BAHRAIN - impressions from my first visit

Some five years go we were commissioned to make two films for the Government of bahrain - one was to promote tourism. The other was about it's progress towards a full democratic system of Government. The events of the past few months have underscored the unease we felt even then. This is what I wrote but never published.


BAHRAIN

The tiny young woman behind the cafeteria counter leant forward to talk to us confidentially. “Can you get me a job in England?” she asked, “I have a friend there somewhere.”

She was from the Philippines – one of thousands of young women who arrive throughout the Mid East region each year. They come to do poorly paid jobs working in the lowest echelons of society for Arab families and employers. Little of their income makes it home to their families for usually they have first to repay their employers the cost of getting to the region.

“I hate it here,” she added,” Please if you know anyone in England who wants a maid let me know… please.’

There are hundreds like her in Bahrain – girls from the Philippines and young men from the Indian subcontinent who find their lives increasingly intolerable as members of the imported working class in this tiny Arab nation – a scatter of islands off the coast of Saudi Arabia.

In the past year sixty young women – mostly from the Philippines – have fled their jobs alleging cruelty by their employers. A refuge for the girls has been set up in Manama, the island’s capital city.

Many allege beatings and of sexual abuse by their Arab employers.

But for all that, the girls in the shelter are among the luckier cases. This October, the local English language newspaper reported another case of a group of young girls trapped in this self-styled “pearl of the gulf.”

These girls had escaped their employers but without passports or money they were in limbo – unable to go home until the high price paid by their Bahraini families for their getting them to the island had been repaid.

But Bahrain’s immigrant workers are luckier than those from some of the other members of the Gulf Co-operation Council Nations.

Over Ramadan Saudi Arabians cross the causeway from their nearby homeland to flood into Bahrain for weekends. They bring with them less fortunate, young Filipinos who would have no escape route from their employers. These maids arrive trailing little Saudi Arabian children behind their employers, rich Saudis vacationing in Bahrain from the pious prison nation that is their home.

If they fall out with their Saudi employers, often because of sexual abuse, they have virtually no recourse. Complaints to the police would bring them imprisonment.

Thousands of Saudis descend on Bahrain every weekend and then for the long celebration of Eid al Fitr, at the end of Ramadan, Islam’s closest counterpart to Christmas. They stay in hotels where they can drink alcohol before boosting the nation’s road accident statistics. Every day brings wrecks involving young Saudi men – often very drunk.

Sometimes though it is Saudi wives at the wheel of the SUVS or shiny Mercedes. Most are novice drivers. In Saudi Arabia they are banned from driving at all but here they often have to drive their drunken husbands from one hotel to another.

One American businessman watched in shock and awe as a young Saudi woman, shrouded in her all-over black abaya, practiced driving on a piece of wasteland near their hotel – before zooming precariously out into the evening rush hour in Manama.

Everyone knows of the miseries of life for all but the most devout Moslems in Saudi Arabia.

Bahrain, a little kingdom with long ties to the West, seems in prospect, a far happier place. Presently it is furiously promoting itself as a tourist destination - hoping to draw new visitors to see its meagre historical sites, its tourist hotels and it poor beaches.

Bahrain’s virtues are few. While it lacks the intense modern face of Dubai its people are genuinely less aloof and warmer to that different class of visitors – the tourist. Bahrainis drive taxis, serve you in restaurants and, for the large part, speak English.

In the evenings the cafes are full of men laughing and drinking coffee and
enjoying long and fragrant hours smoking the water pipes called sheesha in these parts. Many play dominos.

In the early winter as the temperatures become cooler the ‘camping season” gets underway as families opt to leave the dusty city and towns and many spend weeks camping in tents – while the men motor back into the cities of Manama and Muharraq or smaller places like or issa Town to work.

After sunset during Ramadan the island’s few shopping malls are jammed with families. The giant Seef mall boasts an indoor playground area where chortling children enjoy rides while proud fathers in Taubs and women in black abayas look on.

