What's the Plan, Ya Abu Salman?

In the "non-crackdown" crackdown witnessed in Bahrain since the arrival of GCC forces some weeks ago:

Demonstrations have been crushed, public gatherings of any sort banned.

The very symbol of the February uprising, the Pearl Roundabout, has been razed, and the 500 fils coin bearing its image removed from circulation.

Nearly every identifiable political opposition leader not associated with al-Wifaq has been arrested, including most recently long-time dissident and founder of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights 'Abd al-Hadi al-Khawajah. (And it looks like Nabeel Rajab is next in line for arrest.) At least 400 other detainees remain in state custody, two of whom died yesterday in their cells.

Just a few months into its new 4-year term, Bahrain's parliament has ceased to be a functional political institution, having lost 18 of its 40 members to resignations (though only 7 of these have been accepted) and seemingly unsure of how to proceed.

Some 500 to 1,000 employees of public organizations and corporations have been fired for their suspected participation or complicity in anti-government protests, with several investigations still ongoing.

Bahrain's only independent newspaper, Al-Wasat, was taken down in an administrative coup, its founder and long-time editor-in-chief Mansur al-Jamri (who also happens to be the son of the late Shi'i marja' and spiritual leader of the 1990s Shi'a uprising, 'Abd al-Amir al-Jamri) ousted along with several other editors and journalists, the latter being deported altogether. Al-Jamri now faces criminal charges.

Insufficiently-"loyal" bloggers, Twitter-ers, and forum-goers have been targeted and arrested, and pro-government websites have sprung up to circulate disinformation.

Students, teachers, and administrators have been expelled from Bahrain's only public university, and those studying abroad who expressed anti-government views have had their scholarships revoked.

More generally, it is clear that many university and secondary school students have not returned to school, with attendance put at 55% as of April 1. (And since "the rate of secondary students [in] both Muharraq and the Southern Governorates" is said to be "normal," we know that most of the absentees are in Shi'a-dominated regions.)

And yet, for all this, not one step has been taken in the direction of resolving the underlying political conflict that put Bahrain in this mess in the first place. Indeed, rather than address the nation's growing rift between ordinary Sunnis and Shi'is, King Hamad took the time last Wednesday to promulgate five new royal decrees (Ar.). A first approved Bahrain's accession to a 1986 Convention on the Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident (though it abstains from Paragraph 2!), which should improve safety at each of its zero nuclear facilities. A second ratifies the Carthage Protocol on Bio-Safety to the Convention on Biological Diversity, agreed in 2000. And so on. Clearly, then, political reconciliation falls startlingly low on the list of national priorities.

Instead, the operative mentality seems to be one of denial. Members of the Saudi Shura Council told a Telegraph reporter that "there has been 'no crackdown' in Bahrain." The Arab News states proudly that the "Bahraini crown prince won't let society split," an vow the latter made a constant theme of his Thursday night television address in which he reaffirmed his commitment to "reform." Any volunteers to tell him that he is a few weeks and a few arrests too late to avoid a "split?"

Even more worryingly, the continued ambiguity surrounding the substance of timing of this "reform" makes one wonder whether the final product might not be reminiscent of the much-lauded but ultimately-illusory "reform" project initiated by King Hamad in 2001 shortly after his ascension to the throne. Aimed at ending a half-decade-long Shi'a uprising, his National Action Charter (NAC) outlining the framework for political liberalization was approved overwhelmingly by popular referendum, only to be followed by a new Bahraini Constitution promulgated unilaterally almost exactly a year later. Not only was the document drafted and issued without outside consultation, it reneged on a number of central promises made in the run-up to the referendum on the NAC, principal among them the notion that Bahrain's primary lawmaking power would reside in an elected lower house of parliament. And we see how that turned out.

So, then, assuming that the present "non-crackdown" crackdown represents Plan A, seemingly one calculated to bait opponents into the sort of violent responses that might be used to justify the portrayal of them not as political reformists but as terrorists*--and of Iran as an instigator--what should we expect for an encore? What's the plan, ya Abu Salman?



* Indeed, many individuals and opposition forums have reported receiving inflammatory mass e-mails and messages calling upon "fellow Shi'is" to undertake violent action against the government.

Anti-Government Protests in Bahrain = Nuclear Missiles in Cuba

That is the jist, anyway, of this enlightening op-ed in the Boston Globe today by--who else?--a former assistant secretary at U.S. Homeland Security. It is enlightening for the extent to which it reveals the current Iran-inspired hysteria surrounding Bahrain, which seems to be casting a blinding light that obstructs all other competing observations.

