The Battle for the Arab Spring

by Lin Noueihed

  When 14 February came, the demonstrators only numbered in the hundreds but a crackdown by security forces, who used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowds, inflamed anger and encouraged opposition. One protester was killed in the first day of demonstrations, and another crackdown at his funeral procession the following day saw a second person lose their life. With the death toll mounting and public sympathy swelling, Al Wefaq, which had not been involved in organizing the demonstrations, swung behind the movement and withdrew from parliament. Angered by the deaths and emboldened by Al Wefaq's support, thousands of protesters stormed the Pearl roundabout, a traffic island ironically adorned by a monument to the GCC, and set up camp. The statue, a Bahraini landmark, showed six dhow sails, representing each of the members of the GCC, holding up a giant concrete pearl, a symbol of the region's pearl fishing heritage before the discovery of oil. On the grass beneath it, a sea of red and white flags fluttered in a conscious emulation of Tahrir Square. The scene alarmed the royals.

  In the early hours of 17 February, Bahraini security forces attacked and cleared the site. Five people were killed and tanks filled the streets as the area went into lockdown. With images of the crackdown flashing across the world's television screens, the United States pressured Bahrain to withdraw its troops. Protesters were allowed to return and the crown prince offered talks. With the king's backing, he was given three weeks to deliver a political solution. If he failed, hardliners within the royal family would be allowed to push ahead with a military solution.63 Embroiled in a standoff with the head of the armed forces, Sheikh Khalifa bin Ahmed, and his brother, the royal court minister Sheikh Khaled bin Ahmed, who were close to Saudi Arabia and agitating for a crackdown, the crown prince was in a delicate position.

  So was Al Wefaq. The deaths had infuriated Bahrainis and hardened attitudes on the street. Fearing that any talks that did not secure concrete gains would cost them grass-roots support, Al Wefaq and its six opposition allies set a list of pre-conditions for talks that the crown prince could not publicly accept. While secret contacts were underway to find a way out of the crisis, hardliners on both sides worked to polarize Bahraini society.

  Less than a month after Bahrain's protesters had taken over the Pearl roundabout, tents filled the grassy verge, and makeshift kitchens served kebabs and tea to the thousands who showed up each night to socialize and listen to the speakers on a central stage. Gory photographs of the seven Bahrainis killed in the first phase of the uprising were on display, along with demands for justice. Banners sought to calm fears of sectarian divisions. ‘Sunni and Shi'ite are siblings in one nation,’ they read, but with the middle ground increasingly squeezed, the crown prince's efforts to bring the opposition to the negotiating table were on the brink of failure.

  By staying on the Pearl roundabout, protesters risked becoming irrelevant. Foreign journalists had already drifted away to cover faster-moving events in Yemen and Libya. The numbers converging on the roundabout each night had dwindled, sometimes amounting to only a few hundred. They either had to escalate or to accept talks.

  On 8 March 2011, three groups – Al-Haq, the closely related Wafa, or Fidelity, and the London-based Bahrain Islamic Freedom Movement – held a news conference at the Pearl roundabout calling for the overthrow of the monarchy and the creation of a democratic republic. Two days later, on Friday, the first day of the weekend in Bahrain, a group of some 200 mostly Shi'ite protesters marched on the royal palace in Rifaa, an area that was home to royals, members of the armed forces and other establishment Sunnis. The protest did not attract many followers, largely because Al Wefaq had warned against escalation, and it caused splits inside the 14 February youth movement.

  Undeterred, the following Sunday, the first day of the working week, protesters tried to stop employees from entering the Bahrain Financial Harbour, two modern towers that had become the symbol both of Bahrain's painstakingly-cultivated ‘business-friendly’ image and of top-level corruption. The protesters cut off the capital's main highway with tyres, rocks and other debris, disabling the road that connected Bahrain International Airport, on the mostly Sunni island of Muharraq, not only to the financial district but to the country's main shopping centres and ultimately to the King Fahd Causeway that runs across to Saudi Arabia. It was a clear provocation.

