The (Sectarian) Politics of Public-Sector Employment in Bahrain

A cartoon posted to an opposition forum depicts a representative of the “Ministry of Sectarianism” distributing “government jobs” to “unemployed graduates” “of the Sunni sect” and “clerical positions” to “those of the Shi‘i sect”

As usual, I am currently occupied with various writing commitments, one of which is a paper for the upcoming Gulf Research Meeting, 11-14 July at the University of Cambridge. Meant to be a frank and open discussion among Gulf scholars, hopefully my panel on youth unemployment in the Gulf will turn out to be such--otherwise, it will be a long few days.

My paper, titled "The (Sectarian) Politics of Public-Sector Employment in Bahrain," argues that present analyses of the problem of unemployment in the region--youth or otherwise--consistently fail to address the proverbial elephant in the room: the political prerequisites for employment, especially in the public sector. From the introduction:

Analysis of the problem of youth unemployment in the Arab states of the Gulf centers overwhelmingly, as of course it should, around the region’s unique political economy. The continued influx of foreign workers; the persistence of traditional gender roles that see women disproportionately excluded from the labor market; a resource-funded welfare state whose promises of government employment and other material benefits offer few incentives for educational achievement or indeed work itself—these and other structural features of Gulf societies are used to explain why, despite sustained economic growth and job creation that are the envy of neighboring Arab countries, youth unemployment here remains extensive even by Middle East standards.

Given this wide recognition that the region’s youth unemployment problem is rooted at least in part in the very institutional characteristics of the Gulf state, it is curious that another prominent feature of the Gulf landscape—the existence of social and political divisions on the basis of ascriptive group distinctions such as religion, ethnicity, tribal background, and so on—is conspicuously absent from such explanations. Yet in a different sense this omission is not at all surprising, for it reflects a prevailing conception of employment in the Gulf, including public-sector employment, as politically-agnostic.

“Every citizen” of a rent-based economy, tells Beblawi in his seminal study of rentierism, “has a legitimate aspiration to be a government employee; in most cases this aspiration is fulfilled.” By establishing an entanglement of bloated government ministries; subsidizing large, state-owned conglomerates; and spending huge sums on disproportionately large and well-equipped militaries, Gulf states can sop up a young populace that is easily disaffected, eager to marry and find housing, and generally college-educated yet nonetheless unprepared (or uninterested) in the private sector. The upshot, so the argument continues, is that the latter will be content to live their days as government pensioners and social welfare recipients, careful not to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. For their part, ruling elites gain a political ally—at worst a self-interest-maximizing, apolitical animal—and need forfeit only a portion of their resource proceeds to guarantee continued enjoyment of the remainder.

In fact, however, the empirical record would indicate that public employment in the Gulf is better conceived as a privilege, extended to those citizens who demonstrate political support for the state (or at least do not demonstrate the opposite), rather than a right afforded to every individual qua citizen. To see the inherent political nature of public-sector employment in the Gulf one need only observe the aftermath of Bahrain’s February 2011 uprising led by the country’s politically-disenfranchised Shi‘a majority. Already by mid-May, more than 2,000 individuals had been fired from public-sector positions for suspicion of having taken part in mass protests in February and March, which authorities deemed an Iranian-backed coup attempt.

This summary termination of Shi‘a employees and beneficiaries extended, inter alia, to government agencies, publicly-owned companies, hospitals, schools, sports clubs, and university scholarship-holders. The response was so sweeping, in fact, that it prompted the U.S.-based AFL-CIO to file a labor rights complaint against the Bahraini government, contending that the firings violated its free trade agreement with the United States. At the urging of an independent commission tasked with investigating the state’s response to the uprising, Bahrain subsequently promised to bring back sacked workers, but few have been reinstated, and those who have were made to accept new contracts featuring downgraded positions and lower wages. Students returning to Bahrain’s only public university were even forced to sign a pledge of loyalty “for the leadership of the Kingdom of Bahrain represented in His Majesty King Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa.” The two-page document cautioned, “I acknowledge that not signing this document means I do not wish to continue my education at the University of Bahrain.”

Hence, in Bahrain and in other Gulf societies home to ascriptive social cleavages that are politically salient, the state has both the incentive and the ability to base hiring decisions in part or in whole on questions of religious, ethnic, tribal, or other group membership. Especially in light of mounting concern over the regional ambitions of Iran and its presumed support for local Shi‘a political movements, Gulf governments are increasingly wary of employing or otherwise empowering citizens whom they view as open or latent political opponents possibly serving foreign adversaries. As Bahrain’s minister of industry and commerce tellingly admitted during anti-government protests in 2007, “There is a lack of confidence between the ruled and the rulers. It is not unusual. There is a small percentage who do not have loyalty to the state. Sometimes, for good reasons, you have to be careful who you employ.” Fortunately for Gulf rulers, because citizens’ group affiliation is readily-observable via outward markers such as name, dialect, skin color, dress, and so on, this group-based discrimination in hiring is easily accomplished.