First the setup:

"THE COLD War had a line in the sand. America and the Soviet Union could wage proxy battles in Vietnam, Latin America, and Europe. But when the Soviets made a move that was too aggressive, the United States threatened real war in order to preserve the previous ground rules. That moment was the Cuban missile crisis. People throughout this Sunni Arab kingdom talk now of their own Cuban missile crisis."

I'm going to have to stop right here to ask: Is this even true? Could someone from Bahrain please leave a comment to say whether you've ever heard anyone use the word "Cuban missile crisis" in the last 3 months?

Next, after a bit of background, and instead of offering some evidence that this is indeed the view from inside Bahrain, we get a view from an anonymous U.S. official:

“In Bahrain, we could see a Shia government aligned to Iran form, a civil war unleashed, or we could support stability,’’ one senior government official told me. “We had only one move. There is no fourth option.’’

Well presumably there is a fourth option because none of these three makes much sense. First, no one apart from the al-Haqq-led "Coalition for a Republic" was calling for the wholesale overthrow of the Bahraini government, and they have been saying that for the last, what, 10 years? The second option--civil war--would by definition require two armed groups of people engaged militarily. So unless the protesters could have fought a civil war with Molotov cocktails and burning tires, there was never going to be a civil war in Bahrain.

The third option, which the U.S. is said to have chosen, is stability. Here we need to distinguish between outward stability and underlying stability. To the extent that none of the socio-political grievances that gave birth to the present crisis have been addressed--and indeed have been compounded by several orders of magnitude--we must conclude either that a) Bahrain was in fact "stable" before February 14, and somehow became "unstable" overnight; or that b) Bahrain was not then nor is now "stable."

Then we get to a bit of Wikipedia speak:

"Western commentators often argue that the Arab uprisings show the errors in our deal with the devil. ..."

"The Obama administration often reminds us ..."

"But Americans would be short-sighted not to understand that much of the Arab world also views these changes as part of an ideological war that could alter the balance of power in favor of Iran."

So we've got a lot of different, indistinct subjects and verbs here. Allow me to translate: "Western commentators" [people I disagree with]"; "the Obama Administration" [people I agree with and my former employer]; "Americans" [people who don't know much about Bahrain but hear that there are some pretty nasty things going on there]; and "much of the Arab world" [the part of the Arab world that agrees with me].

But then we get to the best and most confusing bit. Referring again to this "much of the Arab world" that is afraid of Iranian influence, she writes,

It may be that these attitudes in the Gulf are incorrect. But they are strongly held. And our silence has made these nations confused by US policy. As the present ambassador ends his post here, Obama should immediately appoint a person who can speak for and be accessible to the White House.

I have to admit that I don't really understand this paragraph, since the third sentence doesn't seem to follow from the first two, nor the last from the third. But it seems to be something like: "It might be that those in the Gulf who view Bahrain as a Iranian-proxy state waiting to happen are wrong, but they REALLY, REALLY believe they are right. And thus should the U.S. make sure that its next ambassador to Bahrain is better able to address these probably-unfounded fears." (Seemingly a nice swipe at the current ambassador, by the way.)

Perhaps the sort of fear-assuaging the writer has in mind is the acknowledgment from Gates reported yesterday that: "We already have evidence that the Iranians are trying to exploit the situation in Bahrain. ... And we also have evidence that they are talking about what they can do to try and create problems elsewhere as well." In other words, the U.S. believes that Iran may be talking about trying to think about things they might be able to do.

Ipso facto, anti-government protests in Bahrain equals nuclear missiles in Cuba poised to start a global nuclear holocaust. That sounds about right, no?

To end on a more serious note, the problem with this entire line of argument is that it is stuck in the events of a month ago. "Western observers" are not dismayed that the U.S. government would support its ally in the midst of a popular uprising, but at its response in the month that has followed. That it has remained silent throughout the extended and ongoing political witch-hunt that has been prosecuted by Bahraini authorities--speaking up only when a prominent blogger was arrested--is a separate issue entirely. The U.S. can promote "stability" in Bahrain without standing by while its government exacts group-wide punishment on those who would dare to oppose it.

But, please, for my sake, don't click on the link above to this op-ed. For a better overview of the views of the "much of the Arab world" alluded to above, read this article in the Telegraph instead:

"Saudi Arabia: there has been 'no crackdown' in Bahrain."

Update: Also read this extended article from the New York Times on Mansur al-Jamri, founder and former editor of Al-Wasat.

