The media have been using the term “Arab Spring” for years, to suggest that the invasion of Iraq would have a spin-off benefit in the Middle East. But after spending some time in the region, I saw three distinct dramas being played out.
From Tunisia and Egypt in North Africa to Jordan and Syria is one theatre. This is the arena of positive evolution.
Then there is the Gulf Cooperation Council theatre. Saudi Arabia is the spider in this web, its tentacles deep in Bahrain and Yemen, two countries it shares border with.
The third is the theatre of Libya where Muammar Qaddafi is dodging minefields being inexpertly laid by an Anglo-French pair of plotters. The Americans, having had their fingers burnt in Iraq, are clearly not keen on conferring martyrdom on another Arab despot.
In an excellent interview with a journalist who specialises in Africa, Fareed Zakaria conclusively established Qaddafi’s immense popularity in the sub-Saharan Africa where people are collecting donations to help him. Little wonder African leaders have been jointly pleading with the international community not to apply the United Nations Security Council resolution of 1973 as a means to advance Western interests.
The Anglo-French move to disguise their designs as altruism is just not selling. The Arab public is taking the Anglo-French propaganda with large doses of salt. “Foreigners have entered my house in Mesrata,” says Rafiq Hamadi in Baghdad, “and when I shoot at them, they run to the media with the story that I am slaughtering my people.”
In the short term, it appears Libya will be divided into East and West. The world, including the Arab public and 20 million Muslims in Europe, will see the partitioning of the country, not to stop the ‘slaughter’ of innocent people but for Libya’s light crude for which European refineries are specially geared.
Bahrain, meanwhile, has been an avoidable tragedy. Avoidable, because the Americans very nearly navigated an agreement between the crown prince and the opposition. But hardliners in Riyadh and Manama scuttled it.
Events in Bahrain deserve to be understood because they will resonate for a while. A 37km causeway links Bahrain to Dammam, the headquarters of Saudi Arabia’s exclusive oil-bearing eastern province which also happens to be a Shia majority region. In the Qatif district, the Shia population is over 90 percent.
Ever since the Ayatullahs came to power in Tehran in 1979, the Saudi state has been firm in handling Shia restiveness in the province, real or imagined. Since King Abdullah’s benign rule, Moharram processions and other Shia practices have been tolerated. But vigilance is as total as can be in a police state.
Across the causeway, Bahrain is, by comparison, a haven of openness except that political freedoms are cleverly circumscribed. A large segment of Bahrain’s 1.5 million population are expatriate.
Nearly 70 percent of the 800,000 Bahrainis are Shias. The rulers, however, follow a strict Sunni school. For over 200 years, the Khalifa family have been Emirs of Bahrain.
A decade ago Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa declared himself king. An Emir, he thought, had colonial connotations. Kingship would lend itself to the possibility of a “constitutional monarchy”. Along with kingship comes a crown prince – in this case Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.
King Hamad, ever since he ascended the throne, has had his uncle Khalifa Ibn Salman al Khalifa as prime minister, under whom, by popular consent, corruption has flourished as it has elsewhere in the Arab world. He was one of the targets of recent demonstrations.
Encouraged by the protest in Tunisia and Egypt, young people of Bahrain, Shias and Sunnis, began to gather at Pearl Square for peaceful demonstrations. They even put up Mahatma Gandhi posters.
The police, largely Pakistani, cracked down hard. In the ranks of the protesters there was some confusion. Did they want freedom? A free press? Participatory democracy? Constitutional monarchy? or that the Kahlifas must flee?
American special envoy Jeffery Feltman, the crown prince, and moderate Shia leader Shaikh Ali Salman secretly met and hammered out a compromise agreement.
The prime minister, seeing his power recede, agreed with Saudi Interior Security chief Prince Naif’s hard line – that any areas that come under Shia influence will become staging posts for Iran. Brutality was then unleashed on the Shias.
And now the crown prince and the prime minister are probably in rival camps.
Obviously, the story is not yet over.
Saeed Naqvi is Distinguished Fellow, Observer Research Foundation in News Delhi and an anchor “In Conversation” on NewsX