Using original, individual-level data from a 500-household mass survey of Bahraini political attitudes undertaken by the author in early 2009, this paper demonstrates that Shi‘i citizens are not only systematically less likely to be employed in Bahrain’s public sector, but they also tend to occupy lower-ranking professional positions when they are employed. For two citizens of identical age, gender, and education level, the probability of government-sector employment (given that one is employed) is predicted to be some 36% higher for a Sunni compared to a Bahraini Shi‘i. The professional discrepancy is estimated at about 15%.

Moreover, the data reveal, whereas 17% of working Sunni males who reported professional data indicated that they worked for the police or armed forces; and whereas 13% of all Sunni households reported at least one member employed in these services, not a single individual from among 127 employed Shi‘i males who offered occupational data reported working for the police or military. The patterns of government-sector employment in Bahrain thus tell a fundamentally different story from the one articulated by rentier theorists, and draw attention to a crucial feature of the Gulf context—social-cum-political divisions along ascriptive group lines—that remains absent from extant analyses of the problem of unemployment in Bahrain and elsewhere in the region.

I've posted the full (draft) paper here.

Update: Still busy. In the meantime, see "The March of Bahrain's Hardliners" at the Carnegie Endowment. I disagree with it in places, but still useful.

Update 2: The Ministry of Justice and Islamic Affairs has moved to dissolve the Islamic Action Society ('Amal). More interesting, however, is the language used to justify the move: namely, that 'Amal "follows a marja'iyyah that advocates violence." A clear reference to al-Wifaq and 'Isa Qasim?

Update 3: For those interested, the slides of my conference presentation are available here.

The End of Pragmatism; Or, Why Bahrain Would Have Locked Up Chen Guangcheng

I spent much of last week thinking and talking about political dynamics in Bahrain and other Gulf countries as part of a workshop for a book project on Sectarian Politics in the Gulf. A consistent theme of that discussion, especially in the Bahrain context, was what I've called elsewhere the "securitization of the Shi'a problem"--or, more generally, of the problem of religious-cum-political minorities.

As I see it, this phenomenon, toward which Bahrain's ruling family has now decisively shifted, involves two main elements: a political calculation, and an ideological orientation. The political calculation is that the entire economic and political reform model represented by post-1999 King Hamad and Sh. Salman is fundamentally flawed; that political stability in Bahrain or elsewhere will never come as a result of placating dissatisfied citizens with the promise of economic and (to a lesser extent) political benefits, but by repressing them--if possible with the help of like-minded neighbors.

The corresponding ideological orientation explains the rationale behind this political calculation: that Shi'a as a class of citizen will never be satisfied with anything less than total domination of the state and indeed the Muslim world generally. They are the Roman Catholics of Islam, harboring dual loyalty to Iran qua state-sponsor of Shi'ism. They are connected by a trans-national communal solidarity whose goal is only Shi'a empowerment. They are, in short, disloyal and unworthy subjects of the Gulf states and their rulers, the latter having succeeded in affording citizens both economic prosperity and modernization, as well as political stability in a region where it is otherwise unknown.

I would argue, then, that the post-February progression of Bahrain can be summarized exactly as this transition in political orthodoxy. The opposition's rejection of the crown prince's dialogue initiative in February and March 2011 set in motion a series of events that cemented this change in thinking from Bahraini Shi'a as a political problem to security problem. Whereas the state had long taken preventative measures--demographic re-engineering, electoral redistricting, Shi'a exclusions from the police/military--to hedge against the possibility that King Hamad's political and economic project failed, still these measures were always conceived as constituting a Plan B. The post-uprising record demonstrates clearly that this strategy has now graduated to Plan A.


One recent news item seems to my mind to illustrate perfectly this shift away from political pragmatism. No doubt one will have heard of the blind Chinese political dissident, Chen Guangcheng, who has just recently arrived in the United States following an unlikely ordeal involving an escape from house arrest to the American Embassy in Beijing, etc. etc. Now, the parallel of this case with that of another well-known dissident from Bahrain--'Abd al-Hadi al-Khawajah--should be obvious enough. Both are thorns in the sides of their respective regimes; both, on account of the latter's now 90-day-plus hunger strike, are physically disabled; and both were seeking to escape their imprisonment to a third-country. (One hesitates to imagine what would have happened if al-Khawajah or any other Bahraini activist had taken refuge in the U.S. Embassy in Manama.)

