26.02.2011                      22.Adar l, 5771

Arabien:

Arab World: The troubled island in Iran’s backyard

The White House’s ability to calm the turmoil in Bahrain will be key to stabilizing the Persian Gulf and checking Tehran’s influence.

Until last week, Bahrain was an overlooked, underreported speck on the regional map, an island fiefdom known in the West as home to an annual Formula One auto race and, presumably, a few oil wells.
But by the start of February, popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt had stoked old grievances across the Arab world, and by mid-month a disparate collection of disaffected Bahrainis had come together to organize a large-scale protest for February 14, the 10th anniversary of a national charter aimed at quashing dissent by enacting limited political reforms. Bahrain’s Health Ministry estimates seven people have been killed since security forces opened fire on the protesters who first took their grievances to the streets….