Category Archives: Bahrain

Arab Revolutions, Bahrain

The Curious Council of Ministers of Bahrain……..

     

  Walking on water

  

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Bahrain cabinet:

  • King HAMAD bin Isa al-Khalifa

  • Prime Min. KHALIFA bin Salman al-Khalifa

  • Dep. Prime Min. ALI bin Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa

  • Dep. Prime Min. KHALID bin Abdallah al-Khalifa

  • Dep. Prime Min. MUHAMMAD bin Mubarak al-Khalifa

  • Min. of Culture MAI bint Muhammad al-Khalifa

  • Min. of Finance AHMAD bin Muhammad bin Hamad bin Abdallah al-Khalifa

  • Min. of Foreign Affairs KHALID bin Ahmad bin Muhammad al-Khalifa

  • Min. of Housing IBRAHIM bin Khalifa bin Ali al-Khalifa

  • Min. of Justice & Islamic Affairs KHALID bin Ali al-Khalifa

  • Min. of Interior RASHID bin Abdallah bin Ahmad al-Khalifa

  • Min. of the Royal Court KHALID bin Ahmad bin Salman al-Khalifa

  • Min. of Royal Court Affairs ALI bin Isa bin Salman al-Khalifa

  • Min. of State for Defense Affairs MUHAMMAD bin Abdallah al-Khalifa

  • Min. of State for Cabinet Affairs AHMAD bin Atiyatallah al-Khalifa 
  • Chief of the Central Information Organization, AHMAD bin Atiyatallah  al-Khalifa

  • Chief of National Security, Abdulaziz Bin Atiyatullah al-Khalifa

  • Commander of the Army, Khalifa Bin Ahmad al-Khalifa

  • Commander of Rapid Deployment Force (Royal Guard), Nasser Bin Hamad al-Khalifa

  • Chief of Royal Charity, Nasser Bin Hamad al-Khalifa

  • Chief of the Olympic Committee, Nasser Bin Hamad al-Khalifa

  • Chief of the Higher Council for youth and Sports, Nasser Bin Hamad al-Khalifa

  • Chief of the Royal Team for Ability, Nasser Bin Hamad al-Khalifa


(Get the picture? One of the above was changed recently).

Everybody else:
Dep. Prime Min. Jawad bin Salim al-ARAIDH Min. of Education Majid bin Ali Hasan al-NUAYMI Min. of Electricity & Water Fahmi bin Ali al-JAWDAR Min. of Health Faysal bin Yaqoub al-HAMMER Min. of Industry & Commerce HASAN bin Abdallah al-Fakhru Min. of Labor Majid bin Muhsin al-ALAWI Min. of Municipal Affairs & Urban Planning JUMA bin Ahmad al-Ka’abi Min. of Oil & Gas Affairs Abd al-Husayn MIRZA Min. of Social Development Fatima bint Ahmad al-BALUSHI Min. of Works ISSAM bin Abdallah Khalaf Min. of State for Follow-Up Affairs Muhammad bin Ibrahim al-MUTAWA Min. of State for Foreign Affairs Nizar al-BAHARNA Min. of State for Shura Council & Parliament Affairs Abd al-Aziz bin Muhammad al-FADHIL .
(One or two of these has resigned in protest)
Cheers
mhg

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Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, Gulf states, Occupied Bahrain

Time on a Reign of Terror in Bahrain…………..

     
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““I need to leave Bahrain,” he says, voice shaking. “What channels can I use?” By all accounts, Bahrain’s protests have had the wind knocked out of their sails the past two weeks, as the government systematically shut down the opposition’s operations. Leading activists were arrested en masse, many in pre-dawn raids. The headquarters of opposition group Waad was torched. As Manama was put under martial law, 100 Saudi Arabian tanks arrived on March 13 to help police the streets. Salmaniya Medical Center, a main gathering point for protesters and the country’s most sophisticated hospital, was essentially locked down. At checkpoints around the city, masked thugs pulled drivers out of cars at the slightest suspicion of anti-government activity, often beating them senseless. A kingdom had imposed a reign of terror — with anecdotes and examples of how vengeance is exacted. “The injuries, the bullet holes, are always in the back — as people are leaving,” one official said. ……….”

It is a reign of terror, largely sectarian, but not only that. It is also tribal. There are prominent Sunni opposition figures under detention, like Ibrahim Sharif al-Sayed who heads a secular democratic group. He may be the target of more of the wrath of the ruling despots and their Salafi allies because they have tried to make the Bahrain uprising a purely Shi’a-Sunni sectarian issue, and people like him disrupt their propaganda.
Cheers
mhg



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Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, Iran, Middle East, Saudi Arabia

My Disagreement with Ayatollah Khamenei………..

