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Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Saudi Arabia’s decision

Saudi Arabia’s decision to deploy security forces in embattled Bahrain threatens to escalate a domestic political dispute in the island state into a sectarian confrontation with Iran, whose reverberations may be felt as far afield as Iraq and Lebanon, analysts said. Saudi Arabia, together with security personnel from the United Arab Emirates operating under a mandate from the Gulf Cooperation Council, has placed 2,000 soldiers and police in Bahrain. At the cost of four lives, scores of injured and the imposition of martial law, calm has been restored. A week after the March 14 deployment, businesses, the stock market and schools were re-opening. But analysts said the Saudi move – the first ever by one Arab state intervening militarily in another since the onset of the so-called Jasmine Revolution three months ago – has crossed a red line for Iran and may prompt it to intervene as a counterweight. A tiny country with no oil of its own, Bahrain nevertheless holds a strategic place in the Gulf. It is home to the US Fifth Fleet and is adjacent to Saudi Arabia’s biggest oil fields. Its Sunni Islamic monarchy is close to the Saudi ruling house as well as the US, but some 70% of its population shares the Shi'ite faith of Iran, Riyadh’s rival for regional supremacy. “Iran sees it as an attack on the international Shi'ite community,” Theodore Karasik, director for research and development at the Dubai-based Institute for near east and Gulf Military Analysis. “Also, they have claimed Bahrain in the past, as a historical claim, is Iran’s 14th province. That kind of rhetoric is a portent for the future.” Iran has already lashed out rhetorically against the Saudi move. Although the GCC forces were invited by Bahrain’s king, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, and the US says it was not consulted prior to the action, Tehran has referred to the action as an invasion it blames on the US On Saturday, hundreds of Iranians stoned the Saudi embassy in Tehran to protest the “killing of Muslims in Bahrain,” Agence France Press reported. Bahrain and Tehran have both recalled their ambassadors. Tehran has cheered on opposition protesters across the Middle East, including Bahrain, and King Hamad said Sunday that unnamed foreign forces had been working to undermine the government, a clear reference to Tehran. But Karasik said Iran isn’t believed to have actively supported protesters anywhere. While Bahrain said GCC forces were invited simply “to defuse the tension in Bahrain,” analysts said Saudi Arabia had much bigger concerns. One is stopping what it perceived as a Shiite assault against a Sunni ally. Another is preserving the Bahraini monarchy for fear that one disposed king will whet the appetites of democratic opposition leaders to target the Saudi and other monarchies. Moody’s Investors Service said the kingdom’s chief concern was Iran’s ambitions to become the unrivaled power in the Gulf, if not the wider Middle East. Moody’s warned that the Saudi move would probably lead to increased tensions between GCC countries and Iran. “This may have consequence for countries further afield, such as Lebanon and Iraq, which have acted as arena for competing regional and international powers,” Moody’s said. Both Iraq and Lebanon have substantial Shi'ite populations competing with Sunni Muslims and other sects for control of the countries. Iran has been active in Lebanon by backing the Shi'ite Hezbollah movement, which has emerged as the country’s biggest military force and dominant political party. In fact, Riyadh may have miscalled the source of tensions in Bahrain – and awakened the genie of Sunni-Shi'ite confrontation it hoped to put down. Jane Kinninmont, senior research fellow at London’s Chatham House, said in a March 18 comment that the protests that have shaken Bahrain for more than a month haven’t been about religion, but on corruption, unemployment and political reform. Discrimination against the Shi'ite majority is a core issue as well, but it had been expressed in political terms until recently, she said.  But even before the GCC forces arrived, the complexion of the protests was changing, with opposition leaders urging the toppling of the monarchy, which was causing a panic among Bahraini’s Sunni minority. “These fears are driving an increasing number of Bahraini – usually tolerant and well-educated – into frightened and sectarian stances,” Kinninmont wrote. The Saudi move will almost certainly exacerbate the sectarian nature of the conflict, said Karasik, thereby opening a door to Iran to exploit the situation. But, he said, Tehran would not risk mimicking Saudi Arabia’s actions by dispatching its own forces.

