Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
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Despite flagging oil revenues and the introduction of conscription in the Gulf, the use of foreign contract soldiers, sometimes called mercenaries, is here to stay.
In the face of poor election results for the last five years, Bahrain’s Sunni Islamists have fallen back on the loyalism and political quiescence common to oil-rich states.
While the Middle East needs a collective security architecture, the U.S. proposal must be changed if it is actually going to exist—let alone succeed.
Gulf states’ reasons for intervention in Syria are complex, and their policies are unpredictable and frequently contradictory.
Any solution to the current crisis in Bahrain needs to address the distortions of the island nation’s political economy.
Conservative figures within the Bahraini royal family seem to be redoubling their efforts to subdue the opposition.
The twin shocks of the Euro debt crisis and the Arab Spring are forcing members of the Gulf Cooperation Council to grapple with old and new challenges, including overreliance on oil, changing trade relationships, and regional integration.
The unprecedented change in the Middle East has created immediate challenges to maintaining social cohesion and macroeconomic stability. Over the longer-term, countries must define their own political, social, and economic transformations.
Protest in Bahrain is not simply a domestic struggle for political rights and liberal reform; it is also a sectarian conflict between a Sunni monarchy in a majority-Shia country that is rapidly becoming part of a growing conflict between Saudi Arabia and the United States.
The current protests in Bahrain result from longstanding political tensions that have been rising dangerously in the country for at least the last six months and were building for several years before that.