Up ahead,
video footage shows,
armored personnel carriers sat in the street waiting. In a deadly
raid the previous day, security forces had cleared pro-democracy
protesters from the Pearl Roundabout in Bahrain’s capital, Manama.
This evening, the men were headed back to make their voices heard.
Tomgram: Nick Turse, The Pentagon and Murder in Bahrain
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Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has been one busy official of
late. Last week, on a surprise visit to Afghanistan, he managed to apologize for U.S. helicopters killing nine boys
collecting wood on a hillside in Kunar Province, even as he announced
that a negotiating team would soon be dispatched from Washington to work
out a “strategic partnership” with the Afghans. Such a “partnership”
would, he indicated, keep the U.S. military in the country well past
the 2014 “deadline”
for the withdrawal of “combat troops.” Of course, he discounted any
American “interest in permanent bases” -- a phrase avoided since the
Pentagon termed the mega-bases it was planning for Iraq at the time of
the invasion of 2003 “enduring camps.” The Afghan bases won’t be labeled “permanent” either, not unless the “Afghans want it,” in which case “we can contemplate the idea.” In the meantime, bases on loan for a while would be just dandy!
Then Gates hopped to Europe to give a pre-labeled
“deliberately undiplomatic speech” castigating Washington’s NATO allies
for yakking too much about getting out of Afghanistan instead of
gritting their collective teeth and “getting the job done right.” While
he was there, the first hints began to emerge about the size of the
promised American drawdown in Afghanistan slated to begin in July.
This represented a much-ballyhooed promise by President Obama in an address to the American people from West Point
in December 2009. In it, he announced that he was surging 30,000 U.S.
troops into that country, but added that the U.S. would “begin the
transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.” At the
time, Washington’s punditocracy declared that this was “red meat” tossed
to his antiwar Democratic political “base.” The figures leaking out
last week -- possibly in the neighborhood of 2,000 troops or “no more than several thousand”
“thinned out” from noncombat forces in Afghanistan -- don’t even add
up to a can of spam in red meat terms. Two thousand wouldn’t even be
enough troops to ensure that an actual drawdown occurs, given the U.S.
forces cycling in and out of the country regularly. (Keep in mind as
well that, since June 2009, the number of private security contractors
-- hired guns -- working for the U.S. military in that country has tripled to record levels, almost 19,000.)
But Gates wasn’t done. Not by a long shot. After shoring up
Washington’s Afghan commitment and rushing to Europe to bolster the
allies, he turned his attention to a third embattled area and headed for
the island kingdom of Bahrain with its major U.S. garrisons, already
knee-deep in protest. But let
TomDispatch regular and Associate Editor Nick Turse, most recently author of
The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan, take it from here.
Tom
The Arab Lobby: How the Tiny Kingdom of Bahrain
Strong-Armed the President of the United States
by Nick Turse
The unmistakable crack-crack-crack of gunfire then erupted, and most
of the men scattered. Most, but not all. Video footage shows three who
never made it off the blacktop. One in an aqua shirt and dark track
pants was unmistakably shot in the head. In the time it takes for the
camera to pan from his body to the armored vehicles and back, he’s
visibly lost a large amount of blood.
Human Rights Watch would later report that Redha Bu Hameed died of a gunshot wound to the head.
That incident, which occurred on February 18th, was one of a series
of violent actions by Bahrain’s security forces that left seven dead and
more than 200 injured last month. Reports noted that peaceful
protesters had been hit not only by rubber bullets and shotgun pellets,
but -- as in the case of Bu Hameed -- by live rounds.
The bullet that took Bu Hameed’s life may have been paid for by U.S.
taxpayers and given to the Bahrain Defense Force by the U.S. military.
The relationship represented by that bullet (or so many others like it)
between Bahrain, a tiny country of mostly Shia Muslim citizens ruled by a
Sunni king, and the Pentagon has recently proven more powerful than
American democratic ideals, more powerful even than the president of the
United States.
Just how American bullets make their way into Bahraini guns, into
weapons used by troops suppressing pro-democracy protesters, opens a
wider window into the shadowy relationships between the Pentagon and a
number of autocratic states in the Arab world. Look closely and
outlines emerge of the ways in which the Pentagon and those oil-rich
nations have pressured the White House to help subvert the popular
democratic will sweeping across the greater Middle East.
Bullets and Blackhawks
A TomDispatch analysis of Defense Department documents indicates
that, since the 1990s, the United States has transferred large
quantities of military materiel, ranging from trucks and aircraft to
machine-gun parts and millions of rounds of live ammunition, to
Bahrain’s security forces.
According to data from the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the
branch of the government that coordinates sales and transfers of
military equipment to allies, the U.S. has sent Bahrain dozens of
“excess” American tanks, armored personnel carriers, and helicopter
gunships. The U.S. has also given the Bahrain Defense Force thousands
of .38 caliber pistols and millions of rounds of ammunition, from
large-caliber cannon shells to bullets for handguns. To take one
example, the U.S. supplied Bahrain with enough .50 caliber rounds --
used in sniper rifles and machine guns -- to kill every Bahraini
in the kingdom four times over. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency
did not respond to repeated requests for information and clarification.