Pretty little girls are allowed to dress as any child their age – until adolescence sees them ushered, for the most part, into the black shrouds that wreathe Moslem women.

In Bahrain in common with the United Arab Emirates girls can dress in western clothing, but most prefer to wear Abayas – some cut very stylishly and trimmed with patterns, but others loose and shapeless gowns with fully veiled faces or mere eye slits… the Niqab favoured by the more devout. Some even wear black gloves.

In the early evenings the corniche in the capital is full of families picknicking and little boys playing football. Bahrain presents a moderate Moslem face to the world – a place of relative tranquility.

But appearences are deceptive. This is a far from happy country – and one whose fault lines lie not far below the surface. Its’ people are caught between Iran and a hard place. The Shi’ite Republic and Saudi Arabia offer alternative models of how Bahrain could end up as its wealth peters out.

Bahrain would prefer to model itself on the success of Dubai a few miles away across the Gulf.

The main volatile ingredients bubbling away in Bahrain are religion, greed and uncertainty as it seeks new sources of income. One model is to be a tamer but more stable version of Dubai – building its new future on attracting Western investment.

Building is underway across the country – especially in the capital – where the “dual” towers of the Financial Harbour complex and the smaller but more vivid architectural venture of the World Trade Centre are both symbols of its desire to pull in investors dubious of the hyperactive growth of Dubai.

The phrase “financial harbour” is both the name of a development and a metaphor used by local politicians and entrepreneurs for the more stolid and dependable financial climate they claim for Bahrain.

But Bahrain’s leaders lack the élan and imagination that is driving Dubai into its pole position in the region – allied to the still vast oil resources of its fellow Emirate, Abu Dhabi.

Bahrain has long since spent its oil wealth and now depends upon the charity of Saudi Arabia to keep its refineries ticking over. Its other resources are limited.

One much touted resource is its new status as a democracy – one of the few of any sort in this part of the world. The Emir of Bahrain, who came to power in 1999, decided to transform his little country into a constitutional monarchy – and so became King Hamad Bin Isa al Khalifa.

Women were given the vote, freedom of speech was enshrined in the constitution, and other reforms were introduced. The democracy is, in fact a very limited one with real power still residing firmly in the hands of the royal family and their appointees.

But nevertheless the idea seems to be to convince Western governments and businesses that the king means business, that the place is now a stable democracy and worthy of inward investment.

Freedom of speech has certainly enabled local people to discuss, in guarded terms, the greed of their rulers.

The Khalifa family has long ruled Bahrain. Until recently they were near absolute rulers, but were content to call themselves Emirs. Now as a constitutional monarchy, portraits of the King, the prime minister (his uncle) and the crown prince that stare of billboards across the country are ubiquitous and oddly reminiscent of the portraits of obviously less benign middle eastern despots such as the late President Assad or Saddam Hussein.

Bahrain’s citizens now have the right to vote and will, in 2006, take part in the nation’s second general election.

But there are no political parties here. The main rift line is between the Islamists, who dominate the present parliament, individual interests and the Shi’ite majority who largely boycotted the last elections. It is still uncertain if they’ll participate this time around.

Not that much power rests with the elected assembly. There are 40 members and their constituencies were carefully contrived to prevent any real risk of representation. Some constituencies return two representatives but have a handful of voters. Others return one MP for ten times as many constituents.

Real power resides firmly with the royal family. The prime minister, a job for life, has been held since the 1960s by the present king’s uncle. And the king has the power to overrule anything the assembly might agree upon and to dissolve parliament if he feels things are out of hand. His family have controlling interests in most of Bahrain’s profitable concerns.

The parliament is completed by an upper house of 40 members, all directly appointed by the King and his court, which reinforces the values he dictates.

