Response of British Army about UK engagement in Bahrain

Response of the British Armed Forces about UK's defense training engagement with Bahrain from an e-mail sent by Nishma Doshi from February 20th 2011, answered on April 21st 2011 by Chris Millward, Land Forces Secretariat. 


http://ifile.it/dvkjntw/MILLWARD%202011.pdf

A Human Rights Report on Trafficking of Persons, Especially Women and Children

A Human Rights Report on Trafficking of Persons, Especially Women and Children


Report by The Protection Project
March 2002


http://ifile.it/orc6j0h/23692081-Protection-Project-2002-Trafficking-Bahrain.pdf

Bahrain: Reform, Security, and U.S. Policy

http://ifile.it/6vzo3ip/53161899-Bahrain-Congress-Report.pdf


Bahrain: Reform, Security, and U.S. Policy

Kenneth Katzman

Specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs

March 21, 2011

Congress Research Service

CRS Report for Congress

Prepared for Members and Committees of the Congress

Summary

Protests that erupted in Bahrain following the uprising that overthrew Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on February 11, 2011, demonstrate that Shiite grievances over the distribution of power and economic opportunities were not satisfied by previous efforts to include the Shiite majority in governance. Possibly because of concerns that a rise to power of the Shiite opposition could jeopardize the extensive U.S. military cooperation with Bahrain, the Obama Administration criticized the early use of violence by the government but subsequently praised the Al Khalifa regime for its offer of a dialogue with the demonstrators. It did not call for the King to step down, and Administration contacts with his government are widely credited for the decision of the regime to cease using force against the protesters as of February 19, 2011. However, as protests escalated in March 2011, Bahrain’s government, contrary to the advice of the Obama Administration, invited security assistance from other neighboring Gulf Cooperation Council countries and subsequently moved to end the large gatherings. Some believe the crackdown has largely ended prospects for a negotiated political solution in Bahrain, and could widen the conflict to the broader Gulf region.

The 2011 unrest, in which some opposition factions have escalated their demands in response to the initial use of force by the government, comes four months after the October 23, 2010, parliamentary election. That election, no matter the outcome, would not have unseated the ruling Al Khalifa family from power, but the Shiite population was hoping that winning a majority in the elected lower house could give it greater authority. In advance of the elections, the

government launched a wave of arrests intended to try to discredit some of the hard-line Shiite leadership as tools of Iran. On the other hand, Bahrain’s Shiite oppositionists, and many outside experts, accuse the government of inflating the intensity of contacts between Iran and the

opposition in order to justify the use of force against Bahraini Shiites.

Unrest in Bahrain directly affects U.S. national security interests. Bahrain, in exchange for a tacit U.S. security guarantee, has provided key support for U.S. interests by hosting U.S. naval headquarters for the Gulf for over 60 years and by providing facilities and small numbers of

personnel for U.S. war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bahraini facilities have been pivotal to U.S. strategy to deter any Iranian aggression as well as to interdict the movement of terrorists and weapons-related technology on Gulf waterways. The United States has designated Bahrain as a “major non-NATO ally,” and it provides small amounts of security assistance to Bahrain. On other regional issues such as the Arab-Israeli dispute, Bahrain has tended to defer to Saudi Arabia or other powers to take the lead in formulating proposals or representing the position of the Persian Gulf states, collectively.

Fueling Shiite unrest is the fact that Bahrain is generally poorer than most of the other Persian Gulf monarchies, in large part because Bahrain has largely run out of crude oil reserves. It has tried to compensate through diversification, particularly in the banking sector and some

manufacturing. In September 2004, the United States and Bahrain signed a free trade agreement (FTA); legislation implementing it was signed January 11, 2006 (P.L. 109-169).

