VANCOUVER SUN: BAGHDAD - Saudi Arabia's massive oil wealth and Sunni solidarity against Shiite Iran is the main reason Arab states remained muted over repression in Bahrain, while loudly protesting over the crushing of a popular revolt in Libya, analysts say.
"Riyadh has traded Bahrain for Libya, because what happens at its borders is vital for the kingdom," said Burhan Ghalioun, director of the Centre for Contemporary Oriental Studies at the Sorbonne in Paris.
He said "the allied military intervention in Libya is secondary for Gulf countries, because their relations are very bad with Moamer Gadhafi," the Libyan leader facing a revolt at home and air strikes by an international coalition to prevent his brutal crackdown on civilians.
On March 14, Saudi Arabia sent 1,000 troops across the causeway into Bahrain, and two days later police cracked down on protesters who had been camped in the centre of Manama for a month, killing three demonstrators.
"Nobody is interested in showing hostility to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries. Westerners and Arab states alike need their oil and huge financial resources," Ghalioun added.
Nearly half of the world's oil reserves are owned by the Gulf monarchies, which since 1984 have been linked through the "Peninsula Shield" defence pact.
It has been conflict between Sunnis and Shiites, and the looming shadow of Iran, that has been instrumental in coalescing support behind King Hamad, the Sunni monarch who rules over a Bahrain population that is 70 per cent Shiite. » | Agence France-Presse | Tuesday, March 22, 2011
