I'm not arguing that Shiites have a lot in common with rodents and insects. But you wouldn't know it by watching Bahrainis and Saudis snuff them out with barely a peep from Western and majority-Sunni Arab nations, both.
Shia-majority Iran, Iraq and the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah have been the most vocal in condemning the outrageous killings, arrests and beatings of Shiites in the Persian Gulf -- but they have had to do so with a muffled voice. Each objection from Iran or Hezbollah unleashes a barrage of opportunistic rants by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the U.S. about "Iranian interference" and expansionism.
Which means as long as we can successfully infer a nefarious connection between these groups, one can simply yell "Iran" or "Hezbollah" and kill, torture and imprison Shiites with impunity -- in much the same way that we yelled "al Qaeda" and buried hundreds of Sunni Muslims in Guantanamo for years. No matter that we have never ever proven a connection of significance between these coreligionists.
It's the equivalent of saying all Irish Catholics have a connection to the Irish Republican Army. Or that all Jews take marching orders from Israel.
The Sectarian Bogeyman
To be fair, this isn't really a sectarian battle -- although some would like to spin it that way. This is about autocratic regimes stifling protest, and it just so happens that the largest disenfranchised populations in these places are Shiites.
At the very heart of the matter lies the growing battle for influence in the greater Middle East. These domestic Arab uprisings -- while highly desired by their national populations -- on a geopolitical level threaten to fundamentally alter the balance of power in the region toward the "Resistance Bloc" -- state and non-state actors that reject U.S. and Israeli hegemony in the Mideast.
Shiite-majority Iran is a major influencer in this bloc, which is why it has been so important for Washington and Riyadh to keep the pressure on the Islamic Republic and deprive it of any opportunity to gain further footholds or popular support from non-Shia populations in the region.
When mass protests kicked off in Bahrain on February 14, the peaceful demonstrations in Pearl Square were decidedly non-sectarian. Sunni and Shia came together to demand reform across the board. Yes, the majority of protesters were Shia, but that number falls along demographic lines in a country of around 70% Shiites who have been marginalized politically, economically and socially.
When a brutal, regime-led clampdown ensued with killings and beatings, the mood changed and protesters called for the downfall of the Al Khalifa ruling family. Suddenly "Iran" was being invoked as an instigator for regime change and Saudi troops were "invited in" to quell the protests.
The past month has seen a violent clampdown of a different kind. Bahraini troops -- many imported from other Sunni countries -- and Saudi forces troll largely-impoverished Shia neighborhoods and villages, arresting activists and violently suppressing any signs of protest -- or even normal Shia religious activity.
Hundreds of activists have "disappeared" in the small Persian Gulf nation of 600,000 citizens - one in every 1,000 Bahraini, by one count -- and masked men storm into private homes regularly in the middle of the night to detain Shia human rights workers, bloggers and opposition members. US-based Physicians for Human Rights tells the New York Times that now even "doctors are disappearing as part of a systematic attack on medical staff."
@angyarabiya Rails Against the Injustice
I spoke to Zainab AlKhawaja, a young Danish-educated mother, just hours after she had begun her hunger strike to protest the detention of her human rights activist father Abdulhadi AlKhawaja, husband, brother-in-law and uncle by Bahraini officials. Zainab witnessed the beating of her relatives in the early hours of April 9 when about a dozen masked men in black uniforms arrived at her home where family members had congregated, having been alerted that special forces were coming to find her father, who they called "the target."
"We changed our clothes... and waited for them to come. My father didn't want to hide in someone else's house and put them in danger. He has been arrested and detained before. His attitude is that he hasn't done anything wrong and is not going to hide."
Zainab, who penned an emotional letter to U.S. President Barack Obama as she began her hunger strike, questions the "legitimacy" of a government whose "only strength is in their guns," claiming they are now "trying as hard as they can to keep their crackdown in predominantly Shia villages so people won't see it."
She continues:
The February 14 youth are still making plans. The government didn't expect this. Every time they leave the villages, people come out again with their candlelight vigils and their peaceful protests. The troops go back in with their tanks, masked men and live bullets - and that really shows who's strong and who's weak.
This CNN report on current events in Bahrain supports the details of Zainab's allegations, which the Khalifas dismiss and Washington ignores.
