Contagion of hope

The success of youthful and uncompromising pro-democracy rebellions in Tunisia and Egypt spawns the same sentiments in Bahrain, Yemen and Syria.

THE searing flame of democracy, which was ignited after Mohammed Bouazizi, a Tunisian youth, set himself on fire in protest when denied his only means of livelihood, has already consumed entrenched dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt. Tunisia's former dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali is now in forgotten exile in Saudi Arabia. Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's strongman for three decades, is now battling disease, after young protesters ejected the former air force pilot from his palace in Cairo's upscale Heliopolis district to relative obscurity in the resort city of Sharm-el-Sheikh.

As Mubarak was being brought down, peaceful protesters were seeking a fundamental change in Bahrain. A possible democratic transition in this tiny kingdom in the Gulf was being fearfully watched not only by the region's unimaginative but wealthy royals, accustomed only to authoritarian ways of statecraft, but also by theocratic Iran. Despite its demonstrative empathy for Bahrain's embattled protesters, who were soon savagely hounded by the state and its powerful regional allies, especially Saudi Arabia, democratic success in Bahrain is bound to pose a significant political challenge to Iran.

If Bahrain embraces a liberal democracy, it can emerge as an attractive alternative to the Iranian theocratic model. Bahrain's democratic assertion and the precedent it would set may also not please the United States whose leaders are habitually used to supping with dictators who have been active enablers of its military preponderance in the oil-rich region. More immediately, the U.S. would be worried about the longevity of its naval base in Bahrain should the kingdom experience a major political transition.

Given the heavy international stakes involved, Bahrain's pro-democracy movement is bound to encounter serious impediments driven by its powerful detractors within the country and beyond. But if Bahrain does succeed in fulfilling its exhilarating democratic aspirations, its achievement, in scope, would be truly revolutionary.

Bahrain's example would most likely inspire similar movements among its neighbours and might not keep archaic Saudi Arabia insulated from the scorching winds of change. The Arab Spring for democracy is also in full bloom in Yemen, where tens of thousands of people have been assembling everyday around the university in Sana'a calling for an end to the dictatorship of Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been ruling since 1978. Besides, the contagion for change is also beginning to cascade in Syria, starting with the city of Daraa, where, on March 18, at least six people were killed when police opened fire on peaceful demonstrators rallying outside a prominent mosque.

The rulers' twist

It has become fashionable to portray Bahrain's unrest as a sectarian contest between majority Shias and a minority Sunni royalty. On closer scrutiny, such a projection of a faith-based power struggle, encouraged by Bahrain's ruling elite, is misleading and mischievous. By labelling the protesters as Shias, it tries to dilute the focus of their demands, mostly secular and progressive, for establishing a modern democratic political alternative. By highlighting their sectarian affiliations, the Bahraini ruling circles have found it convenient to spread the myth that the protesters are not pursuing an indigenous agenda for change. Instead, they argue that the pro-democracy campaigners are Iranian proxies who are following a subversive plot of wrecking from within a kingdom that has so visibly embarked on a well-charted course of all-round development.

The accusation that the protesters are a fifth column for Iran finds immediate resonance among influential lobbies in the U.S. and Europe, which are fearful of an expansion, real or imaginary, of Iranian influence in oil-rich Arab lands. Consequently, Bahraini activists, because of their Iranian tag, stand at an inherent disadvantage in finding mainstream support in the West.

The class angle

As the pro-democracy revolt rolls on, it has become evident that in Bahrain, discrimination on the basis of class, on which the Shia sectarian identity often gets superimposed, is the root cause of the protests. Most of the protesters are jobless and poorly educated and live in areas where housing is substandard, roads are poorly maintained and municipal services are minimal. Visiting journalists can find potholed roads leading to Shia villages such as Budaiyya, Diraz and Sitra. Inside them, walls are densely scrolled with angry graffiti, and leakages from ruptured sewerage pipes form stagnant cesspools. Disease is not uncommon. Poor access to clinics and hospitals adds to the suffering of the people and their frustration with the regime.