The Politics of Employment

It has long been gospel among political commentator and political scientist alike that the rather unforeseen longevity of the Arab Gulf monarchies is tied inextricably to their abilities to buy off political opposition using revenues generated from their control of natural resources. Ordinary Gulf citizens, so the argument goes, are content to disavow politics in exchange for guaranteed state employment and freedom from taxes. For taxation without representation, we all know, is the one sure formula for democracy. How then can one expect untaxed, wealthy, contented citizens to be democrats?

Yet among the lessons we have learned from the case of Bahrain over the previous three months is that government benefits in the Arab Gulf do not translate neatly into more politically quiescent citizens, precisely because these benefits themselves are not distributed in a politically-agnostic way. In Bahrain and elsewhere in the region, government benefits do not buy government support; government support buys government benefits.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the sphere of public-sector employment. In the past two weeks alone, hundreds if not thousands of Bahrainis have been fired from state-sector jobs after being accused of participation or complicity in anti-government protests. These include:

• a dean, 7 teachers, 25 administrators, and 62 students at the University of Bahran; and five Ph.D. students enrolled at foreign universities
• 85 workers at Batelco
• 100 from ALBA (Aluminum Bahrain)
  
• 100 from APM Terminals (which runs Bahrain's main port)
• 50 from Bahrain Airport Services
• all 15 board members of Bahrain Petroleum Company (BAPCO)'s trade union, with another 230 employees "under investigation"
• some two dozen Gulf Air employees
• 30 doctors and nurses from the Ministry of Health
• members of sports clubs
  

I'm sure there are others (and will be more to come), but you probably get the idea--which is that in Bahrain public-sector employment is not a tool with which to gain regime supporters but a tool with which to reward those who are already supportive, or at least are not known to be otherwise. This point is so clear that we need not even reference the wholesale exclusion of Bahraini Shi'a from the police and military (more on this in a future post!) in order to make it.

As a matter of fact, we need not even reference any of the sacked state-sector employees noted above. This is because my 2009 Bahrain survey demonstrates that well before the current political crisis erupted, Shi'a Bahrainis were already disproportionately excluded from, or at least under-represented in, the public sector. And this is true even after controlling for relevant individual-level factors that may influence one's sector of work such as age, gender, education level, and so on.

As we see in the graph above, around 38% of employed Shi'is interviewed in my Bahrain survey reported working for the public sector. This question was asked directly in the demographics section of the survey, i.e.: "What is your sector of work: public or private?" By contrast, a bit more than 50% of employed Sunnis report working in the government sector. (For those statistically-inclined, the Pearson’s chi-squared test statistic measuring the statistical independence of the two means allows one to reject the null hypothesis that they are equal, with an associated p-value of 0.061.)

Yet for many reasons this result is not satisfying. For one thing, the graph above does not account for other variables apart from ethnicity that are also likely to affect one's sector of employment. For another thing, our sample here is limited only to those who are employed, meaning that our sub-sample is not a random sample of the Bahraini population but a random sample of the employed Bahraini population, which is a truncated distribution. So if there are individual-level factors that are correlated with both ethnicity AND employment, our results above may be biased.

Fortunately, however, this worry turns out to be unfounded. Though I will not go into the full details here, there are well-known statistical models that help account for precisely this sort of bias (I use a Heckman selection model). When we estimate the relationship between ethnic group membership and sector of employment given that one is employed, we find that being a Shi'i is NOT related to whether one is employed per se, but has a strong, negative relationship with public-sector employment specifically. And this after controlling for education level, age, and gender.

Below we find the predicted probability that a random Bahraini is employed in the public sector given that s/he is employed, based on the results of the regression model described above. We see that these probabilities are essentially the same as the proportions reported above in the first graph, meaning that the relationship between ethnicity and employment sector is robust.

The likelihood that a Shi'i Bahraini is employed in the state sector given that s/he is employed is around 38%, a Sunni Bahraini 52%. Being a Sunni in Bahrain, then, increases one's likelihood of public-sector employment by about 37%, all else being equal. That is to say, for two individuals of the same age, gender, and education level, distinguished only by ethnic membership, the Sunni is more than one-third more likely to be employed in the public sector given that s/he is employed. No small advantage indeed.


I think the basic argument has been made: while the recent spate of politically-motivated firings from Bahrain's public employers offers the latest evidence that state-sector jobs in Bahrain are not distributed in a politically-agnostic way, in fact this phenomenon is nothing new. Even in 2009 (and one presumes long before), Bahraini Shi'a were disproportionately under-represented in the public sector.