Air strikes on Libya

Western powers launched a second wave of air strikes on Libya early on Monday after halting the advance of Muammar Qaddafi’s forces on Benghazi and targeting air defences to let their planes patrol the skies. The UN-mandated intervention to protect civilians caught up in a one-month-old revolt against Qaddafi drew criticism from Arab League chief Amr Moussa, who questioned the need for a heavy bombardment, which he said had killed many civilians. But the United States, carrying out the air strikes in a coalition with Britain, France, Italy and Canada among others, said the campaign was working and dismissed a ceasefire announcement by the Libyan military on Sunday evening. Britain’s Defence Ministry said one of its submarines had again fired Tomahawk guided missiles on Sunday night as part of a second wave of attacks to enforce the UN resolution. “We and our international partners are continuing operations in support of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973,” a ministry spokesman said. Italy said it also had warplanes in the air, after US and British warships and submarines launched 110 Tomahawk missiles on Saturday night and Sunday morning. Vice Admiral Bill Gortney, director of the US military’s Joint Staff, told reporters there had been no new Libyan air activity or radar emissions, but a significant decrease in Libyan air surveillance, since strikes began Saturday. Benghazi was not yet free from threat, said Gortney, but Qaddafi’s forces in the area were in distress and “suffering from isolation and confusion” after the air assaults. Late on Sunday night, Libyan officials took Western reporters to Qaddafi’s compound in Tripoli, a sprawling complex that houses his private quarters as well as military barracks, anti-aircraft batteries and other installations, to see what they said was the site of a missile attack two hours earlier. “It was a barbaric bombing,” said government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim, showing pieces of shrapnel that he said came from the missile. “This contradicts American and Western (statements) that it is not their target to attack this place.” A Libyan military spokesman announced a new ceasefire on Sunday, saying that “the Libyan armed forces have issued a command to all military units to safeguard an immediate ceasefire from 9 pm this evening”. Both before and after he spoke, heavy anti-aircraft gunfire boomed above central Tripoli. Outside Benghazi, smouldering, shattered tanks and troop carriers from what had been Qaddafi’s advancing forces littered the main road. The charred bodies of at least 14 government soldiers lay scattered in the desert. But with Qaddafi having vowed to fight to the death, there were fears his troops might try to force their way into cities, seeking shelter from air attacks among the civilian population. In central Benghazi, sporadic explosions and heavy exchanges of gunfire could be heard in the streets late on Sunday evening. A Reuters witness said the firing lasted about 40 minutes. In Misrata, the last rebel-held city in western Libya, government tanks moved in after a base used by Gaddafi’s forces outside was hit by air strikes on Saturday, residents said. “There is fighting between the rebels and Qaddafi’s forces. Their tanks are in the centre of Misrata. There are so many casualties we cannot count them,” Abdelbasset, a spokesman for the rebels in Misrata, told Reuters on Sunday afternoon. A Libyan government health official said 64 people had been killed by Western bombardment on Saturday and Sunday morning, but it was impossible to independently verify the report. Libyan state television showed footage from an unidentified hospital of what it called victims of the “colonial enemy”. Ten bodies were wrapped in white and blue bed sheets, and several people were wounded, one of them badly, the television said. Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa called for an emergency meeting of the group’s 22 states to discuss Libya. He requested a report on the bombardment, which he said had “led to the deaths and injuries of many Libyan civilians”. “What is happening in Libya differs from the aim of imposing a no-fly zone, and what we want is the protection of civilians and not the bombardment of more civilians,” Egypt’s state news agency quoted him as saying. There was no immediate public backing for his call from any government in the region, however. Arab support for a no-fly zone provided crucial underpinning for the passage of a UN Security Council resolution last week that paved the way for Western action to stop Qaddafi killing civilians as he fights an uprising against his 41-year rule. US President Barack Obama spoke to Jordan’s King Abdullah, while Vice President Joe Biden phoned leaders in Algeria and Kuwait to shore up Arab support. The intervention is the biggest against an Arab country since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.