But things have improved. Public demonstrations are allowed – though they quickly get out of hand suggesting the depth of anger smouldering in this little country. This December a demonstration, notionally over unemployment became a riot after masked men – thought to be police – beat up the key organisers.

Other demonstrators supporters rioted and in the chaos following police tear-gassed protesting crowds who ran amok in running battles. Drifting clouds of gas forced the closure of a race meeting and police cars were set ablaze in the Souq – one of central Manama’s few attractions for visitors.

The police and army feel no loyalty to their fellow Bahrainis because they are, for the large part, mercenaries – tough men recruited from other Muslim countries to defend the Government.

Such disruptions are rare. When the king introduced democracy, dissidents were freed and welcomed home and women now have the vote.

Democracy is portrayed as benefiting many Bahrainis. But it seems more likely that its advent is designed primarily to play to outside investors - especially Western businesses. Here is a safe financial harbour for their money goes the refrain with neither the reigious extremism of Saudi Arabia or the flashy but insecure ostensiousness of Dubai. Bahrain is stolid and progressive.

Naturally economic reforms are of special benefit to the extended Khalifa family. Most of the major businesses on the island are owned by this dynasty. The Prime Minister, for instance, is reported to have bought some empty land for a dinar – about £1.50 - and later sold it to developers for millions.

He owns Bahrain’s top hotel, the Ritz Carlton, many others hotels, and other businesses including a shopping mall.

But some reforms can backfire. The press is now free here and recently the public were shocked after reports that the Prime Minister had told a courtier – who then passed his remarks on – that the Bahraini people were “like a rug and should be always walked upon.”

Portraits of this gentle soul gazes out at his people from posters the length of the land.

Meanwhile the devil is in the detail. Bahraini men for instance can no longer call themselves Bin…meaning son of … at least formally. That honorific is now the preserve of the royals of the land.

Equally Sheikh, a general name denoting the senior male member of the family, is also denied mere commoners. Only the Khalifas and their kith and kin can enjoy this title these days.

Meanwhile name registering is increasingly important. Every Bahraini carries an ID card and it’s all being turned into one of the world’s most efficient electronic systems.

It’s a good test bed for this. There are only around 300,000 people living here and soon their CPR cards will be linked to a central computer and all their life stories will be available to the authorities – health, tax, and much more. Other larger nations are studying this experiment with interest.

But for all this things have been liberalised. There are fewer people who get bumped off in the night for instance.

The government is anxious to persuade outsiders to invest here – rather than the flashier prospects of adding their finances to the shining towers of Dubai. So the new freedoms are proclaimed loudly.

But one respected intellectual – who manages to tread a line between the establishment and honesty – revealed that he had a foreign passport in case ‘things changed’ and said that at least now people did not vanish in the night to be returned dead to their families in the morning as had happened under the rule of the present King’s father.

And one young man recalled his own experiences of that much-loved ruler’s real nature. He once strayed with a young friend into the route of a royal motorcade. Police surrounded his car, dragged the two teenagers from their car and at gunpoint hauled them to the Emir’s Rolls Royce. An electric window slid down and they found themselves gazing at the ruler.

Slowly he spat into the faces of each boy and ordered them taken to prison.

Four long hours they were detained without contact with their family – and were only released when it was found they were from “good Sunni families’.

Interestingly it is actually ordinary Sunni Moslems who most dislike the royal family now – for they’ve traditionally enjoyed the bulk of the nation’s wealth while the Shiite majority have done more menial work.

Wary of the growing attachment of the Shia to outside forces – code words for Iran – liberalisation brought greater visibility and opportunity for this group. Their religious festivals were even featured on TV to the shock of a public who’d never before witnessed the bloody spectacle of self-flagellation involved in many Shia religious festivals.

Divisions between the Shia and Sunni are less sharp here than in many other countries but even young Bahrainis educated in the West still offer a loathing of the Shias when probed.

