By: Tallha Abdulrazaq
The wave of popular unrest that has engulfed the Middle East region in recent months has paved the way for opportunistic power politicking on behalf of certain regional powers. In Tunisia, decades of oppressive rule combined with corruption, lack of jobs and increased food prices began this chain reaction of events leading to the downfall of several of the Middle East’s ‘old guard’, including Tunisia’s Ben Ali, and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak. Indeed, we can now see from the UNSC sanctioned no-fly zone in Libya that the old Arab regimes are beginning to crumble one by one. It is in this sort of environment that players interested in exploiting the chaos are attempting to expand their influence and power via the use of religious ideology.
Case in point, the revolt in the Kingdom of Bahrain; the Shia who, depending on which figures and sources are consulted, represent 50-70% of the population began to protest against supposed state prejudice and lack of effective representation. This gripe surprisingly managed to manifest itself even following elections in 2010 that saw the Shia Al-Wefaq party win a majority of 18 seats in the Bahraini Council of Representatives. The Shia demands began with greater political freedoms without regime change, but that swiftly changed once the Bahraini government attempted to clear Pearl Roundabout, what protesters were hoping would be akin to the Egyptian revolutionaries Tahrir Square, and killed 3 protesters. As the government security apparatus is dominated by Sunni Arabs, this violent response was then capitalised upon by the Shia opposition who started to utilise sectarian rhetoric, which shall be discussed later. Since then, the Bahraini police and army has advanced and retreated in turn, before the Bahraini Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad requested the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to send troops to help guard key strategic sites.