Of course, none of this comes as news to Bahraini Shi'a, who are all too aware of the political bases of employment in Bahrain. The following cartoon I found on an opposition forum some time ago, showing 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." My survey results, then, only give further evidence to what had already been long assumed.


For now, I will leave you with this uplifting quote (and one that bears on the argument here about reward and punishment) with corresponding video from Sh. Nasr bin Hamad Al Khalifa, a son, as his name implies, of the Bahraini king. It was delivered, if you can't tell by the 12-foot flag in the background, on Bahrain state TV via telephone:

"Bahrain is an island with no escape passage; everybody who interfered in these issues will be punished and everybody who took a stand [supporting the regime] will be awarded. The people who stood with or against the king are well-known to us."

Iran Quote of the Day

I'm not sure whether it's him or those quoting him, but U.S. Defense Secretary Gates has a funny way of always talking about Iran and the threat it poses to Bahrain and the GCC without actually saying anything.

Yesterday in Riyadh to "attempt to thaw ice-cold relations between Saudi Arabia and the U.S.," for example, he offers this beauty in the 60 seconds or so that he spoke to the media:

"We already have evidence that the Iranians are trying to exploit the situation in Bahrain,” Mr. Gates said, repeating earlier assertions without providing details. “And we also have evidence that they are talking about what they can do to try and create problems elsewhere as well."

So, now, not only does the U.S. have evidence that Iran is TRYING to exploit the situation in Bahrain, it also has more evidence that Iran is TALKING ABOUT what they CAN do to TRY and create problems elsewhere. In other words the U.S. believes that Iran may be talking about trying to think about things they might be able to do. That sounds dangerous.

A good translation for the quote into Gulf Arabic is--"Fine, King 'Abdallah, we agree with you [and Sa'ad Hariri] that Iran is interfering in everyone's affairs. Just please don't cancel that $80 billion arms deal we signed last year. You may notice that our economy is not doing so hot these days."

Now, no one will disagree that Iran and the Arab Gulf states are engaged in a regional struggle for power and influence. But it would be nice to be offered some hard evidence of Iranian "meddling," in Bahrain or elsewhere, that doesn't amount to pure speculation, or to the fact that al-Manar is offering pro-Shi'a coverage of the protests in Bahrain. By this logic, Bahrain and the GCC states are also "interfering" in the affairs of Iran, and the whole point becomes meaningless.

Anyway, I am traveling this weekend but hope to write a new article on employment in Bahrain that everyone should find interesting.

Facts on the Ground: A Reliable Estimate of Bahrain's Sunni-Shi'i Balance, and Evidence of Demographic Engineering

The last time the Government of Bahrain reported official demographic statistics on its Sunni and Shi'i communities was in its very first census in 1941, which put the percentage of Shi'a at 53% of the island's population. (See Qubain 1955, who tells that the census was taken "primarily for food control purposes.") In the intervening 70 years, speculation about Bahrain's evolving Sunni-Shi'i balance has become both a local flash-point and a source of frustration for those attempting to study the country.

In an April 4 commentary published by the Carnegie Endowment from Peace, for example ("Bahrain: Between the United States and Saudi Arabia"), we find the following note:

The population of Bahrain is predominantly Shia. Estimates range from as high as 75 percent in the past to about 65 percent at present—but these figures are imprecise.

And yesterday in the New York Post:

Shiites account for 75 percent of the population -- but for only 14 of the parliament's 40 members.

Six days ago in the Bloomberg news:

Shiites make up about 70 percent of Bahrain’s population and many retain cultural and family ties with Iran as well as with Shiites in Saudi Arabia.

The New York Times three weeks ago:

The Farhan family is poor, like many in Sitra and like many of the 70 percent of the country that is Shiite.

And in Lee Smith's recent (and highly-recommended) article in The Weekly Standard:

The opposition says that it is not a sectarian uprising, but a political reform movement, and points to members of the country’s Sunni minority (roughly 35 percent of the population) who support their demands.

A long story short, then: no one knows exactly what proportion of Bahrain's population is Shi'i (or Sunni), an ambiguity complicated only further by the government's decade-long program of naturalizing Arab and non-Arab Sunnis for work in the police and military. Once but a rumor, al-tajnis al-siyasi (or "political naturalization," as it is termed by opponents) is today widely-accepted fact. (See the Carnegie Endowment piece referenced above, for example.) Because Bahrain's Sunni-Shi'i balance is not simply a product of nature, therefore, there is no obvious way to estimate it based on, say, natural birth or immigration rates.

Fortunately, among the other insights afforded by my 2009 Bahrain mass political survey is a much more accurate estimate of the country's current ethno-religious demographics. So we may now cease quoting the "estimated 65% to 75% Shi'a" figure; for it is wrong.