Yet, while the Chinese government made the pragmatic political calculation that an activist Chen Guangcheng at New York University is better than an activist Chen Guangcheng in China, the Bahraini authorities have consistently rejected 'Abd al-Hadi's medical release to Denmark (where he holds citizenship and lived in exile for much of his life). Or, rather, some of the Bahraini authorities rejected the deal.

When talks about an agreement to release him heated up in early April, Bahrain's Foreign Minister (and one imagines his ally King Hamad) was pushing hard for a compromise that would see 'Abd al-Hadi leave Bahrain. Indeed, several individuals have mentioned that the transfer order was even signed by Interior Minister Sh. Rashid himself, only to be nullified by the prime minister at the 11th hour. Almost immediately thereafter, 'Abd al-Hadi was transferred from the Interior Ministry clinic to the BDF hospital under the control of the hard-line defense minister (and ally of the prime minster) Sh. Khalifa bin Ahmad, ostensibly for an upgrade in medical care but presumably to ensure that he could not be released.

Thus has ideology-induced myopia and personal vengeance (note al-Khawajah's now-famous attack on the prime minister in 2004) precluded in Bahrain what in the case of China and Chen Guangcheng seems such an obvious and efficacious solution: simply get rid of the guy. Not only do you avoid (in the case of al-Khawajah) his becoming a martyr, but you also probably earn a bit of goodwill from Western governments and others critical of your continued mistreatment of political opponents. Last but not least, it's likely also that shipping al-Khawajah off to Denmark would steal much of the power of his activism with respect to those still in Bahrain. Certainly, even Khomeini could not command a revolution from France.

That despite these many practical benefits Bahrain's rulers were unable to arrive at the same political calculation as the Chinese speaks both to the degree of fracture within the Al Khalifa, but more importantly to the nature of that fracture, which again is a division over the very conception of the problem facing Bahrain, and how to solve it. If China's policy embodies the idea of political pragmatism for the sake of a more important long-term aim, the path cut by Bahrain over the previous 16 months would seem to elude easy categorization. And that's precisely the problem.

Update: Wow, what can you say about this? Just.. wow. Robert Haddick in Foreign Policy: "The Persian Gulf Needs Its Own NATO, And America needs to lead it." Fix Bahrain by bringing the U.S. into the GCC? Of course!

Update 2: Writing in Al-Watan Sawsan al-Sha'ir explains in her ever-reasonable tone why Bahrain participants at this week's UN Human Rights conference in Geneva are "traitors":

"[modes of] treason may vary, but they all emit the same stench and are equally bleak and slimy. ... Our laws allow[] civil society institutions to be used as landfills of funds that pour from different sources. No wonder their members, accompanied by beauties, move from one European capital to another and thence to Washington where they blow their reeking sectarian venom and shed crocodile tears. ...

You wistfully think that, by dispatching those delegations and spending the money you took from Iranian, Bahraini or Kuwaiti Shiites, you can fulfill your plan. Right now, some of you are negotiating a deal which is about to be concluded. A traitor will always remain a traitor. Hard luck! Try again.

Now THERE is some pragmatism for you.

How Not to Help the Crown Prince

News comes today that the parting gift from Crown Prince Salman's trip to Washington last week was the resumption of some U.S. arms sales to Bahrain. It doesn't take a genius, of course, to see the purpose behind this sure-to-be-controversial move, namely the (attempted) reversal of Sh. Salman's utter political marginalization since his failed attempt to negotiate an end to the March 2011 crisis. Josh Rogin summarizes well this strategy in today's Foreign Policy with his headline: "Obama administration seeks to bolster Bahraini crown prince with arms sales."

Many--including the same senators that were instrumental in blocking previous attempts to sell arms to Bahrain that came to a head last October--have already rejected the deal on moral grounds. Rogin quotes Senator Wyden as saying, for example,

"This is exactly the wrong time to be selling arms to the government of Bahrain. Things are getting worse, not better. ... The country is becoming even more polarized and both sides are becoming more entrenched. Reform is the ultimate goal and we should be using every tool and every bit of leverage we have to achieve that goal. The State department's decision is essentially giving away the store without the government of Bahrain bringing anything to the table."

Yet one need not even appeal to a normative argument to explain why the arms sale is a bad move, for it is already flawed on strategic grounds. In case you missed it, the Obama Administration already tried this move last summer. A perceptive New York Times article from June 9, 2011, for example, told how the U.S. was "Cultivating a Prince to Coax an Ally to Change." Sh. Salman even met then with President Obama himself, unlike (officially, any way) last week.