Apart from poverty and neglect, there are other emotive issues of discrimination that fuel anger as they hammer in the perception among the majority that the regime has quite deliberately bestowed on Shias the status of second-class citizens. There is enough evidence to show that Bahrain's security services, a major employer, do not favour recruitment of Shias.

On the contrary, Sunni expatriates from countries such as Pakistan, Jordan and Syria are preferred. They pack the security forces, which absorb around 8,200 people in active military service, while 11,000 are on the paramilitary rolls. The preference for expatriates over Shias, on account of a deep mistrust of their loyalty, aggravates social tensions among Bahraini nationals.

Besides, they have a spin-off effect of deepening animosity between Bahrain's poor and the South Asian expatriates, especially Pakistanis. With the Pakistan-origin security forces involved in the heavy crackdown on the revolt, Pakistani expatriates in general have become a target of attacks attributed to the Bahraini Shia underclass.

Bahrain's class divide has acquired a visible profile. The shabby Shia localities are a world apart from districts such as Riffa, where Bahrain's well-heeled, mostly Sunni, reside. Most people living here, in close proximity to the royal palace and a golf course, occupy well-manicured villas and are spoilt for a choice of exclusive restaurants, American fast food chains and fancy shopping malls.

The opposition claims that many within the Bahraini elite benefit from an oligarchic economic establishment, which is embedded in institutions surrounding the royalty and its affiliates. For long, allegations of corruption have been swirling around Sheikh Khalifa Bin Salman Al Khalifa, Prime Minister for 41 years, and his fawning plutocratic coterie.

A regular feature of the Bahraini political narrative has been the allegations about pervasive human rights abuses. This perception has magnified since the anti-regime protests, which began in the mid-1990s, resurfaced in 2005 after a pause of a few years. Fully aware that a successful movement for fundamental change has to be demonstrably non-sectarian and modern in its demands, new cyber-active political groups have, since February, launched a full-blown pro-democracy campaign. Leading the opposition is the Haq party. Pursuing a bold, non-sectarian agenda, and focussing on non-violence as the means, the Haq party, in conjunction with a Bahraini human rights group, has over the past five years challenged Bahrain's monarchy with its pro-democracy call.

Apart from drawing in some from the more traditional Shia Al Wefaq Society, the Haq includes individuals such as Ali Rabea, a secular nationalist belonging to the National Democratic Action Society (NDAS). Shaikh Isa Al Jowder, a prominent Sunni cleric, is also part of the movement, which is knowingly, and methodically, seeking broad-based representation.

The Haq's leader is Hasan Mushaima, who is presently under arrest following a March 16 crackdown, launched after the arrival on Bahraini invitation of Saudi Arabian troops drawn from the Peninsula Shield, a collective force of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

In 2006, a year after it was formed, the Haq was instrumental in internationalising Bahrain's internal conflict. It had then called for a United Nations investigation on whether the Bahraini government was engaged in a secret plot to change the country's demographic profile by granting citizenship to Sunnis of foreign origin. The movement cited a 240-page study by Salah Al Bandar of the Gulf Centre of Democratic Development, which alleged systematic demographic manipulation by the regime, as the basis of its appeal. Apart from Haq, the NDAS, renamed Wa'ad (promise), having undergone a generational change and now headed by Ibrahim Sharif Al-Sayed, has also emerged as a prominent player in the protests.

Fissures at the top

The blazing Bahraini revolt for democracy has apparently generated deep fissures within the royalty. Unable to seize the initiative, the hardliners within the establishment seemed to have panicked and, on February 17, ordered a brutal crackdown on the Pearl Roundabout protesters. Five people were killed and scores injured in the ferocious attack. But within hours, the King backtracked, apologised for the assault and designated the pro-reform Crown Prince, Sheikh Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, as the interlocutor for talks with the opposition. For that brief moment, the moderates in the royal household had prevailed. Observers in Bahrain say that those who were marginalised then included the chief of the royal court Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmad bin Salman Al Khalifa, the national security chief Sheikh Abdullah bin Muhammad Al Khalifa and the hard-line Prime Minister Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa.