First, I will repeat for the uninitiated what you will learn elsewhere in this blog: that in early 2009 I conducted as part of my dissertation on ethnic conflict and political mobilization in the Arab Gulf the first-ever mass political survey of Bahraini citizens, administering the widely-used Arab Democracy Barometer survey instrument that aims to measure the political attitudes and orientations of ordinary citizens in the Arab world. This same instrument has been administered to date also in Jordan, Morocco, Palestine, Kuwait, Algeria, Yemen, and Lebanon. The survey was conducted based on a nationally-representative sample of 500 Bahraini households, which were interviewed by local field interviewers. (Of the sample of 500, 435 interviews were actually completed; see point #5 below). For more information on the sample, see here.

As for the findings regarding Bahrain's Sunni-Shi'i balance, then, we see this below. Bahraini Shi'is comprised 58% of my survey sample, Sunnis 42%--a ratio far different from that commonly cited. (Note that these categories do not differentiate between Arab and Persian Shi'a, Hawala, tribal vs. non-tribal Sunnis, and so on.) The estimated sampling error is 0.0238, or about 2.4%. So, the 95% confidence interval for the estimate of the Sunni proportion is approximately 37.7% to 47.0%, or 42.4% ± 1.96 * 2.4%. Correspondingly, the 95% confidence interval for the Shi'a proportion would be 57.6 ± 1.96 * 2.4%, or between 52.9% and 62.3%.


Or, with 95% confidence intervals:

The geographical distribution of these surveyed households as well as their confessional affiliation we find below in my confessional map of Bahrain, about which I posted a previous article. In addition to demonstrating the geographical segregation of Bahrain's two communities, the map also shows the representativeness of the survey sample. (Ignore the green dots; these were added for the previous article.) Finally, for anyone familiar with Bahrain's neighborhoods and cities, it will be obvious that the map evidences the well-known population centers of each group (i.e., al-Muharraq and al-Rifa' for Sunnis; the Sitra peninsula, the villages along al-Budaiyi' Road, and the villages west of Hamad Town for Shi'is), while places that one would expect to be ethnically-mixed ('Isa Town and Hamad Town, for example) are shown to be such.



I appreciate that this conclusion that (at least as of early 2009) Shi'is comprise less than 60% of the Bahraini population is likely to be controversial--and, given what it implies, it probably should be--so I will attempt to preempt some of the more obvious questions and criticisms now.

1. Why should we trust your sample?
   
   This has already been covered here. The short version: the 500-household sample is nationally-representative, and there is no reason to think it would have been manipulated. If 500 data points seems small, recall that Bahrain is about 3.5 times the size of Washington, D.C., and its citizen population according to the 2010 census is just 568,339. So our population-to-sample ratio is around 1,137:1. To achieve this ratio in the U.S., for example, you would need to interview over 270,000 people.
2. But how do you know if a Bahraini is a Sunni or a Shi'i? You're not even a Bahraini!
   
   All interviews were conducted by local fieldworkers, who are more than capable on the basis of location, language/accent (see Clive Holes' work on dialect in Bahrain; or Lee Smith's series in The Weekly Standard), and other cues to determine whether a given respondent is a Sunni or Shi'i. Indeed, as one gathers from the map above, there are but a few places in Bahrain where there can be any question of ethnic membership simply on the basis of location alone. For reasons of sensitivity, however, individuals were not asked directly. If field interviewers were unsure (as happened in several cases with respondents of Persian background), they simply marked ethnicity as unknown. These cases (3 only) are excluded from the proportion reported above.


3. Why does your estimate differ from the standard figure of between 65-75% Shi'a.
   
   The most obvious answer we have already alluded to above, namely that this figure fails to account for the high rate of Sunni naturalization of the previous decade or more.


4. But this just can't be right!
   
   Well, if it helps at all, I am not the first person to make this point. In a conversation with a well-known Bahraini political leader (a Sunni no less), he warned me against believing this standard proportion, saying:
   
   "By the way, you mentioned that you believe ... that [the] Shia population may represent some 70% of the population. You should take into consideration that up to 20,000 Bahrainis may be Saudis residing in Dammam and other Saudi cities and are used as a voting reservoir. In my opinion the population mix is closer to 40-60% given the fast pace of naturalization. ...
   
