Bahrain

The USG Open Source Center translates a report from the Bahrain newspaper al-Wasat for Feb. 14, entitled “Bahraini Opposition Condemns Security Solution, ‘Ill-Treatment’ of Prisoners.” (They mean by ‘security solution’ the regime’s preference for dealing with dissent by violence instead of negotiation.) Bahrain is an ethnically divided society of some 550,000 citizens, mostly Arab, and […]

Justin Elliott writes at ProPublica: Despite Bahrain’s bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, the U.S. has continued to provide weapons and maintenance to the small Mideast nation. Defense Department documents released to ProPublica give the fullest picture yet of the arms sales: The list includes ammunition, combat vehicle parts, communications equipment, Blackhawk helicopters, and an unidentified […]

Anders Strindberg writes in a guest column for Informed Comment All is not what it seems: Bahrain and U.S. strategic interests On the last Friday night of September, Bahraini police shot seventeen-year old Ali Ne’amah in the back with bird shot, in the village of Sadad. He died on site. Ali’s family insists that he […]

The crisis in Bahrain continues to boil along, despite the harsh crackdown of the Sunni monarchy on the protest movement (made up largely of the Shiite majority, but also supported by some Sunni parties). The crackdown has left about 83 dead in the past year, and hundreds have been imprisoned. Abd al-Hadi al-Khwajah, a protester […]