Bahrain Opposition not derailed nor naive, stands ground waits for al Khalifa regime inevitable collapse

Bahrain opposition struggles with next steps
Political stalemate and police crackdown suggest a long-term crisis for Bahrain, as small-scale protests continue.
by Gregg Carlstrom – 27 Nov 2011 – Al Jazeera

Protesters in A’ali marched past a sign that said ‘we are free peaceful protesters’ [Al Jazeera]

Manama, Bahrain – A nine-month crackdown by the government has not stopped Bahrain’s protest movement: Demonstrators still take to the streets to confront police, at times violently, and to denounce the government. As many point out, these anti-government protests have gone on, albeit on a smaller scale, for years.

But their efforts are limited these days to small protests and clashes in villages. Police have adopted tactics which would not feel out of place in the Israeli-occupied West Bank: checkpoints block major roads and the entrances to communities; convoys of armoured vehicles tear down narrow roads in villages; most demonstrations are prohibited.

The security measures mean that a visitor to Manama might not notice any signs of the unrest, save for the occasional police jeep splattered with a paint bomb thrown by protesters.

It is too early to tell whether police will continue the sorts of abuses the commission documented, though during clashes on Wednesday morning, hours before its release, they fired tear-gas canisters and sound bombs into a makeshift clinic in a private home, a practice criticised in the report.

The bigger question for many in Bahrain’s anti-government opposition, however, is whether the report leads to political reconciliation and reforms, and so far those efforts seem stalled.

Opposition leaders hoped for a major concession from the government last week, perhaps a prisoner release, when the official commission studying this year’s unrest released its report on human0rights abuses. None has been forthcoming.

All of this suggests that Bahrain’s slow-boiling crisis will drag on for the foreseeable future.

The formal political opposition is marginalised, and the street-level opposition is tightly restricted. However, protesters no longer seem to fear the government, not when women climb to the rooftops to chant yasqat Hamad (“Down with Hamad”) as tear-gas canisters whiz overhead.

“I almost hope that I am arrested,” one female activist said on Tuesday.
‘This government must resign’

King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa’s only response to the report, so far, has been to establish a new commission entrusted with studying the previous commission’s work. He announced the panel during a speech on Wednesday, and formally established it on Saturday via a royal decree.

The announcement was greeted with scorn by the opposition, which dismissed it as a stalling tactic.

Al Wefaq, which has normally been careful in its criticism of the government, refused to work with the commission unless Hamad first sacks his cabinet. He asked two members of the party to join the new commission, and both refused.
Signs at Friday’s rally read “down down government” and “we want democracy” [Al Jazeera]

“We will not work or co-operate with the present government, and we demand for its resignation,” Khalil Marzooq, a senior member of Al Wefaq, said.

“This government must resign, because it’s proved now that it has killed and tortured our citizens.”

The government, in turn, has sought to cast the opposition’s refusal as a delaying tactic.

Khalid Al Khalifa, Bahrain’s foreign minister, said this week that the cabinet is a “legitimate government appointed by the king” and dismissed calls for its removal.

The political standoff, in some ways, parallels a similar deadlock this summer, when the king launched a “national dialogue.

“Al Wefaq withdrew from the talks after a few weeks, describing them as “not serious,” a decision which some opposition supporters now consider a tactical error.

“The [dialogue] was killed by the opposition, not by us,” Khalid Al Khalifa said. “Now the only thing on the table is the BICI recommendations, and the independent committee that will result from it.”

The opposition, indeed, remains divided over its ultimate goals. Al Wefaq and other parties handed out carefully worded signs at a protest on Friday, inscribed with messages like “Down with the government” and “We want democracy”.

Wefaq members at the rally stressed to journalists that they wanted only to reform the existing system.

But when the protesters chanted, their loudest refrain was yasqat Hamad (“Down with Hamad”), an unambiguous message for the country’s monarch. …more