   The end result [of the naturalization program] is some 100,000 [naturalized] citizens in the last 10 years, more than 90% of which are Sunni (in 2001 thousands of second and third generation Bahrainis of Persian Shia origin were naturalized). The effect may have brought the ratio closer to the original 1970 balance of 60-40%. I believe the project is not complete and it is likely naturalization is still taking place at a rate of 10,000 per year. Compare this to Canada and Australia, the two developed economies with the highest naturalization rates, and theirs are around 0.75% for Canada and 0.5% for Australia. And these are countries that have lots of land for people; Bahrain is already too crowded and the land too expensive for anyone to afford, and we’re bringing in even more people."
   
   As evidence of this rate of around 10,000 per year, he said:
   
   "In September 2007 Sheikh Ali Salman asked what was the population of Bahrain to the Interior Minister, Sheikh Rashid, and his answer indicated that around 60,000 people were naturalized between then and 2001. This is based on the fact that the average population growth rate for the preceding years was around 2.4%; however, the Interior Minister’s figure indicated a jump in the annual growth rate to about 4.2% from 2001 to 2007, meaning there was a 1.8% naturalization rate during these years. This equals out to around 9,000 citizens per year."
   
   Of course, this Bahraini is not the only one to acknowledge or complain of the government's naturalization policy. In the article published by the Carnegie Endowment for Peace mentioned already, for example, Marina Ottoway notes that:
   
   "The population of Bahrain is predominantly Shia. Estimates range from as high as 75 percent in the past to about 65 percent at present—but these figures are imprecise. The decrease is the result of an extraordinary attempt to change the composition of the population in order to dilute the Shia presence. While the government has never admitted the existence of such a program, there is no doubt that the regime has granted Bahraini citizenship to thousands of Sunni immigrants—estimates vary widely, from about 60,000 people (according to Bahraini human rights sources), to as much as double that figure. What is clear, however, is that many of the new citizens were recruited into the security forces and have become the hated face of the repression."
   
   Thus the issue of "political naturalization" is no political bogeyman used by the Shi'a opposition to rally supporters. For one thing, its existence is now common knowledge; for another, it is not just Shi'a who worry about its effects.


5. But you only completed 435 interviews from the 500 household sample. Maybe your figure is skewed.
   
   Perhaps, although the remaining interviews are randomly-distributed so there should be minimal influence on the aggregate estimate of the Sunni-Shi'i ratio. That is to say, the 65 remaining interviews we failed to complete because my funding and residence visa in Bahrain were running out, not because we were systematically unable to reach certain respondents. (In fact, looking at the locations of the uncompleted interviews, they are probably more concentrated in Sunni-populated areas than in Shi'i-dominated areas.) Finally, even if we were to say for the sake of argument that, for example, ALL of the remaining interviews were somehow Shi'is, our overall estimate of Bahrain's Shi'a population increases only 5 percentage points to around 63%, which even then is still lower than the typical 65-75% estimate.

In sum, there is every reason to believe that the Shi'a of Bahrain today comprise less than 60% of the country's total population. Not only does this estimate represent a vast improvement over current educated guesses reported in media and elsewhere, but it calls attention to the pace and scope of Bahrain's program of politically-motivated naturalization of Sunnis.

In the aftermath of the violent crackdown in Bahrain following the arrival of the GCC's "Peninsula Shield" force several weeks ago, media coverage of the continuing conflict there has all but disappeared amid competing crises in Japan, Libya, Syria, and Yemen. This lack of attention has given the false impression that Bahrain's political struggle has somehow run its course, resolving itself through who knows what means. Yet as evidenced by my survey finding here, the crisis has been brewing for no short while in Bahrain, its leaders having long ago taken, as it were, preventative measures in their program of al-tajnis. One should therefore not be lulled by the current lack of press into thinking that it is likely to end soon.

Note: to see some preliminary substantive results of the survey, go here.

What's the "Cooperation" in Gulf Cooperation Council?

Ask anyone what is the Gulf Cooperation Council and, even if he can't name all six member states, there's a good chance he can name their most notable characteristic: that they are all oil-producing, rentier economies. The common image of the GCC is that of a more exclusive OPEC--an inner circle of the most important fuel exporters that exists for the sake of coordinating output, economic strategery, and generally sticking it to the gas-guzzling man.

Yet in light of the Council's dramatic military intervention in Bahrain, and even more recently the choice of retired Bahraini Lt. Gen. 'Abd al-Latif bin Rashid al-Zayani as its new Secretary General, it is increasingly difficult to view the GCC as an organization focused primarily on economics. The "Cooperation" in Gulf Cooperation Council, if it had not been clear already, is now clearly more akin to the cooperation of NATO than to that of OPEC.

