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description=7 posts published by Reidar Visser during May 2011;

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cratisation in the middle east he mentioned the experiences of protesters in tunisia the street vendor of tunis egypt libya and yemen there was even a reference to damascus there was no such special reference to manama the capital of bahrain it is true that in a later section of his remarks obama did comment on the situation on the island albeit briefly but in that particular case he refrained from sympathising with or personifying the protesters relying instead on boilerplate phrases focused on dialogue not dissimilar from what any us president could have come up with there was even a silly reference to the effect that the bahraini government has a legitimate interest in the rule of law as if to legitimise the government discourse that the demonstrators were primarily made up by criminals what a joke the problem in the case of bahrain is that the feeble attempts at dialogue between rulers and ruled always with foreigners with vested interests in the country standing by as onlookers and more or less passively supporting the status quo have been going on for quite some time for example more than a half century ago on 6 march 1935 a british official commented it will not be easy for the al khalifa the ruling family of bahrain to maintain their tribal form of rule but it is in many respects well suited to the island similarly on 14 april 1939 trenchard c fowle in the british residency in bushire discussed the question of political reform in bahrain as follows reform would be most unpopular with the al khalifa family and would make us unpopular with them whereas at present they are extremely loyal and friendly to us the family have already discussed the question amongst themselves and regard the formation of a council as the end of the khalifah rule in bahrain since the bahrain administration is already good and efficient what need is there for a council to sum up the present autocratic government of bahrain suits us very well and any advice from us to the shaikh and his family to change its form for a more democratic one would not be palatable and would tend to make us unpopular with them and unsurprisingly there were hints that pockets of radicalism were unrepresentative perhaps even of foreign origin in a report dated 18 february 1935 a british official carefully pointed out the distinction between country baharina who are decent folk and certain evil townsmen who were trying to lead them astray even more conservative voices reigned in simla in india home of british policy making in the gulf at the time wrote o caroe to the secretary of state for india on 6 november 1935 i am directed to inform you that while the government of india feel that there is much in the administration of bahrain that is susceptible of improvement they consider it desirable to proceed with caution in the matter of giving advice to the shaikh of bahrain in the constitutional as opposed to purely administrative sphere to sum up the goi feel that no representations should be addressed to the shaikh suggesting the introduction of popular institutions of a democratic nature or carrying the implication that the support of government to the ruling family will depend on the degree in which the ruler meets the aspirations of the baharina indigenous shiites that was of course exactly seventy six years ago but the parallels to the way in which the us government is approaching the same ruling family today are quite striking back then the british would typically censure only the worst of the excesses of the al khalifa indeed as late as in the 1950 only the most extraordinary in terms of mistreatment of the gulf population by their arabian rulers would ruffle feathers in british circles as seen in a report from a british diplomat in jeddah dated 5 march 1950 we have noticed at para 14 of the bahrain intel summary for the latter half of january that a bahraini is reported to have been flogged to death at al khobar in saudi arabia not even mentioned by obama for the heinous crime of playing a lute we should like to have any confirmation of details of this which you may possess we are as you know concerned with the administration of saudi justice as it affects british protected persons working here as well as citizens of the uk fast forward to today s situation when obama says shia must never have their mosques destroyed in bahrain and demands that prisoners must be released from jails these are tiny steps forward compared to what is truly required obama juxtaposed his meek call for dialogue in bahrain to the situation in iraq which he appeared to highlight as a shining example of how multi sectarian democracy can work two comments are in order in this respect firstly sectarian conflict in iraq and sectarian conflict in bahrain are two completely different animals sectarian tension in bahrain incorporates an ethnic component that is altogether absent in iraq most shiites of bahrain consider themselves as baharina the indigenous agriculturalist population of bahrain that became subjected to the rule of raiding bedouins from arabia in the eighteenth century as if to underline the overlapping dichotomies of sect myths of origins and ecological patterns of adaption as late as in the 1930s the bahraini ruling family sunni recently settled bedouin would let their camels graze freely around the island including in the gardens of the agriculturalists shiites original baharina even the british got slightly concerned about a complaint of long standing among the baharina that the al khalifa camels eat their crops by way of contrast sunnis and shiites in iraq both see themselves as descendants of the arabian tribes and often try to outbid each other in proving their attachment to arab tribal values true correlations between sectarian identity and myths of descent like those seen in bahrain exist in other gcc countries too but in many cases they are mitigated by a degree of further complexity and subdivision within both sunni and shiite camps since there are often both sunnis and shiites of iranian descent involved as seen for example in kuwait but in bahrain the majority of shiites are also baharina and this adds a special dimension to the conflict second obama seems to overplay the extent to which iraq truly is such a wonderful triumph of democracy in the arab world yes the iraqis have rejected the perils of political violence in favour of a democratic process as obama said incidentally as obama failed to remind us they also rejected vice president joe biden s agenda of comprehensive federalisation of the iraqi state but even the participants in the current unity of government in iraq are beginning to criticize the formula of government that was adopted when maliki was appointed for a second term back in november 2010 44 ministries and three vice presidencies are seen as ridiculous and ineffective in terms of providing services for iraqi citizens and regular security ministers have yet to be appointed due to ongoing bickering between the many members of the oversized government the truth is that in today s iraqi democracy parliamentary politics has lost much of its meaning since almost every decision of significance is arrived at behind close doors outside the parliamentary compound if he is genuinely interested in safeguarding regional stability in the gulf obama ought to go beyond dialogue in bahrain and do a more critical