BAHRAIN: "In Rubble-Strewn Sitra, Faces of the Young Foretell a Grim Future"

October 28, 2011
In Rubble-Strewn Sitra, Faces of the Young Foretell a Grim Future for Bahrain
By ANTHONY SHADID
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/29/world/middleeast/in-sitra-faces-of-young-foretell-grim-future-for-bahrain.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

SITRA, Bahrain � Sometimes a name suggests a condition. There was Beirut a generation ago, Baghdad more recently. In Bahrain, a Persian Gulf state so polarized that truth itself is a matter of interpretation, it is Sitra. Here, the faces of young men foretell a future for the country that looks like the rubble-strewn and violent streets of this town.

On a recent night, after clashes that erupt almost daily, one of them entered the house of a relative, squinting as though he had stumbled from a dungeon into the sun. Tear gas. His friend smirked as he showed the smooth scars left by rubber bullets fired at his leg and chest. Another shrugged as he removed his shirt to reveal a back scarred by pellets.

"Sitra," said the friend, Sanad, "is the crisis."

When the protests erupted in Bahrain in February, activists cast them as part of the Arab revolts, the wave of tumult that has upended an old order from Tunisia to Syria this year. That was before Saudi Arabia intervened militarily, before a crackdown ensued on the Shiite Muslim majority that was so sweeping they compared it to apartheid, before the most hard-line elements in the Sunni Muslim ruling family became ascendant.

Government officials today suggest that the crisis has ended, even as they acknowledge the damage it wrought in relations between Sunnis and Shiites in a country that had managed relative openness and even cosmopolitanism despite its entrenched inequality. "An open wound," said Sheik Abdel-Aziz bin Mubarak al-Khalifa, a senior government counselor. But, he added, "We are in a much better place than we were three months ago."

No one in Sitra seems to agree. This Shiite town of 80,000, a once-bucolic village of fishing and farming turned into a tableau of urban distress, is so restive that even opposition leaders shake their heads at its defiance. Nearly a third of the protesters killed � 10 so far � have come from Sitra, a half-hour drive from the capital, Manama, seething in a caldron of politicization, hardship and repression.

Though the clashes are nothing new � the 1990s witnessed similar bouts � their persistence and breadth signal the intractability of Bahrain's conflict and mirror the unrest between the police and youths in other neglected Shiite towns.

"Sitra is a miniature version of Bahrain," said Muhammad, another youth here, who like others interviewed did not want to be identified by his full name.

Added Sanad, his friend: "We are still here, we are demanding, and we exist."

In scenes redolent of Hama in Syria, or parts of Tahrir Square at the height of Egypt's uprising, youths build barricades at night to keep out the hated police, then remove some of them in the morning. There are telephone poles and cinder blocks and living room chairs and large trash bins, overturned and disgorging their soggy contents. The police have taken to foot patrols, given the difficulty of navigating the streets. Youths stand on corners, passing their own intelligence by cellphone, Twitter and Skype.

Even the fortresslike walls around the local police station are awash in graffiti, despite their ritual whitewashing. The slogans that remain bear the youths' messages, revealed by the headlights of the occasional car driving on dark and empty streets. "Down with Hamad," one reads, in a message to King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa. "We will only kneel before God," declares another. Nearby, a slogan in red says, "The movement continues."

"When they fall," Muhammad said of the Khalifa family, which has ruled for two centuries, "there will be blood. I don't want it to happen. Our blood is not cheap. But I don't see it happening any other way. They just know brutality. That's their language."

The mainstream opposition acknowledges a truth about Sitra: residents in places like this town are more radical than it is. The largest of the Shiite opposition groups, Al Wefaq, is careful not to call for a republic, only a constitutional monarchy. It avoids insulting the king, or closing backdoor channels that it hopes will eventually lead to an elected and empowered parliament.

For both Shiites and Sunnis, who fear domination by the Shiites, time is often conflated. Shiite youths speak of the Khalifas' conquest of Bahrain as recent memory. The same goes for some Sunnis and the 1979 Iranian revolution, whose example they believe still motivates Shiite activists.

"Our grandfathers suffered from the Khalifas, our fathers suffered from them and now we're suffering from them," said one youth here who asked not to be identified. "They ruled us through blood, not consent, and this battle for 230 years continues until now."

One of the protesters killed in Sitra was Ali Jawad Ahmed, a 14-year-old who died Aug. 30. His family says a tear gas canister struck him in the head. No one here believes the government version, that he was the victim of a criminal act.

His name is scrawled on the walls outside his father's house, declaring him a martyr. Inside, his portrait hangs with the caption, "The people want the overthrow of the regime."

When his father finally saw his body, still wearing an Italian soccer jersey and shorts, his head was so bandaged that his father said he could find nowhere to kiss his face.

"Why did they have to kill my son?" his father asked. "He was only a boy. Why didn't they just arrest him?" He shook his head. "No, they had to kill him."

At the Interior Ministry, which is responsible for the police who patrol sprawling Sitra, the ministry's spokesman, Brig. Gen. Tariq Alhassen mused on what lies ahead in this town and others. "How does it end?" he asked. "I don't know."

General Alhassen contended that only a small fraction of Sitra's residents took part in protests, and that those who did were bent on chaos. He catalogued the weapons � rocks, slingshots with ball bearings and gasoline bombs. He called the youths "misled and misguided."

"Youths, as you know, are very energetic," he said. "They are adventurous."

Yet the political narrative to the unrest is inescapable, as is the sense here that it is growing more radical and more adamant in the face of a police presence that often feels like an occupation. Residents trade videos by cellphone of what they say are police abuses. In the streets, they point to cars whose windshields they say the police shattered.

"People are getting angrier, which to be honest is scary," Muhammad said.

He predicted more instability in a country that serves as the base for the United States Navy's Fifth Fleet. "It could blow at any time," he said, as the faint trace of tear gas hung in the air.

Sanad added: "They're creating a community with nothing to lose. People still have something to lose. At least now they do. But for how long?"

The 44-year-old father of the dead protester listened to the conversation, his face bearing the pain of a parent who has outlived his child. "I'll only accept the fall of Hamad," he said.