That the GCC's raison d'être was security all along is not necessarily a controversial idea. As Mohammed Ayoob argues in a recent article in Foreign Policy, for example, the GCC

was established in 1981 in the wake of the Iranian revolution, ostensibly to promote economic cooperation and defend its members against external threats. However, it quickly became clear that given the similar nature of oil producing rentier economies in the Gulf, talk about increasing economic exchange was merely a façade. So was the argument that the Gulf monarchies needed an organization to coordinate their external security policies.

Its real purpose, he continues, was "not defense against external enemies threatening the security of GCC states but cooperation against domestic challenges to authoritarian regimes"; it was the Gulf's reaction "to the Iranian revolution of 1979 in which people's power toppled the strongest autocracy in the neighborhood. The Arab autocracies of the Gulf did not want to share the Shah's fate."

Enter the new GCC Secretary General, Lt. Gen. 'Abd al-Latif bin Rashid al-Zayani of Bahrain.

Selected after Bahrain's first choice was rejected by Qatar due to his role in the countries' erstwhile dispute over the Hawar Islands, al-Zayani is notable as the GCC's first leader from a military background. And he wasted no time in emphasizing the Council's security purpose and, of course, in directing GCC ire toward Iran and its "interference" in Gulf affairs, namely those of Bahrain and Kuwait. In his very first statement after taking office, al-Zayani spoke of the "glorious march" of Gulf countries and "underscored the principle of collective security and commitment to stave off any foreign designs."

Then, in an "extraordinary meeting" yesterday in Riyadh, GCC foreign ministers "severely condemned Iranian interference in the internal affairs of Bahrain which is in violation of international pacts"; condemned "the blatant Iranian interference in Kuwait through planting spy cells on its territory"; and, you guessed it, "condemned the baseless accusations in the irresponsible statement of the Iranian parliament regarding Saudi Arabia and considers it a hostile stand and a provocative interference."

Al-Ziyani thereafter gave his first newspaper interview with Al-Riyadh, the transcript of which has been translated into English here. He was asked directly about his military background and how it may shape his priorities (as if he had any independent decision-making role) as GCC leader. Though emphasizing his commitment to non-military objectives, he says interestingly that "the Al-Jazeera Shield force [i.e., the one in Bahrain] is the nucleus of a Gulf defense force" that GCC Defense Ministers will/should work to develop further.

Apart from the symbolic significance of a retired Lieutenant General at the head of the GCC, we might also note another aspect of his résumé: a long-standing relationship with the U.S. and British militaries. He studied at Sandhurst and Perth in the U.K.; at the Air Force Institute of Technology in, Dayton, Ohio; at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California; took part in the Command and General Staff course at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; and "received the sword of honor along with the title of Master Logistician from the US Army." This represents, in total, some 15 years of experience with Western military academies.

Whether or not this will translate into improved U.S.-GCC military coordination (to the extent that the GCC itself can be described as having an independent military policy) remains to be seen. Yet the quiet decision by the U.S. to suspend military arms deliveries to Lebanon--several weeks after the Bahraini government canceled flights to and from Beirut out of supposed fear that Hizballah (read: Iran) might use them to transfer arms to Bahrain's opposition--may provide some indication.

If Ayoob is correct that at the GCC's inception in 1981 "the argument that the Gulf monarchies needed an organization to coordinate their external security policies" was a façade, thirty years later in 2011 this is arguably still the case. The only difference is that, previously, the excuse of an external military threat was used to coordinate domestic repression. Now, the excuse of an external military threat is used, as in Bahrain today, to engage in joint GCC enforcement of domestic repression, backed by a "nucleus of a Gulf defense force."

If the current crackdown in Bahrain represents just the "nucleus," surely the population there and elsewhere in the Arab Gulf cannot be excited at the prospect of further movement, as represented symbolically by the ascension of al-Zayani, in the direction of the full-fledged atom.

Winning the Battle, Losing the (Media) War: Al-Wasat Edition

Fresh off our observations yesterday that the Bahraini government is growing increasingly aware that it is losing the media battle being waged between it and anti-government activists, we find out today that the country's only remaining non-state newspaper, Al-Wasat, has been "suspended." It did not print a Sunday edition, and its online website is blocked from inside Bahrain. This comes several weeks after armed thugs physically attacked the newspaper's printing presses at its office, forcing it to relocate temporarily and greatly reduce its content.

It is worth quoting at length the article that announces the decision--a piece in the state-run Gulf Daily News that shouts subtly, "NEWSPAPER SUSPENDED"--for sheer comedic value:

MANAMA: Bahrain last night suspended Al Wasat newspaper for publishing "unethical and unprofessional" reports.