        
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“Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said on Monday that there is no difference between the uprising against tyranny in Bahrain with other Arab countries such as Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia or Libya. The Leader, who was addressing a large group of people in Mashhad in the first day of Noruz (the Persian New Year), said this claim that Iran is supporting the Bahrainis because they are mostly Shia is absolutely false. Ayatollah Khamenei said Iran has been supporting the Sunni Muslims in Palestine over the past 32 years and this shows that Iran makes no difference between Shias and Sunnis. The Leader said those who are trying to interpret the Bahraini people’s uprising against despotism as the conflict between Shia and Sunni are in fact doing the “greatest service” to the United States. “Do not turn the anti-despotic movement of a nation into a Shia-Sunni problem,” Ayatollah Khamenei warned. “We will not make a differentiation between Gaza, Palestine, Bahrain, Yemen, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia,” the Leader asserted……..” Mehr News (Iran)

I don’t agree with Khamenei on many issues: the idea of Wilayat Faqih (rule of a supreme cleric), on theocracy, on secularism, on free speech, on the death penalty, and on many other issues.
But this one is different. Apparently Khamenei is pissed (putting it succinctly) that the vast Saudi official media dominating the Arab waves, and its surrogates in the Gulf states, are painting the Bahrain uprising as primarily a Shi’a-Sunni conflict. I happen to agree with Khamenei on this point, as do most Arabs, almost all Arabs, outside the sectarian-divided Gulf region. The rulers of Bahrain and their partners in Apartheid have been using this Shi’a-Sunni rift, enlarging it shamelessly for their own purpose, dividing the region and inflaming it. The Saudis and some other tame and controlled Gulf media have been aiding and abetting this shameful sectarian approach. On this one I agree with Khamenai, even though I disagree on many others.
Cheers
mhg

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Arab Revolutions, Bahrain

A Solution for Bahrain? Forget About It……..

        
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  Can the Saudi army & Abu Dhabi mercenaries crush her spirit?
“The path to such a solution can be achieved in two steps: firstly by establishing a truce based on the ending of opposition protests, the release of all opposition leaders and activists, and the withdrawal from Bahrain of all GCC forces. Secondly, a time-bound national dialogue of two months should be possible based on the principles of enhancing political representation and accountability and the sharing of power. This dialogue should also serve as the basis for talks aimed at achieving the far-reaching goal of a “constitutional or parliamentary monarchy” in the country. It is a goal that King Hamad has previously set and which the mainstream opposition parties are demanding. It is now time to put aside sectarian concerns and deep seated existential fears and get on with the job of achieving this for the future of Bahrain, the Gulf region, and the entire Middle East.……..”

A reasonable idea, but it is not gonna happen. A constitutional monarchy is exactly what the Saudis, and their Emirati sidekicks, went into Bahrain to prevent. The opposition wants this type of solution, has called for it (in spite of some noisy emotional and unrealistic minority demands that are being exploited by the regime and its Salafi allies around the Gulf). There is also a hardline wing of the al-Khalifa clan that wants a Saudi style absolute monarchy. This group is lead by the powerful and highly unpopular old prime minister Shaikh Khalia Al Khalifa (try reading it backwards) who has been in power 40 years. He is no sweetheart: maybe his mom didn’t love him enough as a child (just speculation). He is determined to die in office, in the true fashion of Arab leaders. Besides, Bahrain is unique in the world in another respect: most of the land is now in private hands, mainly al-Khalifa and their cronies (estimates range up to over 80%). This could only have happened through extra-legal means or some funny creative means that any true parliament worth its name would want to investigate. We are talking major medieval-style corruption here.
They may eventually come back to something like this proposal, but it will take some more agony and bloodshed for the people of Bahrain, and probably for the occupation forces as well. Unless the outside world, what is called the international community, gets some courage, finally decides to put its foot down and impose an solution. How about a special UN mediator?
Cheers
mhg



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Arab Revolutions, Bahrain

Did the King of Bahrain Just Save the World?…………..

        
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  Can the Saudi army & Abu Dhabi mercenaries crush her spirit?