Perhaps not coincidentally, this year's initiative has many parallels with last summer: not merely a politically-defeated crown prince, but rising anti-American sentiment, and an ongoing security crackdown against opposition activities. Compare, for instance, the analysis from last year's NYT story:

"But several analysts warn that even if Prince Salman is sincere, he is only one member of a family that includes hard-liners like his uncle, Prince Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa, the long-serving prime minister. With his mild manner and fluent English, Prince Salman may be merely the monarchy’s friendly face, skeptical analysts say."

And then Rogin's piece today:

"The crown prince has been stripped of many of his official duties recently, but is still seen as the ruling family member who is most amenable to working constructively with the opposition and with the United States. It's unclear whether sending him home with arms sales will have any effect on internal Bahraini ruling family politics, however."

So why, exactly, is the State Department expecting a different result this year? One might say that the U.S. simply didn't want the crown prince to return home with nothing; that the arms deal represents not so much part of a concerted Bahrain strategy, but simply an attempt to give Sh. Salman something that he might use to help direct the country on a more moderate path. Yet the fact that the arms sale is but one part of what seems to be a multi-pronged effort--which includes also the visit and appearance on Bahrain TV of Indiana Congressman Dan Burton, for example, who was quick to criticize protesters and to laud Sh. Salman's efforts at dialogue--would seem to suggest a more deliberate strategy.

Unfortunately, it's difficult to see how the latter could succeed. Let us count the ways.

Who Benefits from an Arms Sale?

Given that the State Department has evidently grasped the facts that (1) Sh. Salman and his (at least outwardly) moderate orientation represents perhaps the best hope for a negotiated settlement in Bahrain; but that (2) he has been sidelined within the ruling family, it is strange indeed that the mechanism chosen to revive his political fortunes--military arms sales--serves directly to benefit one of his main political competitors and arguably the most obstructionist of all the Al Khalifa: Defense Minister Khalifa bin Ahmad. (Yes, Sh. Salman is nominally Deputy Supreme Commander of the Bahrain Defense Forces; but he is also, nominally, the second most powerful person in the country.)


To be sure, it was less than a year ago that "The Marshal" revealed to Al-Ahram that it was the U.S. itself, acting in concert with Iran, that orchestrated the entire February uprising. He has since expanded on these claims, telling Al-Ayam that 22 different NGOs "managed and funded by the U.S. and [an unnamed] Gulf state" were actively "working against" Bahrain. More generally, pro-government media, especially the sensationalist Al-Watan newspaper controlled by the defense minister's brother, Royal Court Minister Khalid bin Ahmad, has been fomenting anti-U.S. and anti-Western sentiment ("Ayatollah Obama," anyone?) for the better part of a year. And now the U.S. is rewarding these same individuals with additional resources (and holding out the promise of more), and all to the supposed benefit of the crown prince and Bahrain's "moderate" faction? Interesting.

Playing into the Security Narrative

This issue is symptomatic of a larger problem, which is that the arms deal only reinforces the political calculus that has helped get Bahrain into its current mess, namely the state's progressive securitization of the problem posed by its Shi'a-led opposition. If the goal of the U.S.'s "empowerment" of Sh. Salman is to get Bahrain's government and opposition back to the negotiating table, then agreeing new arms sales is almost exactly the opposite of the way to achieve it. So long as those in charge of Bahrain continue to conceive of the crisis in security--rather than political--terms, then they will seek to resolve it accordingly: not through dialogue, not through political negotiations, but through force. Boosting Bahrain's security and military capabilities is an effective way to ensure that the latter remains an attractive and viable option--and one that would seemingly enjoy the tacit approval of the ruling family's most important Western backer.

It is not difficult to understand: the very TARGET of this entire re-conceptualization of Bahrain's political-cum-security problem is PRECISELY the reform program initiated by King Hamad and increasingly deputized to Crown Prince Salman. The logic of this decade-long initiative is that economic opportunity born of diversification and modernization, combined with incremental political liberalization, can offer a way out of the chronic popular discontent that has plagued the country for decades.


The competing theory, the one articulated EXACTLY by Sh. Salman's detractors within the Al Khalifa, is that Bahraini Shi'a will never be satisfied with anything short of a wholesale takeover of the state, and that political and economic reforms are not only superfluous but, insofar as they only serve to encourage the opposition to pursue a more radical agenda, a cure that is worse than the disease. The only alternative, by this view, is a security-based strategy that both: (1) takes pre-emptive measures to limit the influence or potential influence of Shi'a; and (2) cultivates anti-Shi'a (and anti-Western) orientations among ordinary Sunnis such that these citizens will be happy to fight the government's battles for it if and when the need arises.

Any guess as to which of these two rival strategies resumed U.S. arms sales to Bahrain--to say nothing of U.S. Congressmen "rap[ping] Bahrain rioters" on state television--is likely to reinforce? And to whose benefit? As Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch notes in Rogin's piece for Foreign Policy,

"But there's no guarantee the government will do what we all hope it does. They might just as easily conclude ‘We don't have to empower the crown prince at home; we just have to send him to America."

