THE
ROVING EYE House of Saud 'liberates'
Bahrain By Pepe Escobar
To follow Pepe's articles on the Great
Arab Revolt, please click here.
United States Defense Secretary Robert
Gates visits Bahrain to meet King Hamad bin Isa
al-Khalifa on Saturday. Saudi Arabia invades
Bahrain on Monday. This has got to be just a
coincidence; Gates and the king were obviously
discussing the fortunes of Ferrari and MacLaren in
the (postponed) Formula 1 Grand Prix in Bahrain.
Moreover, this walks like an invasion,
talks like an invasion, but it's not really an
invasion, as White House spokesman Jay Carney
confidently reassured world public opinion. It
helps that
said opinion happened to be
conveniently narcotized, transfixed by the
heartbreaking post-tsunami drama in Japan to the
point of ignoring some distant rumblings in a tiny
Gulf kingdom.
Let's imagine that
neo-Napoleonic French President Nicolas Sarkozy
and Italian Prime Minister Silvio "Bunga Bunga"
Berlusconi decided to send North Atlantic Treaty
Organization troops to help not the Libyan rebels
but Muammar "King of Kings" Gaddafi to protect his
"sensitive installations". After all, as Gaddafi
assured the world, these rebels are "terrorists".
That's exactly what happened with the
House of Saud sending armored carriers, tanks and
1,000 troops - part of "Peninsula Shield" forces -
to Bahrain to repress an unarmed, civilian,
domestic opposition (al-Qaeda or Iran
"terrorists", take your pick) demanding political
reform.
While the whole West - plus the
Arab League - was involved in the dead-end no-fly
zone debate concerning Libya, the Gulf neighbors
ensured an all-drive zone through the causeway
linking Saudi Arabia to Bahrain's capital Manama.
Gates must have been jet-lagged to oblivion; he
had said he was convinced the al-Khalifas "are
serious about serious reform".
"The US and
world community must show they will not stand by
while this thug al-Khalifa uses tank power to
murder fellow Bahrainis."
Substitute
Gaddafi for al-Khalifa, airpower for tank power,
and Libyans for Bahrainis, and these are the exact
words pronounced in outrage by US Senator John
Kerry. But outrage is for the "thug" in Libya; the
al-Khalifa and the Saudis are our "valuable
allies".
One thing is already certain.
These two paragons of equanimity - the House of
Saud and the Sunni al-Khalifa dynasty - have just
helped to reconfigure a peaceful mass movement
towards a constitutional monarchy in Bahrain into
a full-fledged revolution. The ignominy extends to
auditioning for mercenaries in Lahore, Pakistan;
the al-Khalifa's methods are Gaddafi's methods
(see the details here
). Bahrain's revolutionaries will now settle for
nothing less than the overthrow of the
al-Khalifas.
Time to call the
cavalry Whatever the spin, Saudi Arabia
could not have invaded Bahrain without
Washington's assent (and this even after Gates
told the al-Khalifas there was "no evidence" the
bogeyman, Iran, "started any of these popular
revolutions or demonstrations across the region".)
Both Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are
Washington's solid client states. Details of
Bahrain's subservience, especially to the
Pentagon, abound in WikiLeaks cables - here,
here
and here.
There's also this one here
laying down the law; "As the smallest Gulf state,
Bahrain has historically needed closer security
ties with a Western patron than any of its
neighbors ... we can use our close security ties
with Bahrain to continue pushing the envelope for
GCC-US security cooperation."
GCC is the
Gulf Cooperation Council, the US-protected
umbrella of regional paradises on Earth (Saudi
Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and the
United Arab Emirates). Since the start of the
protests in the Pearl/Lulu roundabout in Manama,
Bahrain has revealed itself to be the GCC's weak
link; a 70% Shi'ite majority living as third-class
citizens under a corrupt 200-year-old Sunni
dynasty.
If the pro-democracy movement
succeeds in Bahrain, the next in line will
certainly be the minority Shi'ites in the eastern
oil provinces of Saudi Arabia (which had their
"Day of Rage" last Friday). That, in the long run,
could spell out anything from the end of Bahrain
as a prime parking lot space for the US 5th Fleet
to the end of Saudi Arabia's "stability" - the
other pillar, along with the Egypt, of US foreign
policy in the Middle East since the 1970s.
Once again, it's the al-Khalifa regime
that has sought a clash. Bahraini journalists and
tweets tell the campaign of civil disobedience was
stepped up this Sunday, with roadblocks set up
across the highway in front of the Bahrain
Financial Harbor. The police fired tear gas; then
followed protesters to the Pearl roundabout,
launching stun grenades, more tear gas, and
possibly using live ammunition. Street battles
ensued. Bahrainis tweeted the crackdown offered
images similar to those on the bridge near Tahrir
Square in Cairo when Hosni Mubarak had ordered the
Internet all across Egypt to be shut down.
Meanwhile, in the University of Bahrain -
the largest public university in the kingdom -
protesters were attacked by al-Khalifa loyalists.