  Efforts to clear protesters and reopen the highway descended into pitched battles that lasted hours. Hundreds of riot police were able to push the protesters from the Financial Harbour to the Pearl roundabout, but were met there by rock-throwing youths who disabled police tear gas cans by burying them in the sand. Eventually running out of tear gas, the police gave up and retreated, leaving the highway blocked and in the control of protesters as dusk fell. The next morning, youths had rolled barrels and bins onto the streets around the Pearl roundabout, setting up their own makeshift checkpoints that waved cars through.64

  This was a turning point. Bahrain was no stranger to riots and clashes but this was the first time that the protesters had taken over a central zone and frozen the financial heart of the country. Sectarian clashes broke out at Bahrain University. Fights erupted between Sunni and Shi'ite schoolchildren. Misunderstandings about parking spaces and other trivial conflicts were quickly escalating. Bloggers and commentators began to warn that the country was on the brink of civil war.65

  For the Al Saud family in Riyadh, which had united and ruled over a country of 28 million stretching from the holy cities of Mecca and Medina near the Red Sea to the vital Gulf oilfields, the risks were simply too great to be left to chance. An absolute monarchy, Saudi Arabia suffered from many of the same problems that afflicted other Arab countries. It was flush from a prolonged oil price boom, but the kingdom had youth unemployment of above 40 per cent in some age brackets and a youthful, quick-growing population.66 Billions of riyals in stipends and other benefits were distributed each year among the royal family, which included thousands of princes and princesses, while many Saudis lived on low incomes or in areas with dilapidated infrastructure and inadequate housing.67 Even before the Arab Spring, Saudi Arabia had been facing an uncertain future. Those waiting in line to the Saudi throne were now in their eighties and even if the ruling family succeeded in subduing unrest and sidelining any serious opposition from within the royal family, it could expect a turbulent decade ahead as more of its members passed away, resulting in frequent changes at the top.

  Inspired by events in Tunisia and Egypt, Shi'ites in the Eastern Province had already been holding small-scale regular protests. Calls on Facebook for a ‘Day of Rage’ in March had been met with warnings that protests would not be tolerated, while an overwhelming security presence had emerged on the streets of Riyadh and Saudi clerics issued a fatwa labelling protests un-Islamic. In the event, there was no unrest in the capital, but the Arab Spring had heightened political awareness and raised expectations in a country where King Abdullah was now forced to buy off dissent with a massive package of pay rises, benefit increases and promises to ease unemployment and a housing crunch. Protests had also broken out in Oman which, like Bahrain, was running out of oil and short on cash. Shortly before the crackdown, the GCC had promised Oman and Bahrain $10 billion each to help maintain order. But in Bahrain, the crisis only seemed to escalate.

  Riyadh was not willing to stand by and let the United States try to steer a middle course that could threaten the Al Khalifa, embolden Shi'ite protesters in Saudi Arabia itself and risk the kind of domino effect in the Gulf that would see off three North African leaders in a single year. Revolution, or even serious reform, in Bahrain would send a signal to activists everywhere that Saudi Arabia was willing to stand aside under popular pressure. From Riyadh's point of view, a strong signal was necessary to show that it would defend its allies, even if the United States would not.

  The United States was reluctant to jeopardize its historically-close relations with Saudi Arabia or upset the Bahraini royal family and see the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, whose aircraft carriers were used
for airstrikes on Iraq and Afghanistan, evicted from an island that lay just across the water from Iran. Its presence in the Gulf had taken on added importance as the last US combat troops prepared to leave Iraq. The US approach to the Bahrain crisis appears to have involved pushing for faster top-down reforms to sap the momentum of protesters and limit the chances of full-scale revolution that would destabilize the region and shake oil markets.