The Need for Extra-Al Khalifa--not Intra-Al Khalifa--Pressure

Third, having already failed once to "revive" the crown prince, one would think that the United States Government would get the hint that it has apparently little influence on intra-Al Khalifa politics. The struggle for power within Bahrain's ruling family has had some fifteen months now to run its course, and it's difficult to see any scenario in which Sh. Salman and King Hamad come out victorious.

What is required instead, then, is a bit (or more likely a lot) of extra-Al Khalifa pressure, namely from Bahrain's landlord to the southwest, Saudi Arabia. Not only do the Saudis enjoy obvious leverage over the ruling family generally given their bankrolling of the entire country, but they are particularly well-connected to exactly the recalcitrant individuals in need of political arm-twisting, especially the prime minister. Whether there is any hope of convincing the Saudis that such pressure is in their interest is a separate question, and one made more complicated by the post-Arab Spring U.S.-Saudi fallout. Still, there would seem to be some movement already from the Saudis in this direction, if one would interpret their vague plans for Bahrain-Saudi "union" as a signal to the Al Khalifa to get their house straightened up.

In any case, a U.S. attempt to secure Saudi cooperation on Bahrain cannot be more of a failure than the current strategy of "reviving" Sh. Salman every 12 months or so. At this pace, he should be ready to challenge his ruling family adversaries some time in 2035.

Ignoring Bahrain's New Political Realities

Despite its best attempts, Bahrain cannot return to the pre-February 2011 political status quo. It is not only the Shi'a-led opposition but also ordinary Bahraini Sunnis for whom political expectations have fundamentally and likely irreversibly changed. The most important upshot of this fact is that the days of piecemeal government-opposition political settlements are over. Accordingly, the ability and desire of the government to partake in political negotiations is not governed simply by the relative power of Al Khalifa "moderates" and "hard-liners" but the political calculations of a ruling family facing an entirely different set of political challenges from those to which it has grown accustomed since King Hamad's ascension in 1999.

If the point of the arms sale is again to help jump-start dialogue efforts in Bahrain, the Obama Administration would do well to observe the outcome of the most recent attempt at this. As I noted in my previous post,

In March 2012, rumors surfaced of a new government-opposition dialogue sponsored by the Royal Court Minister Sh. Khalid bin Ahmad. The thinking, apparently, was that by involving the most hard-line Al Khalifa from the beginning, the state might avoid the initiative’s being undermined later. In the end, however, the problem was not Sh. Khalid, but the reaction of Sunni groups, some of which rejected the talks because they symbolized compromise with the opposition, others because they were not to be included. The National Unity Gathering initially declared a boycott of the dialogue until the opposition ended protest activities, although it was not clear that it had been invited in the first place. At the same time, the Al-Fatih Awakening rallied against the initiative not because they opposed it on principle, but because they weren't invited. Their slogan: “No dialogue without Al-Fatih.” Under pressure from Sunnis unhappy that the state would seek a political bargain without their input, Al Mahmud reversed his original decision to boycott.

Not coincidentally, one assumes, talk of this new "political dialogue initiative" stopped almost immediately. The state is willing to do a lot of things to appease Sunnis, but allowing them a seat at the negotiating table alongside members of the opposition is definitely not one of them. Indeed, this scenario above all others is the one that the ruling family will work to avoid. The chance that Sunni and Shi'i political leaders could agree some set of political demands is far too dangerous to risk by agreeing to multiparty talks. Rather than reject the Sunni demand for inclusion directly, then, the state appears instead to have ended its pursuit of a new dialogue initiative altogether.

While it is true, then, that among the barriers to a solution to Bahrain's political stalemate is the post-February 14 decline of Crown Prince Salman (or, more accurately, the post-uprising ascendancy of security-minded members of the Al Khalifa), this shift in power is connected inextricably to the no less dramatic transformation of Bahrain's domestic political dynamics. It is this altered reality on the ground that will ultimately determine the likelihood and efficacy of any new attempts at resolving Bahrain's political conflict, to which the number of parties seems to be increasing by the day.

Hopefully, the inevitable failure of the U.S.'s latest attempt to "bolster" the crown prince will lead to a change in strategy on Bahrain, one that may take into account such factors as those treated here.

Update: Gulf union fever is in full swing. Having failed in previous initiatives to establish a GCC monetary union and even a mere customs union, the Gulf Arab states would have us believe now that they are going direct to political-military union, starting with Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Announcing some grandiose vision at a summit in Riyadh is one thing, backing it up with concrete institutional steps toward integration is another. Someone wake me when the latter has occurred.

