Finian Cunningham

Two former police chiefs from the US and Britain have brought discernible Western “expertise” to the Bahraini force only weeks following their appointments – a surge in repression and state terrorism.

Former Miami police chief John Timoney and his British counterpart, John Yates, formerly commander at London’s Scotland Yard, were assigned last month by Bahrain’s royal rulers to “oversee reform” of the Persian Gulf kingdom’s security forces. Officially, the appointment of the American and Briton was to bring Western professional policing to the Bahraini force and specifically to upgrade the human rights record of Bahrain’s ministry of interior and National Security Agency.

The assignments were announced by King Hamad Al Khalifa following a report by an international commission of inquiry into widespread human rights violations in the US-backed oil kingdom since pro-democracy protests erupted there last February.

As reported earlier by Global Research, the inquiry report and the subsequent appointment of the US and British police chiefs appeared to be a public relations exercise to burnish the tarnished image of this key Persian Gulf ally of Washington and London [1].

However, only weeks into their jobs, the Western commanders appear to have been given a remit that goes well beyond public relations, namely, to sharpen the repression against the pro-democracy movement.

Human rights activists and several political sources say that state forces have dramatically stepped up violence towards protesters and targeting of the Shia community generally. The diminutive island state of less than 600,000 nationals is comprised mainly of Shia muslims (70 per cent) who are ruled over by a Sunni elite installed by Britain when the kingdom gained nominal independence in 1971. American and British government support for the unelected Al Khalifa monarchy is viewed by the majority of Bahrainis as being at odds with their claims for democratic rights.

Over the past year, Bahraini state forces have killed some 50 people; thousands have been maimed, wounded and detained, many of the latter tortured. Proportionate to its population, such state violence is comparable to what Washington and London have loudly denounced the Libyan and Syrian regimes for – indeed mounting a military invasion of the former and threatening to do so in the latter – under the guise of “protecting human rights”. By contrast, there is hardly a word of denunciation from Washington or London towards the Bahraini regime, which hosts the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet.

“The violence is worse than ever,” said one Bahraini pro-democracy activist. “The state security forces are operating with new tactics and this change coincides with the arrival of the American and British police chiefs. But this is no coincidence. We believe that the Bahraini police are using more repression and terror under the orders of these police chiefs.”

Since the appointment of the American and British commanders, at least five more civilians have been killed at the hands of police, including a 15-year-old boy Sayed Hashim who was shot in the face with a teargas canister on New Year’s Eve, and a 27-year-old woman who was bludgeoned with an iron bar.

Not only has state violence on the streets been escalated, but so too has harassment and house raids in Shia villages and neighbourhoods. People detained at police checkpoints are reporting systematic abuses. The police ranks are predominantly made up of Sunni muslim expatriates from Yemen, Jordan, Syria and Pakistan. Bahraini police are also backed up by Saudi and Emirati forces – again Sunni – ever since those neighbouring Gulf monarchs sent in troops last March to suppress the pro-democracy movement in Bahrain. People detained at checkpoints are being humiliated with profanities against their Shia faith, as well as being robbed of money, mobile phones and other possessions by police officers.

There has also been a leap in the number of house raids by police in Shia villages, especially in the early hours. The house raids have targeted towns and villages, such as Sitra and Nuwaidrat, which are deemed to be strongly supportive of the pro-democracy movement.

“We feel that the American and British cops have been brought into crush the pro-democracy movement with systematic tactics of repression and state terror,” said one activist. “The first anniversary of our uprising is coming up in February. The regime has so far failed to crush the uprising but with the anniversary approaching we think that the American and British police chiefs are pushing to do that.”

The past careers of Timoney and Yates indicate that they were a rather bizarre choice by the Bahraini regime – if the latter was genuinely aiming to reform the human rights record and ethical standards of its forces. Timoney was previously accused of deploying brutality against American street protests while commander of the Miami police; while Yates was forced to resign in ignominy over corruption involving phone tapping scams carried out by London’s Metropolitan Police in league with Murdoch’s gutter tabloid press.

It is also pretty certain that these appointments would not have been made without the sanction and, most probably, the suggestion of the US and British governments. That Washington and London would be overseeing a deliberate intensification of state terror in Bahrain should not be any surprise. The Bahraini regime has for decades earned an international reputation for police brutality and torture. The US State Department is well aware of this, according to its own reports, yet Washington continues to reward the Bahraini regime with the presence of its Fifth Fleet and, more recently, with a proposed arms deal worth $53 million, including weapons of repression, such as armoured cars and teargas.

Britain is also a major seller of weapons of repression to Bahrain. Historically, it also has played a crucial role in shaping the repressive apparatus of the Bahraini ministry of interior. The head of the notorious National Security Agency between 1968-1998 was British Colonel Ian Henderson who continues to act as an advisor to King Hamad. Several former British police officers work in Bahrain’s ministry of interior, including the newly appointed John Yates.

