Bahrain Grand Prix Has a Winner, and It’s Not Arab Monarchies

Bahrain Grand Prix Has a Winner, and It’s Not Arab Monarchies
By Nicholas Noe & Walid Raad – 23 April, 2012 – Bloomberg

Having been relegated to the minor headlines in both the Arab and Western media, the anti-government protests in the tiny Persian Gulf nation of Bahrain finally had their moment this weekend.

With foreign journalists and other outsiders descending on the island country for Sunday’s Grand Prix race, critics of the monarchy stepped up their activities to take advantage of the audience, while government forces responded as they have all along — with a strong arm. One activist was found shot dead on a roof, raising suspicions he may have been targeted by security forces. More than 50 protestors and several policemen have been killed since anti-government protests started in February 2011 in Bahrain, which has a population of 1.2 million.

In an editorial, the London-based, Palestinian-owned Al-Quds al-Arabi wrote: “The Formula 1 race generated results that went completely against the government’s wishes.” The concurrent protests “allowed the whole world to see that Bahrain is not as stable as the government is promoting and that it features a strong opposition demanding legitimate democratic change.”

On the other hand, commentators writing for newspapers supportive of Bahrain’s King Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa, as well as some other papers financed by Gulf governments, didn’t see what the big deal was. They expressed exasperation that other media, including the Qatari-owned Al-Jazeera website and TV network, had devoted so much attention to the unrest.

Writing in the Bahraini daily Akhbar al-Khaleej, columnist Muhammad Mubarak Jomaa wrote that it had become “clear that certain satellite channels had greatly escalated their campaign against Bahrain.” Their goal, he theorized, was to stop the Grand Prix race and thereby damage Bahrain. The scheme, he said, had two parts. “The first featured heated attempts to convince the participating teams and crews that taking part in the Bahrain race would be shameful.” When this failed, he wrote, there was an effort to scare off people with reports of unrest and possible violence directed against the race.

In his column, Jomaa’s editor, Anwar Abdul Rahman, went further, arguing that the “slanderous claims” in the Western and Arab media were nothing less than an “Iranian plan.” Bahrain’s opposition has pushed for greater rights for Shiites, who make up the majority of the country’s population but are ruled over by the minority Sunnis. Iran has historic ties to Bahrain and is dominated, politically and in terms of its population, by Shiites. Abdul Rahman’s piece did not explain how the Iranians would execute a plan through U.S., U.K. and Qatari media. …more