All Bahrain's a Stage

and it's people merely players.

Yesterday (14/3/11) troops from Saudi Arabia entered Bahrain at the the request of Bahrain's Royal Family ostensibly to help quell anti-Monarchy protests in the country. Over the coming days the Saudi troops are expected to be joined by police from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and further troops from Kuwait. The troops have been sent as part of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC), a regional co-operation group set up to help defend the Gulf's Arab Monarchies.

The previous day (13/3/11) the GCC played a central role in getting the wider Arab League to support calls for foreign military intervention in Libya in order to overthrow Colonel Qaddafi. In 1969 Qaddafi himself overthrew the Arab Monarch in Libya and the current Libyan rebels have been taking a distinctly anti-democracy/pro-Monarchy stance.

Therefore the arrival of GCC troops in Bahrain appears to be an attempt by the GCC to open an international discussion about the possibilities of sending foreign troops into Libya to overthrow Qaddafi. Although the main purpose of the exercise is for the GCC to find out what everybody else is thinking it is also an attempt to increase the chances of an international intervention by re-assuring western nations who are concerned about invading yet another predominately Muslim country that Arab troops would be available to assist in the operation. As these Arab Monarchies are Sunni Muslims this moves also seems to be an attempt to provoke an aggressive response from Shia Iran.

It is worth noting that Bahrain is the regional banking hub for the middle east so has a vested interest in being at the centre of the flow of information and global discussion. If I was one of Bahrain's Shia protesters I would stop protesting now but as, in terms of population, Bahrain is about 1/8th the size of New York I suspect that most of the protesters are in on the act.