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

“The protesters’ disruption of the harbor, which was reportedly purchased by the conservative Prime Minister Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa for ‘one dinar’, was an important symbolic gesture by the opposition. For the United States, the intervention is a slap in the face. On Saturday, March 12, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited Bahrain, where he called for real reforms to the country’s political system and criticized “baby steps,” which he said would be insufficient to defuse the crisis. The Saudis were called in within a few hours of Gates’s departure, however, showing their disdain for his efforts to reach a negotiated solution. By acting so soon after Gates’s visit, Saudi Arabia has made the United States look at best irrelevant to events in Bahrain, and from the Shiite opposition’s point of view, even complicit in the Saudi military intervention. The number of foreign troop is so far very small and should not make one iota of difference in Bahrain’s balance of power. The Bahraini military already total 30,000 troops, all of whom are Sunnis. They are under control of Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa and supposedly fully faithful to King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa. Bahrain also has a similar number of police and general security forces, mainly mercenaries from Baluchistan, Yemen, and Syria, reputed to be controlled by the prime minister and his followers in the family……..”

I think, nay I know, Shaikh Khalifa Bin Salman is arguably the least charismatic leader in the whole wide wonderful world, and possibly one of the most corrupt, probably got that one dinar back, and then some. But he is certainly not the least avaricious leader in the world: he got that one dinar back out of the sweat and blood of poor Bahrainis (okay, I did not say he is some kind of a leech; no sir, I’d never say that). Yet he has lasted at his job for 40 years (fortyfuckingyears!). That is almost two generations of poor Bahrainis who have to watch his visage on state TV and in the oligarchy media every single day and listen to quotations of the usual inane bland statements that only some leaders on my Gulf seem to have a knack for! Most of these sayings and statements, either in Manama or Riyadh or Shaikhwhatshisarse in Abu Dhabi, make Mu’ammar Qaddafi seem downright entertaining. I suspect some of these potentates can make Yasser Arafat and Lieberman (Avigdor not Joe) sound like fun persons by comparison.
Actually Qaddafi has been the most entertaining of Arab leaders: you can spend two hours listening to his nonsense without completely understanding what the hell he is up to. Yet you keep on listening (well, for only about two hours or so). On the other hand, some of our Gulf potentates I mentioned above can make you fall asleep in less than fifteen minutes (the average limit of their speechifying ability).
Which tells you something about the state of their, or is it our, politics.
Cheers
mhg

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                        Summer

     
“ABU DHABI // The Gulf states last night threw their weight behind the idea of a no-fly zone over Libya, as they took a tougher line against what they termed human rights violations by Col Muammar Qaddafi’s regime. “The ministerial council demands that the Security Council take the steps necessary to protect civilians, including a no-fly zone in Libya,” the Gulf’s foreign ministers said in a joint statement late last night after a meeting at the Emirates Palace hotel. Calls for the imposition of a no-fly zone to protect rebels from bombing raids by Col Qaddafi’s military have been gathering pace in recent days. Gulf officials expressed growing frustration with Col Qaddafi’s violent repression of rebels calling for an end to his four decades of rule, saying Libyan authorities have rejected humanitarian aid from the Gulf and refused to distribute it to its citizens…….”

That is a good precedent. A no-fly zone may be just what the doctor ordered for Eastern Libya. But what about a similar zone for our Gulf? Like a zone of exclusion where no military forces can cross, like across the bridge-to-Bahrain zone? That would keep certain foreign troops from entering Bahrain to help shoot down its people, if it comes to that again. There have been some reliable reports that Saudi forces helped the al-Khalifa put down the protests of the 1990s. There have also been some reports that Saudi ‘assets’ tried to help during the current uprising. Hopefully it won’t come to that. But would the potentates of the Gulf agree to that kind of ‘zone of exclusion’? Would Western powers agree to it?
Cheers
mhg

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