahraini authorities put forty-eight doctors and nurses on trial on charges that were possibly invented. The lawyers and defendants did not see the charges until yesterday. This has been a military tribunal where the international media was completely excluded. It’s shocking that they’ve done this on the eve of the crown prince’s visit to the United States (CSMonitor).

What is the crown prince hoping to do here? He was recently in England, where he met (AFP) with Prime Minister David Cameron.

There’s an effort to restore some good will between Bahrain and its major international partners in the West, as opposed to the Middle East, because these relations have been very strained by this brutal crackdown. The crown prince is the face of reform in Bahrain; he’s the man who really called for it, supported it, urged it, put his neck on the line to achieve it. He’s about the best person they could possibly send, in terms of a person who has respect. The problem is, he has not been in charge. In fact, one has the feeling that most everything he stands for is being stripped away and undermined by hardliners in the same regime.

The crown prince is the son of the king, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. But many experts say that the real power belongs to the prime minister, Sheikh Khalifa Bin Salman Al Khalifa. Is that true?

There’s a lot of evidence that he is getting his way, and certainly over issues of great importance. This is all a guessing game. Nobody except for the royal court knows what’s going on inside the palace. I will say that two days after Obama delivered the speech that was quite critical of Bahrain–the first time that the Obama administration had used strong words and called for changes of policy publicly–the prime minister gave an interview and used very harsh language regarding the people who were being detained and the respected, moderate Shiite political opposition. Perhaps it was not an intentional rebuff to Obama’s speech, [but] he was saying, we’re going to continue with the crackdown. He’s the strongman, and the king is probably the person in the middle between the crown prince and the prime minister. The chief of the armed forces is also a hardliner. …full interview