Looking into Bahrain's crystal ball

It has been a violent week in Bahrain. During clashes coinciding with the two-year anniversary of the uprising, police shot and killed a teenage boy with their shotguns. In retaliation, skirmishers killed a policeman using a homemade explosive. The violence shows no sign of abetting. Who knows who many more were and will be injured.

Ominously, the Bahraini government announced yesterday the arrest of eight members of a "terrorist cell" only a few days after defusing a 2 kg bomb on a major highway. The government has made many such claims before, most of them hard to take at face value. Yet, even the boy who cried wolf was eventually eaten by one.

In short, this week left little room for optimism - except for the extremists on all sides who oppose any compromise that could ameliorate the crisis in Bahrain. The violence has overshadowed whatever meager light of hope the new National Dialogue offers. And without a political solution, whether from this dialogue or another, the future of Bahrain looks quite grim. Recent posts on social media can give us a preview of what we might expect if current trends hold.

On one side, you have the extreme anti-opposition who despise the protesters in the street and whose support for the government extends only to the extent that the authorities crack down on the protesters. Take for example the recent tweets of Mohammed Khalid (@boammar), a Sunni known for his inflammatory rhetoric. After the foiling of the purported terror cell, Khalid tweeted a line of rhyming Arabic poetry, "Cell after cell ... Wefaq has become the final arbiter ... The state has hollowed the law into a forgotten memory ... Terrorism has become like the American state ... This is the Khalifa's Bahrain." In another tweet, he asks "Why does Bahrain tremble before human rights organizations and doesn't tremble before the Creator of Man? Where are our rights as people and as security men before the rights of terrorists who betray the nation?"



A burning tire runing over "The Dialogue." Khalid tweets a pun, calling it "The Mooing" which differs in spelling from dialogue by only one letter.

For Khalid and those like him, Bahrain faces an existential threat from "terrorists" and yet the Khalifa regime does nothing to confront that threat. The risk is that they'll take things into their own hands, as has happened before. The worst case scenario is significant violence between civilians on the streets, as opposed to the current bad case scenario of protesters clashing with police. The risk is real because Khalid et al. confuse the entire opposition for Iranian-backed terrorists. For example, the controversial anti-opposition Twitter account @7areghum blamed a recent fire bombing of a bank on "Wefaq's militias" and used the hashtag "Wefaq's terrorism."

 

The accusation is ridiculous. Sheikh Ali Salman, the head of al-Wefaq, has consistently urged protesters to remain peaceful because such methods strengthen the democratic movement and make it more effective. Just today, he tweeted, "The opposition's approach is peaceful. It rejects violence and believes in serious dialogue. It insists on its right to peaceful protest and to communicate with the international community, and it will not give up on the demands of the people." If it were not for his leadership among others, this week - and the past two years - would have witnessed far more violence.

 

Khalid would scoff at such statements as lies. But he would not be the only one scoffing. Those actually responsible for the fire bombing of the bank would also object. Not because they believe Salman is lying, but because they reject his thesis altogether. Today, the People's Resistance Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack. In a statement on their Facebook page, the group warned "We are still in the beginning of avenging the martyrs" of the revolution.

 

In fact, their entire Facebook page is comprised of one statement after another claiming responsibility for attacking the Khalifa regime. In one yesterday, they write "God as our witness, we have targeted the entire mercenary system defending the criminal Khalifa regime and we promise the people we have some surprised for the regime."After claiming responsibility for another attack on Friday, they warn, "If the message was not clear to the regime and its followers, wait and you will see more."

 

Today, the People's Resistance Brigades has only 315 likes on their Facebook page, and Ali Salman's arguments about peacefulness still hold the greatest sway in the opposition (Note some might question whether the entire Facebook page is fake, but there's no evidence of that). But the consensus is shifting in Bahrain as moderates across the spectrum lose influence.  As it does, groups like the People's Resistance Brigades will gain popularity, the threat of actual terrorism will grow, and reconciliation will grow ever more distant.

 

For now, however, Wefaq and its allies can still mobilize massive protests that remain remarkably peaceful in the midst of violence. And there are still those across the political spectrum who seek a political compromise. So even if the future of Bahrain looks grim, we can at least take solace that there are many striving to change what they see in the crystal ball.