One young Bahraini, a successful businessman educated in Canada confessed: “As far as I’m concerned they’re not even Moslems”

Cars with pictures of Ayatollah Khomeini can be seen on the new highways of Bahrain offered visible support for the fear that the Shiites of the country look elsewhere for their inspiration.

The Shias themselves keep quiet about their poltical ambitions, though are probably similar to those in others parts of the mid-east, - content to be law abiding citizens but by tradition, ready to rise up if the opportunity presents itself and seek power.

But the Sunni Moslems are also challenging the King’s bid to enrich his family with western investment. The influence of the devout Muslims in the government prompted the King to impose an extraordinary last minute ban on hotels in Bahrain selling alcohol in the evening to their guests throughout Ramadan.

Hoteliers met with government ministers after the holy month to complain it had cost them millions. Some who’d defied the band were then ordered to stop selling alcohol until further notice.

Their ire was focused particularly on the man who’d had to enact the ban, the minister entrusted with the task of promoting tourism. In response he said they should realise tourism is about more than alcohol in hotels – and that their ideas were wrong.

But what is there in Bahrain to attract tourists?

One key thing is a sense of safe haven from the more troubled parts of the region. So far Al Queda’s only known attempt at a terrorist outrage here was stopped in its tracks years ago. Nevertheless the US gulf fleet who’re based here decided to send wives and children home after 9/11. There are few visible signs of US personnel around the capital.

There are plenty of westerners though ,joining the Saudi weekend exodus to swim and eat and drink, when they’re allowed, in Bahrain’s many luxury hotels. The pools are good but Bahrain has no beaches.

Few will stray out to visit the so-called attractions. There is the Souq in Manama but it has none of the exotic appeal of ancient Kasbahs in older Arab cities. Its mainly junk sold by the island’s vast and hard working immigrant population from India and Pakistan. There is also a small gold market – patrolled by armed guards.

For Westerners living in Bahrain the social life is limited. Many join the handful of British based social clubs in town. There are no bars to visit save those in hotels – which are said to be full of Russian and oriental prostitutes.

Manama itself has no other visible nightlife. The best restaurants are undiscoverable without local connections or based in five star hotels.

Otherwise the culinary delights are familiar ones.

In the islands three main shopping malls there are familiar global fast food outlets. The Seef Mall for instance has a Burger King and MacDonald’s next door to one another – and women in veils are tugged, like mothers around the world, to these places by their addicted kids. But hamburgers are off the menu at both places. Downstairs there is a Starbucks and the smell of Kentucky Fried Chicken wafts across to the Baskin Robbins concession and the Papa John’s pizza bar. Apart from the veils and accents you could be in Cardiff or Columbus Ohio.

The traveller in search of attractions other than shopping and water sport has slim pickings. There are a handful of badly preserved forts from colonial times, a good but small national museum, an old mosque and a grand new one, a dusty nature reserve with a few drab Oryx, antelope and non-exotic birds and a few other rather dull sites offering the paltry remains of the little understood Dilmun civilisation.

One for instance is the largest gravesite in the Mediterranean with thousands of burial mounds of the vanished Dilmun civilisation. In photos and in reality they look like sand piles. Many locals have never even stopped to look at them.

One proud natural wonder for tourists is the so-called tree of life. It’s a lone tree that grows in an otherwise barren part of the island’s interior. It was long said to be 3,000 years old – a botanical miracle. Recent tests have reveals its actually only 300 years old. It is a pleasant enough tree, though surrounded by garbage.

There is of course the Bahrain International Circuit. It opened for business and hosted its first grand Prix event last year. Tens of thousands visited for that – the Middle East’s first setting for motor sports.

More recently locals attended a long weekend of motor sports, drag racing that turned into a risible non-event as thousands jeered during hours of delays and technical breakdowns.

But for much of the year the circuit stands empty – a shimmering showcase that springs to life for a brief season each year. In 2006 it will open the world’s grand prix season – an achievement but one that scarcely touches the lives of ordinary Bahrainis.