Update 2: Via an anonymous commenter: the BBC's Adam Curtis examines the past 90 years of British involvement in Bahrain, i.e. the period after the arrival of Charles Belgrave. A suitable title: "IF YOU TAKE MY ADVICE - I'D REPRESS THEM."

Update 3: Surprise, surprise! The fabled Bahrain-Saudi union supposed to emerge from yesterday's GCC summit in fact is "a commission to continue studying" GCC integration, the findings of which will be discussed at December's summit. At which time they'll probably announce a follow-up commission, a sooper dooper follow-up commission, etc.

The New York Times also notes that participants in the conference "distributed a draft plan for the union to its members’ foreign ministers to review so they could resolve any issues." Oh no a draft plan!

Update 4: On the bright side regarding the U.S. arms sale to Bahrain, there are some shnazzy new anti-U.S. web fliers created by the February 14th people to correspond with their "Week of Exposing the American Conspiracy." Among them are this beaut featuring an AK-toting Statue of Liberty calling in air support. Perhaps this might open up the possibility for some much-needed Sunni-Shi'i political coordination, since the one thing upon which everyone seems to agree is that there is an American conspiracy in Bahrain.

The Securitization of "the Shi'a Problem" in Bahrain

I've been spending a lot of time lately working on several writing projects. One, which I've mentioned before, is for a forthcoming book on Sectarianism in the Gulf organized by Georgetown University in Qatar. My chapter, meant as a theoretical introduction framing the country-specific analyses that follow, is not a study of Bahrain (which Kristin Smith Diwan is writing) but of the general political phenomenon of sectarianism, and how one might conceive it in the Gulf context specifically. Its working title is "Institutional Incentives, Selective Nation-Building, and Regional Geopolitics: Understanding Sectarianism in the Gulf."

While I won't get into the specifics of the piece, one of the things I argue there is that among the causes of the politicization of sectarian identity in the Gulf context is a progressive shift in thinking among Gulf rulers, especially in the post-2003 (i.e., post-Iraq War) period, about the nature of the problem posed by their religious-cum-political minorities--whether Shi'a in the Arab Gulf or Sunnis in Iran and Iraq. Increasingly, Gulf rulers conceive of the problem posed by religiously-based oppositions not in political terms, one resolvable in a corresponding local political framework, but in security terms, one requiring not only preventative measures to help forestall the latent threat posed by Shi'a (or Sunni) populations, but also regional cooperation with like-minded neighbors. The result is what I call the "securitization of the Shi'a problem" in the Gulf.

Building on this idea, I've just finished a second article examining this trend in the context of Bahrain specifically, which I thought I'd talk a bit about here. This analysis is framed around the issue of intra-Al Khalifa divisions, and how the post-February rise of the khawalid (Defense and Royal Court Ministers Khalifa and Khalid bin Ahmad) in particular is indicative of a change of political orthodoxy in Bahrain, one that rejects the basic premise of the reform agenda initiated by King Hamad and forwarded by Crown Prince Salman, namely that expanded economic opportunity through diversification and modernization, combined with incremental political liberalization, can offer a way out of the chronic popular discontent that has plagued the country for decades.

The counterpoint to the view represented by King Hamad, then, is that Bahraini Shi'a will never be satisfied with anything short of a wholesale takeover of the state, and that political and economic reforms are not only superfluous but, insofar as they only serve to encourage the opposition to pursue a more radical agenda, a cure that is worse than the disease. The alternative, security-based strategy is therefore two-fold: (1) take pre-emptive measures to limit the influence or potential influence of Shi'a (via their exclusion from the police, military, and power ministries, for example, and by attempting to limit their influence through selective naturalization); and (2) cultivate anti-Shi'a orientations among ordinary Sunnis such that these citizens will be happy to fight the government's battles for it if and when the need arises.

These "pre-emptive measures" are not new to the post-February period of course. When one looks at military spending data (via SIPRI) from the period following the initiation of King Hamad's reforms in 2001, for example, one finds that Bahrain has far outpaced its Arab and Middle East neighbors in increasing military spending, as seen in the graphics below. (Note that the special case of Iraq is not included for obvious reasons.) From the decade 2001 to 2011, only Qatar has witnessed a larger average increase in annual military spending (although data from Qatar is available only from 2002 to 2008), and the next closest following Bahrain are Jordan, at an average yearly increase of 6.1%, and Saudi Arabia, at 5.6%.


If one would look at the absolute increase in annual military spending since 2001, moreover, the picture is even more dramatic. Here Bahrain far exceeds any other country (ignoring again the special case of Iraq), having increased its annual spending by some 117.5% between 2001 (at an estimated $406 million) to 2011 ($883 million). Its nearest competitors fail to exceed even a 70% increase over the same period.


