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Tents are seen engulfed with fire as Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) forces move into Pearl Square to evacuate anti-government protesters, in Manama March 16, 2011. Bahraini tanks and armored personnel carriers moved towards Budaya Street in the capital Manama on Wednesday, minutes before a protest rally was expected to start there, witnesses said.
REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed |
Helicopters hovered overhead as troops backed by tanks stormed the site — the focal point of weeks-long anti- government protests in the tiny kingdom — early on Wednesday, an Al Jazeera correspondent said.
Multiple explosions were heard and smoke was seen billowing over central Manama.
Our correspondent said the police backed by the military attacked the protesters from all sides and used tear gas canisters to disperse the crowd.
Protesters, intimidated by the sheer numbers of security forces, retreated from the roundabout, he said. At least 500 protesters have been camping at the Pearl Roundabout in central Manama as part of their demonstration.
Hospital sources said two protesters had been killed and hundreds of others injured in the offensive. The Reuters news agency said three policemen had also been killed.
Ali Al Aswad, a member of the opposition Wefaq party, told Al Jazeera that the government used Apache helicopters to shoot at peaceful protesters.
He said the situation was very bad and Bahrain was heading towards a disaster.
“The security forces are killing the people, we call upon U.N. to help us,” Aswad said.
State of emergency
The move by the security forces came a day after a state of emergency was declared on the island and at least two people were killed in clashes in the Shi’a suburb of Sitra outside Manama.
An order by the king “authorized the commander of Bahrain’s defence forces to take all necessary measures to protect the safety of the country and its citizens,” a statement read out on television on Tuesday said.
Hundreds of Saudi-led troops entered Bahrain on Monday, allegedly as part of a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) initiative to help protect government facilities there amid an escalation in the protests against the government.
It was not immediately clear if Wednesday’s security crackdown involved Saudi troops.
Syed Al Alawi, a witness, told Al Jazeera that troops were surrounding the Salmania hospital and not allowing doctors and nurses to enter.
Calling for help, Alawi said: “The GCC troops are for fighting against foreign forces, instead they are targeting the people of Bahrain. What’s our fault? We are asking for our legitimate rights.”
The arrival of foreign troops was said to have followed a request to members of the GCC from Bahrain.
The United Arab Emirates also sent about 500 police to Bahrain, according to Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the Emirati foreign minister. Qatar, meanwhile, did not rule out the possibility of its troops joining the force.
Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al-Thani, the Qatari prime minister and foreign minister, told Al Jazeera: “There are common responsibilities and obligations within the GCC countries.
International concern
The U.S., which counts both Bahrain and Saudi Arabia among its allies, has called for restraint, but has refrained from saying whether it supports the move to deploy troops.
Hillary Clinton, the U.S. secretary of state, who was speaking in Egypt, said Bahrainis must “take steps now” towards a political resolution of the crisis.
Iran, meanwhile, has warned against “foreign interferences.”
“The peaceful demonstrations in Bahrain are among the domestic issues of this country, and creating an atmosphere of fear and using other countries’ military forces to suppress these demands is not the solution,” Hossein Amir Abdollahian, an official from the Iranian foreign ministry, was reported by Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency as saying.
Saudi intervention likely to bring regional blowback
Saudi Arabia’s incursion is a risky move that could further inflame domestic unrest in both countries and give a propaganda boost to Tehran’s campaign to cultivate the Arab street.
Analysts said the intervention appeared to be a heavy-handed attempt to intimidate protesters who have built a tent city in Pearl Square, a roundabout in the capital, Manama, and erected roadblocks around Manama’s financial hub.
“I don’t get it,” said Thomas Lippman, a Saudi expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “I don’t believe for one minute that this was a collective response to a decision by the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] foreign ministers.”
The move appeared to reflect panic by the Saudis and the Sunni Muslim ruling family of Bahrain, the Khalifas, at the persistence of protests by Bahrainis, who are predominantly Shi’a and who have long complained of discrimination in government and the economy.
There have also been protests in recent days in Saudi Arabia’s heavily Shi’a Eastern Province, which is connected to Bahrain by a 16-mile causeway and is the site of most Saudi oil installations.
“The Saudis feared the demonstrations in Bahrain were having a contagious effect on the Shi’a of the Eastern Province,” said Simon Henderson, a Gulf analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “So they just had to move.”
Henderson said it was possible that the Saudi forces, which appeared to include both National Guard and Army units, would be used to clear away barricades erected by the demonstrators around the financial sector in Manama, the mainstay of the Bahraini economy.
Already Tuesday there were reports of clashes and the deaths of two protesters and a Saudi. The circumstances were unclear.
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| An anti-government protester places a banner saying ”Go Out” at the gate of the Saudi Embassy in Manama, March 15, 2011. Bahrain’s king declared martial law on Tuesday as his government struggled to quell an uprising by the Bahrani people which has drawn in troops from neighboring Saudi Arabia. Thousands of Bahrainis marched on the Saudi embassy in Manama on Tuesday to protest against the intervention. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed |
Saudi media have accused Shi’a Iran of fomenting unrest in both countries, but analysts said there is little evidence to support this.
“Iran is not the driving force in these actions,” Afshin Molavi, an Iran expert at the New America Foundation, told an audience Tuesday at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
He noted that Iranian state media directed at the domestic Persian speakers was barely mentioning the situation in Bahrain. However, Iran’s Arabic-language satellite channel, Al-Alam, has focused heavily on the protests and the Saudi incursion. Of the top 10 stories Monday covered by Al-Alam, all 10 dealt with Bahrain, Molavi said.
Lippman said, “Iran can profit from this by sitting on their hands” and watching anger at the Saudi intervention unfold in the Arab world.
An Iranian official who spoke on condition of anonymity told IPS that Iran had condemned the Saudi action and would probably stage its own military maneuvers but not send its forces to Bahrain. The official, echoing other regional comments, said he believed Bahrain had gotten U.S. approval to invite in the Saudis and the Emiratis when Secretary of Defense Robert Gates visited Bahrain last week.
The Obama administration has denied this, but has not condemned the Saudi and UAE move, albeit urging the foreign troops and the Bahraini authorities to show restraint.
“This is not an invasion of a country,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said Monday.
While asserting that it cares about the “universal rights” of Bahrain’s half a million citizens, Washington is also concerned about safeguarding its base in Bahrain, which is home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet.
Some 3,000 U.S. military officers oversee 30 ships and 30,000 sailors from Bahrain. These U.S. forces safeguard the Gulf states from Iran and the base is also used to support U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
(IPS/Al Jazeera/TAAN)
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