Turmoil in Bahrain

With Saudi troops deployed in Bahrain and a state of emergency declared, IWPR Iran editor Nima Tamaddon looks at the implications of crackdown for the opposition movement and the region.

Some 20 people have been killed in clashes in the small Sunni-ruled kingdom over the last month and opposition groups say that around 100 people are missing.  

What are the implications of Saudi Arabia sending in troops to Bahrain?

The deployment of almost 1,000 Saudi soldiers and 500 United Arab Emirates, UAE, law enforcement officers to Bahrain is based on a defence pact signed by six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, GCC, in the early Eighties. According to the Peninsula Shield agreement, which was further developed after the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in 1991, troops can enter a particular country to guard strategic locations in the case of national emergency until security and stability is restored, under the guidance of the host country. After weeks of protests by pro-democracy activists, on March 14 Bahrain asked for GCC support to quell the demonstrations.

On March 16, troops began to disperse the protesters and cleared the Pearl roundabout camp which had become a symbol of their demands for more democratic rights. It is still unclear whether it was solely Bahraini troops who carried out this action or whether the foreign forces participated. GCC general secretary, Abdul Rahman al-Attiyah, said on March 20 that the Peninsula Shield forces had not clashed with the protesters at all, and had just been tasked with protecting strategic locations. But public opinion in Bahrain is convinced that they were used to attack the protesters.

The day after the Pearl roundabout was cleared, the Bahraini king, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, toured the centre of Manama and praised the measures taken by security forces "to bring life back to normal", the official Bahrain news agency reported. 
The GCC charter does not specify whether the Peninsula Shield may be used to confront either a domestic or foreign danger. The Bahraini government has clearly interpreted it to ask for help against an internal threat to its power, but many people in the region see the pact as having been designed to protect against an external threat. It has been hard to justify and legitimise the act as the restoration of stability among some parts of public opinion in Bahrain and other Arab countries.

According to some local reports, Kuwaiti troops were dispatched to Bahrain along with Saudi-UAE security forces and were supposed to participate in the clampdown - but after some Shia members of the Kuwaiti parliament widely criticised the deployment, the Kuwaiti government ordered their troops to leave Bahrain and return to their country. The GCC hasn’t commented on this, but many Arab commentators on social media sites have hailed Kuwait’s reported decision not to participate in the bloodshed. 

Can the government quell the protest movement - how would it be possible, now, for them to reach a compromise?

Right now, it does seem that the Bahraini government has succeeded in largely quelling the protest movement. Last week, the day after a three-month period of emergency rule was imposed, security forces - allegedly including foreign mercenaries - cleared the heart of Manama and drove the protesters out of the landmark square by firing rubber bullets, teargas and live ammunition, killing at least five and injuring hundreds of others. Main opposition figures were also arrested.


Since the start of protests on February 14, the demonstrators had been pushing for the establishment of a constitutional monarchy. They demanded sweeping reforms and that the current cabinet - headed by the long-serving prime minister Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al-Khalifa - be fired. Following an initial crackdown, the regime extended an olive branch by promising a period of national dialogue and some reforms, but many protesters didn't believe these pledges and insisted on the dismissal of the premier as an absolute minimum. Now, the demonstrators have been ruthlessly dispersed and the possibility of reaching a compromise is much more difficult for both sides.  

What are the likely regional implications of this new development?

The real consequences will only become clear in the comings days, if not weeks. The crackdown on the opposition is still under way – on March 18, the security forces reportedly occupied the capital's main hospital to prevent those injured in the protests from getting medical help. There are also reports that phone connections from Bahrain to Iran, Iraq and Lebanon - other countries with a large Shia population - were briefly cut. In the short term, Bahraini pro-democracy activists will be further squeezed between the conflicting agendas of Iran and Saudi Arabia. Just as the Iranian regime wants to recruit and use them to further its own aims, Saudi Arabia and its regional allies accuse the anti-regime movement of being Iranian agents. Saudi-backed media outlets declare that sending troops to Bahrain thwarted an Iranian "road map" to hijack the protests, while in Tehran the Iranian propaganda machine is rolling into action against Saudi Arabia. Some say that the Saudi deployment of forces in Bahrain is their way to ensure that the wave of uprisings doesn't reach their own shore.

So far, one of the immediate consequences has been a growing confrontation between Tehran and Manama. Tehran’s ambassador to Manama was recalled last week and, on March 20, Iran ordered a Bahraini diplomat to leave the country in a tit-for tat move after Bahrain expelled an Iranian diplomat from Manama, accusing him of attempting to fund the protesters. Last week, Tehran called the deployment of foreign security forces "unacceptable" and warned of "dangerous consequences" for intervening in this crisis. Manama countered this by describing the Iranian statement as "a threat to regional and international peace".  Also on March 20, the Bahraini king met staff from the GCC security forces and thanked them for their loyal service and for helping to dismantle a “30-year foreign plot” - an apparent reference to alleged interference by the Iranian regime.

In recent years, Iran and Saudi Arabia have also clashed over their support for different sides in a number of Middle East conflicts, including Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and now Bahrain. Although state-run media outlets in Iran are trying to depict Saudi Arabia as having already been discredited in the Bahraini crisis, I think the Iranian regime faces a more complex situation. By provoking some elements among Bahraini demonstrators - and in a wider context by supporting opposition movements in other countries allied with the United States - Iran has consistently tried to gain the upper hand vis-à-vis America. But now Iran finds itself in an awkward situation. If Tehran does nothing and stays away from the Bahraini crisis, the uprising - from which it could benefit - will either die down or perhaps continue, but without any advantage for Tehran. On the other hand, if Iran decides to openly interfere in the crisis then Saudi and Qatar - two Sunni states around Bahrain - are likely to confront it. Bahrain also hosts a major US navy fleet that will take Manama and Riyadh's side in any confrontation with Tehran.

Was the Bahraini regime encouraged to take more robust action by the way Gaddafi reacted to the revolution in Libya?

I don't think so. The situation in Bahrain is more comparable to that of the one in Egypt, in terms of its strong alliance with US. Hosni Mubarak was a reliable ally of Washington for three decades but when he faced hardship in January 2011, Washington turned around to face the opposition groups and abandoned him. So politicians in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain believe that it's better to take action themselves, at any price, rather than face the same fate as the Mubarak regime.

Is the continuing turmoil leading to a Sunni/Shia split in Bahrain?

Although the Bahraini protests are not about religious affiliations, I think the regional governments are now starting to reduce it to a Sunni versus Shia confrontation. As well drawing censure from Iranian officials, Hassan Nasrallah of Lebanon and some Iraqi Shia clerics - including Ayatollah Ali Sistani and Ammar al-Hakim, chairman of the Islamic Supreme Council - have criticised the Saudi-Bahraini clampdown on the protesters. Shia members of the Kuwaiti parliament have also voiced their anger. At the same time, some on Arab social media sites have accused Shia religious leaders of hypocrisy, asking why they were silent in 2009 and said nothing against the Iranian regime when it cracked down severely on the opposition movement. As for the Bahraini protesters themselves, I don't think their movement has become any more sectarian. Although Shia have dominated the movement, from the very beginning, the organisers have avoided hoisting flags or chanting slogans with any connection to religion. Instead, their message, on T-shirts, badges, and in marches has been, "No Shia, no Sunni, just Bahraini".