“Bahrain announced on Sunday that it had foiled a plot to subvert security and stability in the Gulf region. “An external plot has been fomented for 20 to 23 years for the ground to be ripe for subversive designs,” His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, the Supreme Commander, said. He pointed out that if this subversive plot succeeded in one GCC country it might then spill over. “I here announce the failure of the fomented subversive plot,” the king said during a meeting with the Peninsula Shield Commander and officers. The king paid tribute to GCC leaders for their keenness to deter dangers jeopardising Bahrain, reflecting strong fraternal historic relations, common destiny and firm commitment to the joint defence agreements………”

Okay, this king (former emir) of Bahrain may have saved the Arab world, nay the whole world, from some ‘external threat’. The Angry Arab blogger commented earlier, perhaps half-seriously or maybe just half sarcastically, that al-Khalifa may have saved the world from a Martian invasion. But the king did not mention an “extraterrestrial” threat, just an “external one”. But you never know, he may have got his words mixed up, busy as he is doing ‘kingly’ things to his poor people. Besides, a plot that is in the making for 20 or 30 years (the king couldn’t make up his kingly mind) reeks of something out of ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’, the B/W version. It takes long for the ‘pods’ to mature and hatch, as I recall. Which reminds me, the king’s security and military (probably with occupation forces) have been busy snatching bodies around the country.
No, don’t even think about a Nobel, certainly not for “peace”.
Cheers
mhg

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Arab Revolutions, Bahrain

After Lulu: Will Salmaniya Hospital be Destroyed?………….

        
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“AL KHARJIYA, Bahrain (AP) — It was just after midnight when armed men in military uniforms came to the hospital bed of Ali Mansour Abdel-Karim Nasser, who was injured by pellets fired during a clash with riot police. He said what came next was worse: he was bound, beaten and mocked in the hallway of Bahrain’s main state-run hospital. “I did not talk. I did not argue with them. I just cried,” he told The Associated Press in his mostly Shiite village, Al Kharjiya, about 20 miles (15 kilometers) from the capital Manama. The Salmaniya medical complex — now under military rule — appears to be one of the last main targets of Bahrain’s Sunni rulers trying to crush a pro-democracy uprising by the country’s Shiite majority. The hospital treated hundreds of injured demonstrators and its morgue held some of the dead since the revolt began last month in the strategically important Gulf country, the home of U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet. For many Shiites, the sprawling complex — sitting between fancy shopping malls and Western-style cafes in central Manama — is as much a symbol of the rebellion as the city’s Pearl Square, which protesters occupied for a month. Authorities regained control last week and destroyed its landmark 300-foot (90-meter) pearl monument to wipe out what Bahrain’s foreign minister called “bad memories.”…….”


It is not inconceivable that some clever al-Khalifa will hit on the brilliant idea that Salmaniya Hospital represents “bad memories” and should be torn down. I have read a few tweets (in Arabic) from Salafi Wahhabi kooks that it may be better if “they” can also be turned into bad memories. I suspect I know who these people are, the “they” the Salafis are tweeting about. None of these tweets were from Bahrain: all from other GCC states, from two countries only. I wonder wtf the Iranians are tweeting about all this: nothing of interest from Khamenei’s tweets, and Ahmadinejad thinks tweeting is a waste of time. King Abdullah probably thinks it is unmanly for someone with a goatee to go around “tweeting”
Cheers
mhg

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Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, Corruption, Occupied Bahrain

Qardhawi as a Saudi Hero of Egypt’s Revolution!………

        
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“Al-Qaradawi, who is the president of the World Federation of Muslim Scholars, was vocal in amassing Egyptians against the ousted Egypt President Husni Mubarak, and egged on other revolutions that took place or are taking place elsewhere in the Arab World, but kept quiet for Bahrain…….”

Qardhawi is certainly not silent about Bahrain anymore: he is siding with the oppressive al-Khalifa and the Saudi invaders.
Now Alarabiya (Saudi owned and managed by some little prince) is building up this Qardhawi dude, and this always makes me suspicious. It is now making Qardhawi the hero of the Egyptian revolution. He hung around in Qatar, then flew in and tried to claim a role in sending Mubarak to Sharm el-Shaikh. Maybe he fancied himself another Khomeini.
Now the Saudis are using him as a tool to justify their invasion and occupation of Bahrain. I have never cared for “television clergy”, be they Sunni, Shi’a, Episcopalians, Baptists, or other Evangelicals (I have never seen any Jewish TV rabbis, but no doubt they have them too). There is always something “oily” and hypocritical about most of the television clergy, whatever faith. There is also something of a different kind of “oil” about this Qardhawi guy. Normally I don’t pay attention to him, but when a royal Saudi network builds him up I perk up, get suspicious.

