US turns blind eye to Bahrain massacre

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/166053.html

Western-trained killers, who are not national Bahrainis, use western-made weapons to fight men, women and children who march on peacefully to struggle for their democratic freedoms.

The US, that's naval fifth fleet stands by watching in an effort to protect oil price fluctuations, has gained conspicuous silence on peaceful protesters being mowed down in hails of gunfire rings loudly.

The tiny population is being massacred, even western reporters are not spared, and we may well ask - Where are the UN soldiers?

Press TV talks with Afshin Rattansi novelist and journalist from London about the unfolding events in Bahrain and on the Britain's role in this tragedy over the decades.

Press TV: Regarding reports of UK weapons such as tear gas canisters etc being used in Bahrain by the security forces against the protesters and in a violent way - Has there been anything in the UK media highlighting this aspect?

Rattansi: I think already the companies are starting to be named; we don't know of course how many people have been killed or in critical condition in Bahrain, but the London Guardian here is reporting that not only is it a case of materials used, but it is the case of the (UK) Ministry of Defense helping to train more than 100 Bahraini officer over the past five years in the UK, which includes training with the British Army, the Royal Navy.

Britain's role in training security forces in Bahrain is a major one and it's not only about the training of those who are killing protesters, it is also about media spin.

Press TV: How do you see the UK and the west's reaction to this uprising? All these Persian Gulf nations and even North African nations are turning into liabilities aren't they for the US?

Rattansi: Well, they say it's a liability. The Pentagon in the past few minutes said they don't have any immediate plans to evacuate some 4,500 navy personnel that they have on the base where the fifth fleet is parked. I think the fact that Britain is so closely tied with Bahrain - we had a minister here, William Hague visiting it recently and the National Policing Improvement agency of the UK wrote on its website that it helps to train people in the Bahraini royal family and judges and lieutenant colonels in how to spin a crisis to the world media so that people don't get the wrong impression as far as the Bahraini Monarchy are concerned.

The British government has been deeply involved for so many years in propping up this regime.

Press TV: A few days ago a Bahraini journalist was basically the first journalist in the Persian Gulf region to essentially call out her own leaders to their faces and that's when the foreign minister walked away during the press conference for an emergency meeting that was held by all the foreign ministers of the region - How significant a shift is that within the media sphere do you think? Do think things are not changing within the media and journalist within the region?

Rattansi: What a brave women she was to speak up to the monarchy like that and that press conference was very soon after abandoned in front of all the cameras; Perhaps their training isn't as good as it should be when it comes to those in the Bahraini government trying to make out somehow that both sides are involved in the violence; and as the Obama administration is trying to make out.

I think the media in Bahrain; well we have yet to see, like we did in Egypt, people resigning from the state broadcasters that after all are advised by US personnel and western broadcasting on how to broadcast. We'll have to wait and see whether the state media of Bahrain will dare to cover what's happening on the streets.

At the moment I'd have to say one is very surprised by American-Backed corporate media where even if corporate interests in the US and defense interests are against any big changes in Bahrain - for those on the ground, it's very difficult when Bahraini security forces are beating people up - beating for example the ABC journalist earlier in the week Miguel Marquez; he was beaten up in Bahrain - very difficult for those sorts of people to then say to their corporate headquarters in New York that everything is going well here with the Bahraini royal family and it is the protesters that are the violent ones.

Press TV: We've heard reports about how Bahrain has brought in recruits from outside of Bahrain to be working in their army and their police forces. Now considering that, is Bahrain then a very unique situation in the case of the military and even some members of the police are not necessarily as patriotic to their country as the Egyptian military or policemen were?

Rattansi: It is true to say that many analysts are calling this a process of ethnic cleansing in Bahrain when it comes to filling the ranks of the security forces with people from overseas giving them citizenship; however, the British are also training people in Yemen; they're also training people in Algeria - Algeria sent 139 officers to ministry of defense in the UK for officer training courses over the past five years or so; from various sources, the British newspaper The Guardian is going strong on that; Yemen 56 personnel, the Egyptian military sending people to Britain for training.

So all the puppet or client states of western oil companies or western governments are certainly getting their military training on how to shoot; though the UK probably didn't think they would be training their guns on women and children, but that certainly seems to be the way it's going doesn't it?

Press TV: Considering this is essentially the first Persian Gulf nation to be affected by these protests; and we've also heard of Kuwait as well now - How significant is it that this uprising that began in Tunisia has moved across to these Persian Gulf nations who are very sensitive to any criticism at all, how significant is it that things will shift, or do you see this as a temporary situation?