 



The Long View on Bahrain

This week will mark the two-year anniversary of the uprising in Bahrain. A lot has changed since those first early protests, and yet so much remains the same.

New political groups have formed, but the main cleavage remains between those who have and those who have not. Broad political movements have fragmented, but the Khalifa have always taken advantage of such schisms to maintain their rule. The contagion of sectarianism has spread, but it has always infected Bahrain to some degree. The pearl monument has fallen, but its memory remains fresh as ever.

So, much remains the same as two years ago. And in fact, much remains the same from two centuries ago. The Bahraini uprising is only the latest iteration of Bahrain's long history in uprisings that have wracked Bahrain every generation under the Khalifa regime. The problem boils down to one simple truth: a minority of have's control the economic and political order, and the majority of have-not's will continue to revolt periodically until they succeed in building a more just system.

Bahrain's PR Trap

New York Times journalist Nick Kristof was denied entry into Bahrain today. As he tweeted, “I’m at #Bahrain airport, and the government is denying me entry. Our ally is terrified of human rights reporting.”

His rejection should come as no surprise. He’s been on the government’s bad side ever since reporting from Pearl Roundabout during the February 14^th uprising. While I’ve been told (but was unable to confirm) he has been granted two media visas since then, he has previously been denied entry. And he’s in good company of a long list of journalists, academics, and human rights groups that has been turned away these past two years. Just this week, a member of the European Parliament was also denied entry.

July 4th on Trial

I want to wish everyone a very happy Fourth of July. I plan to spend my day going to the Nationals game with friends, binging on Freedom Fries, and watching the fireworks over the National Mall. But for this post, I wanted to remember two groups of people who will have an entirely different kind of Fourth of July. Their Fourth of July won’t be about friends, fries, and fireworks. But what they will go through today should remind all of us what the Fourth truly should be about: how lucky we are to live in a free nation.

In Egypt, the political trial against NGOs promoting Egyptian democracy restarts today with high profile testimony from prosecution witnesses. According to Fayza Aboulnaga, the minister who is spearheading the crackdown against the NGOs, the accused organizations were operating without a license and are therefore subject to prosecution. But Freedom House president David Kramer, refutes Aboulnaga’s accusations and argues persuasively that the trial is part of a larger crackdown against civil society by remnants of the Mubarak regime intent on aborting the revolution.  Forty three defendants stand accused, but only a fraction will attend court tomorrow. After months of pressure, the US government convinced the Egyptian authorities to allow the accused Americans to leave the country. The Egyptians remain to face trial, but they won’t do so alone. Robert Becker of the National Democratic Institute refused to abandon his Egyptian colleagues. And Sherif Mansour resigned his position at Freedom House to return to Egypt to face trial in person. He was immediately arrested upon his arrival.

The Triangle of Conflict in Bahrain

My research partner Reza Akbari and I have finally finished our thesis on "The Triangle of Conflict: How Bahrain's Internal Divisions Inhibit Reconciliation." After months of research, two trips to Bahrain and over 50 interviews conducted, we are excited to share with you our results. You can read the entire thesis here, but let me give you a brief summary of our analysis.

In the thesis, we explore the potential for political reconciliation in Bahrain in which people can learn to live non-violently with each other despite their differences. To achieve that reconciliation, moderates from across the political spectrum must gain enough influence to be able to come to the center as part of a political process. Any political settlement will obviously not solve all of Bahrain's deep-seated problems, but it would set Bahrain on a path towards reconciliation.

In the first part of the paper, we ask who are the actors that must participate in any potential dialogue working towards reconciliation. The US media tends to oversimplify the situation in Bahrain by weaving a narrative about a Shia people demanding their rights from a Sunni government. In fact, there are three main camps in Bahraini politics - the government, the opposition, and the loyalist opposition - that do not fall neatly along sectarian lines.These three camps form what we call the “triangle of conflict” in which political struggles occur both on a systemic level between the three camps and at a group level between the factions that form those camps.

