Bahrain: Reform, Security, and U.S. Policy

Kenneth Katzman
Specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs

Protests that erupted in Bahrain following the uprising that overthrew Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on February 11, 2011, demonstrate that Shiite grievances over the distribution of power and economic opportunities were not satisfied by previous efforts to include the Shiite majority in governance. In the early stages of the unrest, Administration contacts with the government were credited by many for the regime’s decision to suspend using force against the protesters as of February 19, 2011. However, as protests escalated in March 2011, Bahrain’s government, contrary to the advice of the Obama Administration, invited security assistance from other neighboring Gulf Cooperation Council countries; it subsequently moved to forcefully end the large gatherings and arrest dissident leaders. Some believe the crackdown has reduced prospects for a negotiated political solution in Bahrain, and could widen the conflict to the broader Gulf region. Others see the primary consequence of the unrest as fostering sectarian hatreds within the population, no longer confined to elite power struggles. Possibly because of concerns that a rise to power of the Shiite opposition could jeopardize the extensive U.S. military cooperation with Bahrain, the March-May government crackdown has not prompted the Obama Administration to called for a change of the Al Khalifa regime, but the Administration has criticized the use of violence by the government.

The 2011 unrest, in which some opposition factions have escalated their demands in response to the initial use of force by the government, began four months after the October 23, 2010, parliamentary election. That election, no matter the outcome, would not have unseated the ruling Al Khalifa family from power, but Shiite activists believed that winning a majority in the elected lower house could give it greater authority. In advance of the elections, the government launched a wave of arrests intended to try to discredit some of the hard-line Shiite leadership as proteges of Iran—a refrain revived by the government during the unrest. Bahrain’s Shiite oppositionists, and many outside experts, accuse the government of inflating the relationship between Iran and the opposition in order to justify the use of force against Bahraini Shiites.

Unrest in Bahrain directly affects U.S. national security interests, and might explain why the Administration response has been more restrained than the response to some of the other regional uprisings in 2011. Bahrain, in exchange for a tacit U.S. security guarantee, has provided key support for U.S. interests by hosting U.S. naval headquarters for the Gulf for over 60 years and by providing facilities and small numbers of personnel for U.S. war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is a fear that, over the long term, U.S. use of the naval headquarters facilities might become untenable because of the instability in Bahrain. This facility has been pivotal to U.S. strategy to deter any Iranian aggression as well as to interdict the movement of terrorists and weaponsrelated technology on Gulf waterways. The United States has designated Bahrain as a “major non-NATO ally,” and it provides small amounts of security assistance to Bahrain. On other regional issues such as the Arab-Israeli dispute, Bahrain has tended to defer to Saudi Arabia or other powers to take the lead in formulating proposals or representing the position of the Persian Gulf states, collectively.

Fueling Shiite unrest is the fact that Bahrain is generally poorer than most of the other Persian Gulf monarchies, in large part because Bahrain has largely run out of crude oil reserves. It has tried to compensate through diversification, particularly in the banking sector and some manufacturing. In September 2004, the United States and Bahrain signed a free trade agreement (FTA); legislation implementing it was signed January 11, 2006 (P.L. 109-169).


Date of Report: May 17, 2011
Number of Pages: 26
Order Number: 95-1013
Price: $29.95

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