Rattansi: Well it's been said that it's a perfect storm - you have the Obama administration both internally and externally has been rather useless I think, considered by most policy analysts; you have IMF-backed economic policies and a massive drive to privatize their industries in these countries, which again impoverishes their people; together with the food inflation and the legacy of so many decades of US-backing of non-democratic regimes - these different factors means this was bound to happen sometime, the only interesting thing is that no western agency, because after all these agencies listen to an elite middle class think tank sort of echelon society in these countries, fail to understand that the grass roots, the people at the bottom, will always rise up.

Press TV: As you well know this part of the world is extremely important to the US for its oil and this is obviously having a very global impact. Even though Bahrain is a very small nation, oil prices have been see-sawing throughout the week every since this uprising has begun - How do you think this will impact the US response to that considering oil is something that is very important to them?

Rattansi: Oil prices have been going up, but we must admit that historically they are not that high and of course that is the reason why the fifth fleet is parked in Bahrain. That fleet is there to protect oil and gas in Bahrain and of course Saudi Arabia and that is the strategic importance of it.

I think some think tank people are saying, could they find other places to park their fleet - we notice from Obama's comments, this is a clear case of people being shot down in a way that in any sense the media would talk about Tiananmen Square or back in the 80s in Latin America when client states would shoot down civilians - we know from the fact that the state department is so quiet and continues to say there is violence on both sides as some of the civilians in Pearl roundabout were firing back we know from that (lies) how strategically important it is - they don't want to lose Bahrain and the fifth fleet is not evacuating.

I think the international community, as seen by corporate media, would be surprised if American soldiers started to participate with the already existing British and American weaponry on the street to start killing off masses of the population in a country, which after all, does not have a large population. The numbers of wounded and dead in a country where the population is between 500,000 and 700,000 is proportionately a lot of people being killed.

Press TV: I wanted to ask you about the human cost of this - we've heard a lot of impassioned pleas now by doctors on the ground in Manama asking for the international community to now help them out considering they no longer have enough beds or equipment to be able to treat all these people coming in who are injured or dying. Do you think the international community will finally be embarrassed to telling the Bahraini monarchy enough is enough?

Rattansi: Well we've seen Ban Ki Moon have failed so many times when UN policy or UN general assembly policy conflicts with US foreign interests.

I think what's telling here again is a quote here of retired admiral William Fallon, the former head of the US central command in the Middle East, talking about how different Bahrain is from Egypt. No force, even if the movement could get one together, can start to combat forces trained by British and American interests.

We must emphasize that when we're watching pictures of civilians being mown down, the people that are killing all these people are trained with the connivance of western corporate and government interests, western democracies with materials supplied to them from those western interests.

Press TV: I'd like to ask about something Hillary Clinton just said a while back. She actually praised Bahrain as a model nation in this Persian Gulf region. However, at the same time, according to WikiLeaks and a lot of the cables that have been leaked, the US knew the people were about to reach their boiling point with the monarchy. Why the discrepancies in their public statements versus their private statements?

Rattansi: I think the “Wikicable database”, whilst including lots of valuable information, doesn't necessarily mean to the intelligence or think-tank community in Washington they read those cables. I think what we were seeing there with the cables, trying to be brought out to somehow save face with the state department, are very particularly chosen in an attempt at face-saving by the state department. There's no doubt that this wasn't seen by the think tanks on the Hill. They're now desperately trying to rely on WikiLeaks to back them up, which is another irony because we of course must remember that the alleged source is currently being tortured in the United States, Bradley Manning. If indeed it was him. [Manning] is being tortured by the United States.

So if the state department starts saying [they] knew there were assets in the field that reminded and told us something like this would happen, I think it's particularly shallow and, ethically, very questionable indeed.

As for Hillary Clinton herself, she's proved time and time again when it came from her presidential bid, she offered to use nuclear weapons against Iran - where you're sitting. I think she's proved herself out of her depth time and time again.

Press TV: There's also a certain corporate aspect to this with the whole F-1 grand prix, and a very big deal is being made out of this whether the F-1 Grand Prix in Bahrain will go through or not in March. But the head of F-1, he does not really speak about the human cost of this. He isn't really speaking about the people's demands themselves. He's only speaking about if there is calm then it will be held and if not then it will be cancelled. Is there certain disconnect on the part of corporations in the West to the human cost and to the genuine people's demands in this part of the world?

Rattansi: Ah, the ethics of sport. Yes, Bernie Ecclestone, who runs Formula One, making these statements about Bahrain which don't at all relate to human rights, and much more about the practicalities of arranging things in Bahrain…what's interesting about that, aside from that sport, is that in this country, in Britain and in the United States, there is, as people like Norm Chomsky have talked about, a disconnect between foreign news and the public. The public is showered with news of celebrities, of sport, trying to erase any world view. That world view is changing internally because of the economic crisis.

But the fact that Bahrain, some foreign land to these countries, is now being brought home unto the sports pages because of the Grand Prix Formula One championships, and it being the first of the season, is an amusing aside, if we disregard the fact, as you imply, they're not to give out human rights, because now people who would never be normally thinking about the human rights violations sponsored by their governments are now having to address them in a different paradigm.