evaluation of multi ethnic democracy in iraq to do that while at the same time making provisions for a post 2011 us presence in iraq and securing a home for the fifth fleet of the us navy somewhere in the gulf can prove to be something of a challenge posted in us policy in iraq leverage issues 26 comments kuwait port project makes waves in iraqi politics posted by reidar visser on thursday 19 may 2011 12 17 with the month long parliamentary holiday well underway iraqi politics has lost some of its momentum despite rumours about imminent emergency sessions a decision on the security ministries still seems some way off meanwhile a decision by the kuwaiti government to press ahead with a project to build a grand new port on the bubyan island to be named mubarak port appears to be what occupies the minds of most iraqi politicians these days since the project entered the public debate a short while ago politicians of all stripes have rushed to condemn it bubyan is the territory marked as kuwait on the above map it is interesting that many protests against the project are not focused on the territorial status of the bubyan island as such despite the fact that iraq claimed ownership of the island for much of the twentieth century and that it featured as one among several elements in the official iraqi justification for invading kuwait in 1990 rather several of the arguments against the port are of a practical nature above all commentators tend to focus on the fact that if kuwait finishes its port project ahead of iraq s own scheme of a great new harbour at neighbouring fao south of basra iraqi commerce will suffer some even predict that the fao project will be abandoned altogether as a consequence of the kuwaiti initiative as a result of this focus the protests may perhaps turn out to be short lived even some of the protestors admit that the iraqi government itself must shoulder some responsibility for having procrastinated with building port facilities in a more timely fashion at fao which would have enjoyed unrivalled access to the gulf and altogether avoided the problems of the khor abdallah the sound shared with kuwait in which bubyan lies and which leads to the iraqi port of umm qasr it should still be noted that lingering iraqi claims to bubyan are not entirely gone despite the un demarcation subsequent to the gulf war some legal experts contend that un boundary commission went too far in settling the maritime border in addition to the land border and by using the median of the khor abdallah sound instead of the thalweg the line that follows the natural riverbed in a recent interview tariq harb a legal adviser to prime minister nuri al maliki went as far as claiming that the un demarcation under unsc 833 was illegitimate or at least disputable given the alleged absence of any iraqis on the border commission this seems to misstate the case somewhat since the iraqi government was indeed represented through riyad al qaysi and eventually accepted the demarcation in 1994 only a more fundamental challenge by the current iraqi government relating to the very legitimacy of the pre 2003 baathist government as a representative of iraq in international affairs would be able to question the post 1991 settlement more generally but there would still remain difficulties in finding historical arguments for treating the bubyan and the second disputed island of warba different from the rest of kuwait for now perhaps the most interesting result of the kuwaiti port project is the creation of a new alliance in the iraqi parliament that brings together people who usually stand rather far apart but who now all agree to watch the issue of the kuwaiti port scheme closely a new parliamentary formation tajammu thus apparently not a bloc or kutla was declared wednesday with members mainly from the breakaway faction of iraqiyya known as white iraqiyya aliya nusayf aziz al mayahi and kazim al shammari iraqiyya itself attab al duri qusay al abbadi and hasan al hamdani sadrists asma al musawi hayfa al atwani and rafi abd al jabbar plus izzat shabandar an ex iraqiyya member who is now a member of state of law so far of course this is a small sized movement and mostly a curiosity it is probably still a phenomenon that the political leadership needs to take seriously as they move ahead on more important issues like the security ministries and the question of a post 2011 us military presence it is noteworthy that this alliance brings together both sadrists and iraqiyya members duri that have been publicly critical about a post 2011 american presence and if maliki wants to challenge them on this issue he will need to do more important things than bickering over vice presidencies the latter holds true also for the salih al mutlak faction of iraqiyya which lately has spent time challenging the newly elected vice president for state of law khudayr al khuzai according to the law on the deputy presidents only the president himself has an explicit right to initiate a process of sacking his deputies parliament can only summon them to question them what the vice presidential vote demonstrated was that maliki s dream of a political majority is still a long way off in this case it was threatened through opposition from both sadrists and isci of his own all shiite national alliance the latter may well opt to join the sadrists in opposing any sofa extension making it doubly important for maliki to bring iraqiyya firmly over on his side if he does indeed harbour a desire to obtain a parliamentary majority for any kind of prolonged us presence beyond 2011 posted in iraqi nationalism uia dynamics 3 comments parliament approves three vice presidents posted by reidar visser on thursday 12 may 2011 12 52 totally out of the blue and despite acrimonious exchanges between iraqiyya and the state of law bloc of prime minister nuri al maliki the iraqi parliament today voted to approve three deputies to president jalal talabani adel abd al mahdi of isci tareq al hashemi of iraqiyya and khudayr al khuzaie of state of law this latest development must be characterised first and foremost as a triumph for maliki state of law had been talking about three deputies as far back as in november 2010 reactions from other parties against the state of law candidate for filling one of the three posts khudayr al khuzaie were sufficiently strong that some of them even proposed changing the number and criteria for electing the largely ceremonial vice presidents the kurds in particular had invested much energy in demanding a single deputyship to be filled by a turkmen and according to some a female turkmen but today the three person formula prevailed and khuzaie was duly elected in the single vote that was held on the batch of deputies again a victory for state of law which had insisted on this mechanism exactly why maliki was able to pull this off at this point remains unclear and the reactions from iraqiyya have yet to materialise today s parliament session was attended by 235 out of a total of 325 deputies that same assembly also voted to sack ayyad al kinani who is thought to have sadrist sympathies from the independent electoral commission ihec it is noteworthy that at least two sadrist female deputies have criticised today s vote conspiracy theorists will probably rush to mention the fact that the iranian foreign minister is in town posing smilingly with his iraqi kurdish counterpart whatever the exact reason the decision certainly signifies that maliki is still able to get the decisions he wants in the iraqi parliame...