THE ROVING
EYE Why
Bahrain is not Syria By Pepe
Escobar
How poignant that the first
anniversary of a true Arab pro-democracy movement
in the Persian Gulf - then ruthlessly crushed -
falls on February 14, when Valentine's Day is
celebrated in the West. Talk about a doomed love
affair.
And how does Washington honor this
tragic love story? By resuming arms sales to the
repressive Sunni al-Khalifa dynasty in power in
Bahrain.
So just to recap; United States
President Barack Obama told Syria's President
Bashar al-Assad to "step aside and allow a
democratic transition to proceed immediately"
while King Hamad al-Khalifa gets new toys to crack
down on his subversively pro-democratic subjects.
Is this a case of cognitive dissonance? Of
course not; after all
Syria is supported by
Russia and China at the United Nations Security
Council while Bahrain hosts the US's Fifth Fleet -
the defender of the "free world" against those
evil Iranians who want to shut down the Strait of
Hormuz.
A year ago, the overwhelming
population of Bahrain - most of them poor,
neglected Shi'ites treated as third-class
citizens, but also educated Sunnis - hit the
streets to demand the ruling al-Khalifas allow a
minimum of democracy.
Just like Tunisia
and Egypt - and unlike Libya and Syria - the
pro-democracy movement in Bahrain was indigenous,
legitimate, non-violent and uncontaminated by
Western or Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)
infiltration.
The response was a major
crackdown plus a Saudi Arabian invasion over the
causeway to Manama. That was the tacit result of a
deal struck between the House of Saud and
Washington; we give you an Arab resolution
allowing you to go to the UN and then launch the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization's humanitarian
bombing on Libya, you leave us alone to smash this
Arab Spring nonsense (see Exposed:
the US-Saudi Libya deal Asia Times Online,
April 2, 2011.)
The Obama administration
took no time to preempt the "celebration" of
Bahrain's crushed democracy push by dispatching a
State Department honcho to Bahrain.
As
reported by the Gulf Daily News, the so-called
"Voice of Bahrain" (more like the voice of the
al-Khalifas), US Assistant Secretary of State for
Near East Affairs Jeffrey Feltman widely praised
King Hamad's steps to "diffuse tensions" - such as
"the release of political prisoners, a partial
cabinet reshuffle and the withdrawal of security
forces".
Feltman's briefers must have been
catatonic, because political prisoners remain in
jail, the cabinet reshuffle is cosmetic and
security forces are in overdrive repression mode.
Feltman said Washington stressed "national
dialogue", "made-in-Bahrain" solutions, and no
foreign states "interfering in the process".
Should Bahrainis follow the NATOGCC model as
applied to Syria?
He also said, "Bahrainis
can count on US support to back a Bahraini
consensus on the way forward" and praised the
"sincerity" of Crown Prince Salman, also a deputy
supreme commander and conductor of the national
dialogue. With friends like these, the
pro-democracy movement in Bahrain hardly needs
enemies.
So that's Washington's message in
a nutshell; make these people stop that noise and
we keep our base here to defend you and your
cousins from the unwashed masses.
If
women are scared, call an invasion Real
life in Bahrain is something completely different.
What US corporate media calls a "tense emirate" is
still under a de facto martial law. Those
"released" pro-democracy protesters - hundreds of
them - remain in jail. Human Rights Watch, to its
credit, but still relying on understatement, says,
"There has been little accountability for torture
and killings - crimes in which the Bahrain Defense
Force is implicated."
No accountability -
in fact.
Anticipating further crackdowns
related to the first anniversary of the uprising,
the Health Ministry has ordered private hospitals
to list to the security apparatus every single
injured and wounded person; hundreds of doctors
and nurses accused of treating injured protesters
have been arrested over the past few months.
The army barbed wired all areas near the
Pearl roundabout - where the Pearl monument was
razed, the ultimate graphic metaphor of democracy
smashed. Two US citizens, Huwaida Arraf and
Radhika Sainath, were recently arrested in Manama
during a non-violent, peaceful protest. Ayat
al-Qormozi was jailed because she read out a poem
criticizing King Hamad at the Pearl roundabout.
Last November, the Bahrain Independent
Commission of Inquiry accused the al-Khalifas of
using "excessive force, including the extraction
of forced confessions against detainees". Late
January, Amnesty International called them to
"investigate and account for the reports of more
than a dozen deaths following tear gas use" and
called Washington to "suspend transfers of tear
gas and other riot control equipment to the
Bahraini authorities".
Saudi-backed local
security relies heavily on Pakistani riot
policemen - not to mention made in USA tear gas
and stun grenades to disperse every single
peaceful anti-government protest. Scores of senior
citizens and kids have died from asphyxia after
regime troops fired tear gas in residential areas
and even into homes. The Saudi-backed repression
even hit peaceful mourners who were attending
funeral processions of protesters killed by the
al-Khalifa security apparatus.
What's the
fuss? This is all part of the crown prince's
"national dialogue".
Yet even with the
non-stop crackdown, demonstrations demanding the
al-Khalifas to go happen almost daily. This was
never an initial demand of the pro-democracy
movement; it became one after the Saudi invasion.
And to prove for good that we're living in
a Monty Python's Meaning of Life world, check this
interview of King Hamad published by German weekly
Der Spiegel [1].
The king says he asked
the GCC to invade his country in March 2011 to
protect Bahrain's "strategic installations" - "in
case Iran would be more aggressive". Tehran had
absolutely nothing to do with the protests -
caused by a Sunni monarchy that treats the
absolute majority of its indigenous subjects like
the United Arab Emirates treats its South Asian
guest workers.
The king also said that
"our women were very scared and it is the duty of
a gentleman to protect women". Perhaps instead of
an invasion, torture, killings and non-stop
repression, the king might have appeased his
"scared women" with a state-sponsored handout of
Louis Vuitton handbags.
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