America and Bahrain Winter: Analysis of the Relationship Between the Usa and the Sunnis in Bahrain

STORY OF THE BOOK

My visit to Brussels at the end of February 2011 on a several-week mission at the European Union headquarters might have been ill-timed. It coincided with the outbreak of an unprecedented wave of popular protests and chaos in the Middle East, precisely in the Arab countries, hastily labeled as the Arab Spring. The visit was in response to our duty, and it might have been a matter of coincidence to be there, and learn more about what was going on from meetings with US officials, European officials, and a huge crowd of media persons from all over the world. It was an opportunity to have discussions with them and explore their views about the recently erupted events that had followed the toppling of the former Tunisian president.

We went to a café run by a group of Arab young women holding the Belgian nationality. There, people, mostly Arab youth residing in Brussels, meet on a daily basis to discuss the political developments in the Arab region. The passionate discussions have a distinctive flavor as the café is frequented by young people hailing from different Arab countries. Despite their diverse nationalities, those young people shared the same aspiration for a brighter future in the Arab world. One of the most moving emotional moments that indelibly stick to my memory was the day when all stood up to congratulate a group of Egyptian youth at the ouster of the former president Mohammed Hosni Mubarak and the success of the Egyptian revolution. To mark the event, Radhia, the café manager, distributed delicious Moroccan tea for free to mark the festive and triumphant mood in the Arab world!

Day after day, the situation in the Arab world had become more critical. One day, a group of Yemeni youth entered the café and received congratulations on the outbreak of popular protests in their country. Another day, Libyan young men threw the café in an excited jovial mood. However, they had mixed feelings of delight, anxiety, and uncertainty over the possible success of an uprising in their homeland. On that day, Radhia asked everybody an intriguing question—Which country do you think will be swept by popular protests next?—to which she got fascinating answers: it could be Morocco and Syria. However, everybody, including my dear friend Waleed Al-Qassimi, was surprised when I said, Bahrain! In a tone of incredulity, Radhia asked me, What are you saying? He hastened to add it is impossible for Bahrain to witness a revolution. He believed the people in the Gulf don’t need a revolution like the rest of the Arab countries!

Honestly, I didn’t know exactly what to say to her, but I simply said, The days ahead will prove me right. She smiled and resumed work in her usual vivacity amid the astonishment of the people in the café.

Days of hectic work, visits, dialogues, and meetings with officials continued. Officials and media people were obviously and insatiably enthusiastic to debate about the Arab Spring developments, the future of the region, and the relations between the West and the emerging Arab political elites who may rule the region. After the revolutions, the discussion revolved around the themes such as how to support change in the Arab region and benefit from the new developments. The future stability of Arab countries was an absolutely neglected matter and was at the bottom of all priorities.

Then came that unforgettable frosty night in Brussels when temperatures fell below three degrees Celsius and my friend Waleed Al-Qassimi suddenly woke me from my deep sleep with a phone call from his adjacent room in Novotel Hotel, almost ordering me to switch on the news immediately.

On switching on the TV, I found programs broadcasting live coverage and political discussions about the protests in Bahrain. I also came across the strange headlines that weren’t commonly used while covering the events either in Manama or the GCC states! Every political commentator spoke of suppression, carnage, killed and injured people, and similar horrible expressions we have been hearing on various channels since February 2011. I quickly contacted Waleed, who was flabbergasted by the very extensive media coverage given to protests in Bahrain. We quickly agreed to keep ourselves up to date with the events. We met in less than thirty minutes in a hotel and logged on Twitter on an iPad to see the huge number of tweets posted in Arabic and English on the events in Bahrain. For us, it was hard to ascertain the accuracy and credibility of all that information circulated.

We spent hours viewing the tweets until the break of dawn and the sunrise of a late Belgium-winter morning. At the hotel restaurant, British Jenny Berry, who kept us company, also appeared astounded by the media coverage about Bahrain, and we engaged in a nonstop discussion about the situation in Manama. Later, we met with director of the Brussels-based US media center in Europe. She joined us in a lengthy talk about the events in Bahrain. During our conversation, she wore a smile on her face; she had trained me in analyzing the anti-Bahrain media stuff through a high-end Japanese software program. The scene recurred when we attended the daily press briefing at the European Commission headquarters, where over eight hundred journalists asked EU official spokespersons a myriad of questions about events in Bahrain.

We relive the same scene whenever we meet EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton. To our greatest dismay, we didn’t get clear, prompt, and explicit explanations of what was going on in Bahrain and the reason for the unexpected interest in Bahrain in the EU capital. As part of what has become a daily routine, we visited the café in old Brussels. There we met Radhia who, utterly befuddled, asked, What is happening in Bahrain? I didn’t seriously take your predictions that the next protests will sweep Bahrain. Tension escalated in Bahrain, and so did our level of anxiety. A friend of mine from Manama sent me an SMS asking me to return to Bahrain immediately. On my way to Brussels airport, strange stories and scenes occupied my mind and were only interrupted by the check-in employee asking me, Are you determined to go to Bahrain even amid the current events? Before handing him my passport, I told him that, being a proud Bahraini citizen, I must go back home soon. Well done, he remarked, since your family is there.

After having witnessed many facts and events in Manama, I started thinking seriously about the root cause of all those protests and reached several conclusions. I decided to put these in the form of press articles to be published in Bahraini Al Watan newspaper. I wished to explore Washington’s relations with Bahrain and its policies vis-à-vis the recent events. I didn’t predict that my articles would be so widely read at home and abroad. On July 5, 2011, a senior government official contacted me to convey an end to the annoyance and resentment of the US embassy in Manama with my writings and regarding President Obama’s foreign policy toward Bahrain. He warned me that the embassy could, among other measures, lodge a lawsuit against my writings, which they considered defamatory to the US president. He also informed me that I would soon receive an official notification to that effect.

