After the Sheikhs: The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies (38 page)

At about this time the protests had begun to reach Manama’s financial district and were being predicted to soon reach palaces and government buildings. The Bahrain Formula One Grand Prix—a central pillar in Bahrain’s economic strategy—even had to be called off,
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much to the consternation of the ruling family. Clearly concerned that the king was due to be ousted in the same manner as the Tunisian and Egyptian regimes, the Bahraini security forces unleashed a massive series of reprisals on the suburbs and villages believed to be home to most of the protestors. Moreover, in order to bolster the defences of their key government and security installations a deployment of about 1500 Saudi soldiers and over 500 UAE security personnel were invited to cross the King Fahd Causeway that links Bahrain to mainland Saudi Arabia. An unprecedented move for these Gulf monarchies,
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the deployment was justified on the grounds that it was an official response of the GCC’s aforementioned Peninsula Shield Force, despite there being no threat of foreign invasion and despite there being no significant contingents from the other Gulf monarchies.
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Although the Bahraini authorities communicated to their citizens that ‘…the foreign [Saudi and UAE] troops have started arriving to Bahrain in light of the regretful situation the kingdom
is currently witnessing’ and called upon ‘…all citizens and residents to cooperate fully with the GCC forces and welcome them warmly’
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within days there were reports that Saudi and UAE forces had been engaging with protestors and taking part in arrest squads.
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Unable to quell the protests, several hundred more political prisoners were taken, including academics, journalists, human rights activists, and even doctors and nurses—the latter groups having witnessed the injuries and deaths sustained by the protestors. Further delegitimising the regime, reports also began to circulate that the Bahraini government was trying to bolster its security services with fresh mercenaries from Pakistan and elsewhere. Having always had a substantial contingent of Pakistani nationals serving in its security sector, along with many Jordanian and Yemeni soldiers, it was believed that the authorities were trying rapidly to increase rapidly the number of non-Arabs in their employment, presumably on the grounds that such foreigners would be more willing to open fire on Bahraini nationals. A Pakistani conglomerate with close links to the Pakistani military was understood to have been recruiting and airlifting thousands of soldiers to Bahrain, while adverts for the ‘Urgent Need of the Bahraini National Guard’ had begun to appear in Pakistani newspapers soon after the first protests in Bahrain.
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Later in 2011 reports also began circulating that Bahrain was trying to recruit from Indonesia and Malaysia, with a noted Saudi scholar claiming that the ‘Bahraini monarchy was at the end of its rope’ and that ‘they [the monarchy] do not trust even the loyalists in Bahrain so they need to seek mercenaries from elsewhere—and these mercenaries will one day be captured and tried in public’.
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Unsurprisingly, the protestors’ key demands soon evolved from simple demands for political reform to full blown regime change, with chants of ‘Down with Hamad’—referring to the king
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—becoming commonplace. Moreover, Bahrain’s aforementioned long-serving prime minister
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—a member of the ruling family and an uncle of the king—was being publicly accused of leading the crackdown and inviting the Saudi, UAE, and other foreign troops into the kingdom. Over the summer of 2011 the protests continued unabated with frequent reports of killings, arson, and the seizing of activists. Many of these crackdowns were recorded by onlookers on their smart phones and uploaded onto YouTube or other video-sharing websites. These have been viewed by thousands of other Gulf nationals and heavily discussed on social media
platforms. Facing criticism that Al-Jazeera was not covering the various Arab Spring revolutions in a uniform manner, the Qatar-based network even produced a documentary on the Bahraini protests. Entitled
Shouting in the Dark
it was watched by more than 200,000 YouTube users in the first week that it was broadcast. Depicting police brutality and various other human rights violations, it led to a diplomatic rift between Qatar and Bahrain, with the latter’s minister for foreign affairs
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tweeting ‘It’s clear that in Qatar there are those who don’t want anything good for Bahrain. And this film on Al-Jazeera English is the best example of this inexplicable hostility’.
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Since then the government has hastily tried to create more public sector jobs and raise salaries—following a $10 billion emergency package from the GCC—and has sought to convene a ‘National Consensus Dialogue’ with the various opposition groups and political parties in order to ‘re-launch the political reform processes’ and ‘write a new chapter in the country’s history’.
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But the leading Shia political society—Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society—boycotted the discussions and in many ways the other societies involved in the dialogue now no longer really represent the substantial popular protests on Bahrain’s streets. The king also initiated the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry to investigate and report on the crackdown. By appointing several world renowned human rights lawyers above reproach, including former UN lawyer Cherif Bassiouni, the king’s intention was likely to buy some breathing space when dealing with the international community. Indeed, the commission was described by some Bahraini opposition members as being the ‘king’s perfect defence shield’ as it allowed him to continue suppressing protests for several months while appeasing concerned western diplomats and other observers by convincing them that something was being done.

