Bahrain Following Lybia?

Washington Post

MANAMA, Bahrain — A tent city in the heart of Bahrain’s capital was wiped away Wednesday morning in a cloud of tear gas and a hail of rubber bullets after the government dispatched troops against pro-democracy demonstrators in defiance of U.S. warnings.
Trails of acrid black smoke floated over Manama as dumpsters and tires were set alight across the city. By late afternoon, the military had announced a 12-hour curfew for most of the downtown area, including Pearl Square, which has been the hub of the demonstrations.
The early-morning sweep came despite U.S. insistence that dialogue, not violence, was the only way to end the crisis that has convulsed Bahrain for more than a month. It drew an unusually sharp rebuke from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is visiting the Middle East.
“They are on the wrong track,” she told reporters in Cairo. “There is no security answer to this,” she added, referring to the protesters’ demands, “and the sooner they get back to the negotiating table and start trying to answer the legitimate needs of the people, the sooner there can be a resolution.”
The assault Wednesday, which left at least five people dead, was no more deadly than a nighttime raid on Pearl Square in February that killed at least four. But it appeared in some ways to deliver a more definitive blow to the protesters, followed up not just by the curfew but by tougher government rhetoric and a heavier troop presence on the streets.
The move also came after two days in which dozens of tanks and hundreds of troop carriers, armored personnel carriers and water tankers streamed over a causeway connecting Bahrain to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has said it will do whatever it takes to ensure the survival of the al-Khalifa monarchy, which has ruled Bahrain for more than two centuries.

Saudi troops and forces from other Gulf countries did not appear to take part in Wednesday’s action, but the decision to clear the square highlighted a profound sectarian divide in the region. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad described the assault as “foul and doomed,” according to Iran’s state-run news agency. And in Iraq, the highly influential cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani called on Bahrain’s government to stop using violence against its citizens. Sistani rarely comments on politics, and his words hold great weight for Shiites in the region.
The mostly Shiite protesters in Bahrain have been calling for democratic reforms and an end to what they say is systematic discrimination against them by the Sunni monarchy. Shiites make up about 70 percent of the population in Bahrain, according to most estimates but constitute only a minority in a parliament that is largely powerless anyway.
Saudi Arabia has voiced concern that if Bahrain is taken over by Shiites, the country would become a satellite state of Iran. But the crackdown may only increase protesters’ sympathy for the Shiite-ruled country, some observers said Wednesday.
“For the Saudis to be here is a challenge to the Iranians,” said Jasim Husain, a member of the main Shiite opposition party, al-Wefaq. “This is something we wanted to avoid.” Protesters have strenuously maintained that they were not controlled by Iranians, an assertion largely supported by U.S. officials.
“This is a historical day in Bahrain,” Husain said. “There are a lot of injuries, for sure.” Husain said contact had been severed between opposition parties and the monarchy, who as recently as Sunday had appeared poised to begin negotiations with demonstrators.
Bahraini security forces massed near Pearl Square about 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, and police started sweeping through the area about an hour later, using tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters, witnesses said. The witnesses also reported hearing rifle fire in the area, and doctors at Manama’s main hospital said that they had treated several protesters who had been shot with live ammunition.
By 9 a.m., protesters had fled, on foot or by car, leaving the army in control of the square, where tear gas mixed with dark smoke rising from blazing tents. In the afternoon, state television broadcast footage of security forces walking through the square as large tanker trucks extinguished the flames. It was not clear who had set the fires, and each side blamed the other.
The Bahraini government said two police officers were run over and killed by protesters leaving the square, and Reuters reported that a third police officer later died, citing a hospital source. Doctors and human rights workers said there were at least two other deaths, but the number was difficult to independently verify.
In a statement, the government said that no live rounds were fired by police and that “the only fatalities” during the operation were two police officers who were “repeatedly run over by three vehicles containing protesters leaving the fringes of the scene.” It asserted that “no other injuries were recorded.”
The military said in a statement carried by the state-run Bahrain News Agency that the protesters were “outlaws who had terrorized citizens and residents and harmed the national economy.”
The square was far less crowded Wednesday morning than it had been in recent days, as many protesters had returned to their villages to protect their homes. Those who remained did not put up a stiff fight, witnesses said. The daylight action stood in contrast to the surprise nighttime attack in February.
The assault also appeared to encompass Salmaniya Medical Complex, Manama’s main hospital, where a doctor said police and soldiers took over the facility about 7 a.m.