Juan Cole: U.S. Should Move Navy Base from Bahrain

Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. For three decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context. His most recent book is Engaging the Muslim World (Palgrave Macmillan, March, 2009) and he also recently authored Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

In the wake of the brutal crackdown by the monarchy of Bahrain on the largely peaceful protest movement this winter and spring, the United States needs to decouple from the small Gulf kingdom. Although the kingdom is lifting its state of emergency, distrust and tension remain high between the Shiite majority and the dominant Sunni minority.

The Wifaq Party, the biggest movement among the Arab Shiites of Bahrain, had asked for the country to move to being a constitutional monarchy. The repression was so heavy-handed that Wifaq members of the lower house (who held 18 out of 40 seats) have all resigned. When ordinary democratic political involvement is blocked, people turn to other ways of achieving their goals. Pushing the Shiite majority toward radicalism is a bad idea indeed. The Sunni hard liners in Bahrain see the Shiite majority a s cat’s paws of Shiite Iran. But Bahrain Shiites are mostly Arab, not Persian as in Iran. And a majority follows the Akhbari school of Shiism, which does not teach blind obedience (taqlid) to the ayatollahs. A small group of Shiite activists, al-Haqq, did call for a republic, but they were not in the mainstream of the reform movement, which mostly simply sought a rule of law and a more fair place for the Shiite majority....

The HQ of the US Fifth Fleet is at Manama, the capital of Bahrain. But there are other places such a naval base could be sited in the Gulf, including in Qatar.

Given the sentiments in President Obama’s recent speeches and his pledge to put the US on the side of reform in the region, it is ghoulish for the US to retain a major military facility in a country that has behaved as Bahrain has....