However, the signs are that the efforts to crush the pro-democracy movement in Bahrain are rebounding badly for Washington and London.

For a start the increased repression is serving to embolden the pro-democracy even more, with more and bigger street protests taking place. On 14 February, a demonstration is planned to make a major stand in the capital, Manama, to mark the first anniversary of the uprising.

Also, more worryingly for Washington and London, there is a growing contempt among protesters towards the American and British governments. Up until recently, protests have mainly focused on the Al Khalifa monarchy and the closely aligned House of Saud. But now Bahraini pro-democracy activists appear to be quickly learning that the higher sources of their grievances are in Washington and London. A new sight at protests across Bahrain recently is the burning of American flags.

If Bahrain’s uprising succeeds in replacing the unelected and venal Sunni elite with a democratic government that is mainly Shia, the US and British governments will no longer be welcome owing to their increasingly apparent nefarious misdeeds. The recent appointment of police chiefs Timoney and Yates with their malicious expertise is but one of many misdeeds that will be recalled by the people of Bahrain.

Finian Cunningham is Global Research’s Middle East and East Africa correspondent

cunninghamfin@yahoo.com  

NOTES

[1] Bahrain: Car Bomb in Capital Following Appointment of American and British Police Chiefs to Lead ‘Reforms’

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28050

US ally Bahrain continued its crackdown against popular calls for democratic rights with the illegal arrest and detention this week of prominent journalist and commentator Jaffar Al Alawy.

To date, nearly 100 journalists, poets, bloggers and media figures have been targeted for detention by the Persian Gulf oil kingdom since pro-democracy protests erupted there last February, according to the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights. The detainees have claimed gross ill-treatment and torture while in custody – independently verified by several international human rights groups. Two respected media figures, Zakariya Al Aushayri and Karim Fakhrawi, have died during detention, their bodies showing undeniable signs of brutality.

In the latest arrest, Al Alawy was hauled into prison after security forces smashed their way into his home without a warrant. Well-known for his radio and television appearances, he is also a published poet, who has been mildly critical of the US-backed Al Khalifa regime.

Ironically, the arrest of Al Alawy followed only hours after US secretary of state Hillary Clinton claimed in a major speech in Washington that the Bahraini government “has recognized the need for dialogue, reconciliation, and concrete reforms. And they have committed to provide access to human rights groups, to allow peaceful protest”.

The detention and torture of nearly 100 media figures in Bahrain is hardly a sign of “allowing peaceful protest”.

Clinton’s speech on US policy and the Arab Spring was spellbinding in its hypocrisy and sophistry. She glorified the US-backed illegal war to overthrow Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and denounced Syria for its “brutal” crackdown on protests.  Syrian President Bashar Al Asad, warned Clinton, “must step down; and until he does, America and the international community will continue to increase pressure on him and his brutal regime”.

There were no such bristling sanctions for Washington’s ally in Bahrain, where the US Fifth Fleet is based. Indeed, the US government recently signed a military arms deal worth $53 million with the Al Khalifa monarchy.

Yet on many counts, Bahrain’s human rights violations put it way out in front for urgent international sanctions against its rulers. In Syria, the death toll from violence is estimated at 3,500. But perhaps a third of this total are casualties among the state forces which are combating in some cases an armed insurrection supplied by Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel (with obviously US oversight).

By contrast in Bahrain, protesters are unarmed and have invariably conducted peaceful demonstrations of civic disobedience. Proportionate to their populations, Bahrain’s death toll of civilians is easily comparable to that of Syria’s. Furthermore, the persecution of dissenting public voices is equivalent to 3,660 journalists being detained; the figure for the detention of all protesters since February rising to 55,000.

Among those hauled into Bahraini prisons, tortured and sentenced are doctors and nurses who did nothing more than treat civilians injured by American-equipped and Saudi-backed state forces. The proportionate figure for these medics subjected to crimes against humanity amounts to over 3,300.

On so many measures therefore, Bahrain is a clear case of outrageous human rights violations and atrocities that deserves urgent international intervention. But Washington is not only tolerating these crimes, it is actively supporting them while doing its rhetorical best to conceal.

The British and Canadian governments are also complicit in this US hypocrisy and twisted manipulation of international law. The former is another major supplier of military weapons that can have no other purpose than internal repression; meanwhile Ottawa maintains a stoic silence over the illegal detention, torture and sentencing of Canadian citizen Naser Al Raas. Al Raas was arrested while trying to leave Bahrain after visiting his family and fiancée during March.