The Information Affairs Authority also referred the newspaper to concerned authorities for an inquiry.

A programme on Bahrain TV last night detailed a report listing the "unprofessional and unethical practices" committed by Al Wasat, which were characterised by "lies, defamation and plagiarism".

The newspaper also published, with malicious intent, news and photographs on recent security developments, which were unauthentic, fabricated and misleading, directly targeting Bahrain's security and stability, according to the report.

The report also revealed compelling evidence that these news stories and photographs were published between March 25 and 28.

This represents a crime punishable by laws governing Press and publications in Bahrain, according to the report.

The TV programme also said the newspaper used old news published in Arab and local newspapers as well as on websites and online forums.

It then changed names of people in the stories with fictitious ones, according to the report.

The Central Informatics Organisation sent a letter to the Information Affairs Authority in this regard after checking names mentioned in the newspaper reports and found them to be fictitious, the Bahrain TV programme added.

So essentially through intrepid investigative work the government-run BahrainTV has "uncovered" some unethical media practices by its only rival. Go figure. Oh, and there's the small detail of the paper's Editor-in-Chief, Mansur al-Jamri ($10 if you can guess which village he's from), who just so happens to be the son of the late spiritual leader of the 1990s Shi'a intifada and ranking marja' in Bahrain, Sh. 'Abd al-Amir al-Jamri. But I doubt that's relevant.

Assuming al-Wasat remains "suspended" indefinitely, and given that the left-leaning Al-Waqt went under a few months ago, we are left in Bahrain with 5 main local newspapers by my count, all of them government-owned or -affiliated. There's Akhbar al-Khalij (pro-Prime Minister), Al-Bilad (ditto), Al-Watan (close to the Royal Court), Al-Ayam (owned by a former information minister-turned-adviser to the King), and The Gulf Daily News (English-language sister paper of Akhbar Al-Khalij).

If one desires some indication of the sort of unbiased reporting we can expect from this bunch, consider this story I highlighted in a previous post on the uncanny terrorist-thwarting ability of the Bahraini government. It was centered around 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.)

The suspension of Al-Wasat therefore represents the government's latest riposte in the ongoing "media jihad" waged by the opposition. Recently it had resorted to arresting international news crews, including one from CNN, but presumably it's found that local outlets like Al-Wasat are less (i.e., un-) able to fight back. Of course, such a move is likely only to drive individuals to the Internet for their news, where coverage is much more polarized and rumor-based. It will be interesting to see, then, whether this crackdown on print media will be extended now into cyberspace.

Update: the aforementioned editor-in-chief of Al-Wasat, Mansur al-Jamri, has released the following statement (sorry for the bad translation):

"Brothers and sisters, perhaps all of your have seen what Bahrain TV aired Saturday night (April 2, 2011). What they published is untrue and is targeting Al-Wasat because it raised(?) the Waving Flag of Bahrain [a pro-government campaign; not sure of the meaning here]. ... We are preparing to issue a statement about what was published on Bahrain TV. I attempted to call into Bahrain TV many times, but they wouldn't let me respond. Thank you."

The Arabic (via the Facebook page of the February 14 movement):

نقلاً عن ثورة 14 فبراير يوم الغضب في البحرين) على الفيس بوك)

كلمة الدكتور منصور الجمري رئيس تحرير جريدة الوسط لموظفيه ارسلها عبر البريد الإلكتروني : الاخوة والاخوات العاملين ربما جميعكم شاهد ما بثه تلفزيون البحرين مساء السبت 2 أبريل 2011، ومانشر ليس صحيحا وهو استهداف للوسط لأنها رفعت راية البحرين خفاقة.حقوقكم باذن الله محفوظة، ولكننا سنتوقف عن الاصدار بناء على ما نشر في تلفزيون البحرين.ولقد حاولت الاتصال... بالتلفزيون كثيرا ولم يسمحوا لي بالرد.شكرا لكم ... وبحفظ الله.

Longer and more substantive statements are quoted in this piece from the Associated Press.

Update 2: In case you hadn't yet fully appreciated the political connotations of all of this, here is a video making its way around pro-government forums showing a ceremonial burning of the final issue of Al-Wasat (or Al-Wasakh--"dirt"--as he calls it) "on the occasion of the stoppage of [its] publishing" by some guys in al-Busaiteen that really like the Crown Prince:



Update 3: I agree the updates are getting ridiculous now, but it cannot be ignored that the ban on Al-Wasat turned out instead to be a coup, its editor-in-chief and two other top editors having been replaced.

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