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Except that it’s not.
Without wanting to go off on too much of a tangent here, few people in my experience are more isolated from the cultures around them than western expatriates living in the Persian Gulf and Bahrain, in this regard, has always been something of an extreme example.
Most Americans or Europeans who have visited will remember a small, socially relaxed city. Bahrain Island is about 30 miles north-to-south and 11 miles east-to-west at its widest. The southern half of the island, however, is mostly uninhabited. The country’s population of 1.1 million (about half of whom are actually Bahrainis) is mostly crammed into the northern end of the main island (in the capital, Manama, and in various small towns and villages to its south and west) and onto the neighboring island of Muharraq, where the airport is located. The US navy base you may have read about – the home port for the Fifth Fleet – is just south of downtown Manama in an area called Juffair (though there is also a huge military airfield in the southeast corner of Bahrain Island, the exact function of which neither American nor Bahraini officials are much inclined to talk about). The protests of the last few days have been taking place at the Pearl Roundabout, about two miles west of the base (i.e. at the other end of the city center).
In an irony of history, Bahrain was once the richest place on the Arab side of the Gulf but is now, arguably, the poorest. Britain established a protectorate over Bahrain in the mid-19th century. After WWI the island became the UK’s administrative headquarters for all Gulf affairs. As a result, Bahrain, in the 1920s and 30s, offered far more advanced infrastructure, better schools and better medical care than any place else in the Gulf. American missionaries built a hospital in Bahrain as far back as 1903 (to this day it carries the mailing address: PO Box 1, Manama, Bahrain). Bahrain was even the first place on the Arab side of the Gulf where oil was discovered a fact that, in the 30s, added even more to its prosperity. The oil did much to mitigate the collapse of the pearl industry in the early 30s, following the Japanese invention of cultured pearls (the importation of which is still banned in Bahrain).
After WWII, however, when the Gulf oil industry really took off, it quickly became clear that Bahrain had far less oil or gas than any of its neighbors. The British pulled out in 1971 and when oil prices skyrocketed a few years later, in the wake of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, Bahrain, with its well-developed infrastructure, was well-positioned to serve as the commercial and communications hub for the region. In later years it also emerged as a banking center and developed a lucrative shipyard repair industry.
Overseeing all of this were/are the Al-Khalifa family, Bahrain’s rulers since the mid-18th century (by far the longest tenure of any of the Gulf’s ruling families). The Al-Khalifas are Sunni Muslims. The bulk of Bahrain’s population (about 70%), however, are Shiites, many of whom are at least partly of Persian ancestry. The Shiites believe, with more than a little justification, that the ruling family and the rest of Bahrain’s elite – virtually all Sunnis – have cornered both political power and the national wealth.
The result has been consistent political unrest since the early 90s – a fact of which even many expats living in Bahrain have often been unaware. Ignorance was an easy thing to cultivate. This was partly because past protests were never anything like those of the last few days and partly because the expat community lives in a bubble far removed from the dirt poor villages west of Manama.
The result has been a generation of rising political tension in Bahrain – one that, this week, has finally boiled over.
More on that tomorrow.
One might think the health care debate is a purely domestic issue - holding no importance for the Middle East. Nothing could be further from the truth.
When questions about engaging with Iran come up at my talks and lectures I try to remind the audience that engagement is a two-way thing. Even before the present crisis I had seen little evidence the Iranian government was eager to engage with us. This does not mean we shouldn’t try – even now, we absolutely should – it does mean we need a back-up plan in case negotiations never get started in the first place.
The last few days have offered ample evidence that the people currently running Iran are more interested in scapegoating the West in a bid to cover up their own brutal actions than in engaging on any level. For all the discussion about whether the events of the last two weeks should alter President Barack Obama’s desire to ease America’s long cold war with Tehran, engagement is probably going to have to wait if only because it is hard to see the Iranian government showing much interest in it anytime soon.
First there were Supreme Leader Ali Khameini’s charges that the U.S. and Britain were behind the unrest. Then came President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s demand that President Obama “apologize” for his carefully-measured criticisms. Finally, on CNN this afternoon, the Iranian ambassador to Mexico blamed the CIA for the murder of Neda Agha-Soltan, the protestor whose much-viewed death from a sniper’s bullet has made her the face of this would-be revolution. According to the New York Times, one Iranian newspaper is making the even more ludicrous claim that a BBC correspondent had her killed.
The strange thing is that a lot of the people spouting this nonsense may actually believe it. The Middle East has long been especially fertile ground for conspiracy theories – a tendency reinforced by the fact that a few especially wild-sounding plots (the Lavon Affair, Iran-Contra, the fact that Kim Philby really was a spy posing as a journalist) actually were true.
It is easy for us in the West to dismiss the sort of rhetoric that has been coming out of Iran as the credibility-challenged ravings of a regime that has little to fall back on. But anyone familiar with the Middle East knows there is a portion of the population inclined to view the world in this way. I suspect this sudden spate of accusations and conspiracy theories is mainly an effort to rally the regime’s base (in the councils of power as much as, if not more than, in the streets) rather than turn back the protests.
The thing to watch will be the degree of traction the charges achieve, particularly among the young. Just as Republican accusations that Obama is a “socialist” have lacked resonance with younger Americans who remember the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall only as boring stuff they suffered through in history class, so it may be that the demon-like United States conjured by the Iranian leadership will not resonate with the under-40 crowd who have little or no memory of the Shah.
The rhetoric of the last week is also a helpful reminder that Iran’s leaders may have the upper hand, but they are clearly feeling cornered and put-upon. Conspiracy theories allow them to retreat to a familiar world-view at a moment when, from their perspective, everything appears suddenly shaky.
For the people currently running Iran the question is whether the accusations of foreign perfidy will be enough to shore up their power. For America this will be a test of the “Obama Effect”. Will the president’s personal popularity, his visibly measured response and his oft-stated desire to deal respectfully with the Muslim World earn him the credibility and good-will America is going to need? As with everything else in Iran it is too early to say, but the result bears watching.
Right now Iran looks like the worst sort of crisis: the kind where everyone agrees that the US needs to do something despite the fact that, realistically, there is not much it can do.
