Oct 14, 2018

The Al Khalifa royals hope that Bahrain’s upcoming quadrennial elections, set to take place Nov. 24 — and Dec. 1, if runoffs are necessary — will mark “a new chapter of the march of democratic development” in the island kingdom. Yet there is good reason to doubt that these elections will serve to enhance the ruling family’s legitimacy in the eyes of the Shiite opposition. Indeed, on Oct. 9, Bahrain’s dominant Shiite opposition group — Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society —called for a national boycott of the elections. This further indicates the extent to which many Bahraini Shiites believe that they are not genuinely represented in the government and that participating in next month’s elections for the lower-house would be counterproductive to their struggle.

Bahraini authorities dissolved Al-Wefaq in 2016, accusing the Shiite Islamist society of “harboring terrorism,” and issued a law in May that prohibits its leaders and members from running in next month’s elections. Last year, the regime also dissolved the dominant secular, left-wing group al-Wa’ad. Amid this contraction of political space, more Shiite oppositionists have turned to militancy after abandoning hope for democratic reform in their country. This radicalization of some Shiites in Bahrain has taken place against the backdrop of the regime’s hard-liners gaining leverage over the monarchy’s more moderate elements that are more open to making concessions to the Shiite opposition.

In Bahrain the current state of affairs remains tense. The recent detention of 111 out of the 169 people who allegedly belonged to Bahrain’s local Hezbollah offshoot — “Bahrain’s Hezbollah” — has followed the arrests of scores of Bahraini Shiites —accused by the state of waging or promoting terrorism, yet defended by human rights organizations as political prisoners and peaceful dissidents. In January 2017, the execution of three Shiites convicted of killing three policemen in March 2014 marked Bahrain’s first use of the death penalty since the Arab Spring broke out, leading to strong criticism from abroad based on the view of the trial as unfair. In May 2018, a Bahraini court voided the citizenship of 115 people, handing almost half of them life sentences based on terror-linked charges. These citizens join hundreds of others whose Bahraini nationalities have been revoked and rendered stateless by authorities since 2012. Of these native Bahrainis, some have been expelled from the archipelago country.

The Manama regime continues to blame Iran for much of the country’s internal unrest. Notwithstanding open questions about Iran’s true involvement in Bahrain’s domestic affairs, which many accuse Bahraini/Saudi authorities of exaggerating, the current climate has afforded the Islamic Republic greater opportunity to exploit Bahrain’s internal problems to its own advantage. The contraction of political space in the archipelago state has added momentum to the arguments, made by certain Shiites, that the opposition might as well look for support from abroad (i.e., Tehran) while all efforts to constructively engage with the regime in Manama remain futile and pointless.

As Bahrain fails to resolve the political crisis that has unleashed waves of instability in the country since 2011, the tense post-2011 regional climate continues to further undermine the prospects for peaceful resolution of Bahrain’s internal sources of unrest. Protecting the Al Khalifa rulers in Bahrain, which since 2003 has been the Arab world’s only Shiite-majority country ruled by a Sunni regime, remains a high priority for Saudi Arabia, which along with the UAE heavily influences Manama. The Saudis have constantly seen the specter of any successful Arab Spring revolution within the Gulf Cooperation Council — especially if the revolution is led by Shiite Gulf Arabs who receive, at minimum, moral support from Tehran — as crossing a red line.