Although the commission’s findings, published in November 2011 and broadcast to the nation, were suitably damning, describing how prisoners were tortured to death, threatened with rape, and often hooded, whipped, beaten, and subjected to electric-shock treatment,
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little significant action has since been taken by the authorities. Most individuals and departments blamed by the commission have not been punished, with only ten junior police officers having stood trial,
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and only a few of the hundreds of political prisoners have been released. Moreover, crackdowns on protests have continued and appear to be no less brutal than
before with reports of deaths and torture remaining frequent. These accelerated after the lengthy hunger strike of a key opposition figure
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and the reinstatement of the Bahrain Formula One Grand Prix in March 2012—deemed by
The Independent
newspaper to be the ‘most controversial race’ in F1 history.
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With F1’s governing body seemingly oblivious to the situation, over 100,000 protestors reportedly took to the streets, with security forces firing teargas and stun grenades into the crowds.
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One demonstrator was even found ‘peppered with birdshot… after having been beaten and partially burned’.
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Opposition sources now claim that over eighty Bahrainis have died since the uprisings began,
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with nearly 5000 Shia having been fired from their jobs,
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with hundreds of homes having recently been raided, and with over $10 million having been looted by security personnel from Shia communities.
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Oman: protests and promises

As another relatively poor Gulf monarchy, Oman also faced serious protests and riots in 2011. Much like in Bahrain, the protestors were not initially calling for the overthrow of the regime, but were rather expressing their grievances over poor economic opportunities, the lack of political reform, and widespread corruption in the government. Unsurprisingly the most serious protests occurred in Oman’s more indigent areas, notably the northern city of Sohar where a number of protestors—most of whom had congregated around the Globe Roundabout as part of the ‘Green March’—died in clashes with the police in February 2011. But several hundred protestors were also reported to have rallied in the capital city of Muscat where they had translated their banner slogans into English and French for the benefit of the international media. Following swift promises of increased subsidies, pay rises for the public sector, social security benefits for the unemployed, and other benefits estimated to have cost the government $2.6 billion,
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Oman’s ruler
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went on to dismiss twelve ministers in a further effort to appease the opposition.
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But in early April 2011 Omani newspapers ran headlines that makeshift weapons had been discovered in the houses of protestors, including members of a group called ‘Gang of the Dragon’. Photographs were displayed indicating that knives and swords were being manufactured.
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And by the end of the month fresh protests had erupted elsewhere in the country, with hundreds spilling onto the streets of Oman’s southern city of
Salalah and with smaller protests taking place in Haima, a key oil-producing region, and in Ibri. The demands again focused on economic concerns and greater government accountability, but this time the authorities found it harder to disperse the protestors, many of whom remained encamped in Salalah’s central square for weeks.
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Although several hundred protestors were imprisoned during this period, only a small handful was kept in custody.
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Nevertheless, with fresh demonstrations in May 2011 there were reports of much greater heavy-handedness from the security forces—including armoured vehicles being deployed to evict protestors from their tents and dismantle roadblocks, and with shots being fired into the air. Hundreds more prisoners were taken and two protestors were reported to have been shot. Protestors in Salalah claimed that the government was ‘trying to crush [their] movement’
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and dozens of activists were given one year prison sentences for ‘damaging public property’ and ‘attacking public employees’.
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Seven were even sentenced to five years’ imprisonment, having been charged with ‘shutting down work at a government organisation’.
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In turn the wave of arrests led to further protests in summer 2011 when demonstrators in Sohar called for the release of these prisoners in addition to the meeting of their other, earlier demands. Although the ‘young protesters’ were reported to have decided to end their demonstration and return home so as to ‘avoid confrontation with security forces that could have bad consequences’, security forces were nonetheless described as having been ‘present in big numbers’ and teargas and baton charges were used to disperse the remaining crowds.
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In parallel to the security clampdown, the Omani authorities also began encouraging loyalist rallies, which often involved motorcades of several hundred cars driving around Muscat. Although the state-backed media claimed these were spontaneous displays of affection for the ruler, opposition activists claim that the state-owned telecommunications company
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had been sending out multiple SMS messages during the nights preceding the rallies, urging Omani nationals to join in. Since the beginning of the protests the authorities have also sought to limit further the actions of existing civil society organisations, especially those relating to human rights. As with most of the other Gulf monarchies a state-backed human rights organisation was set up, and although it did offer support and advice to protestors and political prisoners, its lack of independence and neutrality has been criticised by many observers. Moreover, in 2011 there was
a noticeable rise in media censorship, with journalists and bloggers having been arrested. Most significantly, in August 2011 one of Oman’s few independent newspapers—
Al-Zaman
—was threatened with closure following the publication of an article alleging corruption in the Ministry for Interior. The newspaper’s editor-in-chief was interrogated while the article’s author
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—a prominent Omani journalist and filmmaker, and a participant in some of the protests—was arrested and brought in for questioning. Without access to a lawyer he was charged with ‘insulting the minister for justice and his deputy’, ‘attempting to create a division in society’, ‘abusing the judiciary in Oman’, ‘violating the publications and publishing law’, and ‘practising a profession without a permit from the Ministry for Information’. Representatives for the Committee to Project Journalists explained the writer’s subsequent trial was due to ‘the Omani authorities engaging in retaliatory tactics against [the accused] for his critical writing’ and that ‘the steps taken by the Omani judiciary suggest that this is a political vendetta rather than an effort to apply justice’. Similarly a group of Omani intellectuals, journalists, and activists issued a statement condemning the closure of
Al-Zaman
, stating that it would ‘… take us back to a world of repression and restriction of freedoms’.
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