GCC Troops Enter Bahrain; Protesters Charge "Occupation"

Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) troops have moved into Bahrain to help keep order after a violent day of clashes yesterday. Other reports suggest that primarily Saudi troops are involved, in keeping with Saudi concerns over the mostly Shi‘ite protests against the Sunni government in Bahrain spreading to their own Eastern Province. While there may be a GCC fig leaf in place, I suspect we are essentially dealing with a Saudi intervention. The opposition is denouncing it as an "overt occupation," with all the negative semantic baggage the word "occupation" carries with it in the Arab world.

Unless we count Qadhafi's reliance on sub-Saharan African mercenaries in Libya, this marks the first overt cross-border intervention in the current wave of Arab protests. Last month I noted the concerns of the Saudis about events in Bahrain as a potential area of US-Saudi disagreement and friction; now we appear to have arrived at a critical moment.

It will be interesting to see the US reaction, which will require some diplomatic finesse, I suspect.

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The GCC Summits and a Personal Reminiscence

The 31st summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council has just ended in Abu Dhabi. It has spurred some memories, since as it happened I had the opportunity to attend the first, founding summit of the GCC in May of 1981. It was also in Abu Dhabi, and marked my first ever trip to the Gulf. I was working for a small publication at the time, but the press advisor to the UAE Embassy was an old friend from grad school, and got me an invite. I found myself rubbing elbows with such legendary correspondents as Peter Mansfield and Patrick Seale (but few Americans were in attendance: I recall only John Duke Anthony and myself).

The founding summit was in May, though later summits have been in November or December, when the temperatures are more tolerable. Already then, when the UAE was not quite 10 years old, Abu Dhabi was building everywhere, though many streets were just pavement in the desert, awaiting houses. The airport was an earlier one, not the current one. The Iran-Iraq war was less than a year old, and was the catalyst for the formation of the GCC. Of the six rulers who attended that summit, only Qaboos of Oman is still on the throne.

It was still the era of filing by telex. Old timers like me will remember having to punch those tapes. The UAE telecom people gave us a press room with open phones and telexes: call anywhere you like. I called friends in the States just to check in. Trying to locate the home number of a friend posted to Riyadh, I called his father in Pennsylvania. He lived in the Philadelphia area. To my puzzlement, he asked me to drop by, "since you're close by." I noted that I was in fact in the Gulf. It turned out he'd heard "Abu Dhabi" as "Upper Darby." For 30 years now I can never pass Upper Darby, PA, without thinking of Abu Dhabi.

No great point to this post; just reminiscing.

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