Bahrain is a problematic situation. They are effectively a puppet state of Saudi Arabia where rich Saudis can visit when they need to really cut loose and normal methods wouldn't be sufficient to pay off the religious police if they were to be caught. Saudi Arabia's goverment would hence very much care about any kind of outside interference with their resort nation, more than a good deal of other things. The Saudis might condemn the other revolutions but they aren't going to actually do anything about it, where as there is a decent chance of their direct intervention in Bahrain.
"Decent chance" is an understatement. There was an uprising in Bahrain last year that noone seems to remember, where Saudi Arabia sent soldiers and tanks across the bridge to deal with protests.
Yep. And in the 90's. There a causeway from Bahrain to Saudi and one of the main reasons it was built, apart from allowing rich Saudis to send the their Indian (non-muslim) drivers into state owned (owned by the Bahraini Prime Minister) alcohol shops, was to allow Saudi Arabia to rush troops into Bahrain whenever its wants. There's all sorts of undercurrents that aren't really reported on very well in the western media. Basically, Bahrain's social pyramid is the extended Khalifa family (can list amusing examples of nepotism and corruption, if anyone's interested) at the top, followed by a small minority of Sunni muslims (historically, the descendants of the Sunni's who conquered Bahrain a few hundred years ago from the "native" population of Shias, back when it was a world center of pearl diving) who generally own everything of any value. Under them are Shias, who before modernization were essentially the serf class, tending the land and being servants/pearl divers etc. Today, they are they are almost all unemployed (between 70%-90% depending on who you listen to), their role replaced by the last, largest and lowest group in the pyramid, the migrant workers. These have no rights, and I could regail you with stories of their ill treatment, but this is the modern internet, I don't really need to say more than "take away your passport slavery".
Also, the unrest has been active since "The Events" of last year, as the Pearl roundabout protest are commonly known in Bahrain. It's actually been almost impossible to travel most weekends because of a mixture of police roadblocks and protesters lighting lines of tires on fire on the highways, and most nights see clashes between Shia youths and the police. One good thing about Bahrain, petrol/gas, whatever you want to call it, is
really cheap. People I know out there fill up their SUVs for less than $25. Mostly, the police are composed of Pakistani footsoldiers, for want of a better word, with Sunni Bahraini officers.
As an amusing an anecdote to lighten up a depressing post (which is actually cold, hard fact):
Since "The Events" last year, the Pearl Roundabout has become a symbol of the movement, you find it stenciled on walls everywhere etc. So the government responded by making the roundabout verboten. The roads leading to it were closed and (I'm not quiet sure about this one) it has since been demolished. However, one problem the government faced with their attempt to suppress this symbol was that, being a famous landmark, it was on the 500 fils coin (like, half a dollar or something. You could by maybe a small coffe with it and some other change). So they recalled and stopped issuing all 500 fils coins.
As a final thing, the real undercurrent of what's going on is actually a front of the cold war between Saudi Arabia as the Center of the Sunni faith and Iran as its Shia rival. Basically, in Bahrain Iran is saying "Hey disenfranchised people who are of our faith and may share a common ancestry, depending on how you look at it, we don't like those slightly different islam guys who are oppressing you, have as much support as we can smuggle into your well known for smuggling island." While Saudi, and by extension their puppets the Khalifa family, are saying "Not while our oil money lets us spam burly Pakistani men with shotguns, batons and those shields with the taser on the front."
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Topic: Egypt and the world and Libya - Now without Ukraine! (Read 377585 times)