THE Arab protests at last reached the Gulf on February 14th, when small and scattered demonstrations took place in Shia villages in the Sunni-run kingdom of Bahrain. They soon gained momentum, turning into a rally of thousands in Manama, the capital, before being bloodily dispersed in the early hours of February 17th, leaving at least three people dead. As The Economist went to press, the authorities seemed to be back in charge but the situation was dangerously fluid.

Three days earlier, riot police had broken up the first pockets of protest. But their heavy-handed tactics backfired. A young man was killed. The next day, hundreds joined mourners taking his body home. Police attacked them with tear-gas and birdshot. In the mêlée another young man was shot dead. By the evening the crowd had swelled to tens of thousands, who then occupied a big roundabout near the city centre known as Lulu (Pearl) Square, seeking to copy their Cairo counterparts.

The slogans became angrier. More people converged, putting up tents and a stage with a microphone. Volunteers directed traffic, handed out food and even took care of lost property, copying the Tahrir Square protesters. “No one expected this,” said a young enthusiast. “We didn't think such a big central gathering could happen here.” People climbed onto the stage with an array of demands, from constitutional reform to outright revolution.

It was too much for the ruling al-Khalifa dynasty, which decided to squash the protesters before they became too numerous. It is a questionable decision. Most opposition leaders, seeing that the royal family is backed by the powerful Saudi monarchy next-door as well as by the Americans, have been careful to say they want a democratic constitutional monarchy, not a revolution. With just over 1m people, half of them expatriates, Bahrain hosts the main American naval base in the Middle East.

But the brutal dispersal of the demonstrators may have changed the political dynamic. Sectarian tension and fear of foreign influence have been growing, long before the Egyptian upheaval. Bahrain's Sunni royal family, ruling a population that is two-thirds Shia, is afraid of Iran's influence. But the protests have not been exclusively Shia. Bahrainis of both sects have inveighed against corruption, inequality and their toothless parliament. But the Shias are the angrier, saying they are generally excluded from the army, the police and the higher ranks of the civil service.

Just a few days before the protest, the king announced a gift of 1,000 Bahraini dinars ($2,660) to every Bahraini family. The authorities had been cracking down on the opposition for several months, jailing 23 prominent dissidents in September. Human-rights people say 300-odd campaigners, most of them Shias, have since been detained. That number will now grow.

There is still a chance of peaceful reform. The day Hosni Mubarak bowed out in Egypt, Bahrain's crown prince told a business gathering in Turkey that his government would push ahead with reform. The king expressed sorrow at the first two deaths. Now he must decide whether to keep on cracking down or to seek compromise. Either way, he is in trouble.