Zainab dismisses claims that Bahrain's uprising is a sectarian affair backed by Iran and has this to say about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Bob Gates' assertions about intervention by the Islamic Republic:
They know its not true, we know its not true, our government knows its not true. Its being used as an excuse for why our government is attacking us and why the U.S. government is supporting them. Because if it weren't for this excuse, then America would have to stand up and say that we're not supporting freedom and democracy in Bahrain because it is not in our interest to do so.
This August 2008 WikiLeaks Cable suggests she is right on the Iran issue, and that Washington knows it.
Washington's interests are to circle and shut down the Iranian regime, be it through sanctions, or diplomatic and military hard power. The Arab countries of the Persian Gulf are essential to this strategy now that Iraq is not a reliable anti-Iran ally any longer. Not only is the U.S. Fifth Fleet stationed in Bahrain, but close ally Saudi Arabia also fears an uprising by disenfranchised Shia populations in its oil-rich Eastern Province, and has waged battle against allegedly Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, even though a WikiLeaks Cable recently revealed that Saudi officials are skeptical of their own claim.
And so an anti-Shia narrative is being spun to enable Gulf monarchies to act against protesting Arab populations in the Persian Gulf.
Zainab cautioned that the Bahraini government is now "doing a media campaign" to spin the sectarian narrative and put some "gloss" on their misdeeds. What the Guardian calls "Reputation Laundering." Two days later, I experienced this firsthand.
Lunch in London with a Senior Bahraini Official
A few weeks ago I received a lunch invitation from an Arab diplomat in London with whom I had recently become acquainted. A few days after accepting, his office rang to ask if I would mind if a Bahraini official joined us.
Ten minutes into our lunch meeting, the Bahraini government representative -- an Al-Khalifa, I don't mind telling you, because there are so many of them -- pulled out a document entitled "Indications of Iranian Interference in Bahraini Affairs." The papers essentially do nothing more than quote Iranian officials, quasi-officials, religious leaders, media outlets and parliamentarians railing against Manama's treatment of Shia populations, denouncing Saudi military intervention against Bahraini civilians, and condemning the Gulf Cooperation Council's (GCC) efforts to "spread Iranophobia in the region."
Par for the course. And not a shred of evidence about actual Iranian intervention in Bahrain.
More interesting by far was the earful I received during our meal. Some highlights:
According to Mr. Khalifa, Bahraini Shia leaders, Shia clergy and all 18 Shia parliamentarians in the country's Al Wefaq party, follow instructions directly from Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. I shouldn't be fooled by the fact that they are "very nice, very smart, wear ties, and are educated," he insisted, and then followed by declaring:
"I do not want to be quoted as saying I'm stirring up sectarian tension or adding fuel to the fire. I just want you to be aware."
When asked why the rest of Bahrain's Shia -- who make up nearly three-quarters of the country's population -- are forbidden from serving in their national army, which instead imports Sunni troops from countries like Pakistan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, Mr. Khalifa explained: "I'll come to that. They all follow Khamenei, so they can't serve in the army. We have a few in the army, but we are worried [about] that unless they say outright their loyalty to their country is more than to their supreme leader."
He even managed a gratuitous "Hezbollah" mention. The Bahraini official claims that Iran intervened directly in Bahrain in the 90s, but "learned from their mistake." So they said, "Next time we do it, we will do it through Hezbollah. We have confessions and court cases about this."
Acknowledging that these "interventions" were ancient history, and that most of the defendants were reintegrated into Bahraini society, Mr. Khalifa bristled when I pointed to the WikiLeaks cable that quotes U.S. diplomats as saying:
Bahraini government officials sometimes privately tell U.S. official visitors that some Shi'a oppositionists are backed by Iran. Each time this claim is raised, we ask the GOB to share its evidence. To date, we have seen no convincing evidence of Iranian weapons or government money here since at least the mid-1990s.
"Who cares what the Americans say and don't say?" he demanded.
The cable also addresses Mr. Khalifa's claim that Bahraini Shia follow Iranian clerics blindly:
Post's very rough estimate is that 30 percent of the Shi'a here follow clerics who look to more senior clerics in Iran for guidance. The majority look to Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq, and a few to Muhammad Fadlallah and others in Lebanon. Bahrain's most popular Shi'a cleric is Sheikh Isa Qassim, who has occasionally endorsed the Iranian regime's doctrine of velayat-e faqih, and as a result is a lightning rod for loud Sunni criticism, and quieter criticism from some more orthodox Shi'a clerics.
Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani is not an advocate of the Islamic Republic's concept of Velayat-e-Faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist), itself an aberration of the long-held Shia tradition of separating religious authority from political authority. As example, Sistani has played a low-key role in Iraqi politics, only intervening when sectarian strife threatened fundamental stability in the war-torn country, and has resisted meetings with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in order to underline his political neutrality.
And by the end of the meal, Mr. Khalifa even conceded that "Iran is only 'intervening' through the Marjah (senior member of clergy that is authorized to interpret religious doctrine for followers)." Acknowledging that religious Shia still tend to follow their own preferred marjah from a large pool of clerics, Mr. al Khalifa concluded, "there's nothing we can do about this. There's nothing wrong with it exactly."
Zainab would not have been happy to hear that during our discussion, Mr. Khalifa identified her father as "the main Velayat-e-Faqih supporter." The 50-year-old Khawaja, he said, "may look nice and dress nice, but he is a product of the Iranian revolution."
As I post this article, I receive news that Zainab has ended her hunger strike due to health reasons. Her mother writes: "In the past few days Zainab's health has deteriorated and she has had trouble breathing with fast heart beat. In the last two days she was having trouble standing up or sitting straight and I had to give her water using a spoon."
Better still, her father has been allowed to call the family -- no doubt in part because of the global outcry over his plight, highlighted by his daughter's hunger strike. She tweeted an hour ago: "My father just called... & my heart is bleeding for him. He could barely speak... Never in my life have I heard my father speak of his pain, he's always strong. To hear those words, to hear his voice like that kills me."
Khawaja's "trial" begins at 8:00 am on Thursday in Bahrain's military court.
I feel for the Shia of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and elsewhere. One can make a real case for stomping out rats and roaches for health and sanitation reasons. But say "Iran" or "Hezbollah" -- our favorite manufactured "villains" -- and a Shiite has to live a life of fear for nothing.
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Don't you think that there will be "change" in Iraq this year? This year is the deadline to leave Iraq. We witnessed when Gen. Noriega refused to renew the Panama Canal contract, he was ousted as part of the war on drugs. What a great victory for our fight on drugs, I feel safer. I believe by the end of this year Iraq will experience significant violence, and a military coup is likely to put an end "to insecurities" and bring piece. Remember the "awakening" in ME had been pieceful, but beginning with Libya it has been hijacked into armed violence. Insecurity in the region always is destabilizing requiring military action.
Two possible outcomes: Iraq becomes a Western Military permanent base or it will fall into civil war as Shia militia will fight a US backed military coup. The latter will finally bring the desired Shia vs Sunni regional conflict.
Do you support the crackdown against Bahrainis by the regime and its Saudi allies? The same Saudis who are housing Tunisia's Ben Ali, and lobbied hard to keep Egypt's Mubarak in office?
Thought so.
First they armed Saddam with conventional and unconventional weapons-it failed!
Then they armed the little known Taliban to uproot the peace deal Iran had brokered for Afganistan in 1991.
That was followed by backing our first attempt to ignite Shiite-Sunni war, by backing the Taliban, serving them tea at the white house during both Clinton and Bush years. But Iran did not go to war, thus our first attempt at Shiit vs Sunni war had failed.
Our continued backing of the most fundamentalist and backward factions in the Sunni world backfired into the 9/11 disaster.
Our dual containment policy failed once it was clear that Saddam had become so weakened that his nation would fall into the hands of Iran backed groups. So, we occupied it. The quick overthrow of Saddam and the easy occupation of Iraq only proves how vunerable Saddam had become. That was the real reason for occupying Iraq, a last desperate attempt to contain Iran.
The 2006 war to abolish Hezbollah failed.
Democratic takeover of Turkey from its military rulers has been the death nail on the US foreign policy that has not been revised since the dark ages of the cold war.
Now, we see desperation and panic. We see the peaceful Arab uprisings are being hijacked in Libya and Yemen. This chaos would allow for regional armies to be deployed (Bahrain). We hope to be successful at our second attempt to ignite Shiit vs Sunni war.
The Iran Revolution has been the "Muslim Awakening" to identify their true enemies, and those who back the Arab despotic regimes.
