Ambassador Shaikh Abdul-Aziz of Bahrain

three days of total anarchy, we felt that our security forces were outstretched, and so we called in the Peninsula Shield, which is a group of forces set up about twenty years that were never used by all GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries. We asked them to come in, not to be present on the streets, but to guard key installations like the refineries and power stations to allow our security forces to restore law and order. So now we see a strong military presence on the streets of Bahrain, but life is getting back to full normalcy. But we know that this cannot be sustained, and so we are hoping that the way forward is that eventually once law and order is restored, people get back to the negotiating table.

HSNW: As far as the negotiations go, in your mind what is the ideal outcome for these negotiations? In other words what would an agreement look like?

AA: I think our challenge now is to convince both parties, the Sunnis and the Shias, that it is in their best interest that we negotiate a political solution. The best case scenario is that we have the regime sitting with both the Sunni and Shia leaders, and we conclude with a basic set of principles that will give both parties political justice, political empowerment, and a fairer and larger say in governance. We want good governance and I think the time has come for a lot of the members of the government to be held accountable.

HSNW: Earlier you mentioned how critical Bahrain’s financial sector is, have the protests had any other adverse effects to that sector of the economy?

AA: There is no doubt that events over the last month have affected the economy. We became a banking center after the civil war in Beirut, Lebanon broke out. When the 1975 civil war broke out, all of the banks in Beirut, which was the banking center of the Middle East at the time, looked around to where they could move, and Bahrain was the only country that had the infrastructure to house all the international banks. So they came to Bahrain and we developed into a very important banking center.

Islamic banking started, I would say, about ten years ago in Bahrain and alongside Malaysia, we have become a huge Islamic banking center. The banks have been there for nearly forty years and Islamic banks