The US Should Support Democracy in Bahrain, Not Only in Syria and Libya

This past week saw two ominous delements in the small Arab monarchy of Bahrain, home base of the US fifth fleet.

On Saturday, September 24, the regime held a by-election for 18 seats in the lower house of its parliament. These 18 seats (out of 40) head been held by the main opposition party, al-Wefaq. The al-Wefaq members had resigned en bloc when massive pro-democracy protests broke out in February of this year.

The opposition argued, with justice, that their seats were meaningless for two reasons. First, the parliament had been gerrymandered so that they won only a minority of the seats, even though they received a majority of the total vote. And second, the seats would have been meaningless anyway, because parliament had no power. The prime minister was appointed by the king, and the appointed upper house of the legislature had the only power to limit executive actions. In practice, both prime minister and upper house were simply tools of the royal family (which the prime minister belongs to).

The massive, militant, nonviolent popular protests have continued until today, although the occupation of the Pearl Roundabout – a central location in the capital city, Manama – was dispersed by troops sent in from the neighboring, larger absolutist monarchy, Saudi Arabia. I wrote about these protests in an earlier post, so I won’t repeat the details here.

A complicating factor is that the majority of the population are Shi’a, while the royal family and most of their supporters are Sunni. The king uses this to claim that the protesters are really Iranian agents; however, there are many Sunni in the democracy movement, and a recurrent slogan in the protests was “No Sunni, No Shi’a, only Bahraini.” Protesters have consistently denounced Iranian efforts to influence them.

Ever since the Saudi suppression of the protests, the Bahrain monarchy has tried to maintain that things are back to normal. They had an ersatz “national dialogue” this summer, which made weak recommendations now being “considered” by the king; and they attempted, unsuccessfully, to bring back both Formual 1 racing and professional golf. No one has been convinced; there is a tacit internationa boycott of Bahraini sporting events.

The elections yesterday were part of this pretense. The parliament remains toothless, it is still gerrymandered against the opposition, al-Wefaq boycotted the election, and all independent observers have described voter turnout as “light.” The government, however, declares that the turnout was “massive” and that the opposition was repudiated. Presumably they will now have a parliament that supports the king’s dictates unanimously.

Meanwhile, ominously, the US Department of Defence proposed earlier this week to sell $53 million worth of weapons to the monarchist government. These weapons would include wire-guided missiles, high-tech armored cars, and a lot of other weapons designed for the repression of urban insurgency. Arms sales to Bahrain had been suspended, at least de facto, while President Obama declared that he supported democray and human rights in Bahrain. However, he never acted on that position, and now seems poised to resume arming the tyrant, rather than supporting the democratic forces.

The US, and President Obama, should get on the right side of history. Democracy is more important than oil (especially since oil is destroying the earth’s climate!); if the US doesn’t align itself with democracy, it will become increasingly isolated in the world. This is just the opposite of what so many hoped that an Obama presidency would bring. What is shows, more than anything else, is that in America today oil companies are more important than people.