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الشيعة في البحرين تخوض معارك يومية لا يمكن لأحد الفوز Bahrain Shiites fight daily battles no one can win The day of Ashura ... Bahraini Shiites in Manama commemorate the killing of the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed. Photo: New York Times MANAMA: The battle began soon after sundown. And for the next six hours, in air heavy with heat and tear gas, phalanxes of police officers in helmets battled scores of youths in ski masks, as customers at a nearby coffee shop sat like spectators. There are no winners in the clashes that erupt almost every night in Bahrain. Five months after the start of a ferocious crackdown against a popular uprising - so sweeping it smacks of apartheid-like repression of Bahrain's religious majority - many fear that no one can win. ''This is all cutting so deep,'' said Abdulnabi Alekry, an activist whose car was stopped at one of the checkpoints of rubbish bins, wood and bricks the youths had fashioned during the clash in August. ''The fabric here was never that strong, and now it is torn.'' In the revolts that have roiled the Middle East this year, toppling or endangering a half-dozen leaders, Bahrain, an island kingdom once known for its pearls and banks, has emerged as the cornerstone of a counterrevolution to stanch demands for democracy. While the turmoil elsewhere has proved unpredictable - the ascent of Islamists in Egypt, the threat of civil war in Syria and the prospect of anarchy in Yemen - Bahrain suggests that the alternative, a failed uprising cauterised by searing repression, may prove just as dangerous. The crackdown here has won a tactical victory through torture, arrests, job dismissals and the blunt tool of already institutionalised discrimination against the island's Shiite Muslim majority. In its wake, sectarian tension has exploded, economic woes have deepened, US willingness to look the other way has cast Washington as hypocritical, and a society that prides itself on its cosmopolitanism is colliding with its most primordial instincts. Taken together, the repression and warnings of radicalisation may underline an emerging dictum of the Arab uprisings: violence begets violence. ''The situation is a tinderbox, and anything could ignite it at any moment,'' said Ali Salman, the general secretary of Al Wefaq, Bahrain's largest legal opposition group. ''If we can't succeed in bringing democracy to this country, then our country is headed towards violence. Is it in a year or two years? I don't know. But that's the reality.'' For decades, Bahrain's relative openness and entrenched inequality have made it one of the Arab world's most restive countries, as a Shiite majority of about 70 per cent seeks more rights from a Sunni monarchy that conquered the island in the 18th century. But February was a new chapter in the struggle, when the reverberations of Egypt and Tunisia reached Bahrain and, after bloody clashes, protesters seized a landmark known as Pearl Square, where they stayed for weeks. The toll of the ensuing repression was grim. In a country with a population of 525,000, human rights groups say 34 people were killed, more than 1400 arrested, and at least 3600 people fired from their jobs. Four people died in custody after torture in what Human Rights Watch called ''a systematic and comprehensive crackdown''. Activists trade stories of colleagues forced to eat faeces in prison and high-ranking Shiite bureaucrats compelled to crawl in their offices like infants. Human rights groups say 43 Shiite mosques and religious structures were destroyed or damaged by a government that claimed it faced an Iranian-inspired plot, without offering any evidence that Tehran played a role. Backed by the armed intervention of Saudi Arabia, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa declared martial law in March, and although it was repealed on June 1, the reverberations of the repression still echo across the island. Despite government promises to return people to work, no one has given Mohammed Al Hamad his job back at the Bahrain Islamic Bank, where he worked for four years until he was fired on March 31 for ''bad behaviour''. And last month, 18 professors - all Shiite - were fired from Bahrain University. ''It was meant to frighten us, scare us and intimidate us,'' said Abdulla Alderazi, secretary-general of the Bahrain Human Rights Society and one of the 18. ''But we can't be intimidated any more. That's it. Enough is enough.'' Even amid the crackdown, officials insist that Bahrain remains a democratic country and in the words of a judge, Abdulla Al Buainain, adhering to the ''rule of law.'' Emails to the government information office and a public relations firm hired by Bahrain went unanswered. Checkpoints remain around Pearl Square. Its emblematic statue was torn down. Most dangerous, though, is the exacerbation of sectarian hatred in a country that has never really reconciled to the Khalifa family's long-ago conquest. No one claims that Sunnis and Shiites ever lived in harmony here. But the country stands as an example of the way venerable distinctions of ethnicity, sect and history can be manipulated in the Arab world, often cynically, in the pursuit of power. As the status quo endures - some believe that the king may introduce reforms this month, while others remain sceptical, with growing Shiite anger towards US policy. Many lament what they see as a double standard in President Barack Obama's criticism of the crackdown in May. In contrast to the treatment of Syria and Libya, they point out, no US official is calling for sanctions against Bahrain, a country where the US has its largest regional naval base, for the Fifth Fleet. ''Democracy isn't only for those countries the United States has a problem with,'' said Nabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights. . |
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