In addition to all these gifts of weaponry, ammunition, and fighting
vehicles, the Pentagon in coordination with the State Department oversaw
Bahrain’s purchase of more than $386 million in defense items and
services from 2007 to 2009, the last three years on record. These dealsincluded the purchase of a wide range of items from vehicles to weapons systems. Just this past summer, to cite
one example, the Pentagon announced a multimillion-dollar contract with
Sikorsky Aircraft to customize nine Black Hawk helicopters for
Bahrain’s Defense Force.
About Face
On February 14th, reacting to a growing protest movement with
violence, Bahrain’s security forces killed one demonstrator and wounded
25 others. In the days of continued unrest that followed, reports
reached the White House that Bahraini troops had fired on pro-democracy
protesters from helicopters.
(Bahraini officials responded that witnesses had mistaken a telephoto
lens on a camera for a weapon.) Bahrain’s army also reportedly opened
fire on ambulances that came to tend to the wounded and mourners who had
dropped to their knees to pray.
"We call on restraint from the government," Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton said in the wake of Bahrain’s crackdown. "We urge a
return to a process that will result in real, meaningful changes for the
people there." President Obama was even more forceful in remarks
addressing state violence in Bahrain, Libya, and Yemen: "The United
States condemns the use of violence by governments against peaceful
protesters in those countries, and wherever else it may occur."
Word
then emerged that, under the provisions of a law known as the Leahy
Amendment, the administration was actively reviewing whether military
aid to various units or branches of Bahrain’s security forces should be
cut off due to human-rights violations. "There's evidence now that
abuses have occurred," a senior congressional aide told the Wall Street Journal
in response to video footage of police and military violence in
Bahrain. "The question is specifically which units committed those
abuses and whether or not any of our assistance was used by them."
In the weeks since, Washington has markedly softened its tone. According to a recent report by Julian Barnes and Adam Entous in the Wall Street Journal,
this resulted from a lobbying campaign directed at top officials at the
Pentagon and the less powerful State Department by emissaries of
Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa and his allies in the Middle
East. In the end, the Arab lobby ensured that, when it came to Bahrain,
the White House wouldn’t support “regime change,” as in Egypt or
Tunisia, but a strategy of theoretical future reform some diplomats are
now calling “regime alteration.”
The six member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council include (in
addition to Bahrain) Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United
Arab Emirates, all of which have extensive ties to the Pentagon. The
organization reportedly strong-armed the White House by playing on fears
that Iran might benefit if Bahrain embraced democracy and that, as a
result, the entire region might become destabilized in ways inimical to
U.S. power-projection policies. "Starting with Bahrain, the
administration has moved a few notches toward emphasizing stability over
majority rule," according to a U.S. official quoted by the Journal. "Everybody realized that Bahrain was just too important to fail."
It’s an oddly familiar phrase, so close to “too big to fail,”
last used before the government bailed out the giant insurance firm AIG
and major financial firms like Citigroup after the global economic
meltdown of 2008. Bahrain is, of course, a small island in the Persian
Gulf, but it is also the home of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which the
Pentagon counts as a crucial asset in the region. It is widely
considered a stand-in for neighboring Saudi Arabia, America’s gas
station in the Gulf, and for the Washington, a nation much too important
ever to fail.
The Pentagon’s relationship with the Gulf Cooperation Council
countries has been cemented in several key ways seldom emphasized in
American reporting on the region. Military aid is one key factor.
Bahrain alone took home
$20 million in U.S. military assistance last year. In an allied area,
there is the rarely discussed triangular marriage between defense
contractors, the Gulf states, and the Pentagon. The six Gulf nations
(along with regional partner Jordan) are set to spend $70 billion on
weaponry and equipment this year, and as much as $80 billion per year by
2015. As the Pentagon looks for ways to shore up the financial viability of weapons makers in tough economic times, the deep pockets of the Gulf States have taken on special importance.
Beginning last October,
the Pentagon started secretly lobbying financial analysts and large
institutional investors, talking up weapons makers and other military
contractors it buys from to bolster their long-term financial viability
in the face of a possible future drop in Defense Department spending.
The Gulf States represent another avenue toward the same goal. It’s
often said that the Pentagon is a “monopsony,” the only buyer in town
for its many giant contractors, but that isn't entirely true.
The Pentagon is also the sole conduit through which its Arab partners
in the Gulf can buy the most advanced weaponry on Earth. By acting as a
go-between, the Pentagon can ensure that the weapons manufacturers it
relies on will be financially sound well into the future. A $60 billion
deal with Saudi Arabia this past fall, for example,
ensured that Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, and other mega-defense contractors
would remain healthy and profitable even if Pentagon spending goes
slack or begins to shrink in the years to come. Pentagon reliance on
Gulf money, however, has a price. It couldn’t have taken the Arab lobby
long to explain how quickly their spending spree might come to an end
if a cascade of revolutions suddenly turned the region democratic.