Of course, such data represent but one aspect of overall spending on and preoccupation with national security. Not knowable from this, obviously, is spending on the police or other internal security services. Still, Bahrain's disproportionately high increases in military spending from 2001 to 2011 would seem to suggest that the country was hedging its bets against the possibility that King Hamad's reform initiative would fail to achieve the political peace that it promised, an interpretation supported by other preventive initiatives launched around the same time. Bahrain's ongoing program of Sunni naturalization is thought to have started in the beginning of the 2000s, for example, while the country's electoral districts were redrawn in 2002 to preclude a Shi'a majority in the newly-reestablished parliament.

The course of the February 14 uprising doubtless reinforced the wisdom of these safeguards among members of the Al Khalifa who never bought into King Hamad's political and economic reform project. Though Shi'a could organize mass protests, they had no guns with which to effect an actual physical takeover, and were utterly outmaneuvered tactically. More importantly, Sunnis could be counted on to organize mass protests in opposition to the opposition; and, if perhaps spontaneous in an immediate sense (though some would deny even this), in a larger sense the seeds of this counter-mobilization had been planted long ago by systematic reinforcement of the threat of Iranian-backed Shi'a irredentism promulgated in state media and more informally via the state's cultivation (and bankrolling) of Sunni groups.

At the same time, however, the post-uprising period has also revealed several unintended consequences of the state's strategy, both of which have to do with the fact that the state, having once awakened Sunnis, now faces a very difficult task controlling and appeasing them. Mobilized to counter the threat of "Shi'a terrorists," Sunnis now wonder why the state is unwilling to see the job through: why not arrest all those who continue to defy the state and take part in illegal protest activities, as well as those who incite others to do so? In particular, Sunnis ask, why have the most senior leaders of "Bahraini Hizballah" (i.e., al-Wifaq)--Shs. 'Isa Qasim and 'Ali Salman--somehow escaped punishment for what is now going on 15 months?

Al-Wifaq terrorists chasing the poor police armed only with guns and teargas.

Faisal al-Shaykh in today's Al-Watan, for example, writes of the recent high-profile arrest of Nabeel Rajab, for which many Sunnis have been calling since the uprising began,

While immunity is granted to some persons by the law, it can, by no means, be absolute or unlimited. For instance, MPs possess an immunity that doesn't exempt them from standing trial for in any case imaginable. This is because it is internationally-recognized that all people are equal before the law and that no one is above the law. In Bahrain, there have been continuous outcries that the law must be equally and indiscriminately enforced against all people regardless of their families, titles or posts. These demands are sought by all those who want to see justice and equality prevail and believe that the ideal and healthy situation for any state is when the law is above all and no ''intermediary'' or ''immunity'' is granted to those who break the law. ...

The recent arrest of the “sectarian and racist human rights activist” is not an exceptional measure against violators of the law. On the contrary, we are tempted to ask concerned bodies in the state why they have left the man behave as he pleased and instigating hatred against the state and regime. Have his instigation against the state grown more dangerous than before? If laxity in taking the necessary measures against top instigators sprang from the hope that they would regain their senses and stop their practices against the state, this doesn’t justify the suspension or discriminatory enforcement of the law. We have often heard officials in charge of enforcing the law vehemently utter the set phrase: “Nobody is above the law.”

However, we regretfully tell them that for over a year we have seen many a case proving that the law isn’t as strictly enforced as it is expected to be which proves that there are really people above the law. If you think we are mistaken (although what we are saying has nearly become a conviction among loyal citizens), prove it by enforcing the law against all instigators. We want someone to demystify the confusing enigma resulting from the situation where a citizen [i.e., Sh. 'Isa Qasim, see here for background] urges people to “crush” policemen and then runs away with it. I wish I could really believe that nobody is above the law.

In addition to the state's being constantly pressured to escalate its security response to protesters--pressure that has only increased as demonstrators have resorted to ever more violent tactics as hope of achieving their political aims fades utterly--the government also faces an altogether new phenomenon: Sunnis articulating demands not only for a harsher security response, which are problematic but not an existential threat, but for substantive political demands unrelated to the opposition.

One outspoken Sunni MP, for example, Usama al-Tamimi, has been campaigning for a wide-ranging investigation into corruption by members of the ruling family. A week or so ago he even openly called for the resignation of the prime minister in a session of parliament. (Predictably, his business was attacked some days later; note also the not-so-veiled reference to "MPs" in the opening lines of al-Shaykh's article above.) Similarly, a recent article by Sawsan al-Sha'ir purporting to expose "financial and administrative corruption" at the reclaimed island resort village in the southeast of the country, known as Durrat al-Bahrain, has made a splash among participants in (nominally pro-government) Sunni Internet forums. The issue of corruption, then, like many others, is not one limited to the concern of Bahraini Shi'a merely.

