A lawyer for Bahrainis detained in Guantánamo is now excluded from a country where he was once welcome. Joshua Colangelo-Bryan tells the story.
Support by the Arab League for the military operations in Libya has been an effective diplomatic means for Saudi Arabia and the GCC to redirect interest in internal Arab states of affairs away from the Arabian Peninsula and onto North Africa. The strategy seems to work nicely: the silence surround
A new word is needed to describe these events of recent months. They should be called ‘refolutions’, radical refusals of the old choice between reform and revolution - remarkably sensitive to the grave dangers and high costs of using violent means to get their way
New demands for political reform in the Gulf are meeting a repressive response by regimes especially panicked when pro-democracy protests swell into cross-sectarian movements for meaningful political reform. This brutality polarises opinion between advocates of reform and proponents of repression.
The Gulf Co-operation Council, whose normal work is to consolidate and promote oil interests, would do well to remember that just last week it admonished Gaddafi for using force against his fellow citizens.
Even as the United States military quietly prepares for possible action against the Gaddafi regime, the violence of rulers in Tripoli and Manama promises to stall the Arab democratic wave of 2011.
The media and politicians have done Iraq a great disservice by highlighting the overt sectarian identity of the oppressor and the oppressed. It must not make this same mistake with Bahrain.
World mulls no-fly zone as Gaddafi troops gain ground: time is running out for rebels. India overtakes China as world’s largest arms importer. More civilians fleeing clashes in Ivory Coast as situation spirals towards civil war. Saudi troops sent into Bahrain. South Sudanese leaders pull out of ta
With its oil reserves measured in years rather than decades and facing the imminent yet difficult transition to a post-oil economy, Bahrainis simply cannot afford another wasted ten-year cycle of partial reform and renewed repression. Major unrest in the Gulf States is altering their self-projecti
A “palm revolution” in the Gulf? Political upheaval in the desert state of Bahrain: there have been calls for a Day of Rage in Bahrain to replace the celebration of 10 years of constitutional monarchy on February 14th which is set to split the country in two
The politics of a small Persian Gulf kingdom do not usually reverberate far beyond its borders. But an accumulation of social tensions and rights violations in Bahrain gives its coming election a rare international importance, say Christopher M Davidson & Kristian Coates-Ulrichsen.
