“Forces from neighboring Gulf Arab countries will help maintain order in Bahrain, Arabiya TV reported on Monday, and an adviser to Bahrain’s royal court said their forces were already on the strategic island. “Forces from the Gulf Cooperation Council have arrived in Bahrain to maintain order and security,” Nabeel al-Hamer, a former information minister and adviser to the royal court, said on his Twitter feed. Gulf Daily News, a newspaper close to Bahrain’s powerful prime minister, reported on Monday that forces from the GCC, a six-member regional bloc, would protect strategic facilities. A Saudi official said Monday that more than 1,000 Saudi troops, part of the Gulf countries’ Peninsula Shield Force, have entered Bahrain where anti-regime protests have raged for a month…….”
The lines have been drawn on the Gulf: which is what the worried al-Saud dynasty has wanted since they hosted Bin Ali and supported Mubarak last January. They, like other oligarchies on MY Gulf, have wanted a sectarian divide between the people of the region (I mean the Arab side of the Persian-American Gulf). It is the old policy of ‘divide and rule’.
The rapacious Bahrain oligarchy did a masterful job of terrifying a section of their population into throwing in their lot with the rulers and against their own self-interest. In this task, and as usual, the al-Khalifa have had the strong support of the Salafi movement, always the mercenary force willing to do the bidding of the despots in the Arab world these days. They usually do it for reasons to do with Salafi doctrine, or for sectarian reasons, or for material gain. All three of the above in the case of Bahrain (and Saudi Arabia).
This invasion of Bahrain is being advertised in Gulf semi-official media as a “police” force. They claim the GCC Peninsula Shield agreement allows it. In fact the GCC agreement allows helping a member against foreign invasion, not against popular uprisings. They certainly did not interfere to protect Kuwait in 1990: they chickened out against an outside invader (Iraq).
This is a Saudi invasion against the people of Bahrain. The talk of UAE participation probably means they may have sent a hundred or so people along with the Saudis. The UAE has very few natives to form a real army: its population consists mostly, nay overwhelmingly, of foreign expatriate laborers and housemaids.
This is a Saudi invasion to save the nuts of the al-Khalifa from the fires of their own greed and corruption and their insistence on their Apartheid policy. Just as the 1968 Soviet invasion was against the people of Prague and the Ba’athist 1990 invasion was against the people of Kuwait. Anybody who was against those invasions has to be against this one. After all, a pig with lipstick, even a brotherly or sisterly pig, is still a pig. The pig has just strolled into Manama inside a tank.
The good news for the people of Bahrain and other Arab states is: the fear is gone. It may be zenga zenga in Manama………..
Cheers
mhg