An even more significant aspect of the relationship between the Gulf states and the Department of Defense is the Pentagon’s shadowy archipelago
of bases across the Middle East. While the Pentagon hides or downplays
the existence of many of them, and while Gulf countries often conceal
their existence from their own populations as much as possible, the U.S.
military maintains sites
in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, and of
course Bahrain -- homeport for the Fifth Fleet, whose 30 ships,
including two aircraft carriers, patrol the Persian Gulf, the Arabian
Sea, and the Red Sea.
Doughnuts Not Democracy
Last week, peaceful protesters aligned against Bahrain’s monarchy
gathered outside the U.S. embassy in Manama carrying signs reading “Stop
Supporting Dictators,” “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death,” and “The
People Want Democracy.” Many of them were women.
Ludovic Hood, a U.S. embassy official, reportedly brought a box of
doughnuts out to the protesters. "These sweets are a good gesture, but
we hope it is translated into practical actions," said Mohammed Hassan,
who wore the white turban of a cleric. Zeinab al-Khawaja, a protest
leader, told Al Jazeera
that she hoped the U.S. wouldn’t be drawn into Bahrain’s uprising. “We
want America not to get involved, we can overthrow this regime," she
said.
The United States is, however, already deeply involved. To one side
it’s given a box of doughnuts; to the other, helicopter gunships,
armored personnel carriers, and millions of bullets -- equipment that
played a significant role in the recent violent crackdowns.
In the midst of the violence, Human Rights Watch called
upon the United States and other international donors to immediately
suspend military assistance to Bahrain. The British government
announced that it had begun a review of its military exports, while
France suspended exports of any military equipment to the kingdom.
Though the Obama administration, too, has begun a review,
money talks as loudly in foreign policy as it does in domestic
politics. The lobbying campaign by the Pentagon and its Middle Eastern
partners is likely to sideline any serious move toward an arms export
cut-off, leaving the U.S. once again in familiar territory -- supporting
an anti-democratic ruler against his people.
"Without revisiting all the events over the last three weeks, I think
history will end up recording that at every juncture in the situation
in Egypt that we were on the right side of history," President Obama explained after the fall of Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak -- an overstatement, to say the least, given the administration’s mixed messages until Mubarak’s departure was a fait accompli. But when it comes to Bahrain, even such half-hearted support for change seems increasingly out of bounds.
Last year, the U.S. Navy and the government of Bahrain hosted a
groundbreaking ceremony for a construction project slated to develop 70
acres of prime waterfront property in Manama. Scheduled for completion
in 2015, the complex is slated to include new port facilities, barracks
for troops, administrative buildings, a dining facility, and a
recreation center, among other amenities, at a price tag of $580
million. "The investment in the waterfront construction project will
provide a better quality of life for our Sailors and coalition partners,
well into the future," said Lieutenant Commander Keith Benson of the
Navy’s Bahrain contingent at the time. "This project signifies a
continuing relationship and the trust, friendship and camaraderie that
exists between the U.S. and Bahraini naval forces."
As it happens, that type of “camaraderie” seems to be more powerful
than the President of the United States’ commitment to support peaceful,
democratic change in the oil-rich region. After Mubarak’s ouster,
Obama noted that “it was the moral force of nonviolence, not terrorism,
not mindless killing, but nonviolence, moral force, that bent the arc of
history toward justice once more.” The Pentagon, according to the Wall Street Journal,
has joined the effort to bend the arc of history in a different
direction -- against Bahrain’s pro-democracy protesters. Its cozy
relationships with arms dealers and autocratic Arab states, cemented by
big defense contracts and shadowy military bases, explain why.
White House officials claim that their support for Bahrain’s monarchy
isn’t unconditional and that they expect rapid progress on real
reforms. What that means, however, is evidently up to the Pentagon.
It’s notable that late last week one top U.S. official traveled to
Bahrain. He wasn’t a diplomat. And he didn’t meet with the
opposition. (Not even for a doughnut-drop photo op.) Secretary of
Defense Robert Gates arrived for talks with King Hamad bin Isa
al-Khalifa and Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa to convey, said Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell, “reassurance of our support.”
“I’m convinced that they both are serious about real reform and about moving forward,” Gates said afterward.
At the same time, he raised the specter of Iran. While granting that
the regime there had yet to foment protests across the region, Gates asserted,
“there is clear evidence that as the process is protracted --
particularly in Bahrain -- that the Iranians are looking for ways to
exploit it and create problems."
The Secretary of Defense expressed sympathy for Bahrain’s rulers
being “between a rock and hard place” and other officials have asserted
that the aspirations of the pro-democracy protesters in the street were
inhibiting substantive talks with more moderate opposition groups. “I
think what the government needs is for everybody to take a deep breath
and provide a little space for this dialogue to go forward,” he said.
In the end, he told reporters, U.S. prospects for continued military
basing in Bahrain were solid. "I don't see any evidence that our
presence will be affected in the near- or middle-term," Gates added.
