Two-Sea Stop

Bahrain, Headquarters to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet

A few facts about the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet: Its area of responsibility covers about 7.5 million square miles, an area about equal to the size of the Atlantic Ocean. The Fifth Fleet’s zone includes the Red Sea, the Gulf of Oman, the Persian Gulf, and a good chunk of the Indian Ocean. In other words, those parts of the world’s seas where leisure cruises prefer not to tread. (The Fifth Fleet isn't in fearful mode: Its most famous operation was the capture of Okinawa during World War II).

Twenty-seven countries fall under the Fifth Fleet's zone of responsibility, including most of the countries of the Middle East. Those include all the countries of the Arabian Peninsula (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and Yemen among them), all the countries of the Horn of Africa and its surroundingly turbulent neighbors (Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Keynia, the Sudan), Egypt, Iran and Iraq, and all the so-called stancountries, from Afghanistan to Pakistan to Turmenistan, and a half dozen more (landlocked countries included: the Fifth Fleet's central nervous system is an aircraft carrier group, these days anchored by the U.S.S. Harry Truman.

The Fifth Fleet is a small army unto itself: 15,000 sailors aboard its 20-odd ships (more in times of crises), and another thousand supporting them onshore.

Oh, and the Fifth Fleet is headquartered in Bahrain.

A Friend to the United States--or the Pentagon?

Bahrain? Don't worry: Most people in the world wouldn't know where to place it either, so it likely was a bit bemusing for most Americans who heard President Bush on Saturday hear him say that "the American people have a long friendship with the people of Bahrain." Rather, the folks at the Pentagon and at the Department of State have had a long friendship with a few of the people of Bahrain. The majority of Bahrainis don't put the United States in their most-favored nations column.

Bahrain, which is Arabic for "the two seas," is a tiny archipelago, about 33 islands' worth, only three of which are inhabited, jutting east from the midsection of Saudi Arabia into the warm and sometimes dangerous waters of the Persian Gulf. Bahrain's three inhabited islands are no bigger than New York City's five boroughs (themselves, aside from the Bronx, a set of islands). Yet they've been in Iran's scope across the Persian Gulf for decades. Bahrain, like Iran, is a Shiite country. Bahrain, unlike Iran, is ruled by a Sunni minority. An extreme minority: one family, to be precise, which has ruled the islands since the 18th century.

Unquiet Archipelago

Bahrain is not a quiet place. But it's a place vital to American interests, which explains the visit by President Bush, his first to that country, on Saturday. It does not explain Bush's exaggerations: "Your Majesty," he told Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, the king of Bahrain, "I appreciate the fact that you're on the forefront of providing hope for people through democracy. Your nation has held two free elections since 2000 -- and in 2006, your people elected a woman to your parliament."

Bush was overstating the case. The 2002 election was boycotted by most Shiites who were dissatisfied with the King's limitations on who could run and for what seats of the lower parliament, as well as on his all-appointed upper chamber of parliament, which serves as an effective and permanent veto on whatever the lower chamber may do. The 2006 election yielded only 40 percent of seats to the opposition. Many more would have gone to the opposition had those seats been contested fairly. Political parties are banned. The ruling family's authority, as such, may not be questioned. If that's "the forefront" of hope for the people of the Middle East, it's no wonder that there hasn't been much hope there.

No wonder, too, that the voices of protest were as strident as their protest banners in the Bahraini capital on Bush's arrival. As Agence France Press had it,

About 250 people picketed near the US embassy in Manama after Bush's arrival to voice their opposition to his government's policies in the Middle East and support for Israel. "Get out of Bahrain, criminal," read one of the banners raised by the protesters. "No to the US military presence in Bahrain," "America cares for oil, not democracy," said other banners. Dozens of security men were deployed around the embassy as the sit-in took place some 500 metres (yards) away. The protest was organised by several Sunni and Shiite political groupings, mainly from the opposition, but including some Sunni Islamist groups close to the government.

"We want to tell the US president that he is not welcome, and that he is not a friend of Arab and Bahraini peoples," said Ibrahim Sharif, secretary general of the leftist National Democratic Action Association. "President Bush praises the Bahraini regime saying it is democratic and reformist... This is just politicians complimenting each other," Sharif told AFP.

Bahrain is an unquiet place, its smallness and retreat from the mainstreams of media part of the reason why the Pentagon finds it a propitious place for its Fifth Fleet and for the staging of many military operations going back to Gulf War I. But the assumed quiet is deceptive.

Here's a full report on Bahrain's challenges and unease.