Framing the Family Law: A Case Study of Bahrain's Identity Politics

This article argues that an important debate about improving the family law in Bahrain was derailed over issues of identity politics that had little to do with the law's content. Efforts made by the government in 2004–9 to codify Bahrain's family law stalled in the face of strong opposition from much of the country's Shia community, including many women, who were ostensibly to be the beneficiaries of a codified law. The article analyses the ways in which the family law was exploited as a symbolic issue in a wider struggle for political authority and representation in Bahrain. In particular, it seeks to explain why many Shia women themselves opposed the law, in solidarity with a perceived community of Bahraini Shia, an identity that appeared to trump the appeal of a perceived community of Bahraini women. The nuances of the debate are not well understood; much of the arguments were over who should have the right to define and approve the law. Importantly, Bahrain's clerics argued that the portions of the law applying to Shia should be legitimised by Shia religious leaders in Iran and Iraq, a sensitive issue that touched a nerve in government circles, given longstanding government suspicions that Shia loyalties to religious leaders in Iran and Iraq would also compromise Shia political loyalties to the state of Bahrain. For both parties — government and clerics — the content of the law, and the rights of women, became a secondary concern compared with this debate over power and authority. They employed various strategies to “frame” the debate and to mobilise support behind them, which are described in detail in the paper. Overall, the furore over the family law, and the use of identity politics in the power struggle between the Sunni-dominated government and the Shia clerics, has contributed to further political polarisation between sectarian groups in Bahrain, while leaving genuine problems over women's rights unresolved.



Jane Kinninmont (2011): Framing the Family Law: A Case Study of Bahrain's
Identity Politics, Journal of Arabian Studies, 1:1, 53-68


http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/21534764.2011.576048

Policing Housemaids: The Criminalization of Domestic Workers in Bahrain

By Staci Strobl
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York

This research stems from ethnographic observations in 2005 and 2006 of the women’s sections of

police stations in Bahrain. It uncovered details of a larger social and economic problem in the

Arabian Gulf countries involving the unique legal status of the female expatriate guest workers.

Housemaids or former housemaids formed the majority of female defendants who were ethnographically observed at Bahrain’s local police stations. Observations revealed that this refl ected an overall trend of criminalization of domestic worker-related labour disputes. This research presents the types of cases observed and discusses the women police as agents of social control whose job involves handling a larger socio-economic problem at the backend, through policing.

http://ifile.it/jyntivx

British Journal of Criminology

October, 2008

The Women's Police Directorate in Bahrain: An Ethnographic Exploration of Gender Segregation and the Likelihood of Future Integration

By Staci Strobl
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York

This article explores Bahrain's Women's Police Directorate, a separate unit for policewomen. Historically, the segregation of female police in separate units has charazterized the development of women in policing. The most popular theory describing women's entrance into policing involves a linear, developmental model in which segregation is a step toward full gender integration. This model has never been applied to contexts involving Muslim and Arab social constructions of gender. The article suggests that gender integration of the Bahraini police is unlikely, considering internal perceptions and dominant social and cultural Islamicization trends, which contract with the apparent state feminism operating in Bahrain. It thus suggests that a linear theory is too constricting in positing the inevitability of gender integration in all societies in which policewomen exist. Using a postcolonial theoretical framework, Bahraini trends preliminarily suggest a hybrid outcome in which some police units are gender segregated and others are integrated.

http://ifile.it/rf2bijg

International Criminal Justice Review
Vol. 18, No. 1
March 2008 pp. 39-58

Intifada und Reformprozeß in Bahrain. Das Ölscheichtum als Beispiel für Demokratisierung?

Im Zentrum des Vortrages steht der politische Reformprozeß in Bahrain, der nach einer Welle von jahrelangen sporadischen Unruhen - von Aktivisten als Intifada bezeichnet - im Jahre 2001 initiiert wurde. Der Aufruhr in Bahrain hatte zahlreiche miteinander verwobene Ursachen. Die These ist, daß aufgestaute Wut vor allem unter ausgegrenzten Jugendlichen ein Hauptfaktor war. Das Beispiel Bahrain zeigt, daß Wut zu einem wichtigen politischen Faktor werden kann, dem nicht mit immer mehr Repressionsmaßnahmen beizukommen ist. Intifada ist zu einem Schlüsselbegriff des kollektiven arabischen Bewußtseins geworden, und es ist anzunehmen, daß Straßenproteste in zahlreichen Ländern der Region in Zukunft zunehmen werden. Die Diskussion über die Wirksamkeit bahrainischer Strategien zur Befriedung der Unruhen sind daher von großer Bedeutung.


Das strategisch wichtige Land am Persischen Golf ist bisher von der deutschen Forschung vernachlässigt worden. Bahrain wird sowohl in arabischen als auch amerikanischen Medien als Beispiel für Demokratisierung im Nahen Osten gepriesen. Es soll erläutert werden, inwieweit diese Einschätzung zutrifft.



Dr. Ute Devika Meinel, Cairo, 2003


http://cairo.daad.de/vortragsreihe/pdf/meinel_dt.pdf