(
Qardawi’s son converted to Shi’ism a couple of years ago, but he has not ‘come out’ yet, presumably at the request of his father who would lose his position. I am not sure HTF one converts from one Islamic sect to another: I mean it is not like converting to something like Catholicism).
Cheers
mhg

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Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, Egypt, Occupied Bahrain, Saudi Arabia

Can Saudi Money and Western Arms Kill the Arab Spring?…………

        
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  Can the Saudi army crush her spirit?
“You say you want a revolution

Well, you know
We all want to change the world
 You tell me that it’s evolution

Well, you know
We all want to change the world….” The Beatles

“Mr. Maskati is a 24-year-old human rights activist who not long ago felt so close to achieving Egypt’s kind of peaceful revolution, through a dogged commitment to nonviolence. Then the Saudi tanks rolled into Bahrain, and protesters came under attack, the full might of the state hammering at unarmed civilians. “We thought it would work,” Mr. Maskati said, his voice soft with depression, yet edged with anger. “But now, the aggression is too much. Now it’s not about the protest anymore, it’s about self-defense.” The Arab Spring is not necessarily over, but it has run up against dictators willing to use lethal force to preserve their power……At first, they seemed an unstoppable force, driven by the power of demographics — about 60 percent of the population across the Arab world is under the age of 30………”

It is now clear that the forces of Arab despotism and reaction have recovered from the initial shock of the revolution and have regrouped. The revolution seemed to cut through the decrepit old Arab system like a knife through rancid butter, moving from Tunisia to Egypt to Yemen to Bahrain to Libya and beyond (perhaps to Saudi Arabia). Now the revolution has stalled in the desert of Libya and in the burned and bloody streets of occupied Bahrain. In Libya, Qaddafi has redeployed his oil money and his Western weapons and may have bought himself a reprieve. In Bahrain the people were on the verge of defeating their despotic rulers, when U.S officials started visiting with more frequency just before Saudi arms intervened by invading the country and occupying it.

The Saudi strategy for defeating the Arab spring is simple: to co-opt it in North Africa (Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya) with money and through Western allies, and to crush it by force and genocide in Bahrain and the Arabian Peninsula. Yemen is getting bloodier as the dictator clings to his capital city.
The Saudi invasion of Bahrain, aided by the United Arab Emirates as a baggage carrier, came only a few hours after the US Defense Secretary left Bahrain, possibly with Jeffrey Feltman still in Manama. Or maybe not: Feltman has visited the island several times in only a few weeks and is becoming gradually known in our region as a Shi’a-baiter to a Wahhabi degree (you’d think he is running the al-Khalifa campaign the way he runs the right-wing March 14 campaign in Lebanon, or that he is running for office over there).

In any case, Saudi money has bought the king (formerly emir) of Bahrain to such a degree that he has invited them in to occupy the country and subjugate its people. A king inviting a Wahhabi force to subjugate his largely Shi’a people: it is like inviting Nazis into a Jewish neighborhood. But Saudi money will not subjugate a country like Egypt the way it did under the stagnant Mubarak. It may rob the revolution of some of its gains if the Egyptian people are not careful. Saudi money and force will not subjugate the people of Bahrain for long either; they barely escaped their last intervention in Yemen. Besides, they will probably have more fires to put out at home in the coming months.

As for the West: well, how many ways can one spell ‘hypocrisy’? The West was eager to keep the old order in North Africa until it was too late. Now they are eager to take on Qaddafi. In Bahrain, where people are being killed and displaced by a corrupt kleptocratic regime, the West is largely turning a blind eye with a soft unconvincing “Oh, you shouldn’t!” No doubt dreaming of huge weapons deal from the al-Saud and al-Nahayan clans.
Cheers
mhg



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Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, US Foreign Policy

A Saudi Cause Célèbre: a Policy of Apartheid, a Media Empire……..

        
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  Can the Saudi army & Abu Dhabi mercenaries crush her spirit?

The chief editor of
 Asharq Alawsat, the Saudi daily owned by prince Salman Bin Abdulaziz and run by his son, is here telling the United States administration to stop issuing statements about Bahrain and the Saudi invasion of the island. When this guy writes like this, it can only mean that he got his orders from his lords and masters to say so.