  While criticizing the crackdown in Bahrain, the United States knew both that the overthrow or paralysis of the Al Khalifa family by Shi'ite-led protesters would be a foreign policy win for Iran, and that it had good customers with deep pockets in Sunni allies that were seeking to deter the Islamic Republic. Notwithstanding regular claims of meddling by Bahrain's rulers, Tehran was unlikely to risk a conflagration with the United States or Saudi Arabia by trying to arm or openly support Shi'ite protesters in Bahrain. For the United States, the best outcome would be one that defused the crisis by coaxing both sides to agree on reforms. With tensions rising on the streets of Bahrain, however, it seemed that Saudi Arabia was no longer prepared to listen.

  On 12 March, US Secretary of State Robert Gates’ planned visit to Saudi Arabia was cancelled with just a few days’ notice by Riyadh. Gates went straight to Bahrain instead, where he told the king that ‘baby steps’ on reform would not be enough.

  With the crisis worsening, the crown prince renewed his call for national dialogue. In a new bid to lure them into talks, he now set out seven points of importance to the opposition that were open to serious discussion. The talks would address demands to bolster the power of the elected parliament and to redraw the electoral districts that the Shi'ites complain are deliberately skewed against them. The composition of the government would also be up for debate, as would complaints of corruption, sectarian discrimination and accusations about Sunni naturalization. The reforms agreed through dialogue would then be put to a referendum, according to the crown prince's promises.

  Moments after his call was read out on Bahrain TV, a speaker at the Pearl roundabout shouted ‘No to dialogue, no to dialogue’. The crowd cheered. The opposition parties were in a difficult position, caught between this confrontational sentiment on the street and their instinct to avert a new crackdown. Al Wefaq decided to reject the talks.

  The next day, 1,000 Saudi troops rolled across the causeway in an advance party that included tanks and armoured personnel carriers, and would be bolstered over the ensuing days. The intervention, whose participants grew to include the UAE and Kuwait, sent the message that any attack on one Gulf Arab ruling family would be considered an attack on all. While the forces sent to Bahrain were only there to protect strategic locations, the symbolism was not lost on protesters around the region who thought that popular action alone could bring down any regime.

  Assistant US Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman arrived in Bahrain the same day to push for a peaceful resolution to the crisis. In what looked like an eleventh-hour deal, the opposition announced that it had met the crown prince and agreed a mechanism for national dialogue. It appeared, however, to have come too late. 68

  By the time martial law was declared on 15 March 2011, power had already been transferred to Sheikh Khalifa bin Ahmed, the commander of the Bahrain Defence Forces, and the royal reformers had been effectively sidelined.69 Early the next morning, the Pearl roundabout encampment was cleared in a hail of tear gas and over the ensuing days, the Pearl monument would be demolished and replaced by a traffic interchange, in what the foreign minister described as an effort to erase ‘bad memories’. A night-time curfew was imposed. Tanks surrounded the former Pearl roundabout and checkpoints were set up all over the main roads. Security forces launched a systematic crackdown against anyone associated with the uprising. Bahrain had returned to its bleak cycle of protests, violent crackdowns and funeral processions.

  Even before the crackdown had begun, the information war was in full flow, inflaming sectarian tensions in a way that alarmed and tainted the largely peaceful demonstrators who had been meticulous in their focus on political demands that would appeal to both Sunni and Shi'ite. Bahraini TV spoke of Sunni patients being denied medical attention at Salmaniya hospital. When scuffles broke out at schools and universities between Sunni and Shi'ite students, Bahrain TV accused Shi'ites of running riot, prompting Sunni vigilantes to set up checkpoints to protect their neighbourhoods from imaginary attack. The channel accused Shi'ite protesters of loyalty to Iran, and of planning to set up a Bahraini Hezbollah, akin to the Lebanese armed group that answers to Tehran. Despite scant evidence, the Bahraini government repeatedly accused Iran and Hezbollah of interference during the 2011 uprising, though most of this meddling appeared to come in the form of media statements and solidarity protests.70 Iran and Bahrain engaged in tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions and registered complaints with the United Nations, Tehran criticizing the crackdown that drew a muted Western response and Bahrain criticizing Iran's interference in its affairs.71