He was tortured during illegal detention in the notorious Ministry of Interior headquarters in the capital, Manama. Al Raas told Global Research that he believes the reason why he is now facing a five-year sentence for allegedly participating in “illegal public protests” was because he happened to be held in a cell adjacent to the journalist Karim Kakhrawi. During the 12 days that Fakhrawi was tortured to death, Al Raas heard the screams from his companion prisoner, whose identity he later found out. And he can recall the horrible moment when the screams suddenly stopped. For this reason, Al Raas believes the Bahraini regime wants to suppress his potential testimony to a damning state killing.

Helping the Bahraini regime do its dirty work are the governments of the US, Britain and Canada, which otherwise take every opportunity to moralise, sanction and militarily attack any state that they happen to disprove of.

In her speech at the National Democratic Institute in Washington, Clinton said: “Americans believe that the desire for dignity and self-determination is universal—and we do try to act on that belief around the world. Americans have fought and died for these ideals. And when freedom gains ground anywhere, Americans are inspired.”

In fending off criticism of “inconsistent” US policy on the Arab Spring, Clinton let the cat out of the bag when she referred to “close allies” Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and the need to “a secure supply of energy”.  She added pointedly: “There will be times when not all our interests align… that is just reality.”

Other realities could be mentioned for why the US and its allies are participating in arresting and torturing citizens calling for democracy in Bahrain – such as the fear that the long-overdue franchise for the Shia majority in the Persian Gulf state would boost Iran’s regional role and give the Islamic Republic a degree of respite from Washington’s recently cranked-up campaign to lynch the government in Tehran.

But the bottom-line and truly remarkable reality that Clinton did not mention – which Bahrain clearly demonstrates – is this: Washington stands implacably against democratic progress in the Middle East. Its highly selective invocation of democratic rights and freedoms is nothing but a cynical, self-serving lie.

The persistence of pro-democracy protests in Bahrain in the face of brutal repression may be giving Washington second thoughts about its unwavering support for the royal rulers of the strategically important Persian Gulf kingdom. Are we about to witness a cosmetic ‘regime change’ – not so much for the genuine sake of democratic rights in Bahrain, but more to save Washington’s vital interests across the region?

The tiny island situated between Saudi Arabia and Qatar serves as the base for the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet. The Fifth Fleet, comprising 16,000 personnel and 30 vessels, is a staging ground for US military projection across the Middle East and Central Asia. It also monitors the sealanes of the Persian Gulf through which some 30 per cent of the world’s total supply of traded oil passes every day.

Since the mainly Shia population of Bahrain took to the streets on 14 February in protest against the unelected Sunni monarchy of the Al Khalifa dynasty, Washington has given unrelenting support to the regime – invariably describing Bahrain as “an important ally”.

Apart from the US Fifth Fleet, the US has a free trade agreement with Bahrain, it sells some $20 million in weapons every year to the kingdom, and Bahrain is a financial hub for American and global capital.

Bahrain returned all these favours by lending Washington and its NATO allies diplomatic cover for the military intervention in Libya to oust Muammar Gaddafi. Bahrain, along with the other Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, lined up dutifully behind the US/NATO intervention to give it a veneer of Arab approval, and thus head off charges that the aerial bombardment of Libya is a Western imperialist war of aggression. The Gulf Arab monarchies have also performed the same political function of providing diplomatic cover for the US/NATO sanctions and threats of intervention against Syria.

Bahrain and the other Gulf dictatorships (despite the irony of that) have thus played an important propaganda function. They have helped underpin the premise that the US and NATO involvement in Libya and Syria is guided by defence of human rights and democratic freedoms.

But now here’s the rub. Bahrain stands out as a glaring contradiction to stated US government claims regarding its interventions in Libya and Syria.

The fact that some 40 people have been killed in Bahrain for peacefully demanding democratic freedoms and basic human rights is an unmitigated damning indictment of the US-backed regime. Thousands have been injured – many horribly mutilated – from regime forces firing at unarmed peaceful demonstrators.

The apparent glaring contradiction between US foreign policy towards Bahrain and its espoused concerns for the people of Libya and Syria makes Bahrain under the Al Khalifa regime a serious liability to Washington’s “humanitarian” credibility.

Given the ongoing persecution against Shia workers (over 3,500 sacked); the preposterous use of military show trials to prosecute dozens of doctors, nurses, teachers, lawyers and athletes; the widespread condemnation by human rights groups of illegal mass detention and torture; the targeting of independent journalists and bloggers; the expulsion of hundreds of students and academics – the liability of the Al Khalifa regime to Washington’s foreign policy credibility grows ever more unwieldy by the day.

Added to these barbarities against peaceful civilians is the recent massive teargas deployment in Shia villages that are deemed to be supportive of the pro-democracy movement. Every night, villages are smothered in teargas by regime forces firing thousands of canisters into streets and homes. Local people have described the deployment a deliberate policy of “toxic terrorism” and “collective punishment”.