However, the equation seemed to have turned on its head when, a day after the Crown Prince promised a substantial reform agenda as the basis for detailed negotiations, around 1,000 Saudi troops moved into the kingdom, heralding a merciless crackdown to crush the revolt. This time around, the moderates in the royal household seemed to have been checkmated and outmanoeuvred by the aging Prime Minister and his hard-line clique. Saudi Arabia's drastic recourse to military intervention appears to have been driven by fears that a Shia assertion in Bahrain could encourage similar protests in the kingdom's eastern province, where a majority Shia population, equally impoverished, resides. In Riyadh's calculations, unrest in the eastern province, rich in oil, could raise questions about its reliability as a global oil supplier a risk loaded with grave economic implications that it was unwilling to take.

Fears, never fully substantiated, have also been expressed about Bahrain's potentially destabilising role, once its Shias are empowered. The Saudis have argued that Shia ascendency in Bahrain would transform the country into a client state of Iran, posing a credible threat to Saudi stability across the border.

Key GCC countries appear to share the perception that Bahrain's democratic assertion could destabilise the region's petro-monarchies. It is therefore not surprising that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) decided to send around 500 police personnel to beef up Bahrain's security. Kuwait has also positioned warships off the Bahraini coast, which is not far away from the Iranian coastline.

By choosing to crush the revolt, instead of negotiating for its resolution, Bahrain and its fellow-regimes, especially Saudi Arabia, have taken a big risk. With blood on its hands, the Bahraini regime, in its present form, will now find it hard to draw the core group of protesters who have been outraged by the violence into meaningful talks.

But a reconfiguration of power equations in the royalty, permitting strong reassertion of political clout by the Crown Prince, and the consequent marginalisation of the Prime Minister's influence in the royal court can once again open the door for meaningful negotiations. Otherwise, the peaceful movement for democracy can be driven underground and give rise to a situation embedded with dangerous consequences. Denied political space for peaceful protests, Bahraini youth in desperation could seek support from Iran, whose presence, so far, does not resonate in Manama. In that case Bahrain's Lebanonisation, where the mostly wealthy Sunni community backed by Saudi Arabia would compete, cut throat, for power and influence with radicalised Shias, steeled by Iran, cannot be ruled out.

However, for the moment, the Bahraini hardliners think differently. It is their hope that instead of igniting their anger, the use of deadly force would have sufficiently intimidated the opposition into submission. From their perspective, shattering the opposition's united front should be the next logical objective. Unsurprisingly, the March 16 crackdown has been followed by the arrests of Hasan Mushaima and Ibrahim Sharif Al-Sayed. By detaining these two charismatic leaders among several others, the regime hardliners hope to marginalise the Haq and Wa'ad movements, the two organisations that pose the most serious threat to the conservative royalty.

Yemen's cause

As the Bahraini opposition regroups and plans its riposte, protesters in Yemen, also Saudi Arabia's neighbour, are inching towards possible success. They are demanding an end to the regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has refused to step down despite a flood of defections of his supporters to the opposition.

His refusal to throw in the towel notwithstanding, Saleh's days as President could well be numbered. The defection to the opposition's cause by Major General Ali Mohsin has severely undermined the regime. Gen. Mohsin has been one of the most influential commanders in the Yemeni Army. He has been widely credited with facilitating Saleh's rise to power in 1978. Sixteen years later, his role was apparently crucial for ensuring the victory of the northern forces over the southern separatists.

The General's influence goes far beyond the military. In a country known for its tribal, regional and religious cleavages, he has survived because of his affiliations with the Islamist Islah party and with Yemeni tribal chiefs, both in the north and the south. Military units loyal to him are now guarding the tens of thousands of protesters who occupy Al-Huriya (Liberation) square in Sana'a, their strength getting a boost every Friday with more people joining them after prayers.

Many observers say that the move by Gen. Mohsin, whose popularity has since soared, is not a stratagem to hijack the revolt. In an article contributed to the Al Jazeera website, Yemeni academic Murad Alazzany points out that Mohsin is a shadowy figure who rarely appears on television and while he has the skills necessary to be a good military leader, he lacks the political dexterity required of a president.