It is part of the Khalifa Empire. In every major business and walk of life members of the Khalifa family own a share of the action and are often key members of the operation.

Bahrain is not a place of natural beauty. And development has removed much of the sort of period charm visitors might have found a brief distraction. The old town of Muharraq, near the island’s airport, once had the taste of an old Gulf culture with houses on the edge of the blue sea.

Landfill, which is underway across the island, has now moved the old houses inland where the drab and dusty alleys and lanes now have little appeal for visitors. Bulldozers and Indian workers now crowd the new foreshore amid a frenzy of building work going on across the island.

Bahrain ‘s owners have their sites set on becoming as modern as Dubai, especially if they can win back some of the money which once landed here after the island took over from Beirut as the Middle East’s banking capital . Now it floods into the coffers of the mirage across the waters in the UAE.

Bahrain is a curious country. Like most of its neighbours around the Gulf for the bulk of its history, one century was much like another. It was perturbed by the influx of foreigners – other Arab invaders who brought it Islam early soon after the hegira ion the Arabian mainland, the Portuguese and the British. But its people grew dates and made money from the harsh rigours of pearl fishing.

Until it became the first place in the region where oil was discovered. Pearl fishing had by then been overturned by the Japanese industry of cultured pearls. Oil quickly averted a catastrophe for Bahrainis and the oil revenues soon flowed to make Manama the first Middle Eastern oil boomtown.

It’s virtually all run out now and Saudi Arabia now gives Bahrain the entire output of one of its fields.

Bahrain’s single biggest success story is a thing called Alba… the world’s biggest aluminium smelting plant. It does offer awesome industrial statistics.

And it has Gulf Air, run by an Australian who commutes to London each week. His family live there and his children are being educated in England.

James Hogan has a tough job ahead. Gulf once served many of the oil rich sheikhdoms around the gulf, but one by one they are leaving – with just Qatar and Bahrain still supporting the airline. The emirates now have their own airlines and Abu Dhabi has the recently founded Etihad. Despite winning kudos as one of the world’s top 10 airlines, Gulf ‘s boss was barred from picking up his prize at the wards ceremony in jealous Dubai.

Old rivalries run deep here - fault lines not just inside nations but also between them

One of the shiniest developments in Manama is the financial harbour – dual office towers that will, at 53 stories, be by far the tallest buildings on the island – and will be outshone only by the scores of towers planned or already in place in Dubai.

Dubai though recently banned adverts for the new Bahraini venture on their cabs. And the Crown prince of Dubai still keeps secret the precise final height planned for the new Burj al Dubai under construction there. It will be the world’s tallest building – more than a mile high – give or take an undisclosed few feet.

Bahrain was once moving towards becoming part of the United Arab Emirates along with Qatar. At the eleventh hour it decided to withdraw – leaving the oil rich nation of Abu Dhabi to dominate the emirates.

Many Bahrainis rue that decision as its economic fortunes decline. A report published recently forecast 35 per cent unemployment in Bahrain within the next few years unless dramatic action is taken.

Inevitably economic woes like this breed further divisions. The government has an official programme of Bahrainisation of the workforce which will be bad news to the thousands of indians who work here on construction sites and in other manual labour and send money home to the sub-continent.

Already they attract sneers and dislike from many Bahrainis. Deepening recession could turn sneers to jeers or worse.

Eventually as Bahrain’s financial fortunes shift, and its citizens tighten their belts, girls like the Filipino who asked us to help her find work may no longer have the option of coming to this formerly oil rich nation.

Hopefully she will find a way home or out of her present dead end job that is less tragic than that of another young woman.

It was towards the end of the Holy Month of Ramadan that another young Filipino maid decided she could no longer stand the life she had with her Bahraini family. A virtual prisoner in their apartment she decided to literally climb to freedom.

But instead of escape she found death. She jumped or fell from a second floor window.