Sound Familiar?: More Terrorist Plots

The Bahraini government is good at foiling terrorist plots. I mean really good. Greeting officers of the GCC "Peninsula Shield" force yesterday, King Hamad alluded to yet another in a string of foreign terrorist plots to be uncovered and stamped out by his government. "An external plot has been fomented for 20 to 30 years for the ground to be ripe for subversive designs," he said.

For national security reasons, presumably, the king did not reveal the exact nature of this newest threat to have been overcome. Yet it seems to resemble another, equally sinister plot in September 2010, when 23 Shi'a activists were arrested for their part in a terrorist effort to "overthrow the regime." Interestingly, these same individuals were just pardoned a month ago when protests began. And in the last week many of them have been re-arrested.

So now it is becoming clear: this newest terrorist plot emerged after the Bahrainis pardoned the old terrorist plotters, leading to their re-arrest.

If this sounds somehow confusing, please refer to this instructive terrorist network flow chart helpfully crafted by the incisive al-Watan newspaper in its Sept. 16, 2010, issue (indeed I have saved it all this time because I knew it would come in handy):

In case you cannot follow the logic of the chart here, it goes something like this: there is a terrorist network led by Hasan al-Musheimi', Sh. Muhammad al-Miqdad, as well as this ghostly figure "Others?" with a question mark to get you thinking. Next we have the second-tier members of the terrorist network: two guys named Sami Mirza and Ahmad 'Abdallah along with more "Others?" This shadowy group that may or may not consist of only 4 people then engages in various terrorist activities, including but not limited to lighting cars on fire, using some sort of a burning stop-watch, lighting houses on fire, and slicking the sidewalk down with ice thereby making people trip and fall. (This is the last and more illustrative level of the flow-chart.)

More generally, if we google "terrorist plot in Bahrain" we find:

Mar. 2011: "TERROR PLOT FOILED"
Sept. 2010: "Bahrain hints at Iranian involvement in plot to overthrow regime"
May 2009: "Gulfnews : Two arrested as Bahrain police foil terror attack plot"
Dec. 2008: "Bahrain: Terror Plot Foiled, Syrian Connection Investigated"
Feb. 2007: "Discovery of a 'terrorist training camp' in Bani Jamra"

And these are just on the first page.

So let's all of us salute the Bahraini government on another job well done, and wish them God speed in thwarting the next attack, whether it be a sidewalk slip-and-fall plot masterminded by Sami Mirza or a burning stop-watch bombing carried out by those shadowy "Others?"

As Nabeel Rajab once said, "Bahrain should be in the Guinness Book of World Records. This is a country that has discovered 20 supposed coup attempts in the last 20 years."

Update: It's about that time again! New "terrorist cell" thwarted in November 2011: "Bahrain says terror suspects linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guard."