ANALYSIS:By intervening in Bahrain, Riyadh hopes to stop Shias mounting all-out armed rebellion, writes MICHAEL JANSEN
SAUDI ARABIA intervened in Bahrain’s contest of wills between rulers and reformers more for its own domestic reasons than the desire to prop up the challenged al-Khalifas who have reigned over the island for 200 years.
The main Saudi objective was to ensure that the Bahraini ruling family does not grant changes in the constitution that would whittle down the powers of the king and transform him into a constitutional monarch.
The Saudis fear that reformers in the kingdom’s majority Sunni community could put forward similar demands. Some have already done so – letting the genie out of the bottle – in internet petitions and on Facebook. The Saudi ruling family, in power since 1931, is simply not prepared to cede power to the people by establishing a representative legislature. Instead, the kingdom has a consultative council, consisting of 150 members, all appointed by the king.
The Saudi monarchy depends for its legitimacy and popular backing on its partnership with deeply conservative tribesmen and Sunni clerics belonging to the puritan Wahhabi sect. Both reject and resist political reform and social modernisation and have hampered King Abdullah’s efforts to achieve change.
Riyadh is reeling from a spate of Sunni strikes by communications workers and employees of the Medina municipality seeking higher wages and demonstrations by families of prisoners demanding the release of relatives.
The Saudis also fear that if the Sunni Bahraini rulers address demands of the Shia majority for an end to discrimination and powersharing, Saudi’s Shia minority could press for their rights. The Saudi Shia minority constitutes a restive, underprivileged majority in the oil-rich eastern province, the source of Saudi’s great wealth.
Riyadh claims Shia Iran is stirring up Shias in both Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and argues that intervention is required to prevent these communities from mounting all-out armed rebellions. While it may be true that Iran has encouraged Shias to demand their rights, they have serious grievances which need to be addressed.
Last Friday’s “Day of Rage” advertised by Sunni and Shia internet activists prompted the Saudi authorities to order the largest-ever deployment of security forces on the streets of the kingdom’s cities and towns to smother demonstrations.
Saudi Arabia, the font of global Muslim radicalism, does not want to be infected with the radicalism of secular, liberal democracy, the form of governance demanded by the movements that ousted the regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. By intervening in Bahrain, Riyadh may also hope to stifle democracy uprisings in Gulf states and make it clear to their rulers not to give in to the demands of such movements. Since the dispatch of Saudi troops and Emirati police is a Gulf Co-operation Council venture, it positions all Gulf rulers in the camp opposed to Arab democratic reform.
The Saudi intervention could backfire if democracy advocates turn to violence and if al-Khalifas come to be regarded as imposed rulers and lose legitimacy with the Shia majority with whom they must come to terms.