The Crisis in Bahrain: Is a Negotiated Solution Possible? (original) (raw)
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Challenges for National Dialogue in the Post-Arab Spring Era: The Case of Bahrain
2019
The “Pearl Spring”, the mass protest movement which occurred in Bahrain in 2011, gathered a lot of attention amid the wave of the Arab Spring. However, this protest movement was repressed and the monarchy held onto its rule. What has happened to the country since then? The existing literature has shown that Bahraini politics after the 2011 uprising have been characterized by strengthened authoritarian rule and deepening social divisions. Against this background, this article examines formal and informal, royal-led and society-led attempts for national reconciliation. Though sincere efforts to bridge these social divisions have been made, their success has been limited. This article illustrates that a lack of mutual trust or consensus on the form of governance has led to this limited success. Furthermore, examination of the situation of youth societies also reveals the influence of the rules of the game exerted on the civilian society. To overcome such a dilemma, there was a call for national consensus on the Bahraini constitution, but divisions among the society as a whole, as well as among the ruling family and the opposition, have cast a shadow over national reconciliation.
Journal of Islamic Studies, 2014
More than four years after the so-called "Arab Spring" began, headlines across most of the Middle East seem depressingly retro. The United States is fighting Sunni extremists in Iraq. Activists imprisoned for peacefully protesting a repressive government in Egypt are on hunger strike. Gazans are digging out from the most recent Israeli bombardment. People from Morocco to Oman face poor job prospects and rising living costs. In 2011, people in the region argued over which dictator would be the next to fall. Today, activists breathe a sigh of relief when colleagues are released from prison on bail, even if they still face farcical trials. The sole bright spot is Tunisia, where despite setbacks , a genuine political (if not yet social) transition continues. Both because of the depressing nature of current events and the ease with which they overwhelm, Dispatches from the Arab Spring: Understanding the New Middle East1 2 offers a head-clearing experience. Reading it is a bit like looking at a wedding album amidst divorce proceedings. It's a reminder of 1 Carolyn Barnett is a Fellow in the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 2 Paul Amar and Vijay Prashad (eds.), Dispatches from the Arab Spring: Understanding the New Middle East (Minneapolis, m n : University of Minnesota Press, 2013).
Citizens, Not Subjects: Debunking the Sectarian Narrative of Bahrain's Pro-Democracy Movement
Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, 2011
While President Obama’s Middle East speech on May 19, 2011 was a welcome change of course, it was delivered long after the United States should have started backing its rhetoric with action and trying to stop the gross human rights violations occurring in Bahrain. His administration must take advantage of the shrinking window of opportunity to implement the ideals envisioned in his historic 2009 Cairo speech, for the United States’ standing is now at risk in a pivotal region in the world – one that is at the center of its entire national security strategy. Washington has continued to defer to Manama based on the pretext that the ongoing conflict is more about sectarianism than democracy. But to dismiss the demonstrations as merely the latest iteration of a centuries-old sectarian conflict ignores the complex social, political, and economic factors that far surpass mere sectarian rivalries. Bahrain suffers from the same ills plaguing other Arab countries: a shortage of professional jobs for the growing number of its college graduates, increasing prices in the face of stagnating wages, and little political space for citizens to call upon their government to address existing social and economic challenges. As with other Arab regimes, the government diverts its citizens’ attention to external forces and actors to avoid assuming any responsibility for solving its domestic problems. Specifically, allegations of an Iranian conquest via the Bahraini Shi’a are simply another iteration of the royal family’s traditional manufacturing of sectarian conflict for its own benefit. Although Iran’s goals of regional dominance are no secret, the threat of an Iranian-style Shi’a takeover is a government assertion put forward and then exaggerated to persuade its Gulf neighbors, western allies, and the Sunni political elite that there is no acceptable alternative to the monarchy’s absolute control and consequent suppression of its citizens. Strikingly absent from the discourse about the country’s ongoing pro-democracy movement are the non-sectarian grounds upon which the calls for democracy are based. A closer look at the recent demonstrations indicates that the movement’s impetus is the Bahrainis’ desire for universal social, economic, and political rights irrespective of religious sect. A growing sense of political disenfranchisement is spreading among both Sunni and Shi’a citizens who have been excluded from political and business opportunities. Bahrain’s culture of nepotism and cronyism benefits a select few. As the quality of life for the majority declines among all sectarian affiliations, the government leverages the beneficiaries of its patronage system to counter all calls for an equitable distribution of wealth, political freedom, and equal employment opportunity based on merit. As tempting as it may be to reduce all of these factors to mere strategic interests in Bahrain and the wider Middle East. This report counters the false assumption that Bahrain’s pro-democracy movement is merely another round in the longstanding sectarian strife that destabilizes the country and the Gulf writ large. Rather, the ongoing demonstrations are a cooperative effort between the country’s Sunni and Shi’a citizens to call for meaningful democratic processes and institutions. Whatever animosity exists within the Bahraini population is directed at a government and members of a ruling family that have broken their promises for more economic opportunity and political freedom, and less corruption and authoritarianism. Upon witnessing the remarkable display of people power in Egypt and Tunisia, Bahrainis are no longer satisfied with being treated as subjects; rather, they are demanding to be treated as citizens with twenty-first-century political, social, and economic rights and the power to shape their nation’s destiny. This pro-democracy movement faces significant obstacles, given the backdrop of regional power struggles for control of this strategically located island coupled with a ruling family desperate to retain its relevancy. Trapped within the broader Saudi-Iranian geostrategic struggle for power, it can expect unrelenting opposition from oil-rich Saudi Arabia. Indeed, Saudi Arabia’s desire to maintain the status quo, supplanted with financial incentives, has apparently become a greater challenge to Bahrainis’ reform efforts than any opposition from the Bahraini ruling family. Meanwhile, despite calls for universal human rights, the Obama administration has been disappointingly reticent. In stark contrast to its response to the Egyptian, Tunisian, and Libyan protests, Washington’s (until recently) timid response has been interpreted as a green light by the royal family to brutally crackdown on anyone involved, be they middle-class professionals, blue-collar workers, or unsupportive of the official narrative of sectarian conflict. Nurses and doctors are tried in military courts,5 school-aged girls are beaten to extract false confessions against their families, Shi’a mosques are destroyed for supporting the demonstrations, and political prisoners are beaten to death. The Arab people have spoken loud and clear – they will no longer tolerate either the authoritarian regimes or the double standards of their western allies. Based on the foregoing analysis, this report recommends steps that would both promote democracy in Bahrain and preserve American interests in the Gulf and the wider Middle East.