What Carl Sagan Would Say About Bahrain

For the past two weeks, I was in Bahrain conducting interviews for my thesis. With my research partner Reza Akbari, I hope to be soon writing and publishing several articles on what we've learned. I chose to study Bahrain because I believe it is not very well understood here in Washington, DC. There are three reasons for that.

One, most Americans (myself definitely included) did not pay attention to Bahrain until the uprising last year. As a result, we only hear about what Bahrain is now without understanding what Bahrain was before. That lack of historical context not only makes understanding what's happening in Bahrain now difficult, but it also makes predicting what might happen next impossible.

Two, some Bahraini voices have a much stronger presence in DC than others. Obviously the government, with its embassy and PR firms, can broadcast its perspective effectively. At the same time, Bahraini and international human rights groups have also done an excellent job in pushing their own narrative. And, to a lesser extent, the main opposition party Wefaq has also found a platform to push its views internationally. Yet there are many (exactly how many who knows?) Bahrainis who neither support the government nor the traditional opposition. Some have created new, predominantly Sunni groups as a kind of anti-opposition. Others feel completely unrepresented by any group. These voices go largely unheard outside of Bahrain.

Lessons of January 28th

Today is the one year anniversary of the Egyptian revolution. Yes, the protests began on January 25th. But it was on January 28th that a minority of protesters ballooned into a majority of revolutionaries. Exactly one year ago, protesters collided with security forces all across Egypt, but one clash in particular has especially engrained itself in my mind: the battle of Qasr al-Nil Bridge.

At this time last year, waves of protesters crashed and crashed again upon the seemingly immovable security forces on Qasr al-Nil. For hours, the battle lines went back and forth, but it seemed for certain that the protesters would eventually be turned back. But then the improbable happened. The protesters actually won. And those waves that once crashed ineffectively against the security forces began to flood Tahrir Square. They would not leave until Mubarak fell.

Sanctioning Shalom

According to Deena Jawhar in the Middle East International, Bahrain's elected lower house of parliament has unanimously passed a bill sanctioning all contact with Israelis. If also passed by the upper house, a simple Shalom could result in fines up to $25,000 or five years of imprisonment.

Jawhar explains that while Bahrain's government (read: King Hamad) does not officially recognize Israel, it has taken several measures in recent years such as

the closure of an Israel boycott office in 2005; a proposal by the foreign minister last year to establish a regional forum including Israel; a call for dialogue with Israelis made by Crown Prince Sheikh Salman bin-Hamad in a Washington Post article published in July; and King Hamad's regular meetings with pro-Israel groups during trips abroad.

As such, the King views the bill as an affront to his prerogative to formulate foreign policy. In fact, the crown prince has argued that normalisation with Israel could bring economic benefits to the country - an argument to which the lower house of parliament and its constituents obviously don't give much credence. However, the upper house may have little choice but to follow the government's line, given that they are appointed by the King himself. Therefore, it is unlikely the bill will ever become a law.

This episode serves as a reminder about how deeply and pervasively hatred towards Israel flows through the Arab world. I can understand why Arabs feel so strongly about the plight of the Palestinian people. I can even comprehend why, at the cost of their own economic welfare, the Bahraini parliament is willing to shoot symbolic salvos at Tel Aviv. But what I don't understand - and what I don't think they have considered - is how their anger also hurts the very people they ostensibly seek to help.

An Israel that feels under siege will not and cannot make peace. Nor is there any shortage of reasons for Israel to feel in danger. If not Hamas, then Hezbollah. If not Hezbollah, then Iran. Then let's not forget Syria. Oh, and al Qaeda-inspired Sunni splinter groups. So does Israel need to feel threatened by Bahrain's lower house of parliament? No, but it's just simply one more excuse to retreat into a psychological bunker.

For there to be a political peace, there must first be a minimum level of mutual trust and mutual confidence. And there can be neither trust nor confidence without contact between the Arabs and Israelis. That is why it is so essential, as President Obama has urged, for both sides to offer gradual confidence-building measures to undergird any political negotiations.

But episodes like these make me wonder whether the anger is simply too great right now to move forward. While President Obama was correct to make the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a top priority from the get-go, it might now be better for everyone to take a breather and try again after tempers have cooled.