According to eyewitnesses, many pick-ups carrying
baltajiyya (thugs)- a la the last days of
Mubarak - a lot of them masked, entered the campus
with sticks and swords and attacked protesters.
And once again, the government used mercenaries
against Bahrainis; this is generating a worrying
series of revenge attacks on South Asian
residents.
This is all essential to debunk
the Western corporate media narrative of "violent
protests" that must be "contained" by Saudi
intervention. It is the al-Khalifas who are
fostering violence - a la Mubarak. To top it off -
another cheap stunt - Western media were "invited"
to leave the country on Monday, so as not to
report on the Saudi invasion.
The
frightened al-Khalifas did call the cavalry - in
the form of Saudi tanks and troops. The House of
Saud - as the GCC's top dog - was just itching for
such a fight; if France and Britain are itching to
intervene in Libya, what would prevent Saudis from
intervening in Bahrain? Western corporate media
depicting "Saudi Arabia's reluctant emergence as
the key regional policeman" is nothing but cosmic
disinformation; there's nothing "reluctant" about
it, it's a question of fear mixed with
ruthlessness, as in the survival of both
repressive regimes at stake.
To compound
the advanced wave of hypocrisy, while Europe
debated no-fly in Libya the House of Saud came up
with its "all-drive" and sped to Manama in the
dead of night. al-Wefaq, the largest Shi'ite party
in Bahrain, now describes Saudi Arabia as an
occupation force. Imagine the outrage in the
"international community" - and the calls to start
carpet-bombing right away - if this was Iran
invading Lebanon.
No fly? No; no drive
By the way, GCC members - also part of the
Arab League - support no-fly in Libya (not because
they love the eastern Libya revolutionaries, but
because they hate Gaddafi's guts). Yet abandon all
hope those who expect the Barack Obama
administration to support a no-drive zone in
Bahrain (for Saudi tanks).
Great swathes
of Arab public opinion are absolutely right on the
money; Western elites are staging just an illusion
of action in Libya. The objective is to create a
firewall between the revolutions in northern
Africa and the repressive Gulf petro-monarchy
clients. No fly against "evil" Gaddafi? Why not?
No drive against strategic Saudi Arabia? Don't
even think about it.
The West really
doesn't care much about a bunch of kids with guns
in Libya, those that have been grabbing a
Kalashnikov and wrapping a keffiyah
(checkered scarf) around their heads, rushing to
the front in sports utility vehicles to fight for
a better life. Yet this is Homage to
Catalonia revisited, George Orwell on the
Spanish Civil War, with Benghazi as the new
Barcelona - an outburst of revolutionary fervor
that may be crushed by the heavy weaponry of a
northern African neo-fascist army.
Yet a
no-fly zone in Libya won't change a single fact on
the ground. A game-changer would be to support the
eastern Libyan council to force a no-drive zone on
Gaddafi's tanks and armored personnel carriers;
and to arm the rebels with weapons and
intelligence. That's exactly what they're asking
of the West (and not a North Atlantic Treaty
Organization invasion). So the first step would be
for the Obama administration to immediately
recognize the "rebels" as the legitimate
government of Libya. Then cause havoc on Gaddafi's
communications system (a cakewalk for the
Pentagon). And then tell the rebels what Gaddafi's
command and control are up to. All this at
virtually zero cost - and no US boots on the
ground.
Invading you softly with my
tanks While the pro-government daily
al-Ayyam talked about hundreds of Bahrainis
"welcoming the Saudi forces", Crown Prince Salman
bin Hamad al-Khalifa, Bahrain's answer to Saif
al-Gaddafi (the relative "modernizer") still talks
of dialogue, including electoral reform, "a
government representing popular will",
investigations on corruption and the end of
"political naturalizations" (Bahrain naturalizes
scores of Sunnis to dilute the Shi'ite political
representation).
The absolute majority of
the population doesn't believe a word of it
anymore. Not with the Medieval House of Saud
having supported Mubarak to the end, welcoming
Tunisia's Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali as an exile,
supporting Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen and now
invading Bahrain - with the White House virtually
begging Riyadh to pump just a little more oil to
make up for the shortfall in Libya.
Everything one needs to know about the
House of Saud is in these words by Minister of
Interior Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz, King
Abdullah's half-brother and the de facto Minister
of Pain. On the oily family hacienda having
survived this past Friday's "Day of Rage", Prince
Nayef said, "Some evil people wanted to spread
chaos in the kingdom and called for demonstrations
that have dishonorable goals." But in the end the
House of Saud managed to thwart this "deeply
nefarious plot". They certainly did; just in time
to invade a neighbor.
Saddam Hussein must
be kicking himself in his tomb. If only he'd been
slightly more subtle while invading Kuwait (which,
by the way, was part of Iraq before the British
Empire decided it wasn't). There would have been
no no fly zone, no shock and awe, no US wasting a
trillion dollars, and on top of it he'd be hailed
today as a pillar of "stability" in the Middle
East, as well as a "valuable ally". As valuable as
those irrepressible democrats, the al-Khalifas and
the House of Saud.
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