The first Jubilee Dialogue examined perspectives on change in the region, two years since the onset of the “Arab Spring.” Participants challenged the UK’s approach in marrying values and interests in its foreign policy in the region, and explored innovative ideas on how the UK can best support long term sustainable change in the region. The Jubilee Dialogue is a series of discussions in which external experts provide their views to Government on a key foreign policy subject.
The political subject in the ‘Arab Spring’
Contemporary Levant
The Arab uprisings have been the most important political events worldwide of the short twenty-first centuryand arguably of the greatest global significance since the end of the apartheid state in South Africa some 25 years ago. How have they affected academic approaches towards the Middle East and the people of the region? Research on the Middle East has often been driven by instrumental concerns, especially by policy matters centred on the agendas of states and corporate interests. This has often drawn on analyses that consistently misrepresent socio-cultural and political developments, most importantly processes of change. The mass movements that began in 2010 and have continued, with many crises and interruptions, have compelled academic researchers to make re-assessmentsin particular to think in new ways about the circumstances, experiences, aspirations and potentials of the mass of people in the region. Here I focus on the question of human potentials and especially on political agencyits implications for those who study and comment on events in the Middle East and on their implications worldwide. I draw in particular on histories and recent experiences of change in Egypt. Old agendas A very striking feature of uprisings that began in late 2010/early 2011 was the incomprehension and disbelief with which they were observed by those committed to the old order. It was understandable that officials and familial networks around presidents Ben Ali and Mubaraklater Asad, Qaddafi and othershad difficulty comprehending the implications of the early demonstrations. They had entrenched interests and had spent decades confrontingand survivingpublic protest. More significant was the willingness of their friends and allies abroad to back themeven as the uprisings became mass movements of real breadth and depth, with revolutionary implications. In the case of Tunisia, the foreign minister of France, Michèle Alliot-Marie, entered a mode of denial. As the opposition movement grew to an unprecedented scale she took a Christmas holiday in Tunis and offered military help to back the regime, telling President Ben Ali: 'France could offer the know-how of [our] security forces to help control this type of situation' (Der Spiegel 2011). When later challenged for failing to understand the crisis, she attempted to spread the blame: 'Let's face it,' she said, 'we were all of uspoliticians, diplomats, researchers, journaliststaken by surprise by the jasmine revolution' (Willsher 2011). On this score Alliot-Marie was right. With the exception of certain political activists and a minority of academic researchers, those observing the regionespecially from the outsidewere unprepared for the events and for those that followed. This is not a loose criticism made with the benefit of hindsight. In the summer of 2011 the influential journal Foreign Affairs, very widely seen as a voice of the foreign-policy establishment in the United States (and compulsory reading in the embassies of many states), published a lengthy mea culpa on behalf of academics in the
2012
Bahrain faces a long-running local dispute about the sharing of power and wealth. While there has never been a simple division between Sunni and Shia, politics have become increasingly polarized along sectarian lines, a trend exacerbated by outside actors. Since the report of the royally established Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (the ‘Bassiouni report’) in November 2011, the government has taken some steps to address human rights abuses and to create new mechanisms for the oversight of the security services. However, the effect of these potentially important mechanisms will depend on the political will invested in them. So far the indications are negative. There is still scope to find common ground between the different elements of Bahraini society in support of a constitutional monarchy, based on a revitalized social contract, not on sect-based power-sharing. There may now be an opportunity to develop a fresh GCC mediation effort in the context of discussions on greater GCC unity. Conversely, the failure to reach a political solution to the problems in Bahrain may undermine the drive towards GCC unity by contributing to both political and sectarian tensions within the GCC. The repression in Bahrain, a Western ally, complicates and hinders the efforts of the US and UK to sketch out a new policy towards a Middle East where demands for democracy have become increasingly vocal.
Introduction to the Special Issue on the Arab Spring
University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law, 2013
What quickly became known as the " Arab Spring" is a series of protest movements, reforn1 movements, and revolutions (son1e bloody and some relatively "bloodless") that l1as been ongoing for more than two years in the n1ajority-Muslim world of the Middle East and North Africa. Arab Spring recalls both the European Revolutions of 1848, dubbed the "Springtime of the Peoples," as well as the Prague Spring of 1968. And the events have drawn comparisons to the post-Soviet revolutions of 1989. The compilation of essays contained in this Special Issue of the Journal of lntenwtiounl Lmu reflects on these events from a variety of academic and policy perspectives, and grows out of the Journal's Novem.ber 2011 symposium entitled "Democracy in the Niiddle East."