At least eight people have died from asphyxiation after regime forces fired teargas into homes. The latest victim was Jawad Ahmed (36). He died on 14 September, succumbing to teargas fired into his home in the village of Sitra. Relatives did not want to take the victim to the hospital out of fear that he would be arrested by regime forces – as is common in Bahrain where the hospitals have been under military command ever since the Saudi-led invasion to crackdown on the protesters in March. Only days before Jawad Ahmed’s death, a boy, Ali Jawad (14) was killed when he was shot in the head at close range with a teargas canister. [1]

The insoluble dilemma for the regime is that such fierce repression has signally failed to quash the pro-democracy protests. After nearly six months of state terrorism, the Bahraini protests against the regime have become more determined with 200,000-300,000 out of a population of less than 600,000 participating in demonstrations every week.

In June, Bahrain’s King Hamad Al Khalifa promised a return to “normal” with a raft of initiatives that were hailed, and quite possibly formulated, by Washington as a positive move for reform: these included the official lifting of the state of emergency; a process of “national dialogue”; an independent probe into human rights violations; and the transfer of all prosecutions from military to civilian courts.

However, unfortunately for the US-backed monarchy, these initiatives have not bought off the opposition, which continues to take to the streets calling for the downfall of the regime. Hence the regime has reneged on its initiatives and is resorting to full-on repression, which in turn is only emboldening the pro-democracy movement even more.

The unreformable Bahraini regime thus presents Washington with a thorny problem. Not only is the US government being shown to be on the side of tyrants in Bahrain, but its support of such a regime is exposing a chasm in Washington’s rhetoric about human rights in Libya, Syria and elsewhere across the Middle East. Bahrain may only be a tiny territory, but the reality of state terror and repression against unarmed civilians is blowing a huge hole in the US façade of protecting human rights and democratic freedom.

In this way, is the Al Khalifa regime in Bahrain in danger of hitting a threshold, which the US government can no longer tolerate because of its public relations liability? Recall how Washington supported to the last hour the dictatorships of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Ben Ali in Tunisia. But when the public relations conundrum of supporting these tyrants became insufferable they were duly dispensed with. Could we be about to witness the same cynical abandonment of Washington’s tyrants in Bahrain?

The first sign of this shift may be gleaned from the remarkably critical coverage recently of the Bahraini regime in the New York Times and Washington Post. Given that these papers, along with other mainstream media, have so far given scant coverage to the violations in Bahrain, it is notable that these organs of US government thinking have come out with such unvarnished description of repression in the “important ally”.On 15 September, the New York Times ran a front-page story headlined: Bahrain Boils Under the Lid of Repression. “American willingness to look the other way has cast Washington as hypocritical,” bemoans the Times as it goes on to list a litany of human rights violations. “Backed by the armed intervention of Saudi Arabia, King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa declared martial law in March, and though it was repealed June 1, the reverberations of the repression still echo across the island.”

In an editorial piece on 10 September, the Washington Post went further and hinted at official US strategic concerns over Bahrain: “The regime… hasn’t delivered — and now it is risking a new explosion of unrest that could destabilize not just Bahrain but the region around it… If Bahrain blows up, vital US interests will be at risk. The [Obama] administration should use its influence now.”

The vital US interests at stake under the increasingly unreliable Al Khalifa regime in Bahrain are high. They include the US naval command of the Persian Gulf oil trade; the spillover of Shia unrest in Bahrain into top oil producer Saudi Arabia; and the boost that this would give Iran’s influence in the region.

But just as important is the ongoing damage that the Al Khalifa regime is inflicting on Washington’s carefully crafted claims of supporting human rights and democracy across the region – and in Libya and Syria in particular. Bahrain nails the lie in Washington’s rhetoric; it throws a clunking big spanner in US foreign policy wheels.

We shouldn’t be surprised therefore if the US Air Force is loading gold bullion for the hasty departure of King Hamad to Saudi Arabia.

Ralph Schoenman, author of a Hidden History of Zionism, points out: “The Al Khalifa feudal kleptocracy in Bahrain stinks in the nostrils of all fair-minded people. Its barbaric mode of rule has reached a point where the imperial masters shop furtively for a bourgeois surrogate to calm the storm before the mass struggle assumes armed and revolutionary proportions.

“Yet every tenuous attempt by US rulers to locate less tainted and detestable, if pliable figures, to extend the life of a fragile imperial hegemony will but hasten the mass uprising that this classic manoeuvre is designed to forestall.”

Finian Cunningham is a Global Research Correspondent based in Belfast, Ireland. He was expelled from Bahrain for his critical journalism on 18 June 2011.

cunninghamfin@yahoo.com  

NOTES

[1] Bahrain: US Ally Kills Children… So When Is NATO Intervening?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26324