• by Jim Lobe* (washington)
• Wednesday, October 19, 2011
• Inter Press Service

A State Department announcement that it will delay the shipment of 53 million dollars in new arms to Bahrain pending the results of an international commission investigating alleged abuses by the kingdom's security forces earlier this year has evoked mixed reactions from human rights groups here.

The announcement, which came in the form of a letter from a senior Department official to a prominent Congressional critic of the sale earlier this week, said Washington 'will review the Commission's findings and assess the Government of Bahrain's efforts to implement the recommendations and make needed reforms.'

'We will weigh these factors and confer with Congress before proceeding with additional steps related to the recently notified arms sale,' wrote Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs David Adams to Sen. Ron Wyden who, along with half a dozen of his Senate colleagues, had opposed the sale.

Announced early last month, the sale mainly includes anti-tank missiles and armoured Humvees, which rights groups fear could be deployed by Bahrain's security forces against protesters whose calls for democratic reforms since last winter have been met with severe repression. The State Department has insisted that the weapons are for Bahrain's external defence only.

Human Rights First (HRF), which, along with Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Open Society Policy Centre (OSPC), campaigned against the sale, said it welcomed the delay, although it questioned the State Department's reliance on the government-financed commission to determine whether the sale should go forward.

Created by the government last June, the BICI is chaired by Prof. Cerhif Bassiouni, who has led U.N. investigations into alleged war crimes in Bosnia and Libya. The group also includes Sir Nigel Rodley, a former U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture; former International Criminal Court Justice Philippe Kirsch; former U.N. legal adviser Mahnoush Arsanjani; and Badria al 'Awadhi, an international and Sharia law expert based at Freedom House here. Its report is due to be released Oct. 30.

'We do not need to wait for the BICI (Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry) report to tell us serious human rights violations happened and are happening in Bahrain,' said HRF's Brian Dooley, who has visited the island-state several times over the past six months.

'We already know that hundreds of people have been abused in detention and hundreds have been sentenced after unfair trials,' he added. 'The United States government already has the facts that violence is being perpetrated against civilian protesters.'

Amnesty International, another critic of the deal, said it also welcomed the delay but stressed that the sale should not go forward until human rights conditions actually improve.

'As long as the Bahraini government and its security forces are using violence, unjust military trials, and alleged torture against peaceful protesters, the U.S. government should not be sending more weapons there,' according to Sanjeev Bery, the Middle East and North Africa advocacy director for Amnesty's U.S. branch (AIUSA).

Amnesty, which released a report Tuesday on arms transfers by the U.S. and other weapons-exporting countries to Middle East and North Africa since 2005, charged that Manama had actually escalated its crackdown against the largely Shi'a opposition movement in recent days by, among other actions, re-arresting a prominent educator who has helped organise protests.

Jalila al-Salman, former vice president of the Bahraini Teachers Association, was seized at her home before dawn by some 30 security agents. Al-Salman, who was sentenced to a three-year prison term by a military court last month, had been speaking out recently about the abuse she and others allegedly suffered while in custody after her first arrest last March.

The Teachers Association former president, Mahdi 'Issa Mahdi Abu Dheeb, was tried with her and sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of inciting 'hatred of the regime' and seeking its forcible overthrow. Human rights groups have charged that the military courts have failed to meet minimum standards of fairness and due process.

The pending arms deal has caused some embarrassment for the administration of President Barack Obama, which has tried to depict itself as sympathetic to the democratic movements that have swept through much of the Arab world since the beginning of the year.

Although the administration initially denounced the Bahraini government's crackdown against the pro-democracy movement when it first broke out last February, Washington has been relatively quiet since mid-March when it objected to the dispatch of some 1,500 troops and police from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to Bahrain in support of the regime.

Washington's reticence has been attributed primarily to its geostrategic interests, specifically, the continued use and planned expansion of its naval base in Bahrain - home to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet - and its desire to avoid further straining ties with Riyadh.

Already angry over what it regarded as Obama's abandonment of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Saudi Arabia was further aggravated by Washington's initial support for the Bahraini opposition's demands for democratic reform.

Such reform, in Riyadh's view, risked empowering Bahrain's Shi'a majority which, in turn, could spur similar protests among the Shi'a population in Saudi Arabia's oil-rich Eastern Province and strengthen Iran's influence and position in the Gulf.

At the same time, U.S. officials have been worried that Manama's repression would radicalise the Shi'a population, which is believed to make up about 70 percent of the kingdom's citizenry, and drive it closer to Iran.

Some 34 protestors have been killed by the security forces, almost all of them between February and April. Some 1,400 others, including many professionals like the Teachers Association leaders, have been detained, and thousands have been fired from their jobs.

The sale caught many lawmakers by surprise. 'We recognise the administration's commitment to the strategic relationship with Bahrain …' wrote Wyden and four other Democratic senators to the administration last week. 'However, the Bahrain government's treatment of peaceful protesters during the past several months is unacceptable.'

They were joined by a rising star among right-wing Republicans, freshman Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. '…(P)roceeding with the announced arms sale to Bahrain without modification under the current circumstances weakens U.S. credibility at a critical time of political transition in the Middle East,' he wrote in his own letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Congress cannot stop the sale from going through because the 30-day notice period expired earlier this week. But State Department officials said they know that the sale remains politically sensitive and that, in any case, a number of procedural steps remained to be taken before delivery.

'It's a matter of months, not days or weeks,' said State Department spokesman Mark Toner Wednesday.

*Jim Lobe's blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service