Its title in Arabic is a tough sounding “America Must Control These Statements!”. He is referring to US concern about Bahrain and the killings of civilians by regime security mercenaries. The headline is translated by the newspaper to a milder “America’s inconsistent statements”. He is also saying that allowing free elections in Bahrain would “hand the island to Iran”, a typical Wahhabi refrain against free elections anywhere, even in the oppressed Arabian Peninsula which is about 90% of the “right sect”. He, a foreigner to Bahrain, is also casting suspicions of disloyalty on a majority of the people of Bahrain. Even though it was the ruling oligarchy that betrayed the country by inviting foreign forces to invade.

They have mobilized their vast media (all owned or controlled by Saudi princes), their hired Salafi shaikhs, and their paid ghost newspapers in some states of the Persian-American Gulf (the worst two dailies in my hometown, the worst two in the Middle East, with suspicious financing, fall in that category). They focus now on Bahrain more than anything else, having made the al-Khalifa Apartheid policy against the people of Bahrain their cause célèbre.

They will lose in the end because they are on the wrong side of the move of history. They have no cause beyond keeping in power a grasping and corrupt regime that is a smaller version of their own. Besides, the fear that kept these twits in control is gone. I am not talking about just Bahrain. There is no fear…….
Cheers
mhg

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Arab Revolutions, Bahrain

Bahrain: the Economics of Corruption 101……….

        
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   Spirit of Bahrain



“Bahrain’s Shi’a are also under-represented in the bureaucracy, which is increasingly staffed by puritanical Salafists hostile to Bahrain’s majority on theological grounds. Perhaps most irritating of all, the monarchy is believed to have extended citizenship to as many as 100,000 Sunnis Yemen, Syria, Jordan and Pakistan, who form the backbone of the security services. Foreign Sunnis get a government-built house after five years of military service – but Shi’as say they have to wait 15 or even 20 years………. Even though Bahrain’s king would like to see military action against Iran, he has refrained from saying so in public, for fear of sparking of a rebellion by his subjects. Following independence in 1971, Bahrain established a parliament and a constitution which guaranteed basic rights for all citizens. But in 1975, the monarchy promulgated a new security law, which allowed for the detention of political prisoners for up to three years without trial. Bahrain’s parliament protested – and was promptly dissolved…….. For several years, Bahrain was characterised by brutal authoritarianism: through the 1990s, Saudi troops repeatedly quelled rioting by the emirate’s Shi’as, and memories of those dark years have been revived by recent events…………..”

For many years, the average people of Bahrain lived in sectarian peace. When they voted for independence in 1970, it passed because they all voted for it. The real troubles started with the ruling oligarchy, the al-Khalifa and a few families who hang around them, their tribal allies. Bahrain is a resource-poor country, with a large ruling family, many shaikhs, and a hungry group of elite retainers and hangers-on of the rulers. The current king has at least three wives and more than two dozen children. The limited resources could not keep all these shaikhs of the ruling family, and their tribal retainer families, in the style of their richer neighbors, the true petroleum princes. Yet the al-Khalifa had to live in the expected style of Arab oil shaikhs. They could see the Saudi princes treat the country and its resources as their own private feudal fiefdom (they still do, more now than ever). They could see the ruling family of Abu Dhabi treat the country’s resources as their own private wealth, throwing occasional crumbs at the people.


The easiest, the only, way was to apportion more of the country’s meager resources to the elite and less to the rest, to most of the people. That became easier to do after the constitution was suspended and the real parliament dissolved by force in 1975. Then some quarter of a century later they established a fake electoral system where they always had a majority, and they made sure the security forces and the military were composed of the “right sort” of people. But there aren’t enough Bahrainis of the “right sort” to police the country. Besides, Bahrainis of any religion or sect were unlikely to abuse and torture their own compatriots no matter of what faith or sect. So, what to do? They started importing mercenaries from other countries. They also started encouraging the growth of a nasty Salafi contingent (Salafi as in Islamic Heritage groups and Wahhabism and Bin Laden and all that).


The ruling family has had 35 years to divide the people and plunder the island(s) of Bahrain. Plunder through abusing the revenues or stealing (I know: it ain’t polite, but it is the only way of putting it succinctly) public land which was blatantly expropriated, actually privatized, for the members of the ruling family and their retainers and their families.

This is the story, more or less. The rest is fear-mongering among the eternally sectarian-conscious people of my Gulf (I know we are), and fear-mongering among foreign policy makers and some idiotic advisers who are made to believe that the ayatollahs will be strolling around Lulu Square and to the gates of the headquarters of the Fifth Fleet. 

End of the story, more or less (more less than more).
Cheers
mhg



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