In 2006 details of the policy unexpectedly came into the public domain following the publication of a lengthy report by Salah Al-Bandar — a British citizen of Sudanese origin who had been working for Bahrain’s Ministry for Cabinet Affairs. The report — now dubbed Bandargate — claimed to have uncovered a secret plot by a group within the government to ‘deprive an essential part of the population [the Shia] of their rights’.[597] Moreover, it inferred that the group was trying to turn the Shia into a minority within just a few years and was busy working on ways to gerrymander electoral constituencies so as to reduce the clout of Shia members of parliament. Although Al-Bandar was promptly deported and the state-backed media was banned from reporting on the story, a protest was held demanding a thorough investigation.[598] In 2008, following the publication of official figures indicating that Bahrain’s total population had increased by more than 40 per cent between 2002 and 2007, tensions increased further, as it was deemed unlikely that all of the increase was due to expatriates or the naturalisation of stateless persons. Analysts have claimed that the natural rate of growth for the national population would have only yielded an increase of 47,000 persons, thus more than 72,000 were probably granted citizenship during this period.[599] Indeed, in summer 2010 opposition groups in Bahrain estimated that between 65,000 and 100,000 Sunni nationals have been added to the country’s voter rolls in the last decade. Most of the newcomers[600] seem to be housed in brand new villages in Bahrain’s hinterland, suitably distanced from the older, predominantly Shia villagers. Many seem to work for the state security services, the police, or the royal court, likely due to their unswerving loyalty to the Sunni elites. Interviewed by the New York Times in summer 2010, a resident of one such village — a settlement specifically for Sunnis employed in the security sector — stated that he and his two brothers worked for the police and that ‘…if the Shia took control of the country, they would pop out one eye of every Sunni in the country’.[601]
Unsurprisingly, Shia-led protests, most of which have focused on their socio-economic discrimination or the jailing of their leaders, continued to gather pace following these revelations and the issue of sectarian manipulation is now very much at the core of the bloody revolution underway in Bahrain. However, even prior to 2011 these protests were being met with extreme force. In March 2009, for example, following the arrest of twenty-three Shia leaders, crowds had gathered to demand their release and carried placards with the slogans ‘We are against sectarian discrimination’ and ‘No, no to oppressing freedoms’. The Bahraini police — mostly made up of Sunni Bahraini nationals or Sunni expatriates from Jordan, Pakistan, and elsewhere — shot teargas canisters into crowds and for several days fought pitched battles in several Shia villages. Interviewed by the New York Times, Shia protestors complained that they were all but banned from holding military and security positions, and that ‘…there are no jobs because of naturalisation of foreigners, because of the political prisoners, because of the abuse of the rights of the citizen’.[602]
In August 2010, shortly before parliamentary elections were due to be staged, four more Shia activists were arrested including the spokesperson for a Shia political group called the Haq Movement for Liberty and Democracy,[603] the head of a Shia human rights group committed to helping those who have been tortured,[604] and others belonging to a group that had — according to the government — been ‘created to undermine the security and stability of the country’.[605] Commenting on the arrests, the head of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights claimed ‘I don’t think anyone in Bahrain believes those stories’ and predicted they would further inflame sectarian tensions in the country.[606] By the end of the month it was thought that nearly 160 activists had been detained — initially high profile Shia political and human rights leaders, but later including ‘many young men not known as activists’. The official view was again one of denial, with spokespersons claiming that the detainees were ‘suspected of security and terrorism violations, and were not being held for expressing dissident political views’ and that ‘…the only thing the government did wrong was that it went too easy at first’. The government also stated that it would ‘…no longer tolerate unrest among the Shia’ and that those convicted of ‘…compromising national security or slandering the nation can be deprived of health care and other state services’.[607]
Writing for The Economist in October 2010, one week before the elections, one analyst tried to sum up the mood in Bahrain following these harsh government counter measures. In the short term, it was argued, the measures might work, as ‘Opposition and human-rights people could be frightened into acquiescence’. However, it was pointed out that due to the ‘…government’s mishandling of events in the past few weeks [it] has stirred a well of resentment that may, in the longer term, spell danger for the Sunni ascendancy — and even for the ruling house’. Significantly, the article also claimed that the government was ‘blatantly harassing the opposition parties, particularly the main Shia-dominated one’ and that its leaders were being ‘…assailed in the pro-government press with accusations of encouraging terrorism and being in the pocket of “outside powers”, meaning in essence Iran’.[608] Indeed, when a British member of the House of Lords[609] met with Bahraini Shia leaders in London, and when the British ambassador to Bahrain met Shia leaders in Manama, the Bahraini state-backed newspapers were full of allegations of British- or Iranian-engineered plots to overthrow the ruling family. A petition was even signed by prominent Bahraini Sunnis demanding the expulsion of the British ambassador on these grounds.
600
139. Many Bahrainis have observed an influx of new citizens from Pakistan, Yemen, and Baluchistan. See Kinninmont (2012), p. 18.