Hunter
animosity against Iran and the Shias in the Sunni world so far has not been translated into an open embrace of Israel by the Arab states and even less so by Arab populations. Rather, merely a deeper Sunni-Shia divide has been added to the existing Arab-Israeli fault line.
Arab Spring, Bahrain Uprising, and Syrian Crisis: Impact on Sectarian Tensions Developments that began in the Arab world toward the end of 2010 with the start of popular uprisings in Tunisia and that spread to many other Arab states known as the Arab Spring ultimately also led to the worsening of sectarian tensions. Among these popular protests, those with the most negative impact on sectarian relations have been those in Bahrain and Syria. In the case of Syria, the protests led to a full-scale civil war with a strong sectarian tinge and the involvement of regional countries, notably Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, which have supported the antigovernment and predominantly Sunni groups. Meanwhile, Iraq’s Shia-dominated government and Hezbollah have been supporting Syria’s Alawite regime of Bashar al-Assad. Bahrain Crisis Shia protests in Bahrain began in a small way and were first aimed at forcing the ruling Sunni Al Khalifa to grant the country’s majority Shia population a better deal, although some more-extreme Shia groups asked for the end of the monarchy. The government first offered money and promised to release prisoners, but when these measures failed to end the protests it reacted harshly. In its efforts to crush the uprising, the Bahraini government had the support of the Saudi and UAE military, which intervened in the country under the cover of the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) Peninsula Shield—though this was intended to protect against external aggression and not domestic unrest. The Saudi and UAE troops entered Bahrain on March 14, 2011, and took active part in the suppression of the protests.51 However, the protests have continued sporadically and there seems to be no end to Bahrain’s crisis.52 The crisis in Bahrain enhanced the anxieties of Saudi Arabia and other conservative Gulf monarchies that were already rattled by protests in Egypt and Tunisia, which had led to the toppling of the existing regimes. The closeness of Bahrain to Saudi Arabia, its mostly Shia character, and the extensive relations between its Shias and Iran were Ethan Bronner and Michael Slackman, “Saudi Troops Enter Bahrain to Help Put Down Unrest,” New York Times, March 14, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/world/middleeast/15bahrain.html?pagewanted=print.
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It is important to note that these protests were not the first expressions of the Bahraini Shias with the discriminatory practices of the Al Khalifa; there had been protest in the 1990s and even earlier.
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