So, the state has two groups of discontented Sunnis: one unhappy with its handling of the crisis; another simply unhappy. Even if it could broker some political agreement with the opposition, then, it still faces a different set of problems involving Bahraini Sunnis stemming from its very own efforts to mobilize the community.

The government learned this lesson the hard way during its most recent attempt to restart talks with the opposition. In March 2012, rumors surfaced of a new government-opposition dialogue sponsored by the Royal Court Minister Sh. Khalid bin Ahmad. The thinking, apparently, was that by involving the most hard-line Al Khalifa from the beginning, the state might avoid the initiative’s being undermined later. In the end, however, the problem was not Sh. Khalid, but the reaction of Sunni groups, some of which rejected the talks because they symbolized compromise with the opposition, others because they were not to be included. The National Unity Gathering initially declared a boycott of the dialogue until the opposition ended protest activities, although it was not clear that it had been invited in the first place. At the same time, the Al-Fatih Awakening rallied against the initiative not because they opposed it on principle, but because they weren't invited. Their slogan: “No dialogue without Al-Fatih.” Under pressure from Sunnis unhappy that the state would seek a political bargain without their input, Al Mahmud reversed his original decision to boycott.


Not coincidentally, one assumes, talk of this new "political dialogue initiative" stopped almost immediately. The state is willing to do a lot of things to appease Sunnis, but allowing them a seat at the negotiating table alongside members of the opposition is definitely not one of them. Indeed, this scenario above all others is the one that the ruling family will work to avoid. The chance that Sunni and Shi'i political leaders could agree some set of political demands is far too dangerous to risk by agreeing to multiparty talks. Rather than reject the Sunni demand for inclusion directly, then, the state appears instead to have ended its pursuit of a new dialogue initiative altogether.

The state (or rather whoever is controlling it) seems thus to have decided that if the ruling family is unable to appease both sets of Sunnis--both those who disagree with what is perceived to be its lax security response, and those who harbor substantive political misgivings independent of this concern--that it will have to take steps to propitiate at least the former group, which then conveniently can be mobilized against the latter, more reform-minded Sunnis, who may be branded "traitors" or fools duped by the opposition. (Note the state-sponsored Sunni reaction against al-Tamimi, for example, or better yet the state's handling of Muhammad Al Bu Flasa and Ebrahim Sharif in the early days of the uprising.)

It is under this backdrop, I would argue, that one should understand the government's recent escalation against the opposition, which includes the arrest of Nabeel Rajab, the increased use of bird-shot against demonstrators, and of course the prime minister's recent direct threat to Sh. 'Isa Qasim and other "clerics [who] incite violence, sectarianism, harm[] the economy, and insult[] the judiciary and constitutional institutions." The statement, carried on BNA, said that "[t]he cabinet instructed ministries to take legal measures if these violations continue, affirming its total rejection of any bargaining over the nation's security and unity." To be sure, the arrest of 'Isa Qasim would buy the government at least a year of gratitude from pro-government Sunnis (see this celebratory forum thread, for example)!

In short, those in control of Bahrain seem to have come to the conclusion that not only the state's previous policies, but indeed its entire political strategy since the initiation of King Hamad's ostensible reform project in 2001, is no longer working. Whether this is because the faction led by King Hamad has been overruled, or because it has finally come over to the view of more security-minded members of the Al Khalifa, the upshot is the same: Bahrain will seek to address the current crisis within a security--rather than a political--framework, for it is only through such an effort, by this thinking, that stability (or something like it) can be achieved. And so long as the country is under no external pressure to alter this new course, there would seem to be little reason to abandon it.

Update: A friend points out this article in al-Wasat that tells of King Hamad's well-publicized visit yesterday with "top generals" in the defense forces. (There's also an English article here from the BNA.) Similarly, a Bahrain Mirror story claims that Sh. Rashid has informed "a number of ambassadors" of an imminent security crackdown. The sense on the street seems to be very much in anticipation of the latter.

Update 2: Joost Hiltermann in the New York Review of Books: "Bahrain: A New Sectarian Conflict?" Though I'm not sure what the question mark is for.

Also, somehow Bahrainis are managing to stay in good humor despite the promise of a new crackdown. Here, a short cartoon mocking the recent ministerial appointment of Sameera Rajab, expert in the field of Iranian interference:



Update 3: Two intrepid George Washington University students have published a new Master's thesis on the reconciliation of Bahrain's "Triangle of Conflict" (full text here via Google Docs). Based on several weeks of fieldwork, the paper is interesting especially for its insights from many interviews with anonymous diplomats, Sunnis in parliament, al-Fatih, TGONU, and members of the formal and street opposition.