"Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa said a foreign plot against his kingdom had been foiled and thanked troops brought in from neighbouring countries to help end increasing unrest after weeks of protests.
"'An external plot has been fomented for 20 to 30 years until the ground was ripe for subversive designs ...I here announce the failure of the fomented plot,' the state news agency BNA quoted him overnight as telling troops.
"King Hamad told the forces that such if such a plot succeeded in one Gulf Arab country, it could spill into neighbouring states, BNA said.
"The ferocity of a crackdown last week by Bahrain forces, aided by the entrance of troops from Sunni-ruled Gulf countries, stunned Bahrain's majority Shi'ites, the main force of the protests, and angered the region's non-Arab Shi'ite power Iran.
"Iran, which supports Shi'ite groups in Iraq and Lebanon, has complained to the United Nations and asked neighbours to join it in urging Saudi Arabia to withdraw forces from Bahrain.
[...]
"Bahrain has also said previously that it arrested opposition leaders for dealing with foreign countries."
It's pretty hard to say exactly how foreign influenced the Bahraini protests actually were. Certainly there was support from Iran as well as from other Shi'ite dominated countries and organizations. The actual extent of that support is difficult to ascertain.
Yukio, totally unrelated to this post (sorry, I can't seem to find the right email addy for you): I just read this write up about a study linking (or not) conservatism with religiosity in America. I found it rather fascinating, and I am dying to know what you make of it, what your thoughts are on it. Here's the link: http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2011/03/is-god-always-on-right.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BpsResearchDigest+%28BPS+Research+Digest%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher
ReplyDeleteThat link looks funky, so if it doesn't work, it's a post entitled "Is God always on the right?" at BPS Research Digest.