  But at the same time, Iran's Arabic-language Alalam channel was painting a picture of a Saudi invasion to crush the Bahraini people. As Bahraini security forces backed by helicopters cleared the protest camp on 16 March 2011, mainly using tear gas and military vehicles, Alalam was reporting that Saudi fighter jets were hovering above the Pearl roundabout, that Saudi troops were spraying protesters with bullets, and that Shi'ite mosques were calling for jihad. The Iraqi Shi'ite channel Ahlulbayt painted the crackdown as sectarian cleansing, causing alarm among Shi'ites who were increasingly incited to view Sunnis as their enemies.72 Lebanon's Hezbollah-owned Al Manar also weighed in and when its leader Hassan Nasrallah gave a speech supporting the Bahraini protesters, it only appeared to prove government accusations that this was an Iranian-backed plot. In response, Bahrain suspended flights to Lebanon and expelled some Lebanese from the country.

  Qatari-owned Al-Jazeera, which had given wall-to-wall coverage to the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, providing some of the momentum they needed to succeed, was more muted on Bahrain. The protests were covered, but as routine events rather than revolutions-in-the-making. Neither Qatar nor Saudi Arabia, who own the major Arab satellite news networks, were interested in spreading the unrest to the shores of the Gulf.

  Carried away by what they saw as a historic opportunity to ride the wave of revolution sweeping Arab countries, Bahrain's protesters had overplayed their hand and thereby undermined the reformers inside the ruling family, antagonizing Saudi Arabia and ending 2011 in a far worse position than they had begun it. Both in the royal camp and in the opposition camp, hardliners had won the day. The crisis had quickly taken on more of a sectarian dimension than the 1990s uprising. Some Sunnis such as Sheikh Abdel Latif Mahmood, who had been in the opposition camp in the 1990s and made efforts to find a middle ground early in 2011, ended up staunchly in the monarchist camp and blamed the Shi'ites for escalating the conflict and turning it sectarian. Some Sunni opposition leaders, such as Waad's Ibrahim Sharif, were arrested in the crackdown, but the vast majority of those rounded up were Shi'ites.

  Martial law was lifted in June and many of those who had been detained were freed or put on trial. Through the summer, however, it increasingly appeared that reformists within the royal family had lost ground. When the king made a speech in August, pardoning protesters, promising to investigate any abuses and ordering the reinstatement of those who had been expelled from their jobs or universities for taking part in protests, his orders were not immediately implemented. The episode suggested some personal loss of authority for the king, and that he and the crown prince were sounding a more conciliatory tone than many ordinary Sunnis.

  For many Shi'ites, it was too late for reform anyway. ‘For Hani's mother, no reform will bring her son back. He was not even killed at a protest. So are the Shi'ites not people?’ said Khadija, a mourner at the funeral in Bilad al-Qadim in March. Zahra, a neighbour of Abdelaziz, agreed: ‘Al Wefaq are scared for their seats and we don't care. People have got to the stage where they
don't want dialogue. They want these people out.‘73 But that was unlikely to happen without an equally monumental shift in Bahrain's neighbour.

  Saudi Arabia's decision to give shelter to Ben Ali, its outrage at the ouster of Mubarak, and its bold decision to intervene in Bahrain has seen it labelled as the main counter-revolutionary force to emerge in 2011. To simply call it counter-revolutionary, as the final section of this book argues, would be to oversimplify matters. But the Gulf has certainly emerged as a red line for Saudi Arabia in a year that would see protests reach from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea.

  The Immovable Object

  Efforts at healing the wounds opened up by the crackdown and the Gulf intervention had floundered by the end of 2011. A National Dialogue held by the king in July did not come across to dissidents as a serious effort to address the grievances of opposition parties. It involved some 300 participants from all walks of Bahraini society and the political opposition received just thirty-five seats, drowning out their voices. Participants eventually agreed to give the elected parliament a greater degree of scrutiny over government, reforms that were approved by the king, but were unable to agree on measures to empower the elected lower house vis-à-vis the appointed upper chamber.74