Press TV: I'd like to also ask you about the monarchy's response so far. It went from the people have a right to peacefully protest within the Bahraini constitution to an attack at 3am, a completely surprise attack at 3am on sleeping protesters. There was this unfounded claim by the foreign ministers that these people had weapons on them. So, now we have not seen any evidence of that presented even on Bahraini state television, which it's being claimed a lot, but there is no evidence for that. And now we have the crown prince, supposedly a lot of western media calling it an emotional plea for people to go back home and let things calm down, and then for a dialogue to begin. How do you assess the monarchy's response to all of this?

Rattansi: I think it's breath-taking on the one hand, but then again, this has happened before. And in the context of what's been called ethnic cleansing from bringing foreigners into the country to fill the ranks of the security forces. That's not as surprising.

I should say that while we have been speaking to each other, I did notice that the British government had just made an announcement saying that 24 licenses, and 20 open licenses, has called for arms dealers that their licenses for selling arms to Bahrain has been revoked. I'm not sure what that means because that seems to suggest that they didn't know that the Bahraini government was undemocratic before the present murder of so many civilians. But it shows how this story keeps changing by the minute.

And we'll have to gauge, and I'm sure they are gauging right now, how could the Americans, the British, and NATO see themselves pulling out of Bahrain?

Press TV: There's also being a lot made of the sectarian divisions. A lot of people are saying that the monarchy are trying to exploit that. So are certain parts of the western media and the media worldwide. However, we have seen change on the ground there in Manama that people are saying “there's no Sunni, there's no Shia, we're all Bahrainis and we are all together.” Considering now that the Bahraini people have been united, this unrest has been on and off from the 1980's anyhow. Finally, now that we are seeing that these people are united, do you think that this time will be different from previous times?

Rattansi: I think that the way it's been reported here in any program like this one, which we're speaking on, the corporate media tries to stress those sectarian divisions. And I think, as Press TV has been reporting, too much is being made of that.

There isn't a marriage of Shias and Sunnis and so forth in Bahrain. But through the prism of a western orienteer's context were Islam is a kind of evil, there's nothing better than to portray it in this way. The appalling economic order in Bahrain, which we must remember, is a very rich country because of its energy resources, means that it's not so much sectarian divisions. Although, historically the Shia majority has been moved out of all positions of authority and, as I've said, people were brought in, there is now unity here. After all, one might have said the same about Egypt between members of the Muslim Brotherhood and those that probably didn't sympathize like Muhammad al-Baradei.

Sects, different opposition movements, everyone now are coming together against what are outdated systems of government in the context of an international economic crisis that, after all, arguably was created by western banks.

Press TV: Just before I let you go, I'd like to ask you just one more question about Saudi Arabia. Now, Saudi Arabia's role here is extremely important because there has been a lot said about how Saudis see Bahrain as essentially a free country and they are able to travel to Bahrain for alcohol, whatever, just to have a “good time”, for lack of a better word. Will the Saudis ever allow Bahrain to become a free country considering they have so much on the line? A lot of their oil installations, I hear, are right on the border with Bahrain.

Rattansi: I think Saudi Arabia has done more-or-less what Washington has told them to do. These are very changed times and at this stage I think it's a fool to predict what's going to happen because, perhaps, Washington presumably did not tell the Al-Khalifeh family to send out security forces to kill loads of women and children. In this context it's difficult to tell what Washington is saying because Washington doesn't seem to have that many options. There are two scenarios. If Washington really did do in Egypt, as it were, in Bahrain, then, as it's happened before, Saudi just lays back and takes whatever Washington tells them to.

Press TV: I have time to squeeze in just one more question. You mentioned that options are few right now for the United States. That's something that an expert at the Washington institute for near east policy has also said. He said that despite the close alliance, Bahrain has, in fact, been defiant of the US over the years. Is that the feeling that you get, would Bahrain ever have the guts to be defiant over the United States?

Rattansi: Well, it's never been as defiant as Qatar where, of course, another TV station was born and, of course, the United States has bombed its bureaus. Bahrain, as far as I've understood it, has been hand-in-glove with western institutions.

In fact, I've just written a piece of counterpunch which I mention that people from JP Morgan, the big banks, are due for conferences being held in Manama in a fort-night. And they'll be presided over by the crown prince. This is a regime that plays it both ways. Plays it as a free market center with its new shining buildings, plays with its part of enterprising economy that the right wing economic think-tanks of Washington wanted to, and also continues to arrest people.

I think, however, that we're all a little surprised that they could order in security forces just to open fire on men, women, and children - unarmed, sitting in the street - and also, as I understand it, killing emergency personnel such as doctors and so forth.