The protests and violent crackdowns in Bahrain hit home for Toby Jones. The Rutgers history professor has studied the Persian Gulf region for years and lived in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain from 2003 to 2006. “Bahrain is such a small place,” he said. “A lot of these folks who have been organizing and getting shot at are close friends of mine.” Jones studies the political connections between science, technology, environment, knowledge production, and the state formation, war, and Islamism. He is author of "Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia," published last year by Harvard University Press. He is working on a new book project, "America’s Oil Wars." He recently spoke to Rutgers Today about Bahrain and Libya.
Rutgers Today: Bahrain is a country that most Americans probably don’t know much about. How does it fit into the overall narrative of protest and dissent that began in Tunisia and then Egypt?
Jones: In Bahrain there has actually been a decade of civil activism and political organization, and there have been demonstrations in the last couple of years. So Bahrain has a slightly longer history of activism. Bahrain is just like Egypt and Tunisia in that it has an authoritarian political system in which power is concentrated in very few hands.
Rutgers Today: To what extent does the Sunni/Shiite relationship relate to the current conflict?
Jones: There is a religion dimension that historically has not linked itself to conflict, until recently. Bahrain has less than one million people, but almost two-thirds are Shiites who are ruled over by the Sunnis. Many observers tend to view the conflict as one community pitted against another. That’s not true. The Shiites aren’t in the street because they want to create an Islamic theocracy. The reason the Shiites are in the street is because the state has sought to keep them out of power. They want political rights and a guarantee of their freedoms. One of the slogans you can hear in the street is ‘No Sunni; no Shia, just Bahrain.’
Rutgers Today: The protests in Bahrain again put the U.S. in an awkward situation, perhaps even more so than with Egypt.
Jones: Bahrain is very much a lab for how this all plays out, and may be a litmus test for relationship between the U.S. and the Middle East.
Rutgers Today: Can you explain that relationship and how it might change?
Jones: Since the middle of the 20th century, the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East have had a basic arrangement: The U.S. would provide external security in exchange for access to cheap oil. So the U.S. supported autocrats because they were seen as stable, loyal, and dependent on U.S. ability to project its power.
What the U.S. faces now is potentially a full transformation of that relationship. It has to make a moral choice or a geo-strategic choice. The moral choice would be to say they support democratic outcomes. The geo-strategic choice would be to retain those old strategic alliances, which means supporting autocrats, who, in Bahrain, have fired on peaceful protesters. That’s a difficult situation.
Rutgers Today: If the U.S. makes the moral choice, does it risk destabilizing the region further?
Jones: The assumption that these autocrats are stable over the long term, is being undone by what is going on in the street. But even before the protests, the authoritarian regimes generated pathological political outcomes, like Al Qaeda, that get exported. The argument that these countries will not sell us oil anymore doesn’t make sense. They desperately need the oil revenues. Why would we think they would stop selling it to us?
Rutgers Today: This week Libya has taken center stage, and Qaddafi, hanging onto power, is employing mercenary forces and violently cracking down on protesters. What do you think are the prospects for regime change in Libya?
Jones: The situation in Libya is frightening and fluid. Qaddafi’s forces have been brutal, but they have also been divided. By capturing key cities, including Benghazi, the opposition seems to have secured a foothold for itself. Qaddafi may survive, but at best his power will be limited to Tripoli and in areas where he has a base of support.