It is the Turkish secular democracy with a muslim government that has inspired people to know what they want.
They are heartened by Iran's "struggle" but are inspiring a secular future that can resist Western interference. That is the true reason why people in the Arab world are on the streets. They have had it and now they know what they want. Tunisia showed what is possible.
Leave it to the Western narcissistic explanations to find anything to give ourselves credit. We can't deny that the uprisings undermine 60 years of US foreign policy, so we credit the uprising to the technology they use to communicate with one another. We are so intellectually dishonest and bankrupt that we give the credit to Twitter. We can't accept responsibility and can't face failure, so we make movies about Facebook and we call it the force behind the revolutions."It is not their intellect, it is our technology" the argument goes. And that's how we rationalize it.
Of course the Resistance Bloc has already been hugely empowered during the Arab Spring. Egypt of course drifting out of the Saudi-US-Israeli camp and moving closer to the Iranian side being the main one. Coupled with Hezbollah becoming the most power political party in Lebanon and Al Sadr dashing Maliki's attempts to extend the US occupation of Iraq it does appear that history is on the side of the resistance camp.
Bahrain of course is feeling the full force of the Saudi counter revolution but it smells to me like an act of desperation on Saudi Arabia's part. They won't be able to maintain a Sunni government in Bahrain when 70% of Bahrain's population is Shiite.
Personally I think Yemen is next to go (another blow of Saudi Arabia). Libya seems to be in a stalemate and things certainly heating up in Syria. In the end I have faith that the Bahraini's will prevail but it could get mighty ugly in the mean time.
Bahrain protesters are not peaceful, killing innocent Indians and Pakistanis. Very bad.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/132418/pakistani-murdered-in-bahrain/
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110319/jsp/frontpage/story_13737549.jsp
Narwani does not know Arabic but tries to be the champion of common Arabs. Anyone reading her posts will see a visible tilt towards the extremist Iran. Always stonewalling and trying to fool people into believing the 'goodness' of mullahs. Now it has come out in the open. Good! Arabs should take anything from her or other 'well-wishers' with loads of salt.
BTW, your evidence that Iran is behind the protests against the foreign dictator of Bahrain is????
(somehow I doubt that it would be as good as the evidence that the US is behind the protests going on in Syria, or the attempt to overthrow the democratic government in that other country not that long ago)
Well in good news from Tunisia which started off this whole string of Revolutions (and who most people forgot about once the Egypt revolution started) they have just announced that women will be required to make up 50% of all officials running in the election.
Don't know about the rest of the world but that is a higher proportion of women running in elections that in most European countries that have those kinds of quotas. Know in Germany 30% of all politicians running for office have to be women.
1) The West hasn't really been growing in 3 years.
2) Iran has observer status in the BRIC.
3) The Arab World is not collapsing just the despots that rule it. Lebanon, Turkey, Kuwait and Qatar have all been growing at over 5% these last few years. It is not a collapse of the Arab World just a realignment with corrupt leaders and regimes falling.
Is it because I said I am a human & I need my human rights , I receive such a treatment and deprived from medical care!? they even prevented the Kuwaiti medical convoy from helping wounded people!
Is it because I saide this regime is corrupted & my people needs a better one , I end up of being treated like rat ? all shiites are rats? what about sunnis who demonstrated ? or they just want to deflect the revolution & make it sectarian ?
even in our last rally yesterday we still have the same slogans "peaceful ", "no shiite no sunni ,this home we'll never sell " ....
I urge International institutes to send a medical convoy just like what they've done for ware zones , to end the medical blockade against my people and render Doctors abduction useless
The people who are taken away are most often never heard from again. The next thing their terrified families hear is to come pick up their mangled body at the morgue.
This systematic torture and murder of innocent, unarmed people is tolerated by our government because they dock the Navy 5th Fleet in Bahrain, and because the majority population is of the Shi'a sect of Islam, but have a Sunni King.
You might not know that Iran is a predominately Sh'ia country, so the people of Bahrain who just wanted to vote for their own representatives when they started their protests, are cast into the dark role of "bad guys" by the U.S. gov, even though the Shi'a of Bahrain have nothing to do with the gov.of Iran.
God help them.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/15/iraq-mass-grave-discovered_n_849760.html
She reminds me of Noam Chomsky.