Gen. Mohsin's defection, along with that of several others, including diplomats, was triggered by the bloodbath on March 18, when snipers, possibly state-sponsored, killed 52 people who had joined the protests after Friday prayers. Despite the scales tilting heavily against the President, the Yemeni uprising could yet take on an ugly turn. Contrary to some expectations, a sizable portion of the Yemeni Army has still not revolted against the President. This was evident when Defence Minister Muhammad Nasir Ali appeared on television to declare his loyalty to the President after Gen. Mohsin had defected.

The vertical split in the Yemeni military, unless more defections take place, now opens the prospect of a civil war, unless the President decides to step down by significantly advancing his stated timetable for resignation at the end of the year.

Faced with the prospects of chaos, Yemen's break-up is also not wholly inconceivable as the possibility of the southern separatists taking advantage of a collapsing state cannot be ruled out. Already, the President is accusing the secessionists of endangering the state by citing the presence of the northern Houthi rebels and the southern separatists at the rallies. The President has been saying that the two rebel groups are at the rallies only to hasten his exit so that in the following period they can more easily fulfil their separatist agenda. He also cites that in his absence, Al Qaeda, influential in central Yemen, could pose a bigger danger to Yemen's cohesion.

That may well turn out to be true, but most Yemeni intellectuals disagree with this view. They point out that the pro-democracy uprising as it develops also generates a collective process of national rejuvenation, where old agendas are shed and are replaced by aspirations of national unity, rule of law, civil liberties, including respect for human rights, protected within the framework of a vibrant democracy.

In keeping with the region's aspirations for change, the Syrian regime, led by President Bashar Al Assad, has begun to experience domestic pressure for political reforms. So far the call for regime change has not entered the protesters' lexicon. Instead, the focus is on greater political freedoms, strangled since 1963, by an archaic emergency law.

Syrian revolt

The Syrian revolt was sparked on March 18, when state security forces in the city of Daraa killed at least six protesters who had earlier participated in a demonstration, which had ended in a sit-in outside the Al-Omari mosque. The demonstrators were demanding the release of 36 protesters who had been picked up by the security forces three days earlier. The sit-in was high on emotion as among those detained were teenagers who were barely 15. But the protest led to bloodshed when the police used live ammunition to break up the peaceful assemblage.

More than 300 people were arrested later. The protests have now turned into a full-scale revolt engulfing a number of important Syrian cities such as the commercial capital Aleppo, the capital Damascus, Hama and Homs. The heavy-handed state response in Daraa was replicated in the coastal city of Latakia, where police firing killed 12 people. After the bloody response by the state security, some significant course corrections have come from the regime. The entire Cabinet has been sacked and President Assad appears prepared to lift the hated emergency law.

If that happens, it would mark a major victory for the opposition. It could also generate a constructive dialogue with the presidency, leading eventually to an orderly and honourable democratic transition.

The wave of pro-democracy protests has shown that the proverbial winds of change are unstoppable. Old authoritarian models, whether secular, as in the case of Yemen and Syria, or sectarian and plutocratic, as in Bahrain, are under attack by a new Arab generation, which seeks self-empowerment, political freedoms, accountable governments, and prospects of a decent life free from fear.

In the face of youthful and uncompromising pro-democracy rebellions, the dictatorships in Egypt and Tunisia did not take long to succumb, though the democratic transition in both these countries is far from complete. In Yemen, President Saleh is still suffering from the delusion that he can ride out the storm. But with the revolt gathering steam, and the state apparatus unequally split in the opposition's favour, his political exit from Sana'a may not be far.

Bahrain's sterile recourse to authoritarian rule, reinforced by an outsourced domestic security force and foreign troops, is both disappointing and counterproductive. It has pushed this tiny kingdom to the edge, as the regime's attempt to crush the uprising is likely to radicalise it further. With Iran's help, which so far has been imperceptible, the country's sectarian divide can deepen beyond repair.

Far from transitioning into a liberated island of democracy, Bahrain, in some ways similar to Lebanon's experience, faces the grim prospect of serving the vested interests of Saudi Arabia and Iran by emerging as the proxy battleground of a lengthy and bloody sectarian feud.