Bahrain Opinion: Creating the Discourse of Fear on Fantasy Island (Hammonda)

The blogger Hammonda writes:

One of the critical things the Bahraini government has done since this year’s uprising set off panic that it was nearly game over is to create a discourse challenging the narrative of an oppressed majority demanding democracy and an end to discrimination. The authorities have worked diligently to put the argument in public space that the street protest movement was violent, sought to replace the monarchy with an Iran-allied republic and did not represent the majority of Bahrainis. To do this, a number of measures have been taken such as hiring PR companies, promoting a Sunni-led political party to occupy a nationalist middle ground, and creating a chattering army of Bahrainis and foreigners primed with talking points to influence traditional and online media, often with fake or hidden identities.

For example, one tactic is to send out seemingly ordinary citizens, supposedly motivated simply by concern for how media is misrepresenting what happened. One such group approached international media in Geneva recently, one news agency went for the bait, another sniffed out that they were government plants. Some people who were likely of this ilk come the way of reporters in Manama. You never really know one way or another, but accumulation of evidence can push the argument that way. The snippets of information thrown in about what someone has been doing so far or are about to do lends a slightly dark shade to these encounters. The line of argument is more interesting though.

According to one young man, the protesters in February were in their entirety really looking for an Islamic state. The fact that they were mainly Shi’ites proves that point, since the Shia are not in the majority in Bahrain, so it would not make sense for them to be Shi’ite-dominated. If the demonstrators said they were about Sunni-Shi’ites together fighting for a non-discriminatory society with a truly democratic political system, they were lying since that’s what Shi’ite doctrine of taqiyya is all about.

The Waad people --- a constant thorn in the side for the authorities because they ruin the narrative --– joined with the protesters because they had Shi’ite sympathies, he said. Take their leader Ibrahim Sharif: “People said he’s sympathetic to them because his wife is Shi’ite,” he said. Another concerned Sunni Bahraini, whose line was to present the Shia as sheep following their religious leaders, as well as lazy whingers, explained that a friend of hers had quit the secular Waad because they wanted to “coerce him with women, with drink”. The arguments sometimes imply that Shi’ites do not carry the values of true Bahrainis, their protests are violent, their beliefs are weird. “People on the ground are asking for reforms, but how about reforming their actions, their minds, their beliefs. Change starts at the individual level,” as one person said.

I asked about violence and intimidation on the other side. The young guy defended on-line hunters and trackers like the outrageous Hareghum (Burn Them), who spent months naming Shi’ites for security [services] to arrest or companies to fire and still calls Shi’ites “monkeys”. He sort of rolled his eyes and guffawed in affection at some cuddly chum that was just jokin’, didn’t mean no harm. “Hareghum has calmed down. People were scared at the beginning. He asked for people to send information, I don’t see anything wrong in that.” The Bahraini online world is rife with fake accounts and identities, as the Lilian affair demonstrated. 

Another theme is that the National Unity Gathering, which suddenly appeared out of nowhere under the leadership of cleric Abdullatif Al Mahmoud (who made pro-protest comments in the early days of the Roundabout), represents the majority. A government official argued the same, though he stopped short of claiming that the Sunnis were numerically superior: “Where we are today is that the slight majority of the people living in Bahrain, the majority of those who voted for parliament, and many who live in Bahrain don’t want regime change or want to strive for reforms through violent means...the Rally is the largest political party in Bahrain.”

The idea that the Shia have nothing to complain about came up often. I went on a few trips that tried to sway the argument one way or the other. One was to villages around Sitra such as Ma’ameer --- where the land reclamation projects of the decade since [King] Hamad won calm and time with his 2002 reforms have ruined bays and fishing. The sea at Ma’ameer is a stinking swamp, with sewage and industrial waste from nearby oil and other manufacturing installations. You can’t fish there. The town is covered head to foot with graffiti against the ruling elite - the senior members of the ruling family who are invisible but omnipotent. “Hamad in basket waste,” one said in English. The streets were deserted, but strewn with stones and barriers for the people to jump out and confront the state’s enforcers at a moment’s notice. 

In Sitra Safala young men were preparing street blockades at 1 in the morning. Riot police have a habit of coming hunting for people to detain between 2 and 5, or just frightening residents with a show of force,  firing teargas, stun grenades and rubber bullets in all directions, they said. The houses are so ranshackle that teargas usually gets inside. “Last night they stormed in and threatened my sister with a knife,” said A.F.. “We can’t sleep in our houses, we can’t go to work.” A.A. said security closures of sea zones had made living off fishing, which Sitra residents still do off their part of the coast, harder. ”They are destroying our livelihood with reclaiming land, since 2004,” he said. On the highway outside Sitra are a line of car showrooms run by wealthy families, symbols of those who make inside the system, on the edge of a community distinctly outside it. Of the 40 or so people who have died since Feb. 14, ten are from Sitra.  

Driving past the Financial Habour on another trip to show that “they” having nothing to complain about, development was presented as an ipso facto good. ”Bahrain has developed a lot in the last 10 years. This was nothing, it was just sea before. It wasn’t even a beach, it was just rocks,” a guide said.

It isn’t called the Financial Harbour for nothing. It used to be sea and beach where fisherman had their boats and made their living. But the traditional life of Bahraini communities --- mainly but not all Shi’ite ---has been overturned by the development of land refill, luxury housing developments, the fast highway from Saudi Arabia, shopping malls. Shi’ite villagers feel they have been literally cast aside as the fast-track to “development” stormed past their communities on the high road to Manama. Much of the country is state or royal property and off-limits to the public, and palaces dot the landscape. “Look at these tall trees,” someone said to me in Budaiya, pointing to a fenced off plantation, “it means ‘I don’t want to see you.’” Highways, land-fill, luxury housing and royal ranches. [The opposition party] Wefaq tried to raise these issues in the 2006 parliament and diplomats say they were effective enough to disturb many in the elite. That could explain the determination of the ”hardliners” within the upper echelons to delegitimise them and find an alternative address on the Shi’ite street. But what matters to many in the bourgeois areas is ”they blocked our roads, our access, our offices; they blocked our life”.

The government was caught flat-footed by the uprising. If and when it happens again --- and there’s a fair chance of that --- its defenders will be ready with instant demonisation to justify instant repression.