Exclusive: Conversation with HSNWAmbassador Shaikh Abdul-Aziz of Bahrain
Ambassador Shaikh Abdul-Aziz, a veteran diplomat and foreign policy adviser to the government of Bahrain, sat down with Homeland Security NewsWire’s executive editor Eugene Chow to examine the current state of affairs in Bahrain; the ambassador discusses the effect of protests on Bahrain’s economy, the source of the current sectarian strife, and what a political solution to protestors’ demands might look like; “A political solution must be reached,” he says
Homeland Security NewsWire: Of all the Gulf states, Bahrain is really the only one with a large Shia majority. What is the current political arrangement that has allowed Bahrain to maintain such a unique system?
Ambassador Shaikh Abdul-Aziz: We really need to go back to when the Shias and Sunnis have always lived in cohesion before in Bahrain. For hundreds of years there have been intermarriages and business partnerships, so there was never a problem of any kind between the Sunnis and Shia. Bahrain is also home to other communities – Buddhists, Sikhs, Christians, and we are the only country in the Gulf with a Jewish community. So we have always been able to live with each other cohesively for hundreds of years.
Ten years ago when our present King came to power, he embarked on a very ambitious reform program. He set up a two chamber parliamentary system and there have been other first achievements for us in Bahrain as well as in the Gulf. We saw our first woman ambassador, we saw our first woman judge, and one of the women ambassadors was also of the Shia faith.
In the last ten years, although there have been many achievements, there have been setbacks in certain government projects which did not help to raise the standard of living at the pace that we would have liked to see. Essentially, the Shias in Bahrain, because they represent such a large proportion of the community and consist of larger families, actually felt the brunt of the slow achievements of the social programs.
I think what triggered a lot of the events that we are seeing today are the events of Tunisia and Egypt. It arrived on the shores of Bahrain and we thought we would be the last country to see any form of unrest because, in terms of political reform, we are the most advanced. We have a vibrant civil society and people are used to being very vocal about their grievances. But, for the first time we saw them airing their grievances through unlicensed protests. The events quickly escalated because maybe the security forces did not go about containing some of the violent aspects of these protests.
On the Day of Rage on the fourteenth of February, there were about twenty demonstrations all over the country. Most of them were peaceful, but one or two of them were not. They confronted the security forces and