The following day, I received a message from the Information Affairs Authority (IAA) notifying me about my writings, which were said to be in violation of Article 70 of the press, printing, and publication law for containing offensive allusions to the US president. The newspaper’s editor-in-chief was also assigned to refer me to the aforementioned article which prohibits the publication of any material considered offensive to any monarch, president, or ruler of an Arab or Muslim country or any other state with which Bahrain has diplomatic ties. I expressed astonishment that my writings were considered defamatory to the US president especially that, for years, I have been writing about US politics and foreign policies with due respect and freedom as is vouchsafed by the constitution. My aim has always been to raise awareness of the US foreign policy toward Bahrain and shed light on US motives and future tendencies by providing political analysis of the situation in the region and its repercussions on Bahrain.

I have never made mention of President Obama as an individual because that was not my interest. All I cared about was the US president’s policy, which is highlighted and analyzed by global media. Following the Information Affairs Authority’s notification, I received many phone calls, e-mails, and messages on social networking websites as well as media statements by NGOs inside and outside Bahrain. I also filed official complaints at Bahrain Journalists Association (BJA) and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). Furthermore, a mass protest was held in Busaiteen on July 8, 2011, in support of my views, which triggered the US embassy to issue a press statement the same evening titled US Embassy Expresses Disappointment and Backs Press Freedom.

The statement conveyed the US embassy’s disappointment that some individuals and associations in Bahrain mistakenly inferred that it had exerted pressure on the IAA to take repressive measures against a Bahraini columnist. In a statement, press and cultural attaché at the US embassy Rachel Graaf said, We understand that the IAA took a sovereign decision to enforce Bahraini press and publication laws, and we recommend that individuals and organizations who have concerns take up the matter with the agency involved, adding that, the US has a long and distinguished history of defending the rights of individuals around the world to express their opinions, even when those opinions are critical of the US or its policies. The embassy said it maintains a strong relationship with many of Bahrain’s journalists and welcomes the opportunity to directly engage with any journalist who seeks information or clarification on US policies. I didn’t pay much attention to those developments as I was confident that what I did and I’m still doing is part of my constitutional and inviolate right of expression and part of the conviction of my indispensable personal freedom.

IS THERE A REVOLUTION

IN BAHRAIN?

Many are those who talk about the February 14 revolution, with some calling it the uprising of February 14 and others referring to it as the protest of February 14, etc. But the most important question is, what has happened and is happening in Bahrain a revolution? Eminent American analyst George Friedman says, Not every bid of unrest is a revolution nor every revolution is democratic and not all democratic revolutions lead to a constitutional democracy. In order to understand what is happening in Bahrain, and whether it is actually a revolution or just a protest, we have to understand the concept of revolution and its context in the Middle East. A revolution requires the following ingredients:

First, to be a popularly wide movement. Second, to have a of being politically organized. Third, to express a general desire for all the people. Fourth, to aim at a radical change of the existing political regime/system.

Let’s take these elements and apply them to what has happened in Bahrain. With regard to being a popular and wide movement, I do not think it was so, but it was rather a factional movement led by a very limited group and did not include all the components of the Bahraini people. As for having an organized political orientation, I can say that this element may have existed because we are talking here about the trend of Wilayat al-Faqih despite the existence of limited political differences between the political trends that were evident in these events. With regard to the expression of a general popular desire, I do not think that those events expressed the desire of all the people; otherwise, we would not have seen the emergence of the National Unity Assembly (NUA), which has been joined by hundreds of thousands of citizens. As for changing the existing political regime, it was the main goal of such protests. I do not think, therefore, that the recent events witnessed by the country can be described as a revolution. In addition, the other Arab countries have not experienced revolutions but rather mere protests that have led to political changes and nothing else, and the most outstanding examples are Tunisia and Egypt, where, although the presidents were ousted, the existing political regimes survived. We go back and ask another more controversial question: Do we expect the Arab countries that have witnessed widespread protests to turn into stable, prosperous, and democratic regimes? We need to understand the experiences of many countries in the world and study them before answering this question especially that the outbreak of popular revolts in the Arab states is among the rare examples in the world. The experiences witnessed by the world indicate that most of the popular revolts that have emerged from 1988 to 2005 did not lead to democracy but to authoritarian regimes. Such political regimes are characterized by instability and are based on a set of apparently democratic institutions while all the practices within the regime are actually authoritarian and controlled either by an individual, a group, or a party. There are several models of such regimes such as what happened in Mexico (1988), Nicaragua (1990), Zambia (1991), Russia (1993), Armenia (1996), Albania (1997), Serbia, Ukraine, Peru, Ghana (2000), Georgia (2003), and finally Ukraine in 2005. Such states have seen major political openness at first, and the political trends and organizations gained much influence, but they soon entered into conflict over governance and legitimacy. Thus, one dreads that the Arab countries which witnessed widespread protests that led to political changes at the presidential level could not reach an advanced level of democracy, especially in light of the complex composition that characterizes Arab societies.

Hypothesis: a wide popular movement + organized political orientation + a common wish of all components of society + radical change of the political system = revolution.

WHEN WILL THE USA UNDERSTAND WHO IS THE STRONGER PARTY IN BAHRAIN NOW?

Taking